The 2019 season couldn’t have gone much better for Stephen Strasburg, but his follow-up performance is already over. After making just two long-delayed and abbreviated starts, the 32-year-old righty has been transferred to the 60-day Injured List and is slated to undergo surgery to alleviate carpal tunnel neuritis in his right hand. He becomes the latest top-flight pitcher to land on the IL this season, and leaves the already-struggling Nationals just that much more shorthanded as they defend their title.

After averaging just 24 starts per season from 2015-18 due to a variety of ailments, Strasburg didn’t miss a single start in 2019. He struck out a career-high 251 batters in a National League-high 209 innings, received enough run support to notch an NL-high 18 wins as well, and finished with a 3.32 ERA, 3.25 FIP, and 5.7 WAR, the last of which ranked third in the NL behind Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer. He followed that stellar season with a dominant postseason performance, pitching to a 1.98 ERA with 47 strikeouts and just four walks in 36.1 innings, and won World Series MVP honors while helping the Nationals win their first championship in franchise history. After opting out of the final four years and $100 million of his contract, he signed a new seven-year, $245 million deal. It was a very good year.

Strasburg appeared to be on track to make his season debut on July 25, in the Nationals’ second game, but he was scratched from the start just hours before first pitch due to what was described as a nerve issue. He was replaced by Erick Fedde, and received an injection of cortisone. At the time, he admitted that he had been pitching through numbness in his hand for weeks. From NBC Sports’ Todd Dybas:

“Started out, probably, like the end of the first week of camp. I was waking up in the middle of the night and my hand was asleep. Kept falling asleep and I was getting these feelings, and it wasn’t really bothering me throwing. It seemed like once I tried starting to ramp up and stuff, the symptoms started to increase. It really’s something the last two [intrasquad] games was feeling it pretty regularly. Just something you try to throw through. After I got out of the last start problems, issues, just kept persisting. Saw that there was nerve impingement in my wrist. Got a cortisone shot to hopefully create more space in there to get it to calm down and get back to normal.

…”It got to the point where I didn’t have the same feeling in my hand holding the ball. It was affecting my ability to command the baseball the way I’m accustomed to. It’s something that I feel like if I take some time now to get that feeling back to normal, I can be out there much sooner than if I try to just gut it out at this point.”

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It’s been a big week for the Seager family. For the first time in the careers of 26-year-old Corey Seager, who debuted in the majors with the Dodgers in 2015, and his 32-year-old brother Kyle, who debuted with the Mariners in 2011, the pair crossed paths in a regular season game. What’s more, they put themselves in the history books by becoming the first pair of brothers to homer in the same game for opposing teams since 2001, and just the ninth to do so in MLB history. Both brothers are off to strong starts this year after solid but unexceptional 2019 seasons.

Bad timing accounts for the fact that the brothers had never played a regular season game against each other until this week. Their respective teams played an interleague series in Los Angeles in April 2015, but Corey, the Dodgers’ first-round pick three years earlier, had just begun his second stint at Double-A Tulsa. When the Dodgers visited Safeco Field in August 2018, he was on the injured list, having not only undergone Tommy John surgery on May 4 of that year but also arthroscopic surgery on his left hip labrum on August 7.

MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick described the brothers’ first regular-season meeting as bittersweet, because the coronavirus pandemic prevented parents Jeff and Jody from making the trip from North Carolina to join them either at Dodger Stadium, where they played on Monday and Tuesday, or Safeco Field, where they played Wednesday and Thursday. The dueling homers occurred in the series opener on Monday, with Corey clubbing a towering 425-foot shot off Justin Dunn with two on in the third inning; dig the looks on the pair’s faces as little brother rounds the bases:

As you can see, an inning later, Kyle countered with a 405-foot solo homer off Ross Stripling, the second of three that the Dodgers righty would serve up in that frame as the Mariners overcome a 6-2 lead. Even so, the Dodgers came back to win the wild slugfest, 11-9. Read the rest of this entry »

The future of the Tigers arrived ahead of schedule this week — in Chicago, not Detroit, because necessity didn’t consult a travel itinerary. Faced with injuries, the majors’ most ineffective rotation, and a losing streak that erased a surprisingly strong start to the abbreviated season, the Tigers promoted three of their top prospects — third baseman Isaac Paredes, lefty Tarik Skubal, and righty Casey Mize, the last of those the number one overall pick of the 2018 draft — to provide immediate reinforcements. The moves aren’t likely to send the team to the playoffs, even given the field’s expansion, but they should make the Tigers an improved and more interesting club even as they endure growing pains.

