Despite an atypically mediocre performance from their bullpen last year, the Yankees project to have the strongest relief corps in 2021 according to our forecasting systems. However, their chances of fulfilling that expectation have taken a hit with the news that Zack Britton, the team’s top setup man, will undergo arthroscopic surgery to remove a bone chip in his left elbow. The 33-year-old lefty could be out until mid-June or later.

Britton had already been slowed this spring by a bout of COVID-19, which he contracted in January while going to the hospital when his wife was giving birth to the couple’s fourth child. He told reporters that he lost 18 pounds and had been set back in his offseason throwing regimen. After experiencing elbow soreness in the wake of a bullpen session on Sunday, he underwent an MRI on Monday that showed the chip.

The surgery will be performed on March 15 by Dr. Christopher Ahmad, the Yankees’ team physician. As WFAN’s Sweeny Murti pointed out, Dr. Ahmad’s website suggests a timeline of six weeks before a pitcher undergoing such a procedure can be cleared to throw, and that a return to full competition could take 3-4 months:

Britton’s surgery will be performed by Yankees team Dr Chris Ahmad. Here is what his website says about timeline for removing a bone chip. h/t ?@Eric_M888? pic.twitter.com/cCULq0g7Qi

— Sweeny Murti (@SweenyMurti) March 10, 2021

Roughly speaking, three months from now means a mid-June return, and four months a return just after the All-Star break (the All-Star Game is scheduled for July 13 in Atlanta). Even a best-case scenario, involving a minimally invasive operation and a buildup to a reliever’s workload instead of a starter’s, might shave a month off that. In 2019, for example, the Rays’ Blake Snell missed about eight weeks after undergoing surgery to remove loose bodies (bone chips or cartilage fragments). He wasn’t built up to a full workload upon returning to help the Rays secure a Wild Card berth and reach the postseason, totaling just 10.1 innings in six appearances and maxing out at 62 pitches, but he was reasonably effective. Because this is happening out of the gate rather than towards the end of the season, the Yankees and Britton have less incentive to hurry back. Via ESPN’s Marly Rivera, Britton isn’t in a rush, saying, “However long that takes is how long I’m going to be out. I know that I’m going to be back with the team at some point this year and pitch significant innings. So that’s all that matters.” Read the rest of this entry »

The 2020 season couldn’t have been much fun for the Nationals or Stephen Strasburg. In the wake of their World Series victory over the Astros, the team sputtered out of the gate, while Strasburg, the MVP of that World Series and a newly-minted $245 million man via his opt-out and re-signing in December 2019, was limited to two starts before undergoing late August surgery to alleviate carpal tunnel neuritis.

On Tuesday, Strasburg took the mound for his first Grapefruit League appearance — against the Astros, coincidentally, albeit a much different team from the one he faced in the World Series, with Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley, Carlos Correa, and Yuli Gurriel the only starters in both games. The 32-year-old righty threw 38 pitches, had good command of a fastball that reportedly sat at 93 mph and ranged from 91 to 93 (he averaged 93.9 mph in 2019, via Statcast), and retired five out of the six batters he faced. He struck out four, including Correa looking at a high fastball to end the first, Kyle Tucker looking at a fastball in the second, and Gurriel check-swinging at a low curveball.

These descriptions come from the Washington Post’s Jesse Dougherty and will have to do, as there was no television or Trackman for the game. The Nationals’ Twitter account did celebrate Strasmas by posting a press box-level video of the four strikeouts:

Time to open up your #Strasmas presents…

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? ?????????#SpringTraining // #NATITUDE pic.twitter.com/suA2LhCKSa

— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) March 10, 2021

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Even before they signed free agent Trevor Bauer, the Dodgers appeared to have a stacked rotation, particularly with David Price returning from his opt-out season. Now, with Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, and Bauer in place, and with youngsters Julio Urías, Tony Gonsolin, and Dustin May attempting to reclaim starting spots as well after spending the postseason as swingmen, the unit is bursting at the seams. On Monday, Price made his Cactus League debut, and both he and manager Dave Roberts made clear that his role is up in the air, even if it means pitching out of the bullpen.

It may not come to that, though like every other team concerned about the jump in the schedule from 60 games to 162, the Dodgers will call upon their depth to avoid overtaxing any of their starters, particularly given their expectations for another run deep into October. That’s already been one of the signatures of the Andrew Friedman regime. Between very liberal usage of the Injured List and some fairly quick hooks, the Dodgers allowed just two pitchers to make 30 starts in a season during the 2016-19 campaigns, with only five throwing enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. Under last year’s shortened schedule, no Dodger started more than 10 times (which prorates to 27 in a full season) or qualified for the ERA title, with Kershaw topping out at 58.1 innings.

