Few players have ever been more closely identified with a single team than Al Kaline. A bonus baby who debuted at age 18, and the youngest batting champion ever at 20, Kaline played every single one of his 2,834 professional games as a member of the Tigers, and remained part of their organization for 67 years. While he didn’t always have an easy time adapting to the expectations placed on him at such a young age, he aged with grace and humility, and became “Mr. Tiger.” In a career that ran 22 seasons, from 1953-74, he collected 3,007 hits and 399 home runs — yes, there’s a story to that missed milestone — and won 10 Gold Gloves as a right fielder. In 1980, he was elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, and became the first Tiger ever to have his uniform number (No. 6, chosen in honor of Stan Musial) retired. After his playing career ended, he moved into the broadcast booth and then into an advisory capacity, most recently as a special assistant to general manager Al Avila.

On Monday, Kaline, who had recently suffered a stroke, died at the age of 85 at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

“In my book he’s the greatest right-handed hitter in the league,” Ted Williams said of Kaline in 1955, the year he became the youngest player ever to win a batting title.

“I have always referred to Al Kaline as ‘Mister Perfection,’” Tigers manager Billy Martin, who managed Kaline from 1971 to late ’73, once said. “He does it all — hitting, fielding, running, throwing — and he does it with that extra touch of brilliancy that marks him as a super ballplayer.”

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For a guy who didn’t play at all in 2019, and was right around replacement level the year before, Evan Gattis has been in the news a fair bit this winter. In fact, as much as any of the Astros’ marquee players, he’s become one of the faces of their illegal sign-stealing efforts and the aftermath, a situation he’s confronted with a candor rare among his former teammates, but typical of his time in the majors. Last week, the 33-year-old slugger confirmed that his playing career is indeed over. In his six-year career, the free-swinging Gattis hit .248/.300/.476 (110 wRC+) with 139 homers and 8.9 WAR, but those numbers barely scratch the surface of what’s been one of the more improbable tours through the professional ranks in recent memory.

Within The Athletic’s landmark November 12 report on the Astros’ sign-stealing efforts was a reference to a September 21, 2017 game in which White Sox reliever Danny Farquhar described hearing a banging sound while on the mound. That trash can-based signal was the cue to alert an Astros hitter if a breaking ball or offspeed pitch was coming. Within hours, Jimmy O’Brien of Jomboy Media posted a detailed breakdown to Twitter and YouTube, showing Farquhar facing off against Gattis, with audible bangs anticipating some of the pitcher’s selections. Upon reaching a 2-2 count, Farquhar summons catcher Kevan Smith; the two changed signs, and Gattis struck out chasing a low changeup.

On YouTube, that clip of Gattis receiving signs and then getting hung out to dry once they were changed — compelling audiovisual evidence to accompany the deep reporting of Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich — has been watched over 4.5 million times. Gattis has struck out four and a half million times on that pitch alone. Read the rest of this entry »

12:22

Jay Jaffe: Hello folks, and welcome to another more-or-less shelter-in-place-based edition of my weekly chats. I hope you all are managing out there amid this challenging time. I’m doing all right — better some days than others — while New York is in the epicenter of the US outbreak. My family and I are safe and well-stocked in terms of supplies, going outside to a minimum and while complying with social-distancing mandates as we deal with the needs of our daughter and our dog, and we’re now regularly wearing fabric masks when we go out.

12:23

Jay Jaffe: I just filed a piece on the wild career of Evan Gattis, who’s been in the news a lot lately, for better or worse. That should be published sometime during this chat. Edit: It’s here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/evan-gattis-rollercoaster-ride-through-baseball-has-ended/

12:26

Jay Jaffe: I think they’re all fine as far as TV and streaming. The question — beyond the obvious one about whether some variant of the plan that was reported by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal on Friday night (https://theathletic.com/1723090/2020/04/03/rosenthal-mlb-pondering-gam…) is even feasible — is whether they’re fully wired for Statcast, which is moving to a new technology called Hawk-Eye this year. I imagine that if this comes to pass, they will be.

