Yesterday saw us examine left and center field. Today, we bring the outfield review to a close with a look at right field.

“History” is almost certainly too strong a word for something that’s only been tracked for a limited amount of time and that can so easily slip below the radar, but last year, for the first time during the stretch covered by our splits (2002 onward), right fielders provided more offense than any other position. Both they and first basemen collectively finished in a virtual tie for the positional lead in wRC+ at 108, but a closer look shows that right fielders produced 210.6 batting runs, compared to 209.4 for first basemen. That’s a difference that the slightest tweak in park factors might change, but it’s worth noting nonetheless, particularly after right fielders finished just 4.7 runs behind first basemen in 2018; the gap had been over 100 runs — still just a few per team per season — in favor of the first basemen in each of the previous four seasons.

Driving that 2019 performance were the NL’s top two MVP contenders, winner Cody Bellinger and runner-up (and 2018 winner) Christian Yelich, with 2018 AL winner Mookie Betts third, but here’s the thing: those guys are on the move. Bellinger, who started 102 times in right field, 28 at first base, and 21 in center, enters this shortened season as the Dodgers’ regular at the last of those positions, having demonstrated the athleticism to handle the job, at least on a part-time basis. Oh, and there’s also the matter of his having Betts as his new outfield neighbor thanks to that February blockbuster. As for Yelich, who made 121 starts in right field before his season ended on September 10 due to a fractured right kneecap, he’s back in left field, where he spent most of 2014-16 and much of ’18, and where his defensive metrics have generally been the strongest. Newcomer Avisaíl García will play right.

Of course, there’s plenty of talent at the position beyond the MVP winners. Aaron Judge hits the ball harder than anyone in the game; his problem has been injuries, not performance. Ronald Acuña Jr., who’s on the top tier when it comes to the game’s most electrifying players, is slated to play mostly in right field after spending most of his 2018 and ’19 seasons in left and center. Michael Conforto, miscast in center, has taken to right, Max Kepler has come into his own, Joey Gallo showed signs of breaking out before getting hurt, and Bryce Harper is still a force. Further down the list are late bloomers like Hunter Dozier (another relative newcomer to the position), Brian Goodwin, and Michael Yastrzemski; former top prospects hoping to turn things around such as Nomar Mazara and Gregory Polanco (a 2018 breakout set back by injuries last year); and onetime first-rounders looking for that first sustained taste of success in the majors, such as Kyle Lewis, DJ Stewart, and Lewis Brinson. And hopefully, Jo Adell will debut this year. It’s a group as worth watching as any position. Read the rest of this entry »

2:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon folks and welcome to another edition of my Tuesday chat. Apologies in advance for what’s likely to be a shortened one this week, as I have to bolt to pick up my daughter at some point.  I’ve been pretty buried in Positional Power Rankings lately. My first one, tackling the first basemen — much of which was written before the pandemic — went up Monday: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2020-positional-power-rankings-first-base/ , and I’ll have right field up Friday.

2:06

Jay Jaffe: Well, the steroid era already turned 500 homers into a milestone of questionable value; where attaining it once meant virtually automatic enshrinement, now a player has to have reached it almost without a hint of scandal. There have long been 400-homer players who didn’t come close to sniffing the Hall, even before PEDs were on the scene, such as Dave Kingman. As always, i advocate taking a more complete look at a player in terms of evaluating him for Hall fitness than just one number.

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Not particularly — it’s pretty common for TJ returnees to struggle with control and command initially. So long as he’s pain free, I think he’ll come around.

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Earlier today, Meg Rowley introduced this year’s positional power rankings. As a quick refresher, all 30 teams are ranked based on the projected WAR from our Depth Charts. Our staff then endeavors to provide you with some illuminating commentary to put those rankings in context. We begin this year’s series with first base.

First base just ain’t what it used to be. For the first time in the span covered by our strict position splits (i.e., including only the time actually spent at the position), which means as far back as 2002, not a single first baseman produced a season worth at least 5.0 WAR. Even Pete Alonso, who set a rookie record with 53 homers while posting a 143 wRC+ and playing better-than-advertised defense, topped out at 4.8, with Freddie Freeman and Anthony Rizzo the only other ones to reach 4.0, though Carlos Santana and Max Muncy surpassed that latter pair if you include their time at other positions. Alonso and Freeman were the only ones who cracked the top 10 in MVP voting, placing seventh and eighth in the NL. The highest-ranked AL first baseman in the voting, José Abreu, placed 19th.

