Spring training results are basically meaningless, and yet as portents of things to come are concerned, Ketel Marte homering on Sunday, in his first plate appearance of the Cactus League season, was a positive. The 26-year-old Diamondback is coming off a breakout, MVP-caliber season, albeit one that ended with him on the sidelines. Marte didn’t play a single game after September 17 due to a stress reaction in his lower back, and while he didn’t need surgery, his recovery was something of an abstraction until that first knock; the same can be said for baseball in general.

Behold, let the new season begin:

Primer turno y primer jonrón para Ketel Marte. ? #MLBDominicana ?? pic.twitter.com/CJVoZGevEx

— MLB Dominicana (@MLBDominicana) February 23, 2020

The switch-hitting Marte enjoyed a dazzling 2019, setting career highs in virtually every key offensive category. He hit .329/.389/.592, numbers that respectively ranked second, seventh, and fourth in the NL; his 150 wRC+ ranked fourth as well, behind only Christian Yelich (174), Cody Bellinger (162), and Anthony Rendon (154). That performance wasn’t anything that could have been expected given his previous history, as he entered the season a career .263/.324/.389 hitter, one fresh off a modest .260/.332/.437 (106 wRC+) showing in 2018. Marte’s 32 homers more than doubled his previous total of 22, compiled in over 1,500 plate appearances from 2015-18. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Hey hey, folks! Welcome to another edition of my Monday chat. I’m back from a week spent in sunny Siesta Key, Florida — no baseball, just family stuff like watching my daughter and her cousin splash in a swimming pool and build sandcastles on the beach. I just finished making a presentation about baseball to my daughter’s preschool class, which was wild. We gave out baseball cards, popcorn, and sunflower seeds, and sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Did not get into the various flavors of WAR. Jay Jaffe @jay_jaffe About to give a presentation about baseball to a bunch of 3-4 year olds in my daughter’s preschool class. Trying to decide first topic 24 Feb 2020

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Gah, the poll didn’t post there.

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Hmmm. I can’t see mustering much sympathy for the players who were involved if they’re getting razzed about it daily. I do think I’d reserve my sympathy for those who weren’t part of the 2017-18 teams and may catch some collateral damage.

12:07

Jay Jaffe: It varies from publication to publication and sometimes from writer to writer. At Baseball Prospectus, the rights for each piece reverted to me after a period (18 months I think). At Sports Illustrated, they retain the copyright but are pretty cooperative about granting permission to re-use, such as for my book or to update as part of my JAWS series. Here, I retain the rights to my work.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, Major League Baseball made official a handful of rule changes that had been in the works for nearly a year. In case you missed it while following the latest twists and turns of the Astros’ sign-stealing saga or the excitement of pitchers and catchers reporting, here’s the full press release, which spares us from having to retype it:

Rule changes for the 2020 season were announced today by @MLB. pic.twitter.com/cXZrFzHv3F

— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) February 12, 2020

The three-batter minimum rule — and the existential threat it poses to lefty specialists — has been the most discussed of these changes. Our own Ben Clemens illustrated that it won’t matter all that much, a conclusion supported by Sam Miller’s examination, while other analysis such as this article by Tom Verducci and this one by Cliff Corcoran suggest it could have a negative impact.

The changes to the injured list and the service time tradeoffs that come with the permanent 26th man and the limited September roster size can bear closer analysis, but the rules that have my attention today — and this should be no surprise if you’ve been reading my work here — are the ones concerning position players and two-way players. By themselves, they won’t amount to much, and while they do close the loopholes that come with the 13-pitcher limitations on the new 26-man rosters, those are some pretty narrow loopholes to begin with. What they really do is stamp out a bit of novelty, not that the sport needs further encroachment by the Fun Police. Read the rest of this entry »

While Yasiel Puig remains unsigned, a couple of other free agent outfielders came off the board on Wednesday via one-year deals at rock-bottom prices that belie their potential productivity even in part-time roles. Cameron Maybin returned to the Tigers, with whom he debuted in 2007, via a $1.5 million deal that includes an additional $1.3 million in incentives, while Jarrod Dyson agreed to a $2 million contract with the Pirates.

