The polls are closed, the results are in, and with no need for a recount after being certified by the firm of Fwar, Dips, Winshares, Gritt, Babip, Pecota, Vorp & Eckstein, they can now be considered official if not actually binding. On Wednesday, I invited FanGraphs readers to weigh in on half a dozen rules that were introduced for 2020 as part of the COVID-19 health and safety protocols but whose status for next year is up in the air and must be negotiated between the players’ union and the owners. The most prominent of those are the universal designated hitter and the expanded playoffs — a pair that might prove to be a bottleneck, since commissioner Rob Manfred and the owners want the players to agree to some form of the latter in exchange for the former — but some of the other ones were an even more radical break from baseball tradition, and they drew very mixed reviews.

Stealing a page from the great Jeff Sullivan, for each of the six rules I asked voters not only whether they were in favor of keeping the rule, but also how much they cared about the issue, on a scale from 1 (very little) to 5 (very much) — call this the passion rating. One purpose in soliciting these answers was to provide some points of comparison with the responses Sullivan received to his February 11th, 2019 poll with respect to the universal DH, the three-batter minimum for pitchers, and the runner-on-second extra innings rule, none of which had been used in MLB at that point and all of which received an audition in 2020. Do people approve of the rules more or less than before? And do they care about those changes more or less than before?

While I’m sure what I’ve done here falls short of actual science — particularly given the fact that for most of the questions, I presented some data that might have an impact upon voters’ choices — I do think the results are interesting enough to share and compare. Read the rest of this entry »

As one of the market’s top position players, George Springer is expected to draw heavy interest this winter, and already there have been reports of the Mets and Blue Jays expressing just that. The 31-year-old center fielder is coming off a strong season; not surprisingly, on Wednesday he was among the four free agents who declined qualifying offers from their 2020 teams, along with Trevor Bauer, DJ LeMahieu, and J.T. Realmuto. Springer, however, could be the winter’s only free agent besides Realmuto to land a contract of at least $100 million.

Springer got off to such a slow start in 2020 that he was hitting .194/.331/.388 as late as September 2nd while pulling the ball an astronomical, out-of-character 51.3% of the time. But while the Astros struggled down the stretch, he finished strong with nine homers and a .703 slugging percentage in his final 23 games and 100 plate appearances. Overall, he hit .265/.359/.540 with 14 homers and finished in virtual ties for ninth in the AL in both wRC+ (146) and WAR (1.9). Given the shortened season, he couldn’t approach the career highs he set in either homers (39) or WAR (6.5) in 2019, and while the same turned out to be true about his wRC+ (156), the difference wasn’t nearly so large as it appeared to be given that season’s raw rate stats (.292/.383/.591):

Springer hit more fly balls than grounders for the first time in his career in 2020, and his final pull rate of 48.0% was 7.7 percentage points above last year’s mark and eight points above his career mark. His average launch angle increased significantly, but his expected batting average and slugging percentage were more or less unchanged from 2019. The hits just didn’t fall in to the same extent: His .259 BABIP was a career low and placed him in the bottom quintile among qualified hitters. Still, his September hot streak suggests he ironed things out, and his 146 wRC+ was five points above his career mark. Plus, he struck out a career-low 17.1% of the time, lest anyone think that his gains in that area — which started to show up in 2017, after he’d struck out 26.0% of the time in his first three seasons — were simply a product of the Astros’ sign-stealing shenanigans. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, I wrote about the National League’s current state of limbo regarding the continued use of the designated hitter. The Senior Circuit’s adoption of the DH was one of several rules changes included as part of MLB’s 2020-specific health and safety protocols, though both the league’s operations manual and commissioner Rob Manfred made clear that all of those changes would be undone once the season ended unless the players’ union agreed otherwise. While rules-related proposals are usually in place in time to be voted upon at the annual November owners meetings, this year’s assembly was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, and with MLB hoping the players will agree to some kind of expanded playoff format in exchange, it could be awhile before we get a resolution.

In writing Tuesday’s piece, I thought it would be interesting to take a page from the Jeff Sullivan playbook and invite FanGraphs’ readership to weigh in regarding not only the universal DH, but also the other rules that were adopted for 2020 but could revert back to their previous state. Several of these rules, or variations of them, had been kicked around in proposals for years, but few of us dreamed they would be put into action given their relatively radical nature. The shortened season created conditions that allowed some of them to audition on the big stage, and while many purists were mortified, a significant share of players, fans, and media found that even some of the more radical ones weren’t so bad after all. Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to the first edition of my weekly chat since the end of the regular season! While the queue fills, I’ve got a bit of housekeeping….