12:28

Jay Jaffe: If there’s a skills competition for hitters, you’d figure there might be a parallel one for pitchers, but airing it all out in such a context poses a much higher injury risk than a home run derby would, so I’d be very skeptical that comes to pass.

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Before the COVID-19 pandemic stopped Major League Baseball in its tracks, the illegal sign-stealing scandal and its aftermath was one of the game’s top stories, not only as the Astros continued their half-assed apology tour around the Grapefruit League, but as commissioner Rob Manfred’s hotly-anticipated report into the Red Sox’s sign-stealing activities hung in the balance. For the past few weeks, more pressing matters have prevailed, but a few details of where things stand regarding the sign-stealing mess have emerged, enough to gather into a single roundup. Mostly, they all serve to remind us just how much we miss baseball, the booing as well as the cheering.

Hinch and Luhnow suspensions won’t extend beyond 2020

If you were lying awake at night wondering how the year-long suspensions of the Astros’ former manager A.J. Hinch and president of baseball operations Jeff Luhnow would be affected by the stoppage, it appears that you now have an answer, though it may keep you tossing and turning. Sources told ESPN’s Buster Olney that in the event no baseball is played in 2020, the pair, who were almost immediately fired by Astros owner Jim Crane when Manfred released his report on January 13, would be considered as having served their suspensions. The specific wording in the report (PDF here) states that both suspensions end “on the day following the completion of the 2020 World Series” rather than mandating a specific number of games missed. The report obviously did not account for the contingency of the cancellation of part or all of the 2020 season due to pandemic, but likely any official declaration that the World Series is indeed scrubbed due to previously unforeseen circumstances would apply, thus ending the suspension.

Presumably, it’s the specificity of the report’s wording that has led to this conclusion. MLB must believe that it’s on thin ice if Manfred revises the punishment now, either on legal grounds or simply as a matter of precedent, and as we’ve seen throughout this saga, precedent is everything when it comes to handing down punishments. What’s more, one need only look at the league’s reluctance to launch investigations into both the Astros and the Red Sox despite the numerous complaints — 10 to 12 teams went to the commissioner’s office about the Astros “cheating their asses off for three or four years,” according to the Washington Post, and Manfred sounded assurances that the scandal was confined to the Astros even as rumors swirled — to draw the inescapable conclusion that the league’s desire for closure far outweighs its zeal to administer punishment. Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball is figuratively sheltering in place while the COVID-19 pandemic escalates throughout the U.S., having settled several major issues with regards to the work stoppage, such as salaries and service time, via an agreement reached last Friday. As the league and the union look ahead to when it might be possible to start the 2020 regular season, a report from a Chicago sports radio host, Matt Spiegel of 670 AM The Score, has sketched out one possible outline, in a series of tweets he sent on Tuesday afternoon (one, two, three).

Citing “a well informed source that does business with multiple MLB execs,” Spiegel reported that MLB is discussing the possibility of a 100-game season that would begin July 1; eliminate the All-Star Game, which is currently scheduled for July 14 at Dodger Stadium; eventually pick up the post All-Star Game schedule; and run through October 15. Instead of hosting the All-Star Game, Dodger Stadium would serve as a neutral site for a warm-weather World Series, with Anaheim or San Diego serving as a second site if the Dodgers — whom FanGraphs projected to be the best team in baseball, with 97 wins and a 97.6% chance of making the playoffs over a 162-game season — make the World Series. The scenario assumes that the ALCS and NLCS would still take place at the venues of the qualifying teams, a risk given the possibility that those series could stretch to November 3. Of course, “many questions remain, & talks are fluid,” according to Spiegel.