After losing 114 games last year and an average of 103 over the past three seasons, the Tigers appeared likely to remain doormats this season. Back in March, before the coronavirus interrupted spring training, our Playoff Odds projected them for 95 losses, with a 0.1% chance of making the playoffs — higher than the Mariners and Orioles, both of whom came in at percentages too small to be viewed with the naked eye, but otherwise pretty hopeless. The pandemic-shortened schedule improved their odds significantly; though still projected for a .417 winning percentage (25-35 instead of 67-95) as of Opening Day, they were estimated to have a 1.4% chance at winning the AL Central and a 12.0% chance at claiming one of the AL’s eight playoff berths.

Those odds climbed to as high as 39.2% as the Tigers won nine of their first 14 games, the team’s best start since 2015, when they went 11-3. In that year, however, 14 games represented 8.6% of their schedule, where this year it’s 23.3%. Those Tigers finished 74-87, a reminder that even lousy teams sometimes bolt from the gate in impressive fashion; last year’s Mariners, to use an example in recent memory, opened by going 13-2 but still finished 68-94.

As if on cue, the 2020 Tigers hit the skids for what has become an eight-game losing streak, starting with five straight at home — two to the White Sox, then three to the Indians — and then all three games against the White Sox in Chicago. The skid has sent them to a 9-13 record, dropping their run differential into the red (-25 runs); even entering Wednesday, their actual winning percentage had been well ahead of their projected winning percentages, but they’ve regressed to the point that their .409 mark is looking up at both their Pythagenpat (.420) and Baseruns (.416) winning percentages, which is to say that they’ve apparently found their level. Read the rest of this entry »

2:09	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to a slightly delayed edition of my weekly chat. I just walked in the door having pried a nearly-4-year-old away from water balloons on the playground and will need a few minutes to get settled

2:13

Jay Jaffe: I’m back, with a bit of housekeeping… here’s today’s story on Mookie Betts’ progress towards Cooperstown https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mookie-betts-is-building-a-case-for-co… and here’s yesterday’s story about the Yankees’ mounting injury concerns https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/with-injuries-to-stanton-judge-and-lem…

2:13	Jay Jaffe: and now, on with the show

2:17

Jay Jaffe: I’m not sure anyone knows enough to say that’s a necessity. He apparently has carpal tunnel neuritis but I have yet to see anybody offer a timeline for recovery. Obviously, the team shouldn’t push him to pitch if he’s not healthy, but if waiting a month and ramping up allows him to be ready to contribute in the postseason (assuming the Nationals make it; right now they’re tied for the eighth and final seed with the Mets), then that’s a reasonable course of action.

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It’s a lousy time to be the Red Sox these days, running an American League-worst 6-16 record while allowing over six runs per game. Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez are out for the year, Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez aren’t generating anything close to their usual firepower while much of the lineup wheezes, and 3,000 miles away, Mookie Betts is off to an MVP-caliber start with his new team, the Dodgers.

On Monday, Betts continued his early-season rampage, homering for the fifth time in five games. This time it was a leadoff shot against the Mariners’ Justin Dunn:

That was the 21st leadoff home run of Betts’ career, a total that’s tied for seventh since 2014, his first year in the majors; George Springer leads with 36. It was Betts’ ninth homer of the season, which would have tied him for the National League lead with Fernando Tatis Jr. if the Padres prodigy hadn’t hit two against the Rangers (the second of which broke the Internet and the game’s insufferable unwritten rules). The 27-year-old right fielder is hitting .319/.374/.681 with 1.6 WAR, tied with Brandon Lowe for third in the majors behind Tatis and Mike Yastrzemski (both 1.8).

Last Thursday, while his former team was losing so badly to the Rays that they used both catcher Kevin Plawecki and infielder Jose Peraza on the mound, Betts homered three times against the Padres. It wasn’t just any three-homer game, either — and not just because his first homer, off Chris Paddack, came on a pitch off the plate and away (a rarity Ben Clemens broke down on Friday). It was the sixth three-homer game of Betts’ career, which tied the major league record:

There are some prodigious home run hitters on that list; four of the 17 players above hit at least 600 in their careers, while two more are in the 500s and three in the 400s. Betts, on the other hand, is still two homers shy of 150, and yet there he is at the top alongside Sosa (609 homers in 18 seasons) and Mize (359 homers in 15 seasons, a total suppressed by his losing three prime seasons to World War II). He’s been helped a bit by playing in a homer-heavy era, and by Fenway Park as well, in that he’s the only player with three three-homer games there, as many as Nomar Garciaparra and Ted Williams put together. Read the rest of this entry »