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Here’s today’s dispatch, on the status of the universal DH and how a number of aging hitters are caught in limbo http://blogs.fangraphs.com/checking-in-on-the-status-of-the-universal-…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Here’s yesterday’s piece on the Indians’ plans to trade Francisco Lindor and how they’re complicated by the presence of so many other alternatives on this year’s market and next http://blogs.fangraphs.com/francisco-lindor-and-the-crowd-of-available…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: And, since he’s giving his re-introductory press conference right now, here’s last Friday’s piece on the Red Sox’s rehiring of Alex Cora http://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-inevitable-return-of-alex-cora-to-bosto…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: OK. As we tell our 4-year-old daughter, the question store is open….

Read the rest of this entry »

As if this winter’s free agent market needed anything else to slow it down, the fate of the universal designated hitter has yet to be settled. Like seven-inning doubleheader games and the extra innings runner-on-second rule, usage of the DH in NL games was considered to be part of MLB’s 2020-specific health and safety protocols rather than a permanent change, and so the subject must be revisited in talks between the players’ union and owners. Given the need for Senior Circuit teams to adapt their rosters accordingly, and for a number of free agents to generate competitive bidding and decide their destinations, it’s a decision that should be made as soon as possible, but… it’s complicated.

The possibility of using the DH in the NL for the 2020 season didn’t arise until mid-May, about two months after the coronavirus pandemic forced teams to shut down spring training. Not until late June, when the Major League Baseball Players Association agreed to return for a 60-game season, was the decision finalized; at that point a number of revised rules were shoehorned into the 2020 Operations Manual, whether or not they were directly related to player health and safety. Those rules, which “shall apply during the 2020 championship season and postseason only,” included:

• The universal DH.
• The extra-innings rule that begins each half-inning after the ninth with a runner on second base.
• An override of the previously introduced rule limiting the usage of position players as pitchers to extra innings or depending upon the score deficit
• The three-batter minimum rule for pitchers.
• The continuation of suspended games shorter than five innings.
• The allowance for pitchers to carry a wet rag in their back pocket for the purpose of providing moisture as a substitute for licking fingers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I noted that Marcus Semien was the highest-ranked player from our Top 50 Free Agents list who did not receive a qualifying offer. He heads what projects to be the strongest free-agent class at any position this year, but for teams willing to shop for a shortstop via trade, Francisco Lindor presents a tantalizing alternative. The Indians have reportedly informed teams of their intent to trade the four-time All-Star, who would be at the top of an even stronger crop of free-agent shortstops next year and who almost certainly isn’t going to receive a competitive offer to stay in Cleveland.

Lindor, who turns 27 on November 14, had the weakest season of his career on the offensive side in 2020, hitting just .258/.335/.415 with eight homers and six steals; his 100 wRC+ represented a 14-point dip from 2019 and a 19-point drop relative to his previous career rate. He did overcome a slow start to finish strong, batting .212/.264/.353 (60 wRC+) through his first 21 games and then .285/.371/.450 (122 wRC+) over his final 39. That’s a rather arbitrarily chosen point of inflection, but it’s not far removed from acting manager Sandy Alomar Jr.’s suggestion that Lindor was pressing at the plate early in the season. Even while shedding 1.1 mph of average exit velocity, Lindor wound up underperforming his Statcast expected batting average and slugging percentage (.278 and .441, respectively), though that kind of variance is unremarkable.

Beyond the bat, Lindor was a career-worst 2.5 runs below average via his baserunning, his second year in a row in the red. Thanks to his 5.8 UZR, he still finished with 1.7 WAR, ranking eighth among shortstops and prorating to 4.6 WAR over the course of a full season. His two-year total of 6.1 WAR places him fifth at the position (Semien is first at 8.8), and his three-year total of 13.7 WAR is tops. Read the rest of this entry »

In the least shocking development of the offseason thus far, the Red Sox have rehired Alex Cora to manage the team. Not only did the move to bring back the previously suspended skipper appear to be inevitable, but news of it leaked onto Twitter just 22 minutes after Decision Desk HQ became the first verified outfit to call the presidential election in favor of Joe Biden. This was a Hall of Fame-caliber Friday news dump, designed to minimize the attention paid to a transaction that’s clearly defiant, if not cynical.