Leaving aside the possibility that this is some April Fool’s prank — which, under the circumstances, should result in nothing short of a (socially distanced) trial at The Hague — it’s worth noting that this scenario has yet to be confirmed by the league. Nor has it even received a second report via the familiar cast of MLB insiders, the Rosenthals and Starks and Passans and Shermans who make the world of baseball news go ’round. So perhaps this is just cloud talk, a fantasy floating by. Even so, while recognizing that there’s no plan that will satisfy everybody, this scenario — which should be regarded as a best-case one — doesn’t sound so bad. While acknowledging that the decision on whether to start on a given date may well be out of MLB’s hands, this is at least a plausible sequence of events.

We’ve already been conditioned to accept the possibility of a 100-game season based upon the Center for Disease Control’s guidelines calling for the cancellation or postponement of events consisting of 50 or more people through at least May 10, a recommendation to which MLB is adhering. That best-case scenario would allow for a three-week resumption of spring training and the start of the season in early June, but it may now be a pipe dream given the ominous trajectory of the coronavirus’ spread in the U.S. Because of that, it’s somewhat reassuring to think about that 100-game scenario — the rough equivalent of the strike-shortened 1981 season, albeit without the two “halves” — remaining intact even if its start is pushed back by a month relative to previous expectations, and if its postseason takes on an unprecedented form.

As for that postseason, Spiegel’s report doesn’t flesh out what it might look like before the two League Championship Series. Just spitballing here, but even if the format remained the same, it seems possible that MLB might choose to host games at neutral sites in order to minimize the number of travel-induced off days. Then again, even if the Wild Card games were doubled up to be played on a single day, the net gain through the Division Series is just three days. What’s more, it’s those travel days that minimize the number of four-games-per-day pileups during the Division Series; five days in a row of that might be too much for the networks, viewers, and the rest of the baseball industry to withstand, though right now that certainly sounds more appealing than no baseball at all.

As for Dodger Stadium, it has undergone a $100 million offseason renovation in anticipation of hosting the All-Star Game for the first time since 1980. No Dodger Stadium game has been rained out since the 2000 season, and none of the seven World Series games the venue hosted in 2017 and ’18 had a first-pitch temperature below 67 degrees. As warm-weather options go, it’s reasonable bet to be playable in early November. It also has the highest seating capacity (56,000) of any existing venue; among the retractable roof parks besides the Rogers Centre (49,282, but likely ruled out due to the additional logistical complexity international travel would bring), the Diamondbacks’ Chase Field (48,686) and Seattle’s T-Mobile Park (47,929) are the largest, and from there the dropoff is steep, with Miller Park (41,900) the next-largest, and Tropicana Field (25,000) the smallest.

As for the virus’ spread, the projections for the death count in the U.S. are now in the 100,000 to 240,000 range, and the country faces a dearth of the tests and treatments that could accelerate a return to something resembling normalcy. In the face of such unfathomable figures, the resumption of professional sports may seem trivial, and to the individuals directly affected by those deaths, it certainly is. Even so, the opportunity for the games to provide an audience of millions some combination of entertainment, distraction, relief, unity, and above all hope as we emerge from the worst of this crisis should not be underestimated. Major League Baseball can certainly be a part of that combination, and by most indications wants to be part of that. Via USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, here’s what MLB Players Association chief executive Tony Clark said last week upon the hammering out of the aforementioned agreement:

“Players want to play. That’s what we do. Being able to get back on the field and being able to play, even if that means their fans are watching at home. Being able to play for their fans is something they’ve all expressed a desire and an interest to do, and to do so as soon as possible.”

…“We would play as long as we possibly could. Obviously, the weather becomes a challenge the later you get in the calendar year, but we would do our best to play as many as possible regardless of when we start.

“How many games remains to be seen.”

In order for the season to start, certain conditions have to be met. Again via Nightengale:

-Medical experts determine games will not pose a risk to the health of players, staff and spectators.

-There are no travel restrictions.