Here’s how the team’s workload management stacks up relative to the rest of the majors:

I’ve combined the separate 2016-19 and ’20 totals using the actual innings qualifiers, which vary according to schedule length and don’t need to prorate, and used an 11-start threshold for last year, which prorates to about 30 over a full season. As you can see, over the past half-decade, the Dodgers are tied for the majors’ second-lowest total in terms of innings qualifiers, and have the lowest total in terms of start “qualifiers.” They’re mostly among bad teams via both of those lower rankings, save for the A’s. If you sort the various columns, you can see that Dodgers’ starters rank 14th in total innings in that span, yet third in WAR. It’s a strategy that’s worked out well, to say the least. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday was a red-letter day for the Angels as well as anyone else who’s been following the ongoing saga of the majors’ most notable two-way player. Shohei Ohtani made his first Cactus League pitching appearance of the spring — his first in nearly three years, actually — a milestone that will hopefully become a footnote as he works his way back to regular rotation duty following a string of injuries.

The 26-year-old Ohtani started Friday’s exhibition against the A’s and worked 1.2 innings, throwing 41 pitches, 24 for strikes (five swinging, eight looking, eight foul, three in play). All five A’s that he retired were via strikeouts, though his outing was hardly pristine. In the first inning, after striking out leadoff hitter Mark Canha looking at a fastball, he yielded a sizzling double down the line by Elvis Andrus, then after whiffing Matt Olson via a fastball, he walked Matt Chapman before striking out Mitch Moreland swinging at a filthy splitter. He got into further trouble in the second inning, serving up a hustle double to Ramón Laureano and then another double to Tony Kemp — a fly ball into the right-center gap, the hardest hit he allowed — that sandwiched a strikeout of Chad Pinder via another splitter. He then walked Aramis Garica before striking out Canha, again on a splitter.

Ohtani departed with two outs in the second because he’d surpassed the Angels’ 40-pitch target. With three hits, two walks, and one run allowed, this was no gem. The scoreboard didn’t have velocity readings and there was no Trackman data, but a scout relayed to Eric Longenhagen that his fastball ranged from 96-99 mph (some reports had 100), with the strikeouts coming on 98 and 99. His slider ranged from 82-85 mph, his curve was 76 mph, and his changeup/splitter (Eric’s source thought it was a splitter, but the broadcast referred to it inconsistently) 88-90 mph. While he struggled to command his slider, the splitter was devastating. Manager Joe Maddon described Ohtani’s delivery as “more clean and consistent,” adding, “I like his arm stroke better. It starts there and then he’s able to recapture the velocity he’s had in the past, and the really good break of his splitter. The big thing for his success is going to be repetition of delivery and knowing where his fastball is going consistently.” Read the rest of this entry »

2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to the sixth straight week of my Friday chat — and yes, clearly I’m keeping track.

2:01	Jay Jaffe: While the queue fills up, a bit of housekeeping. This week, I took a look at the potential fits for free agents Jake Odorizzi (http://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-remaining-market-for-jake-odorizzi/) and Jackie Bradley Jr. (http://blogs.fangraphs.com/finding-a-fit-for-jackie-bradley-jr/)

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Then I doubled back to Bradley today after he signed with the Brewers and joined a crowded outfield (http://blogs.fangraphs.com/figuring-out-jackie-bradley-jr-s-brewers-fi…)

2:02	Jay Jaffe: I also took a quick look at the impact of the announcement that the start of the Triple-A season will be delayed at least four weeks (http://blogs.fangraphs.com/in-expected-move-mlb-delays-triple-a-season…)

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Also, a piece I worked on about our team-level rotation projections is being held over to next week, as we needed to tweak our assumptions regarding innings per start and thus total rotation innings,  which were a bit outdated.

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Anyway, on with the show!

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Earlier this week, when I examined the potential landing spots for center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr., the Brewers stuck out as a team that didn’t appear to have a glaring need, particularly with center fielder Lorenzo Cain returning to the roster after opting out early in 2020. Yet FanSided’s Robert Murray, who previously covered the Brewers for The Athletic, had recently reported that the team was in the mix for them, and a week and a half later, they landed him via a two-year, $24 million deal that includes an opt-out after this season. The question is, how’s this going to work?

To these eyes, the bigger surprise than the Brewers adding to their stockpile of outfielders is that Bradley landed a multiyear deal in March, and at a healthy AAV at that. Aside from Bryce Harper‘s 13-year, $330-million megadeal, which was announced on March 2, 2019, in my research for the Bradley piece I was unable to find another multiyear position player deal that was completed in March during the past decade, with Manny Ramirez’s two-year, $45 million return to the Dodgers in 2009 the last one that came to mind. It’s just not a month for lasting commitments.