On the offensive side, first basemen collectively hit for a 108 wRC+ for the second year in a row, matching their lowest mark of the aforementioned period. In other words, they almost perfectly kept pace with the majors’ rising tide of offense, gaining five points of on-base percentage relative to 2018 (from .333 to .338) and 24 points of slugging percentage (.from 438 to .462); the league as a whole gained five points of the former and 26 of the latter. Collectively, the 47.2 WAR produced by first basemen was just 0.3 ahead of last year for the lowest mark in that period. Read the rest of this entry »

Last month, in the wake of nationwide anti-racism protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, the Quaker Oats company announced that it would retire the name and logo of its Aunt Jemima brand of pancake mixes and other breakfast foods, acknowledging that its origins are “based upon a racial stereotype.” Other corporations quickly followed suit as the branding for products such as Uncle Ben’s rice, Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, Cream of Wheat cereal, Dixie Beer, and Eskimo Pie ice cream bars came under closer scrutiny. This remarkable, long overdue reckoning on branding and symbolism, on who we honor and how, had already spilled over into the sporting arena with NASCAR’s decision to ban the Confederate flag from its events and the Minnesota Twins’ removal of a Target Field statue of former owner Calvin Griffith over racist remarks he made in 1978, but last week it advanced on several fronts. The NFL’s Washington Redskins and MLB’s Cleveland Indians (hereafter referred to by the team’s respective city names) both announced that they would consider name changes, while the Baseball Writers Association of America has begun an internal discussion to change the names of two awards on which its members vote.

On the NFL front, in the latest turn of a decades-old battle, Washington announced that the team “will undergo a thorough review of the team’s name.” That came after FedEx, which owns the naming rights to the team’s stadium, requested it do so. Within hours, Cleveland followed suit with a statement saying that the club is “committed to engaging our community and appropriate stakeholders to determine the best path forward with regards to the team name.”

pic.twitter.com/NUM5GYvlwe

— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) July 4, 2020

The statement arrived nearly a year and a half after the franchise announced a phaseout of its Chief Wahoo logo, a grotesque and demeaning caricature that in various incarnations had been in use since 1948, the same year that Cleveland won its last World Series. The logo made its last lap around the league in 2018, and did not appear on any of the team’s 2019 uniforms. Read the rest of this entry »

2:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to my first chat of … summer camp? Spring training 2.0? The long-delayed preseason? I’m still working on what to call it. What’s in no dispute is that I’d like to start the chat with some entry music from the most badass soundtrack composer of all, Ennio Morricone:

2:06

Jay Jaffe: That’s a good question, and not being a lawyer myself, I don’t have a definitive answer. I do know that the discussion of grievances with  regards to the negotiations concerning the return to play centered around whether MLB was making a good-faith effort to schedule as many games as possible, so I would think that the union would have to prove something similar here, and I bet it would be harder given that they did in fact sign off on the health and safety protocol involving this testing regimen just a couple of weeks ago.

2:08

Jay Jaffe: Eugene Freedman, who often writes about labor relations, including for FanGraphs, would be a better person to ask on that score. (((EugeneFreedman))) @EugeneFreedman @RuthKapelus @NickFrancona @barrysvrluga I haven’t received/read the agreement on health and safety, so I don’t know the answer. Normally, the remedy for a dispute over implementation & interpretation of a negotiated agreement is the parties’ grievance procedure. But, in the case of imminent safety and health 1/ 7 Jul 2020

2:09

Jay Jaffe: I have to admit my eyebrows did some funny things when I saw the report that Cohen is re-entering the fray. I’d assume that he’s the best capitalized of any potential buyer, and no, I don’t think Jeff Wilpon is going to get five years this time around because I don’t think the Wilpons have the kind of leverage that they believed they did a few months ago.

