Author Archive: Dan Szymborski

That final step towards a World Series return again proved elusive for the Tampa Bay Rays Friday night. After carefully nursing a slim 1-0 lead through the early innings, the Rays lost control of the game in the fifth, eventually dropping Game 6 to the Houston Astros by a 7-4 margin. After jumping ahead to a 3-0 series lead, the Rays have now lost three consecutive games, pushing themselves the brink of elimination and the ignominious feat of joining the 2004 New York Yankees as the only teams in baseball history to blow such a series advantage in the playoffs.

Offense has been at a premium in the ALCS, and initially, it looked like this game would be no exception, with four batters in the first inning going down on strikes. Blake Snell’s first inning was a glimpse into how the rest of his afternoon would go: he was effective on paper, but the Astros were downright stingy at swinging at pitches out of the strike zone, forcing him to work hard for his outs.

While the broadcasters talked about shadows more often than Gandalf did in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (yesterday’s were of the non-Sauron variety), Framber Valdez‘s primary weapon in Game 6 was his extraordinarily effective curveball. Despite the Rays being the second-most effective offense against bendy pitches in 2020, Valdez didn’t fear matching strength vs. strength, throwing the pitch more than half the time; when the Rays offered, they missed nearly two-thirds of the time. Hunter Renfroe’s futile attempts to hit the offering were great examples of what has made 2020 Valdez an upgrade from the 2019 edition: behind 3-1 against the former Padre, he dropped two beautiful curves in just about the perfect place to induce unsatisfying swings.

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On Monday afternoon, the Tampa Bay Rays moved to within two wins of advancing to their second World Series in franchise history with a 4-2 victory over the Houston Astros. The scoring was relatively sparse, with five of the game’s six runs coming on three home runs.

Sadly, the game itself was at times overshadowed by the passing of legendary second baseman (and former Colt .45 and Astro) Joe Morgan at 77. Morgan was perhaps more famous for his part on the Big Red Machine, but he was also a key contributor during Houston’s early years. Astros manager Dusty Baker, the only manager in baseball to play against Morgan at his peak (Bud Black and Terry Francona, among others, faced him late in his career) and a friend, said a few words about the Hall of Famer before the game.

“He meant a lot to us, a lot to me, a lot to baseball, a lot to African Americans around the country. A lot to players that were considered undersized. He was one of the first examples of speed and power for a guy they said was too small to play.”

But baseball grinds on despite grief, and after Game 2 was done, Charlie Morton had earned his sixth career postseason win, improving his October line to 6-2 with a 3.16 ERA in 11 starts. While it will go down in the history books as a five-inning shutout, and the ninth consecutive playoff start in which he allowed two runs or fewer, Morton’s start wasn’t anywhere near as neat as you might expect if you only read the box score. The Astros frequently made solid contact but, thanks to the Rays’ defense and a bit of bad luck, failed to cash in on any of their opportunities. Houston left seven runners waiting futilely on the bags through five, only going down 1-2-3 once (in the fifth). Read the rest of this entry »

With the 2020 MLB season delayed thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) received more attention in the United States than usual. While discerning fans — you! — were already aware of the quality of baseball in South Korea, others got their first extended exposure to the league this spring. And one of the players who might have stood out is the Kiwoom Heroes’ current home run leader, Ha-seong Kim 김하성. Kim, who is hitting .304/.396/.521 while splitting time between shortstop and third base, is in his sixth season as a full-time starter in the KBO, and has never had an OPS lower than his 2018 .832 mark despite debuting as a teenager. With the news that Kiwoom will be posting Kim this offseason, it’s quite likely that he’ll be bringing his talents to MLB.

Star shortstops don’t actually hit free agency in their primes all that often. If you’re strict and only count players who their new teams are signing to play the position — Manny Machado was brought in to man third base for the Padres and Hanley Ramirez never played a game at the position for Boston — the last free agent shortstops to sign for at least $20 million guaranteed were José Reyes and Jimmy Rollins after the 2011 season. This year, there’s a very good possibility that at least three — Andrelton Simmons, Marcus Semien, and Didi Gregorius — pass that threshold. Kim could be the fourth. Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves finished sweeping the Miami Marlins on Thursday afternoon, issuing a 7-0 shellacking to knock the Fish out of the postseason. After holding Cincinnati’s bats firmly in check in two Wild Card games, the Braves’ bats exploded in Games 1 and 3, with a generally ineffective Miami lineup struggling to keep up.
Coming into the 2020 season, one of the big question marks surrounding the Marlins was just how effective they’d actually be at scoring runs. In 2019, the team finished last in the National League in runs scored, nearly half a run per game behind the 14th-place San Diego Padres. The Marlins added some veteran depth to the lineup in the form of Jesús Aguilar, Jonathan Villar, Corey Dickerson, and Matt Joyce last offseason — which feels like it was about five years ago at this point — and the hope was that with the team’s impressive stable of young pitching improving, they’d score just enough runs to become relevant. With an assist from a 16-team playoff format, that’s exactly what happened; the offense managed to support a generally solid rotation, and the weak bullpen (5.65 FIP) didn’t sink the team enough to drop it below .500.