Given that slim history, plus Dan Szymborski’s less-than-glowing ZiPS projection for Bradley — WARs of 1.6 and 1.3 in the first two seasons over about 1,000 total plate appearances, a serviceable return if accompanied by a solid platoon partner — I figured it might be a stretch for him to approach the three-year, $27 million deal from the ZiPS contract model, to say nothing of the reports that he was seeking a contract of at least four years. Bradley (and agent Scott Boras) didn’t get the years, and his total guarantee is less than that of the model but not by much; with his opt out after the first season, he’s exchanged that for a good amount of control.

Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns, who’s been on the job since October 2015 (initially as general manager) has a history of overstuffing the roster and letting manager Craig Counsell figure out the playing time, and it’s helped the team to three straight postseason appearances for the first time in franchise history. On back-to-back days in late January 2018, Stearns traded for Christian Yelich and signed Cain to a five-year deal, that despite corner outfielders Ryan Braun and Domingo Santana — not to mention first baseman/outfielder Eric Thames — coming off solid seasons; Santana had bashed 30 homers in his age-24 campaign. In late July 2018, he dealt for Mike Moustakas while third baseman Travis Shaw was in the midst of a 32-homer season; Shaw took up playing second base seamlessly and the team came within one win of a trip to the World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

On a day when the COVID-19 headlines in the U.S. ranged from very good to very bad, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Major League Baseball plans to delay the start of the Triple-A season by at least four weeks, and perhaps longer. Though it’s a bummer to at least some degree, the move — which does not affect MLB’s scheduled opening on April 1 — was anticipated within the industry. It addresses significant safety and economic concerns that come with operating the sport amid the ongoing pandemic, in part by reestablishing alternate training sites for each team to draw players from if and when roster moves are made.

The Triple-A season was scheduled to begin on April 6 — that’s for the Triple-A East teams (ugh on the generic league names), with Triple-A West teams starting on April 8 — but with the change, teams at that level are tentatively slated to open on May 4 (East) and May 6 (West), about the same time that Double-A and Single-A classifications open (the delay to their seasons was reported at Baseball America in January). The Triple-A schedule will be shortened from 142 games to 120, the planned length of the lower levels, with the season running until September 19 for East teams and September 21 for West teams.

MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations Morgan Sword said in a statement, “This is a prudent step to complete the Major League and Minor League seasons as safely as possible, and we look forward to having fans back in ballparks across the country very soon.” The league sent a memo notifying teams of the delay, and many minor league affiliates relayed the message to the public via their social media accounts. For example:

pic.twitter.com/msmCuIywIn

— SWB RailRiders (@swbrailriders) March 3, 2021

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While Jake Odorizzi is clearly the top free-agent pitcher still available as March opens, Jackie Bradley Jr. is the market’s top position player still on the shelves, No. 18 overall on our Top 50 Free Agents list. Beyond the fact that they and their agents may have aimed too high with their contractual desires in an industry still feeling the economic pinch of the COVID-19 pandemic and treating the $210 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold as a salary cap, the pair don’t have a ton of similarities beyond their availability. But like Odorizzi, Bradley could provide a clear boost to a contending team.

Bradley, who turns 31 on April 19, spent the past 10 years in the Red Sox organization after being chosen as a supplemental first-round pick out of the University of South Carolina in 2011. It took him awhile to find his footing in the majors: Since he couldn’t keep his batting average above the Mendoza Line over the course of 530 plate appearances in 2013–14, he bounced up and down between Triple-A Pawtucket and Boston and spent nearly half of 2015 on the farm as well before finally sticking around for good.

Since the start of the 2015 season, Bradley has produced at about a league-average level offensively (.247/.331/.438, 102 wRC+) and provided exceptional and often spectacular defense. His +33 DRS in center field is tied for fifth in the majors in that span, and his 19.9 UZR is sixth, though he’s somewhere around 10th or 11th on a prorated basis, depending upon the innings cutoff one chooses. Likewise, his 42 runs via Statcast’s Runs Prevented metric ranks sixth since the start of 2016. In a league where Kevin Kiermaier has dominated the defensive metrics, Bradley has just one Gold Glove to show for his efforts, but he’s nonetheless put together some enviable highlight reels. Here’s one that covers just the last eight weeks of his work:

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As the calendar flips to March, exhibition season has begun (!) in both Arizona and Florida, and yet a few top free agents remain unsigned. Atop the list in terms of projected impact is Jake Odorizzi, who’s had the misfortune of mistiming the market, in part due to an injury-wracked 2020 season. Still, there’s no shortage of teams that the veteran righty, who placed 24th on our Top 50 Free Agents list, could help.