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On Saturday, the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka got hit upside the head and ultimately concussed by a 112-mph screamer off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton, the third player he faced in the team’s first simulated game of summer camp. By Monday, a good portion of Major League Baseball could identify with the headaches and other scary consequences of being knocked down so soon after restarting amid the coronavirus pandemic. The testing program that represents a foundational piece of the protocol to keep players and essential staff safe broke down, causing teams to delay or cancel workouts and amplifying a crisis of confidence within the sport.

Indeed, if one didn’t already feel a fair bit of ambivalence regarding MLB’s attempt to stage even an abbreviated season amid the pandemic, the dysfunction that’s been on display since late last week has certainly provided cause for concern. While the league reported results of its intake tests that initially appeared promising, the caveat attached — incomplete results from most teams — was enough to raise some eyebrows. Beyond that initial stumble, Monday brought news of at least half a dozen teams whose workouts were delayed or canceled due to holiday-related holdups in receiving test results, a matter that should have been anticipated well in advance. All of this comes while the ranks of players testing positive and those opting out both continue to grow, producing absences that could potentially reshape the season and in some cases have life-altering consequences. And of course, this is all unfolding (unraveling?) against the backdrop of record-setting numbers of new cases in the U.S. with totals topping 50,000 for three consecutive days.

Should MLB attempt to proceed at all? Can it? From here, the likelihood of the league pulling this off seems more remote than ever.

Though it was overshadowed by the rancorous and all-too-public exchanges between the owners and the Players Association, MLB sold the union and the public on the viability of a restart based on its ability to expedite a high volume of tests, primarily via saliva-based tests — faster and less invasive than nasal swabs — that a repurposed anti-doping lab in Salt Lake City could process for a 24- to 48-hour turnaround. Even before that turnaround time could be called into question, MLB made a mess of its intake testing, which began at players’ home stadiums on July 1. Players and essential staff were given temperature checks, saliva or nasal swab diagnostic tests for the coronavirus itself, and antibody tests using blood samples. Only those who tested negative were permitted to enter facilities for the first workouts beginning on Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

No sooner had the Yankees opened their summer camp — or spring training 2.0, or whatever we’re calling this tense and perhaps tenuous ramp-up to the long-delayed 2020 season — on Saturday than they got their first scare: the sight of pitcher Masahiro Tanaka being drilled in the head by a line drive hot off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton. The 31-year-old righty never lost consciousness but was taken to the hospital for testing and further evaluation, and while he was released, on Sunday he was diagnosed with a concussion. The terrifying sequence was a reminder that the coronavirus isn’t the only thing for players to fear during this abbreviated build-up to the regular season, but all things considered, both he and the Yankees look quite lucky right now.

At Yankee Stadium, in a simulated game that marked their first formal workout of the restart, Tanaka had faced Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres before Stanton stepped in. The slugger smoked a line-drive comebacker that struck the pitcher on the right side of the head and ricocheted high in the air (I’ll leave it to you to find the video). Keep in mind that since the advent of Statcast in 2015, only Judge and Nelson Cruz have higher average exit velocities than Stanton’s 93.4 mph — he is emphatically not the guy you want pounding a ball off your noggin. According to James Paxton, the ball came off the bat at a sizzling 112 mph. Tanaka fell to the ground, writhing in pain, and stayed down for about five minutes before sitting up and eventually being helped off the field with the assistance of two trainers. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a mundane transaction, one that ordinarily wouldn’t have required 500 words to explain to a baseball-starved readership, let alone 1,800. Matt Kemp, a 35-year-old former All-Star who played just 20 major league games last year, signed a minor-league deal with the Rockies. Given the move’s timing and the circumstances that surround it, however, Kemp-to-Colorado leaves a whole lot to unpack, and so here we are.

Kemp is on a minor-league deal, but he won’t play in the minors this year because there won’t be any minor league season, news of which was officially announced on Tuesday, though the outcome had long been apparent. Kemp may not play in the majors, either, not only because it’s unclear whether he’s good enough to do so anymore, but because the coronavirus pandemic that delayed Opening Day by nearly four months is still running rampant, and because the precautions designed to keep players and associated staff healthy may not be enough.