Put it this way: I’m no Jon Heyman when it comes to the inside baseball of Major League Baseball, but I tweeted a week ago that the Red Sox not rehiring Cora to manage would be an even bigger shock than the White Sox’s strange rehiring of Tony La Russa, who hasn’t managed since 2011. Unlike the situation in Chicago, where owner Jerry Reinsdorf appears to have unilaterally decided to bring back an old crony without interviewing other candidates (or at least announcing that they had done so), the Red Sox were reported to have interviewed several MLB coaches including Mike Bell (Twins), Don Kelly (Pirates), Carlos Mendoza (Yankees), James Rowson (Marlins), Skip Schumaker (Padres), Luis Urueta (Diamondbacks), and Will Venable (Cubs). But despite that crowded field — which grew to “at least nine candidates” who received first-round interviews — it’s fair to wonder the extent to which this was an ownership-driven decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Between the end of the World Series on October 27 and the arrival of the Qualifying Offer deadline on November 1, players and teams finalized a whole bunch of decisions on whose options to pick up and whose to decline. As we’ve noted in a few places throughout this site — Craig Edwards’ FanGraphs Audio discussion with Meg Rowley about Kolten Wong, Ben Clemens’ piece on Charlie Morton, and my own roundup of the Qualifying Offers — the set of decisions points to a bleak winter for players, as the loss of revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic is causing cutbacks in payroll and other areas. That said, a whole bunch of players lost their jobs because they underperformed drastically in a short season ahead of an unforgiving market.

Via the data provided by Jason Martinez, who runs our RosterResource section, 34 out of the 40 players with at least six years of service time and either a club option or a mutual option had those options declined by their respective teams this past week. That count excludes both players who were released in-season and thus had their options automatically declined (such as Jake McGee and Bryan Shaw), as well as players who still have arbitration eligibility remaining (such as Domingo Santana). Of the six players whose options were picked up, only three were for salaries of more than $5.5 million, namely the Marlins’ Starling Marte ($12.5 million), the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo ($14.5 million), and the Yankees’ Zack Britton ($14 million, but for 2022 in a mechanism that effectively turned his ’21 salary of $13 million into a mutual option as well). Eighteen of the declined options were for 2021 salaries of $10 million or more, and another seven were for at least $5 million. In other words, this subset of players with club or mutual options of $5 million or greater went 4-for-28 in having those options picked up, if we’re counting Britton.

By comparison, using the same parameters, 33 out of 43 club or mutual options were declined by teams last year, a count that doesn’t include the two mutual options declined by players who went on to sign four-year deals elsewhere (Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas). Of the 10 club options picked up, seven of them were by players with salaries of at least $9 million: Rizzo ($14.5 million), Marte ($11.5 million, picked up when he was still a Pirate), the Indians’ Corey Kluber ($17.5 million), the Twins’ Nelson Cruz ($12 million), the Cubs’ Jose Quintana ($10.5 million), the Nationals’ Adam Eaton ($9.5 million), and the Pirates’ Chris Archer ($9 million); three other players with salaries in the $5.5-9 million range had their options picked up as well. Such was the structure of these contracts that all of those players except Cruz and Quintana had club options after both the 2019 and ’20 seasons, with Marte and Rizzo the only two who had both picked up; Quintana had a similar structure following the 2018 and ’19 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

In the latest sign that this offseason could be a difficult one for free agents due to the industry-wide loss of revenue caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, just six players received qualifying offers from their 2020 teams prior to Sunday’s 5 PM Eastern deadline. That’s the lowest total since the system was put in place in 2012, not that anyone should fret the loss of something that makes player movement more difficult. The six — Trevor Bauer, Kevin Gausman, DJ LeMahieu, J.T. Realmuto, George Springer, and Marcus Stroman — have until November 11 to accept or decline the one-year, $18.9 million offers. While historically, the odds strongly suggest that most of those players will decline them and move on, Gausman and Stroman stand out as two players who could accept them and return to their respective teams.

I’ll get to the players and the decisions themselves, but before that, there’s a lot to unpack. To review, the qualifying offer system was introduced for the 2012-16 Collective Bargaining Agreement and then revised for the 2017-21 CBA. It’s the latest mechanism in a battle that’s as old as free agency itself, for not only does it compensate the team who lost a major free agent by awarding them a draft pick, it penalizes the team that signs him by costing them a draft pick, and acts as a drag on player salaries because at a certain point, the cost of the lost draft pick(s) is substantial relative to the expected value of the player. That the updated rules make a player who has previously received a QO ineligible to receive another one is a clear acknowledgement of that fact.