Just past the one-third mark of the abbreviated 2020 season, the Yankees have been steamrolling opponents to the point of compiling the American League’s second-best record (15-6) thanks largely to a league-best offense, but as with last year, they’re having a hard time keeping their regulars healthy. Earlier this past week, they lost Giancarlo Stanton to a hamstring strain, and within a 48-hour span this past weekend, they placed both Aaron Judge and DJ LeMahieu on the Injured List as well, that at a time when the pair collectively occupied the AL leads in the three slash stats. As with last year, when shortstop Gleyber Torres was the only member of the expected starting lineup to avoid landing on the IL at some point, the team’s depth is getting quite a test, but there’s no guarantee that they can replicate the strong performances that kept them afloat in 2019.

Stanton, who after being limited to just 18 games last season due to strains in his left biceps, left shoulder, and right knee — not to mention a right quad strain suffered during the AL Division Series — would have begun this season on the IL as well due to a right calf strain, had it opened on schedule. The delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic worked in his favor, and he began the shortened 2020 campaign with a bang, mashing an Opening Day home run off the Nationals’ Max Scherzer in his first plate appearance, then following up with an major league-high 483-foot shot off Eric Fedde two days later. For a short while, he remained healthy and productive, serving as the designated hitter in 14 of the team’s first 15 games and batting .293/.453/.585 (182 wRC+) with three homers, but he left the second game of the Yankees’ August 8 doubleheader with what was soon diagnosed as a Grade 1 left hamstring strain, an injury that is expected to sideline him for 3-4 weeks.

It’s a frustrating turn of events for the 30-year-old slugger, who has lost significant time to injuries in four out of the past six seasons, though Stanton did play 159 games in 2017 with the Marlins and 158 in ’18 with the Yankees. “I’m hurting for him,” manager Aaron Boone told reporters at the time. “I know what he’s done to be here. His play speaks for itself. Hopefully it’s something that doesn’t end up keeping him down too long.”

Judge, who is off to a .290/.343/.758 start while leading the AL in slugging percentage and home runs (nine, now tied with Mike Trout) and ranking third in wRC+ (191), was lifted from Tuesday’s game against the Rays in the sixth inning, just after hitting the last of those homers. Boone said he wanted to get the slugger off his feet after four straight games on the turf at Tropicana Field, but he hasn’t played since due to what was initially described as “lower body tightness” and has since been diagnosed as a mild calf strain.

She just asked, "Why don't you watch some baseball and learn if Aaron Judge is better?" https://t.co/kCefalSM1o

— Jay Jaffe (@jay_jaffe) August 16, 2020

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After more than two weeks on the sidelines due to the majors’ second large-scale coronavirus outbreak (the Marlins were first), and more than a week of quarantining and daily testing, the Cardinals are finally slated to return to play on Saturday. The plan is for them to drive to Chicago on Friday to play a pair of series against the White Sox and Cubs, during which they’ll begin making up for lost time by playing three doubleheaders in five days. Even so, the math has become daunting as far as fitting the 55 games they have remaining into the 44 days from Saturday until the end of the season.

While the other four teams in the NL Central are between 16 and 19 games into their schedules, the Cardinals have played just five. They began the shortened season by beating the Pirates twice at home, losing to them once, and then losing two to the Twins in Minnesota. Before the start of their three-game series in Milwaukee on the weekend of July 31, two players tested positive, leading to the series’ postponement. Further positive tests have brought the total number of positives to 18 – 10 players and eight staffers, including a coach whose positive result was reported on Thursday — and they’ve had additional postponements of series against the Tigers, Cubs and Pirates, as well as the marquee “Field of Dreams” game against the White Sox in Dyersville, Iowa.

While initial, widely-circulated rumors of the outbreak’s origin centered around players visiting a casino, the team has refuted that allegation, and MLB concurs with that conclusion according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold. Goold reported that the Potawatomi Hotel & Casino in Milwaukee went so far as to check the reservation and membership records it is keeping as part of their heath and safety protocols since reopening and found no record of any Cardinals player visiting. Attempts by the paper to trace any root of the casino report to Minneapolis or St. Louis have proved unsuccessful as well. The casino-based rumor may stem from a July 12 visit to an outdoor drive-in concert venue called the Hollywood Casino Amphitheater by Cardinals players, who were photographed wearing masks and socially distancing. Via Goold, manager Mike Shildt said that the Cardinals have “traced the genesis of the outbreak back to an outside individual who was asymptomatic when he had contact with a member of the club,” bringing the infection into the clubhouse.