Even before the official green-lighting of the season, the Rockies were among the first teams to feel the impact of the coronavirus. Last Tuesday, the Denver Post’s Kyle Newman reported that four-time All-Star outfielder Charlie Blackmon was among three Rockies who had tested positive for COVID-19, along with pitchers Ryan Castellani and Phillip Diehl, all of whom had been informally working out at Coors Field in recent weeks. News of their illness followed reports of at least half a dozen teams being hit by the virus, though the players and staffers who tested positive on those teams weren’t identified. Blackmon and company were, but that’s not supposed to happen. While MLB has created a COVID-19-related injured list among its many new roster rules, on Tuesday ESPN’s Marly Rivera reported that both Yankees general manager Brian Cashman and Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer said that teams are not allowed to divulge the names of players who tests positive, in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Read the rest of this entry »

In the Before Times, when the 2020 season was planned at 162 games — on February 12, to be exact — Major League Baseball officially announced a handful of rule changes that had been in the works for awhile, many of which concern teams’ active rosters. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, the season has been drastically shortened, and between a hasty reboot of spring training, a suspended minor league season, and voluminous health- and safety-related protocols, the league has been forced to put some of those changes on hold and adopt a very different set of roster rules than was initially planned.

What follows here is my attempt to sort through those rules and explain some of the new entries in the transaction lexicon. Additionally, I’ll use a couple of teams as examples in order to illustrate some of the roster considerations that may be in play. We’ll start with the easy stuff…

Active rosters

Instead of simply expanding from the tried-and-true 25-man active rosters — a limit that was introduced with the first Collective Bargaining Agreement in 1968 — to 26-man ones as planned, teams will begin the season on July 23 or 24 with rosters of up to 30 players, though they’re allowed to carry as few as 25 (a minimum that will remain in place all season). According to the 2020 Operations Manual, on the 15th day of the season (August 6 or 7) the upper limit drops to 28 players, and two weeks after that date, it drops again to 26. For any doubleheaders after that point, teams will be permitted to add a 27th player.

Additionally, the nit picky rules governing the makeup of those rosters, which were laid out in February (and panned here by yours truly), are on the shelf. Teams won’t be limited to carrying 13 pitchers, after all, and position players won’t be limited to pitching only in extra innings, or in games in which teams are ahead or behind by at least seven runs. In other words, all of this is as it was last year, and somebody damn well better sign catcher/blowout closer Russell Martin tout suite. Read the rest of this entry »

At last we have a 2020 MLB season, or plans for one at least. Based upon what we know about the 60-game schedule — that teams will play each other 10 times within their own division, and have a total of 20 games against the geographically corresponding interleague division — Major League Baseball may need to revisit its tiebreaker procedures, because going by the handful of 60-game slices I examined from last year’s results, they could have some ties to unknot.

You may recall that earlier this month, when a 50-game schedule appeared to be a distinct possibility, I reviewed increments of that size from the 2019 season to illustrate how different the playoff picture might look, depending on when the snapshot was taken. In examining the 50-game segments, which began with Games 1, 26, 51, 76, and 113, I found that nine teams that actually missed the playoffs would have made it at some point. An average of 3.8 actual division winners matched their final positions over those increments, and likewise, an average of 1.2 Wild Card teams did so, with an overall average of 2.6 party crashers per period; division/Wild Card flip-flops accounted for much of the discrepancy. However, not once in those five sets of samples did I find ties for division titles or Wild Card spots, and only once did two Wild Card qualifiers even “finish” with the same record, a rather odd and seemingly improbable result given the limited range of outcomes.

With the 60-game slate now a reality, I decided to revisit the study. While many of the answers it returns are similar to those from the 50-gamer — a fair bit of variation in the selection of playoff teams from snapshot to snapshot, but perhaps not as much as if it were based upon a season that didn’t hit a low point as far as competitive balance was concerned — I went forward with this largely because it promised substantially more fun from a Team Entropy standpoint, which is to say a greater potential for end-of-season chaos via more ties for playoff spots, whether division or Wild Card. That may be a function of selecting a larger number of increments, beginning with Games 1, 16, 31, 46, 61, 76, 91, and 103, or it may just be dumb luck. Obviously, there’s no guarantee such results will be replicated in the upcoming 60-game slate (assuming it can be played to completion, a rather large elephant in the room), but they’re something to hope for, at least if you can get past the anxiety produced by [broad gesture at everything].

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