That blueprint worked against the Cubs and their 10th-ranked offense and thanks to Sandy Alcantara and Sixto Sánchez, seven runs in two games still left Miami with significant room to spare. But shutting out the Braves is a trickier proposition and when Atlanta’s run-scoring machine ramped up, the Marlins failed to match it, leading them to be the first team eliminated from the round of eight. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things 2020’s expanded playoff format robbed us of was a real American League East throw down. The Rays earned bragging rights, winning 13 of their 15 games in late August to turn a two-game deficit into a four-and-a-half-game cushion, ultimately taking the division by an impressive seven games and whomping the Yankees by an 8-2 margin in their head-to-head matchups. But the Yankees never really acted as if their season was in serious jeopardy because in the end, it never really was. After all, the stakes for winning the division versus finishing in second place have never been lower. With the pennant race defanged, a Yankees vs. Rays postseason matchup brings real electricity where their other 2020 matchups did not. The winner will be just one series away from a trip to the Fall Classic; the loser will be sent home to make plans for 2021.

What makes this matchup fun isn’t just that the results actually matter. There’s also a real contrast between how the teams are run. The Yankees may not spend with the same unchecked aggression they did 15 years ago, but they still agree to massive contracts when the right opportunity arises; Gerrit Cole isn’t being paid in exposure. New York is a standard modern juggernaut: big payroll, big power, and big plate discipline, but with an interest in developing players from within rather than cashing every top prospect into veteran deadline help.

If the Yankees are a 21st century Goliath, no team better personifies David than the Rays. There’s no denying that Tampa Bay’s tiny payroll includes a healthy chunk of parsimony, but most observers agree that the team lacks the revenue — and the possibility of such — to realistically challenge the luxury tax threshold. Whatever you attribute the club’s low payrolls to, the Rays have to be careful and clever. And as low-spending teams go, their record matches up with that of bigger payroll clubs exceptionally well. Since they dropped the Devil from their name before the 2008 season, the Rays have won 1081 games, the fifth-most in baseball, despite playing in one of baseball’s toughest divisions.

And the contrasts don’t stop at payroll. The Yankees have the name-brand superstars, while the Rays always seem to find a multitude of average-to-above-average players out of nowhere with almost paranormal ease. Back when we thought the season would be 162 games long, ZiPS projected four Yankees hitters to be worth at least three wins; only a single Ray (Austin Meadows) was projected to eclipse that mark. But the computer also projected 17 Rays position players to put up at least one win if used in a full-time role compared to just 11 Yankees. No Tampa Bay starter was projected to equal Cole, just as no Rays reliever was expected to be as dominant as Aroldis Chapman, but ZiPS saw the Rays as having 38 better than replacement level pitchers in the organization, the most of any team in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Cincinnati is named for Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a patrician of the early Roman Republic, and a historical figure to whom a few legendary tales have been attributed. The story goes that Cincinnatus was called into duty, exercised absolute authority as dictator, then gave up his power and went home quietly. If postseason baseball can serve as an homage, the baseball team representing his namesake city got the “quietly” part of it right at least.

The Braves completed their two-game sweep of the Reds in convincing fashion on Thursday afternoon, winning 5-0 and advancing to the National League Division Series to face the winner of the Marlins and Cubs. Luis Castillo wasn’t quite as sharp as Trevor Bauer was in his Game 1 masterpiece, but he threw effectively for 5 1/3 innings, striking out seven and allowing just a single run.

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Thanks to 2020’s 16-team postseason format, the Brewers hold the dubious record of being the first playoff team in baseball history not to spend a single day of the season above the .500 mark. That unfortunate track record continued Wednesday night as the Brewers dropped the opening game of their three-game Wild Card matchup against baseball’s winningest team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. En route to a 4-2 loss, 15 Brewers faced a strike three and a sad trudge back to the dugout.

While the Brewers were never favored entering this series — or in any of its game if you fancy the ZiPS Postseason Odds — a few nasty surprises before first pitch soured their odds even further. The team had originally reshuffled the rotation to try to line up a possible Game 1 start for Corbin Burnes, who put up a 2.04 FIP, 2.4 WAR campaign, qualifying for the ERA title by a single out (he would have finished fourth). Unfortunately for the Brew Crew, an oblique issue scratched Burnes from the Wild Card roster and likely the postseason. Joining Burnes yesterday was Devin Williams, out with an unspecified shoulder injury.

Already down two of their most important pitchers, the Brewers turned to Brent Suter to start Game 1. Their other option was starting Brandon Woodruff on short rest, but coming off a 108-pitch win against the Cardinals (the most pitches he’s thrown in the majors), he was instead held back for Game 2. Suter has extensive experience as a starter, but the Brewers have generally been cautious with him since his return from a 2018 Tommy John surgery, not letting him hit the 60-pitch mark in any start. Read the rest of this entry »

12:04

Dan Szymborski: And we are LIVEISH

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Dan Rather @DanRather I have heard others see the world differently, but here are two things you will not find on a Rather dinner table: beans in the chili or garlic in the guacamole. 12 Sep 2020

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Over

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If I told you at the start of the 2020 season that the Cubs would win the division by a comfortable margin, you probably would rightly make some assumptions about the events that led to this result. Probably the most obvious is that a National League Central victory would involve big years from the three biggest names in the lineup: 2016 MVP Kris Bryant, 2018 MVP runner-up Javier Báez, and three-time All-Star and Gold Glover Anthony Rizzo. But that most obvious of assumptions would be wrong in this case. Through Tuesday’s games, these key contributors to the team’s success over the last five years have combined for just 1.1 WAR in 581 combined plate appearances, about the same WAR as players such as Kevin Pillar and Victor Reyes. In 2016, the year the Cubs won the World Series, this trio combined for 15 WAR, or 4.8 WAR per 581 plate appearances.

All three are eligible for free agency no later than the end of the 2021 season and their poor performances have changed their outlooks enough to potentially have consequences for both their career trajectories and future contracts. With their performance this year, the Cubs have gotten a taste of what the team’s future might hold if all three depart Chicago. There are mitigating factors all over the place — the shortened, odd 2020, Bryant’s plethora of injuries — but the fact remains is that for stars, the risk is fairly one-sided. What this means is that for the best players in baseball, it’s far more likely that events will reduce their value than increase their value; I can think of a lot of scenarios that would cause Mike Trout to underperform his WAR projection by five wins, but very few in which he’d exceed it by the same margin. Poor baseball is one thing, but uncertainty is also a problem for a superstar. How have the outlooks for these three changed over 2020? Let us count the ways. Read the rest of this entry »

The Baltimore Orioles have guaranteed that they will finish below the .500 mark after dropping four of five games to the Tampa Bay Rays. After playing relevant baseball for a good chunk of this shortened season and hovering in wild card contention into early September, fighting with the Red Sox to stay out of the AL East basement might be a disappointing result to some. As a suburban Baltimore native — like Elaine Benes, I’m from Towson — I can’t deny that the Orioles making the playoffs would’ve been cool, even with the COVID-19 restrictions preventing me from sneaking out of the press box for some pit beef. The 2020 season is unsuccessful from the point-of-view of the standings, but in terms of building a future contender, the O’s made real progress.

When it comes to roster construction, my personal credo is that if you can’t add good players, add interesting ones. I feel that even in a season that’s lost from a qualifying-for-the-playoffs perspective, there are no lost at-bats or innings pitched. Rebuilding isn’t just adding a bunch of players in the draft and seeing what happens; it’s a process of finding out every bit of information about your talent that you can. Even in just 60 games, the Orioles know a lot more about their roster than they did at the start of the year. The team has some veterans, but in most cases, they made sure to find playing time for a large percentage of the players with a plausible future in Baltimore.

We learned a lot about the players in the end, and for many of them, I feel better about a larger role in 2021 and beyond than I did before this season. And because it’s me, let’s just throw in some (preliminary) 2021-25 ZiPS projections. Read the rest of this entry »