Odorizzi, who turns 31 on March 27, spent the past three seasons with the Twins, putting together a solid campaign in 2018 (4.49 ERA,4.20 FIP, and 2.5 WAR in 164.1 innings), and an All-Star one in ’19 (3.51 ERA, 3.36 FIP, and 4.3 WAR in 159 innings). Last year was a near-total loss, though, as he was limited to 13.2 innings by an intercostal strain and a blister. Prior to that, Odorizzi pitched four years and change with the Rays, that after being traded in blockbusters involving Zack Greinke and Lorenzo Cain (2010) — he was originally a supplemental first-round pick by the Brewers in ’08 — and then James Shields and Wil Myers (2012). In Tampa Bay, he totaled 6.5 WAR from 2014 to ’16 before a bout of gopher trouble (1.88 homers per nine) led to a replacement level season in ’17. That hiccup aside, he’s been very solid and (prior to 2020) rather durable, averaging 30.3 starts per year from 2013 to ’19; an oblique strain in ’15 and hamstring and back woes in ’17 kept him to 27 starts in those seasons. As best I can tell, he’s never missed significant time due to an arm injury.

Odorizzi has gone his entire career without signing a multiyear deal. He won back-to-back arbitration cases against the Rays in 2017 ($4.1 million) and ’18 ($6.3 million), the reward for which was being traded to the Twins just two days after the latter decision was announced. After making $9.3 million in 2019, his best season, he received a $17.8 million qualifying offer from the Twins, which apparently put a drag on his market before he could fully test the waters. Via MLB.com’s Do-Hyoung Park, Odorizzi received “a lot of interest” from other teams at the time, to the point of exchanging dollar figures, “but the uncertainty generated by the timeframe and the draft considerations ultimately led to his return to Minnesota.” The fact that Odorizzi wouldn’t be be subjected to another qualifying offer the next time he reached free agency, and thus wouldn’t have the millstone of draft compensation attached to his signing, was a factor in his decision.

Alas, his 2020 season didn’t pan out as planned. The intercostal strain landed him on the injured list to start the season, and so he didn’t make his season debut until August 8. In his third outing, on August 21, he was hit in the chest by a batted ball, suffering a contusion and landing on the IL again. Upon returning, a blister problem led to another early hook. Though he was on the roster for the AL Wild Card series against the Astros, he did not pitch.

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2:00	Jay Jaffe: Hey folks, good afternoon and welcome to another edition of my now-regular Friday chat (this is the sixth week in a row, my longest since the first month of the pandemic).

2:01

Jay Jaffe: Today I’ve got a piece up on Carlos Correa (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/what-to-make-of-carlos-correa/), which was inspired by a FanGraphs Audio spot I did with Kevin Goldstein (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-bill-james-updates-his-ran…) discussing last week’s piece on Fernando Tatis Jr. (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fernando-tatis-jr-has-a-clear-shot-at-coop…) as well as Kevin’s piece on the next $400 million deal (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/who-will-be-the-first-400-million-player/).

2:01

Jay Jaffe: I spent much of this week in Remember Some Guys mode, writing about the return of Oliver Perez (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/hello-again-cleveland-oliver-perez-returns…), the departure of Shin-Soo Choo (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/shin-soo-choo-heads-home-to-south-korea/) and the indy-league detours of Scott Kazmir (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/schlepping-from-sugar-land-scott-kazmir-on…), who spent a few weeks last season in something called the Constellation Energy League, where among other things he competed against a team laden with the large adult sons of Roger Clemens. In acknowledgement of all of this, I have donated my royalties from all of these pieces to David Roth’s Foundation to Remember Some Guys

2:01

Jay Jaffe: Before getting to the festivities, I have to recommend this Washington Post piece on “Baseball Bugs” the famous Looney Tunes cartoon which was released 75 years ago this month: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/02/25/baseball-bugs-bunny-l… You can watch it here: https://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/629/bugs-bunny-baseball-bugs.htm… And now, on with the show…

2:05

Jay Jaffe: I’d dispute the notion that Butler is the 3rd best leadoff hitter of all time, first off. Kenny Lofton was a similar hitter but a much better baserunner, and everybody forgets that Pete Rose was an elite leadoff guy, taking more than 10000 PA at the spot. Beyond that, Butler’s fielding metrics are downright brutal (-84 via B-Ref) such that he finished with 49.7 WAR, about 19 fewer than Lofton and not enough to really make a dent in an advanced stat-based Hall conversation

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