This is the latest installment of a daily series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

With work in so many industries disrupted by COVID-19 and the efforts to limit its spread, many individuals have felt the financial pressure of work stoppages or even layoffs. Those in the baseball haven’t been immune to this pressure. Earlier this week, Major League Baseball and all 30 clubs agreed to relief for the seasonal ballpark employees that have been left jobless with the delayed start to the season, pledging $1 million per team. Yesterday, after a loud and persistent public outcry, we finally saw the financial situation of the league’s minor league players addressed, if only temporarily.

MLB Announces a League-Wide Initiative to Support Minor League Players

After a handful of teams announced earlier in the week that they would continue to pay their spring training per diems, the policy was officially adopted as a league-wide, temporary solution for all minor league players:

A league-wide initiative has been announced for Minor League players to receive compensation between now and the scheduled start of the Minor League season. @MLB will continue to work with all 30 Clubs on the development of an industry-wide plan for compensation beyond 4/8. pic.twitter.com/Ck8Lv9uuzp

— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) March 19, 2020

Every team will provide each minor league player a lump sum equal to the allowances that would have been paid until the beginning of the minor league season on April 8. There are a few exceptions, and no solution has been announced for how to handle compensation between April 9 and the beginning of the upcoming season, whenever that might be. MLB and the teams are still working on a long-term plan. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros received some bad news about Justin Verlander’s health yesterday after he left his spring start early on March 8. The results of his MRI showed a lat strain and he’s been shut down without a timetable to begin a throwing program. His availability for opening day is definitely in jeopardy and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him miss at least the first month of the season as he ramps up his workload during extended spring training.

Losing Verlander for any amount of time is concerning for the Astros because their depth behind him is rather lacking, as Jay Jaffe explained yesterday. The loss of Gerrit Cole, Wade Miley, and Collin McHugh has left the back end of the Astros rotation rather open. And with Verlander out for the foreseeable future, that opens up another spot temporarily. Zack Greinke, Lance McCullers Jr., and Jose Urquidy should hold down the first three places, leaving two to a group filled with question marks. Josh James, who was likely leading the competition for the fifth spot, likely earned a role in the rotation with Verlander’s injury. That means the battle for the final spot comes down to Austin Pruitt or Framber Valdez, with Forrest Whitley an extreme long shot.

Both Pruitt and Valdez have collected less than 200 innings at the major league level, though Pruitt is already 30 years old while Valdez is just 26. Neither has been all that impressive during their short big-league careers. Valdez has the raw stuff, including a plus curveball and a mid-90s fastball, but he simply can’t control it. Pruitt doesn’t have the same raw stuff, but his repertoire has elements that are intriguing. There may be enough there that the Astros can tinker with to help him reach his ceiling. Read the rest of this entry »

Last winter, a whopping 33 contract extensions were signed between the end of the World Series and early April, nearly as many as the previous two offseasons combined. In all, over $2.2 billion in new money was guaranteed to these 33 players, with seven of those extensions crossing the nine figure mark. It was the largest total outlay for contract extensions in a single offseason in baseball history, beating the previous record set during the 2011-2012 offseason.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the rash of extensions signed last year was the diversity of the types of players teams extended. Established stars like Mike Trout, Paul Goldschmidt, and Chris Sale all signed massive contracts befitting their status as legitimate stars. Then there were players like Nolan Arenado, Xander Bogaerts, and Jacob deGrom, all members of the most common group of players to sign extensions: young, established players on the verge of hitting free agency.

In recent seasons, we’ve seen more and more players sign long-term contracts before reaching arbitration, like Alex Bregman, Blake Snell, and German Márquez all did last year. The newest frontier for contract extensions moves even earlier on the arbitration timeline. Some teams are now extending their top prospects before or not long after they make their major league debuts — Eloy Jiménez, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Brandon Lowe all fell into that category last year. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, MLB.com reporter Sarah Langs wrote an article entitled, “Juan Soto is even better than you think he is.” Soto is already good. Like, really good. And he’s only 21 years old. Langs took Soto’s 2020 ZiPS projections and envisioned the continued growth he could see this upcoming season. If the projections hold up, we could be seeing a historic season from the young Dominican, as Langs explained:

“The only players to have multiple qualified seasons with a 140 or higher wRC+ before their age-22 seasons are Mel Ott (3), [Mike] Trout, Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams. Each of those players’ outstanding starts to their young careers resulted in a Cooperstown plaque, except for Trout, who’s still active but by all measures seems headed there, too.”