The value of the one-year qualifying offer is based upon the mean of the top 125 player salaries (full-season salaries, not prorated ones). A player issued a QO can accept and return to the team for whom he played in 2020 at that price, or he can decline it and sign with any team (including the one from whom they rejected the offer), with his old team receiving a draft pick whose placement is based upon the size of the subsequent contract. If a qualified player signs a deal for at least $50 million, his old team gets a draft pick between the first round and Competitive Balance Round A. There were no such picks in the 2020 draft, but in ’19, those picks were numbers 33 and 34, while in ’18, they covered picks 31-35, meaning that they yielded around $9-10 million in future value. If a qualified player signs a deal for less than $50 million, the compensatory draft pick follows Competitive Balance Round B, which takes place after the second round, and which in 2019 covered just pick number 78, and in ’18 fell in the 75-78 range, worth somewhere around $3-3.5 million.

Meanwhile, the quality of the pick lost by the signing team depends upon whether it exceeded the Competitive Balance Tax in the previous season, and whether it receives revenue sharing money. A team that pays the tax will lose its second- and fifth-highest picks, which might amount to around $8 million in future value, while a team that receives revenue sharing will lose its fourth-highest pick, which might be worth closer to $3 million. These are ballpark estimates; you can read the fine print here. Read the rest of this entry »

Beyond the fact that at the end of each season only one team can be crowned champion, the Dodgers accomplished something that’s become comparatively rare in the age of expanded playoffs: winning the World Series after posting the majors’ best record during the regular season. Not only that, their .717 winning percentage is the highest of the post-1960 expansion era… but of course, that comes with a significant caveat. The shortened and geographically limited schedule makes it difficult to justify measuring this year’s team against the best of all time, but when we consider this Dodgers squad in the context of their recent multi-year run of success — the regular season dominance, the close-but-no-cigar postseason showings — we can make a fair case that they’ve earned a place alongside the best teams of the expansion era.

First, here’s the short list that the Dodgers joined, the teams from the Wild Card era that finished the regular season with the majors’ best record, then went on to win the World Series:

Interestingly enough, top teams have survived to pop the champagne corks more frequently since the one-and-done Wild Card Game was introduced in 2012 (three out of eight) than they did during the period during which each league had only one Wild Card team (three out of 17). While that might be a fluke, intuitively it makes sense. Aside from not having home-field advantage in any round, from 1995-2011 Wild Card teams were on otherwise equal footing with division winners, and were even prohibited from playing their league’s top seed in the Division Series if they hailed from the same division. From 2012-19, teams that won the Wild Card Game were then matched against the league’s top seed, usually after expending their ace and thus limiting him to one start in the Division Series. As an aside from this current exercise, I do think this is a strong argument for maintaining the 2012-19 structure going forward, Rob Manfred’s desire to expand the playoffs be damned (and damned it should be).

Moving along, the Dodgers’ .717 winning percentage was an eyelash (.0006, less than a full point) better than the 2001 Mariners with their 116-46 record, and trails only four teams from the pre-1960 expansion era, three of which came in the first decade of the 20th century. The 1906 Cubs’ .762 (115-36) is still tops, but I’m going to dispense with the ancient history for the remainder of this exercise, so my apologies to the 1902 and ’09 Pirates (.739 and .724, respectively) and even the ’54 Indians (.721); even though we’re grappling with a team that played just 60 games, what they did in the larger scheme took place not only in the era of 162-game schedules but also within that expanded talent pool, which includes players of color in significant numbers. Within that post-1960 set, the 2020 Dodgers’ .712 Pythagorean winning percentage also ranks first, 21 points ahead of the 1969 Orioles, but beyond acknowledging that placement, I’m not going to dwell upon the small sample.

With that out of the way, it’s worth considering the place these Dodgers hold, not just for 2020 but for the run that has produced three trips to the World Series in four years. As I noted on Wednesday, they’re the fifth team to lose back-to-back World Series and then return to win one within the same five-year stretch, though of course other teams had similar accomplishments in a different sequence; for example, the 1969-71 Orioles and ’88-90 A’s sandwiched two World Series defeats around a victory. And of course there are teams that had greater success in the postseason within a given range, such as the 1972-76 Reds and 1976-78 Yankees, both of which lost one World Series before winning two, or the 1972-74 A’s and 1998-2000 Yankees, who each won three straight (the latter before losing a fourth), or the 1991-99 Braves, who went 1-4 in five World Series. Read the rest of this entry »