The well-traveled Maybin, who turns 33 on April 4, has played for eight different major league teams and has already passed through the hands of the Tigers twice. They made him the No. 10 pick out of an Asheville, North Carolina high school in 2005, and brought him to the majors in 2007, but dealt him to the Marlins that December in the Miguel Cabrera blockbuster. After three years with the Marlins, four with the Padres, and one with the Braves, he sparkled in a return to the Tigers for the 2016 season (.315/.383/.418) but was nonetheless dealt to the Angels that November and continued on his merry way. After splitting the 2018 campaign between the Marlins (again) and Mariners, he went to spring training last year with the Giants but was cut in late March after being arrested on a DUI charge. He landed with the Indians and opened the season with the team’s Triple-A Columbus affiliate before being sold to the Yankees for all of $25,000 on April 25, a time when Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Aaron Hicks, and Clint Frazier were all sidelined by injuries. Read the rest of this entry »

“It feels like there’s still no closure and everything has been thrown into question — past outcomes are being second-guessed and even future games will be cast in doubt. There can be no redemption arc after an institutionalized scandal like this until there’s some accountability.” — Sean Doolittle, Nationals reliever

Sean Doolittle speaks for all of us. Four weeks after Commissioner Rob Manfred issued his report on the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing efforts and suspended both president of baseball operations Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch for the 2020 season, new revelations about the scheme continue to emerge, some of which challenge his findings or call his judgment into question. So long as such information keeps coming to light, Major League Baseball can’t make this scandal — or the justifiable outrage from players within the game and fans outside of it — go away. Not even a leaked report about a cockamamie 14-team playoff format will deflect attention from Houston’s various schemes.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal‘s Jared Diamond reported on an effort by the Astros’ baseball operations department to decode opponents’ signs and relay that information to hitters in real time, one that preceded the trash can banging scheme and that general manager Jeff Luhnow had awareness of, though it went unmentioned in the commissioner’s report. Later that day, MLB Network aired an exclusive interview with A.J. Hinch, one in which the Astros’ former manager expressed regret over his own role in failing to stop his players from participating in the sign-stealing scheme but gave a carefully parsed answer when it came to the possible use of wearable buzzers. On Monday, pitcher Mike Bolsinger, who retired just one of eight Astros hitters he faced in his final major league appearance on August 4, 2017, filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, “accusing the Astros of unfair business practices, negligence and intentional interference with contractual and economic relations,” according to USA Today’s Nancy Armour. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers and catchers have begun reporting to camps, and all but a small handful of name-brand free agents have found home. From among our Top 50 Free Agents list, one in particular stands out for multiple reasons: Yasiel Puig. The enigmatic 29-year-old right fielder’s current plight and potential matches are worth a closer look.

Signed to a seven-year, $42 million contract after defecting from Cuba in 2012, Puig made an instant impact upon debuting with the Dodgers on June 3, 2013, and was just about the game’s most arresting — and polarizing — presence for his first two seasons in the majors. What’s an article about Puig without some video? Let’s remember some highlights.

Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to today’s chat. As I spent the weekend in Cooperstown at the Friends of Doubleday Hot Stove Weekend event, i’m scrambling to catch up. The chat will begin in a few minutes; thank you for your patience…

12:08

Jay Jaffe: OK, I’m back.

12:11

Jay Jaffe: they paid more but they got more, I think. Giving up Downs and Wong was trading from considerable organizational depth — they already have lots of 2B options including Lux, a top-10 prospect ready to take over, and they still have both Will Smith and Keibert Ruiz as catchers, with Wong looking more like an Austin Barnes type. Graterol works as a win-now addition in the bullpen, something that IMO they still needed to add. And if they intend to trade Joc and Stripling, they can further reconfigure.

12:12

Jay Jaffe: Leaving the Angels non-deal aside, I’d say that the Dodgers paid more but in doing so also improved their 2020 roster by a larger increment than they had previously done

Read the rest of this entry »

Until last year, Wilmer Flores had spent his entire professional career — from the time that he was signed out of Venezuela on his 16th birthday in 2007 through the ’18 season — with the Mets. After being non-tendered in November 2018, he landed with the Diamondbacks and put together the best season of his career, at least from an offensive standpoint. This week, he parlayed that success into a modest two-year, $6 million deal with the Giants, who suddenly have a rather crowded infield.

Flores, who’s still just 28 years old, hit a sizzling .317/.361/.487 for a 120 wRC+ in 2019, numbers that represent across-the-board career highs. That said, he missed nearly two months after suffering a fracture in his right foot when he was hit by a Drew Pomeranz pitch on May 19, and wound up making only 285 plate appearances, his lowest total at the major league level since 2014. When he wasn’t pinch-hitting — which he did 23 times, hitting just .190/.261/.238 — he played mostly second base, making 56 of his 60 starts and 64 of his 80 total defensive appearances there; the balance of his appearances came at first base. Even in that limited playing time, his 1.1 WAR was his highest mark since 2015.