-Removal of legal restrictions on mass gatherings that would prevent games in front of spectators.

Yet, if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to recommend no gathering of more than 50 people, MLB officials and the players would be willing to play in front of empty stadiums and at neutral sites.

There may not be unanimity on that last point. Per Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, quoting a league source, “MLB has little to no appetite for playing games in empty stadiums or for a postseason that extends into December.” The phrase “not a lot of appetite” similarly turned up in an article by Jayson Stark at The Athletic last week, from “one baseball person who is likely to be involved when these discussions arise,” though the words from Stark’s piece were in reference to playing a whole season without fans.

Such stances aren’t unreasonable. Playing in empty stadiums would at least allow for the fulfillment of television contracts and prevent cable subscription cancellations — which according to Craig Edwards provide more than 90% of revenues for regional sports networks — and might be used as an interim step if CDC guidelines are loosened but not fully lifted by the targeted Opening Day. That said, via Stark, the team-to-team inequities in TV deals may give some teams pause about going this route without an agreement to share additional revenue. Meanwhile, beyond any weather-related concerns for games and travel, a postseason extending into December would be problematic due to the additional competition baseball would face from other major sports, whose seasons will have presumably resumed or started by then.

The quotation from Verducci arrived in the context of his look at the obstacles Nippon Professional Baseball faces in its attempt to resume its season. In Japan, which has far fewer cases on a per-capita basis than the U.S., teams began playing practice games on March 20, and targeting April 24 for Opening Day. Players, staff, and media are been screened as they enter ballparks, but nonetheless, within that first week, three players on the Hanshin Tigers tested positive for COVID-19 infections; players and staff were ordered to self-quarantine, and practices were suspended. NPB may be forced to reconsider the date of its opener in light of a recent spike in infections that has put Prime Minister Shinzo Abe under pressure to declare a state of emergency.

How NPB, or MLB for that matter, would handle the situation if a player tests positive during the regular season is just one question that would have to be answered before play can be restarted — one of several that can’t be answered at this time. That may well be why nobody at the league is stepping forward to float this proposal through more familiar channels, let alone formally announce it yet. Perhaps that 100-game goal will have to be trimmed to 90 or 80 games as the weeks go by. But as we squint into the distance at what baseball might look like later this summer and fall, this plan is something to focus upon. And, given the alternative of no baseball, to root like hell for in hopes that it comes to pass.

Like his longtime Astros teammate Joe Morgan, Jimmy Wynn packed a lot of punch into a relatively diminutive frame, and did a great many things well on the diamond while thriving in a low-offense environment. Listed at 5-foot-9, the “Toy Cannon” made three All-Star teams during his 15 major league seasons (1963-77), but he likely would have drawn even greater appreciation had his career taken place a few decades later. His combination of tape-measure power, a keen batting eye, a strong throwing arm, speed, and solid work in center field has made him a stathead favorite, one whose career numbers (.250/.366/.436 for a 129 OPS+ with 291 homers, 225 steals, and 55.8 bWAR) tell quite a story. Bill James ranked him 10th among center fielders in The New Bill James Historical Abstract circa 2001, and similarly, it took Wynn until well after his playing career to be fully appreciated by Houston fans, that after he had worked his way back from a dark domestic altercation (in which he was stabbed by his wife in self-defense) to become a community icon whose name graced a baseball facility for urban youth, and whose number 24 hung in the rafters of Minute Maid Park.

“It’s never too late to make things right,” Wynn wrote in Toy Cannon, his 2010 autobiography, a frank account of his career and the mistakes he made along the way. “Even if it does mean that you may have to crawl out of a deeper hole at an older age to get your life turned around. You can still do it, one day at a time, if it’s important to you.”

Wynn died last Thursday in Houston at the age of 78. His cause of death was not announced.