According to MLB.com’s Anne Rogers, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak told reporters via Zoom on Thursday that the 18th positive test is a coach whose positive test “comes after several days of inconclusive results. He is asymptomatic and has been in isolation for the past week.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the run-up to the 60-game 2020 season, colleagues Craig Edwards and Dan Szymborski were among the many writers in the industry who weighed in on the possibility of a player hitting .400 or better. They used lots of fancy math and projections to do so, but it’s already clear that both laid down on the job by failing to estimate the odds of a player hitting .500, as Rockies right fielder Charlie Blackmon was through Tuesday night. Can’t anybody here play this game?

Blackmon’s 3-for-4 performance against the Diamondbacks on Tuesday extended his hitting streak to 15 games, which is tied with the Giants’ Donovan Solano for the major league high this year; during that span, he hit .567/.591/.817. The three-hit game also marked Blackmon’s sixth straight with multiple hits, tied with the Mariners’ Kyle Lewis for the big league high; over that span, he hit .739/.778/1.174 — that’s 17 hits in 23 at-bats, and without a single strikeout, to boot.

Blackmon entered Wednesday afternoon’s game against the Diamondbacks — in which he went 0-for-4 with a walk, but don’t let that tangle my yarn — at .500/.527/.721, with 34 hits through 17 games. As best as I can tell using Baseball-Reference’s Stathead service (the updated version of the Play Index), that’s tied for fourth since 1901:

That’s some company, with four Hall of Famers — one a repeat customer, topping the list in the American League’s inaugural season (expansion alert!) — and the all-time hits leader, plus the Rockies’ original right fielder (Bichette) as well as the already-counted Hall of Famer who bumped him to left field upon arriving in 1995 (Walker). The one you don’t know about is Reynolds, a well-traveled outfielder from a high-offense era; he played for five teams in 13 years from 1927-39, batting as high as .359 for the White Sox in 1930, the year that offense was off the charts. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, key players on two American League playoff contenders made mistakes pertaining to COVID-19 protocols that will cost them significant chunks of the shortened 2020 season. Cleveland starting pitchers Mike Clevinger and Zach Plesac — two key members of what has been the majors’ most effective rotation thus far — were both placed on the restricted list by the team and ordered to self-quarantine for three days after sneaking out of the team hotel in Chicago. Meanwhile, Oakland center fielder Ramón Laureano was suspended for six games by Major League Baseball for his part in a bench-clearing incident that occurred in Sunday’s game against Houston.

The two situations are different in their particulars, but they share some commonalities. In a normal season, the actions of these players might not have generated more than a series of stern lectures behind closed doors, and whatever suspensions they led to would have been blips on the radar amid a 162-game schedule. However, the pandemic has necessitated new rules and regulations — over 100 pages of them in MLB’s 2020 Operations Manual — and all three players crossed lines that not only violated those rules but increased the risk of infection for themselves and their teammates. Their punishments have been amplified, perhaps disproportionally, albeit as a warning to other players.

The saga of the Indians’ starters unfolded in stages. On Sunday, the team sent Plesac, a 25-year-old righty with 24 major league starts under his belt, back to Cleveland after he left the hotel without permission and went out with friends on Saturday evening. As innocuous as it sounds, that’s now prohibited under the revised protocols MLB issued last week in the wake of outbreaks on the Marlins and Cardinals; any player wishing to leave the hotel on a road trip is required to obtain permission from the team’s compliance officer.

Plesac’s actions greatly upset both the Cleveland brass and his teammates. Mindful of the possibility that he had been exposed to someone with an infection and could trigger an outbreak, the team quickly moved to isolate him from the rest of the traveling party, arranging a car service to send him back to Cleveland. According to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Zack Meisel, both Plesac and the driver were given instant tests to ensure they were not already infected. Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of my weekly chat. First off, here’s my piece from today about Fernando Tatis Jr.’s statistical dominance and the joy he’s bringing https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fernando-tatis-jr-enters-the-stratosphere/

2:02	Jay Jaffe: And here’s yesterday’s dispatch about the Marlins’ unlikely — and likely unsustainable — success amid a massive coronavirus outbreak https://blogs.fangraphs.com/despite-outbreak-marlins-skate-to-the-top-…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show

2:04

Jay Jaffe: I took a stab in a 3-part series here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/missed-time-and-the-hall-of-fame-part-1/ (change the last digit in the URL) I have a couple stray thoughts that might lead me to revisit that down the road. It’s also worth noting that old friend Travis Sawchik did some of the heavy lifting for a piece on players missing time for WWII https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-year-off-might-do-to-baseb…

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