ZiPS projects a 5.5 WAR season for Soto with a 149 wRC+, a seven point increase over his 2019 mark. Only six other players are projected to accumulate more WAR and just three are projected to post a higher wRC+ than Soto. After placing second in Rookie of the Year balloting and a year after placing ninth in the NL MVP voting, Soto has a strong case to be one of the early frontrunners in the NL MVP race heading into this season:

Read the rest of this entry »

Players have reported to camp, bullpens are being thrown, and batting practice is being taken. Spring training is nearly in full swing with a full slate of games scheduled for Saturday. Every spring, the various position battles being waged on every team’s roster are often the most interesting storylines to follow.

This year, a surprising position battle opened up in Arizona. Last weekend, Mike Hazen, the general manager of the Diamondbacks, confirmed that there would be an open competition for the fifth spot in Arizona’s rotation. With Madison Bumgarner added during the offseason and Robbie Ray still in the fold, it looks like the D-backs have just one open spot. Luke Weaver should be fully healthy after recovering from his forearm strain that wiped out nearly four months of his season last year. Mike Leake, who is dealing with a fracture in his non-throwing hand this spring, likely has a spot in the rotation locked up too. Many assumed Zac Gallen, acquired by the D-backs at the trade deadline last year, would have earned that last spot with his impressive rookie campaign, but apparently that’s not the case. Instead he’ll have some competition in the form of Merrill Kelly and Alex Young.

The fifth spot in the rotation is probably Gallen’s to lose, but both Kelly and Young bring intriguing profiles to the table that make this position battle a little more interesting than it may seem. Here’s a quick look at what ZiPS sees from this trio. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, the Cleveland Indians found themselves in the middle of a classic good news, bad news situation. It was encapsulated by this tweet from their official Twitter account:

We would like to officially welcome Domingo Santana to The Land!

Additionally, Mike Clevinger will undergo surgery on his left knee today and his timetable is TBD. pic.twitter.com/3PSW9gPjeO

— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) February 14, 2020

First, the bad news. While participating in preseason drills earlier in the week, Mike Clevinger partially tore the meniscus in his left knee. After his surgery on Friday, the club announced a recovery timeline of six-to-eight weeks. The short end of his rehab timeline would put him on track to rejoin the team just after Opening Day. But since he’ll have missed all of spring training, it wouldn’t be surprising if he was brought along conservatively. Depending on how much time he needs to ramp up for the season, it’s possible he’d miss as much as the first month. Read the rest of this entry »

A little over a month ago, the Diamondbacks signed David Peralta to a three-year, $22 million contract extension. It was a little odd to see Arizona commit to the veteran outfielder for the next three seasons. The 32-year-old was in his final year of arbitration, but the total value of the contract made it a low-risk move for the club and a risk-mitigating decision for Peralta. On Monday, the Diamondbacks were at it again, this time signing Nick Ahmed to a four-year, $32.5 million extension.

Ahmed was also in his final year of arbitration so the new deal buys out his first three years of free agency. But unlike Peralta, Ahmed was facing an ugly arbitration hearing to fight over just $350,000. Ahmed was seeking $6.95 million while the Diamondbacks countered with $6.6 million. The soon-to-be 30-year-old will instead take home even more than he bargained for in 2020 — reportedly a $6 million salary but with a $1.5 million signing bonus — as well as long-term security over the next four years.

Along with Peralta, Ahmed represents a core-adjacent player who should provide solid production for the team as they move into the second year of their soft reset. With Madison Bumgarner and Starling Marte now on board as well as a restocked farm system, the Diamondbacks look poised to challenge for the National League Wild Card. It’s a shame an NL West rival had to go and acquire a former MVP right fielder, all but locking up the division in February. Locking up Peralta and Ahmed to affordable contracts now gives Arizona cost certainty for the next few seasons as they look to graduate a number of prospects over the next couple of years with the payroll room to add additional talent via free agency. Read the rest of this entry »

Just when you thought every angle of the Astros sign-stealing scandal had been covered, a new wrinkle emerges. Previous attempts to discern the true impact of the banging scheme were always limited by the lack of granular data. Without going through the effort of scanning all of the available audio and video, we had very little idea how often the Astros banged on their trash can. Were they using their scheme in every plate appearance? Only in high-leverage situations? Without answers to these questions, we were using incomplete data that included a ton of noise.

Enter Tony Adams. He scanned through 58 Astros home games with available video and audio and logged every single instance of a bang using a custom application he built. He ended up logging over 8,200 pitches and over 1,100 bangs. Last Wednesday, he made his data public on his site.

With Adams’ data in hand, we have answers to some of the questions that thwarted earlier attempts at analysis. The data still isn’t comprehensive. The 23 home games with missing video are still shrouded in mist, and we can’t assume the banging scheme was in effect during plate appearances where the batter only saw fastballs. We also don’t have insight into other possible methods of communicating stolen signs, like whistling, buzzers, or the like. Still, the new data provides us with a thorough look at those 58 games, helping us draw some more definitive conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday afternoon, the Mariners announced a four-year contract extension for Marco Gonzales with a guarantee of $30 million. This new deal will cover the 2021–2024 seasons, with a club option for a fifth year that could bring the total value of the deal to $45 million. Because he signed an unorthodox contract extension in 2018 — Gonzales signed to avoid an unpleasant service time issue inherited by the Mariners — this new deal will cover all three of his arbitration years and potentially two free agent years.

With Gonzales’ $5 million 2021 salary on the books, the Mariners have just over $50 million in committed salary next year. That’s the season when the Mariners have been aiming to transition out of their soft rebuild phase. By then, Jarred Kelenic, Logan Gilbert, and possibly even Julio Rodriguez could all have graduated to the majors and the Mariners should have a ton of room to add salary. Signing Gonzales to an affordable contract now locks in his salary figures during his arbitration years, giving Seattle some cost certainty during the seasons where they’ve indicated they plan to spend more.

It’s likely the framework for Gonzales’s extension was built on the flurry of four-year extensions handed out to a number of starting pitchers last offseason. Aaron Nola, Luis Severino, Blake Snell, Kyle Hendricks, and German Márquez all signed four-year pacts with their respective teams prior to the season starting. The table below lists the six pitchers with their age, service time, and cumulative performance prior to signing their extension:

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a relatively quiet winter for Jerry Dipoto and the Mariners. Seemingly content to let their youngsters play (or develop in the minors), the frantic wheeling and dealing that we had become accustomed to in offseasons past has subsided this year. With their eyes set on 2021, there hasn’t been much of a need to add to their roster. But while most of their key positions are manned by players who, in an ideal world, will form the core of the competitive roster next year, the bullpen is filled with a number of question marks. The Mariners addressed that concern by signing Yoshihisa Hirano to a one-year contract yesterday.

The deal guarantees $1.6 million to the pitcher with a number of performance bonuses based on appearances and games finished. The most interesting wrinkle to his contract comes in the form of a $250,000 bonus that kicks in each time he’s traded. This “Jerry Dipoto clause” is a savvy inclusion for the veteran reliever who will likely be shopped around near the trade deadline if he’s any good at all.

After an 11-year career in Japan, Hirano made the jump to the States in 2018. In two seasons with the Diamondbacks, he was a decent option towards the back end of the bullpen. Last year, he improved his strikeout rate by almost four points but saw his FIP jump over four due to an increase in his home run rate. Through August 12, he had actually posted a 3.30 FIP with just three home runs allowed, but a nasty two-game stretch on August 14 and 16 led to a brief stint on the Injured List with elbow inflammation. He returned in mid-September, but continued to struggle, giving up four more home runs in his nine appearances after August 12. Read the rest of this entry »