Born in Cincinnati on March 12, 1942, Wynn was the oldest of seven children of Joseph and Maude Wynn, and grew up near the Reds’ ballpark Crosley Field. His father was a sanitation worker, though Wynn “still called him a garbage man because that’s what he was doing and there is no shame in that work at all,” as he wrote in his autobiography. Joseph, who played semipro ball in Cincinnati into his late 40s, coached his son in Little League, and worked with him tirelessly.

“My father made me the kind of hitter I am,” Wynn told Sports illustrated’s Ron Fimrite in 1974:

“I was a shortstop when I was a boy growing up in Cincinnati and my father saw me as an Ernie Banks type—a good fielder who could hit home runs. He threw baseball after baseball at me, and when he got tired he took me out to a place near the airport where they had pitching machines. I developed the timing and the strong hands and wrists you need to hit homers.”

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12:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to today’s chat, where I plan to talk about baseball in at least some shape and form. I hope you’re doing all right; the Jaffe-Span household is trying to keep it together in downtown Brooklyn, where we’ve got a reasonable stockpile of supplies and are taking plenty of precautions when we do need to walk our dog (Sandy) and get our daughter some outdoor exercise.

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Some housekeeping: Please read this message from David Appelman. Like just about everyone else in the world of sports, we’re facing some lean times, and we hope that you’ll think of us.  https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-fangraphs-update-were-asking-for-your-he…

12:06

Jay Jaffe: The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis has a piece about our situation and those of several other sports media outlets https://www.theringer.com/2020/3/30/21199460/coronavirus-sports-media-…

12:06

Jay Jaffe: I’m currently working on an obituary of Jimmy Wynn, the Toy Cannon — a highly-underrated ballplayer who was a stathead favorite. That will run tomorrow.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show…

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Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association have spent the past few weeks working through a long list of issues brought about by the coronavirus pandemic-driven delay to the 2020 regular season. On Thursday night — on what would have been Opening Day — the two sides announced a deal that settles several key questions that have hung in the balance since MLB postponed the start of the season. In general, the deal gives the league a great deal of flexibility in its attempt to salvage as much of the season as is feasible, and protects the players against the possibility that the season could be canceled entirely by addressing the thorny question of service time. However, it not only sells out amateur players with regards to this year’s draft and international signing period, it does so in ways that hint at more permanent and controversial changes sought by the league, such as a contraction of the minors and the institution of an international draft.

Despite the often-contentious relationship between the union and the league in drawing up the battle lines related to the next Collective Bargaining Agreement (the current one expires following the 2021 season), this deal represents an effort by both sides to avoid prolonged public bickering over billions of dollars in the face of an international crisis. Each side made key compromises that will leave some parties unhappy. The union voted to accept the deal on Thursday, and the owners ratified it via a conference call on Friday. With the ratification, a roster freeze is now in effect, barring teams from signing free agents and making trades, waiver moves, minor league assignments, et cetera, until both sides agree such transactions can resume. Towards that end, on Thursday dozens of players were optioned to the minors.

Per the deal, whose details were first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan and additionally fleshed out by the Associated Press, The Athletic, and the New York Post, MLB will advance the players $170 million in salary for April and May. At this point, it’s a virtual certainty that no games will be played during those months so long as the league adheres to the Center for Disease Control’s guidelines, which called for the cancellation or postponement of events consisting of 50 or more people through at least May 10. That best-case scenario, which may be a pipe dream given that the U.S. has now overtaken China in terms of the most confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections and is on an ominous trajectory as far as its further spread, would allow for a three-week resumption of spring training and the start of the season in June. Read the rest of this entry »

No pitcher took it in the JAWS quite as hard as position players Ernie Lombardi and Josh Donaldson did via Baseball-Reference’s latest update to its version of WAR, which I’ve spent the better part of the past two weeks unpacking — at least when I wasn’t stocking my freezer and my pantry while reading the grim COVID-19 news. B-Ref’s latest influx of data resulted in alterations to five different areas of the metric that affected players as far back as 1904 and as recently as last season. Lombardi, a Hall of Fame catcher, lost a whopping 7.3 WAR due to the introduction of detailed play-by-play baserunning and caught stealing data from the 1930s and ’40s, while Donaldson lost 3.8 WAR due to a change in the way Defensive Runs Saved is calculated. By comparison, the largest swing for a pitcher, either positive or negative, was the 2.2 WAR gained by Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson.