Thirty-one of Flores’ starts at second base came against lefties — whom he hit to the tune of a 151 wRC+ — and all but a handful of those starts bumped Ketel Marte to center field. That the Diamondbacks desired to move Marte back to the infield in hopes that it would be less physically demanding likely played a big role in the team’s decision to decline Flores’ $6 million option for 2020; instead, they paid him a $500,000 buyout. Last week, Arizona acquired center fielder Starling Marte from the Pirates so as to further the Ketel-to-the-Keystone plan. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees’ path to a second straight AL East title got a bit easier with Red Sox’s trade of Mookie Betts to the Dodgers, but they won’t emerge from this week unscathed. On Wednesday, the team announced that lefty James Paxton, their most effective starter in 2019, will be out of action for three to four months after undergoing surgery to alleviate a herniated lumbar disc. Even with the addition of Gerrit Cole to the fold, this is a loss that will test the Yankees’ depth.

The 31-year-old Paxton, whom the Yankees acquired from the Mariners in a four-player deal in November 2018, had an uneven first season in pinstripes. He surrendered 29 runs and 12 homers in the first innings of his 29 starts, and was cuffed for a 6.38 ERA and 5.84 FIP in June and July, shortly after he returned from a 25-day absence due to left knee inflammation. Even so, he was strong enough on either side of that two-month stretch that he still finished the season with 3.5 WAR, a 3.82 ERA, and 3.86 FIP (the last two both good for an 83 on their respective “minus” scales), all tops among the team’s starters; he was the only one to take a substantial workload (150.2 innings, third on the team) while finishing with either an ERA or a FIP under 4.28. Indeed, in a season where Luis Severino was limited to a grand total of 12 innings due to a bout of rotator cuff inflammation and then a Grade 2 strain of his latissimus dorsi, Paxton was something of a staff savior.

Paxton wobbled a bit through three postseason starts, allowing five runs in 13 innings while striking out 20. The first two were shortened, but he was at his best in Game 5 of the ALCS against the Astros. With the Yankees down three games to one, he worked around four walks and a wild pitch to turn in six innings of one-run ball while striking out nine; the team won 4-1 and sent the series back to Houston. His October work came on the heels of a bout of nerve irritation in his left glute, which forced him from his final regular season start after just one inning and led to a cortisone shot. Per the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, his surgery is connected to that issue. Read the rest of this entry »

As has been the case for too many October contests since Kirk Gibson homered off Dennis Eckersley, the Dodgers couldn’t seem to win the big ones this winter. They reportedly offered Gerrit Cole $300 million (with deferrals), but were outbid by the Yankees. They expressed interest in Anthony Rendon, but never offered him a contract, and were unwilling to go to a fourth year for Josh Donaldson. Hell, they were even outspent by the Blue Jays — who had spent less than all but four other teams in free agency over the past 14 years — for the services of Hyun-Jin Ryu. They were said to be focused on trades, with a Francisco Lindor/Mike Clevinger package offering one tantalizing possibility. On Tuesday, they finally broke through with a blockbuster, acquiring Mookie Betts and David Price from the Red Sox as part of a three-team, five-player deal that also included the Twins.

Dodgers Receive:

• RF Mookie Betts (from Red Sox)
• LHP David Price (from Red Sox)
• Cash Considerations (from Red Sox)

Red Sox Receive:

• OF Alex Verdugo (from Dodgers)
• RHP Brusdar Graterol (from Twins)

Twins Receive:

• RHP Kenta Maeda (from Dodgers)

Separately, the Dodgers cleared even more space in their outfield by trading Joc Pederson to the Angels for infielder Luis Rengifo, with other players possibly involved. Dan Szymborski will break down that deal on Wednesday.

Though he’ll quite possibly only be around for one year before testing free agency, the 27-year-old Betts fortifies an already robust lineup that led the NL in scoring (5.47 runs per game) and wRC+ (111) in 2019 while powering the Dodgers to a franchise-record 106 wins. The 2018 AL MVP will play alongside reigning NL MVP Cody Bellinger in a lineup that now boasts three of the majors’ 25 most valuable players by WAR from the past year (Max Muncy being the third); all three of those players rank among the top 11 hitters by wRC+ over the past two seasons. The Dodgers’ path to an eighth consecutive NL West title just became even easier, but this is about increasing their odds of getting back to the World Series, which they did in both 2017 and ’18, and finally winning one for the first time since 1988. Read the rest of this entry »