B-Ref’s version of WAR is different from that of FanGraphs, particularly when it comes to pitching; it’s based on actual runs allowed, with adjustments for the qualify of the offenses faced and the defenses behind it, where the FanGraphs version is driven by the Fielding Independent Pitching categories as well as infield flies. As bWAR is the currency for JAWS, it’s of particular interest to me, even at a time when the Hall itself is closed due to the pandemic. I’ve grazed by the pitchers in my two recent updates, mentioning a few tidbits here and there while trying to avoid a typical Jaffe-length 3,000 word epic, but in this installment I’ll take a closer look at the those most affected. To review, here are the five areas where B-Ref’s WAR update has incorporated new (or recently unearthed) data, ordered for chronological effect:

• New Retrosheet Game Logs (1904-07)
• Caught Stealing Totals from Game Logs (1926-40)
• Baserunning and Double Plays from play-by-play data (1931-47)
• Defensive Runs Saved changes (2013-19)
• Park factor changes (2018)

So the big thing for history buffs, as the site itself noted last month, is the addition of four years worth of box scores that account for every game of the careers of Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson. The latter’s major league debut, on August 2, 1907, happened to be against Cobb’s Tigers. B-Ref’s play-by-play data doesn’t go back quite so far (the earliest boundary is now 1918, though it’s incomplete), so it’s not apparent via the aforementioned link, but it turns out that the first hit Johnson surrendered was to Cobb, who was batting cleanup that day. It was one of six hits Detroit rapped out in the Big Train’s eight innings. Cobb, just 20 years old but en route to his first of 11 batting titles, came away quite impressed. In the aftermath of the game, he said, “We couldn’t touch him … every one of us knew we’d met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.” Read the rest of this entry »

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.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to escalate, with the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. alone above 46,000, and the worldwide total approaching 400,000. For the first time, the single-day death toll in the U.S. topped 100 on Monday, pushing the country’s tally past 500, and already as of Tuesday morning, it’s closing in on 600. Even so, President Trump and his administration spent its time on Monday downplaying the pandemic’s deadliness, expressing impatience with the advice of health experts, including those of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and musing about lifting the guidelines for Americans to stay at home and reopening the country in order to stimulate the economy — advice that could further overwhelm hospitals, expand the outbreak, and have deadly consequences for millions.

The news around the country is grim at just about every turn. For glints of optimism, one must look to Italy, where the count of new cases and the daily death toll have both decreased for three straight days — thanks to lockdowns that are much more strict than the patchwork of orders in place across the U.S. That said, the grim tallies in Italy, a country of over 60 million that has reported nearly 64,000 confirmed cases (but perhaps 10 times as many cases overall, with the balance going uncounted due to asymptomatic cases and a shortage of tests) and over 6,000 deaths, are still sobering.

On the baseball front, the quiet from the weekend that Tony Wolfe covered in Monday’s installment has continued, at least as far as MLB is concerned. But roughly 7,000 miles away from New York City, it was another story on Monday night…

Live Baseball in Korea

As was the case with the U.S. and MLB, the novel coronavirus pandemic in South Korea forced the Korea Baseball Organization to postpone its Opening Day, which was scheduled for March 28, that after canceling all of its preseason games. Thanks to the country’s success in flattening the curve through quick intervention, widespread testing, contact tracing, isolation, and surveillance — the last at a level that certainly would not be deemed acceptable in the U.S., to say nothing of the feasibility of the other measures — just 64 new cases were reported on Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »