When ESPN’s Buster Olney reported on Friday that Yankees right-hander Domingo Germán will not pitch again this year, either in the regular season or the postseason, in the wake of a reported violation of the Joint MLB-MLBPA Domestic Violence Policy and a likely suspension, it was a instance of the league and the players’ union lucking into the right outcome. While players suspended for violating the Joint Drug Agreement by taking performance-enhancing drugs have been ineligible to participate in that year’s postseason since 2014, that’s not the case for those suspended under the DV policy introduced in August 2015. Not only does that make for a jarring incongruity given the relative severity of those transgressions, allowing recently suspended players to participate in the playoffs can lead to unsavory behavior on the part of teams, as we’ve seen multiple times since the policy was introduced. It’s time for the players and the league to close this loophole.

Germán was placed on administrative leave on Thursday in connection with an incident that reportedly took place at the pitcher’s residence late Monday or early Tuesday, after the pitcher and his girlfriend appeared at CC Sabathia’s charity gala. The 27-year-old righty, who in his first full major league season has emerged as a viable rotation cog, had pitched in relief of Sabathia on Wednesday night in preparation for a more flexible role come the postseason. The announcement of his placement on leave dimmed some of the luster of the Yankees’ victory over the Angels later that night, which not only marked their 100th win but clinched their first AL East title since 2012.

No police report was filed in connection with the incident at Germán’s residence, and no charges were filed. The incident was reported directly to the league, which, according to The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, conducted a preliminary investigation on Tuesday and Wednesday, interviewing people around the team. While Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he heard “whispers” of an investigation on Wednesday, the team was not informed until Thursday morning that the pitcher had been placed on administrative leave. Via Adler:

“I learned on the drive in that he was going on administrative leave,” Boone said Thursday afternoon. “Heard some of the whispers and whatnot, but this is a Major League Baseball investigation and issue. We’re just trying to be as cooperative as we can while this goes on.”

A player can be placed on administrative leave for up to seven days, though that period can be extended; during that time, he is paid but not allowed to have any contact with his team. By inference, the mere placement of a player on leave means that the league and the union agree that the allegation in question is substantive — that there is enough evidence to merit preventing him from playing. As Adler noted, “[S]ources told The Athletic the union had the option to appeal his immediate placement on administrative leave but did not take the opportunity to do so.”

Not every player suspended under the policy was placed on leave beforehand, but it is worth noting that the only two of the 14 players investigated who were not suspended, Yasiel Puig and Miguel Sanó, did not require any leave, as the allegations pertained to incidents that took place in the offseason. Neither was ultimately disciplined due to insufficient evidence that they violated the policy. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my Monday chat. Excuse the slow start on my part – I’ve got a piece on Domingo German, DV suspensions, and the postseason that’s going live soon and that requires more attention than most posts when it comes to an editorial pass. On a lighter note… well, things aren’t great for Team Entropy (update coming tomorro) but we’ll manage. And now, on with the show…

12:06

Jay Jaffe: I did not actually watch much of it, alas. Because the weather is so good here in NYC, and because the next few weekends will be so hectic, I spent much of my weekend with my daughter — her first trip to the Bronx Zoo on Saturday and then first to the Metropolitan Museum on Sunday. Very fun times. Less so for the Cubs, apparently. Between their mounting injuries and the ongoing failures of Craig Kimbrel — who, let’s face it, can’t possibly be at 100% right now — it’s a grim ending for them, and a bummer for #Team Entropy. It’s an impressive showing by the Cardinals, and the fact that the Yelich-less Brewers have risen to the occasion while the Cubs have fizzled is impressive as well.

12:09

Jay Jaffe: Given that the Nationals have rebounded from their dreadful start to (likely) make the playoffs, I don’t see Davey Martinez getting ousted. If it’s an NL East landing spot for him, I suspect that the Phillies are the more likely destination — particularly when held in contrast to the Mets; i can’t see them willing to pay his high salary or see him willing to sign on for the chaos that comes with working for the Wilpons. Maybe the Padres, but as with Philadelphia, the firing of the managers often suggests that the GM is next on the chopping block, so I’m not sure how attractive either scenario is.

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A Yastrzemski hit a home run in Fenway Park on Tuesday night, and if you’re any kind of student of baseball history, you might have felt some goosebumps. Two hundred miles away in the Yankee Stadium press box, I certainly did, because I’m old enough to remember the final years of the career of Carl Yastrzemski, a former Triple Crown winner and inner-circle Hall of Famer who retired in 1983 while owning the all-time lead in games played (3,308, since surpassed by Pete Rose) and the number eight spot on the all-time hit list (3,419, now ninth). I also recall the flicker of promise that was his son’s professional career in the mid-1980s, and the sad news that he passed away in 2004 at the too-young age of 43. With all that in mind, I can’t help but pull for Mike Yastrzemski, a 29-year-old rookie who on May 25 of this season became the first grandson of a Hall of Famer to play in the majors.

I was hardly alone. By all accounts, the youngest Yaz — who lists at nearly the same size (5-foot-11, 180 pounds) as his grandfather (5-foot-11, 175 pounds) and swings from the left side — was welcomed with open arms for his Fenway debut. He strolled across the outfield grass with “Poppy Yaz” prior to the game, receive a warm ovation upon coming to the plate to lead off the contest, and, in the fourth inning, sent a Nathan Eovaldi fastball 401 feet to center field:

The home run made Yastrzemski the first Giants rookie in 47 years to reach 20 homers (Dave Kingman did it in 1972) and just the second Giant to hit 20 in the past four seasons (Kevin Pillar beat him by 16 days). The blast and the hoopla that surrounded his debut were the highlights of what became a grueling, 15-inning, 24-pitcher September slog; it lasted five hours and 54 minutes, which in single-game terms is about as long as his grandfather’s career. Yastrzemski made a strong effort to bring it to an end earlier by leading off the 14th inning with a ground-rule double, his only other hit in eight trips to the plate. His Giants teammates stranded him, though they did go on to win, 7-6. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — On Tuesday night, in the Yankees’ 152nd game of the season, staff ace Luis Severino finally made his 2019 debut. The 25-year-old righty, who after back-to-back All-Star seasons had been laid up by shoulder woes since spring training, spun four scoreless innings in an 8-0 rout of the Angels. His fastball sizzled, topping out at 98.8 mph and sitting 96-97, and his tantalizing performance fuels hopes that he can make a substantial postseason contribution to a 99-win team whose rotation has been its weakest link.

“That’s Sevy out there,” gushed catcher Austin Romine afterwards. “We need Sevy where we’re going. He’s pitched in big games for us and we look forward to him pitching in more big games for us.”

Romine could be forgiven for forgetting the quality of Severino’s last big game (six runs in three innings in Game 3 of last year’s AL Division Series against the Red Sox) and focusing on the fact that the Yankees simply don’t have any other starter of Severino’s caliber. In both 2017 and ’18, the young righty threw least 190 innings, notching at least 220 strikeouts and 5.0 WAR, and receiving down-ballot Cy Young consideration. His 11.0 WAR in that span trailed only Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Jacob deGrom, and Corey Kluber, a group that accounted for three of the four Cy Youngs awarded.

Tuesday night qualified as a big game only in the grand scheme of things, as relatively little was at stake in the standings. The Yankees began the night with a nine-game AL East lead over the Rays, and a magic number of three to clinch, though in the battle for the AL’s top postseason seed, they were also tied with the Astros at 98-53. The Angels (68-83) have not only clinched a losing season, but their lineup has been defanged, as Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and Justin Upton have recently been shut down due to season-ending injuries, while Tommy La Stella hasn’t played since July 2.

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NEW YORK — They’ve won back to back National League pennants and clinched their seventh straight NL West title on September 10. They have a four-game lead over the Braves for the senior circuit’s best record. And yet, even as they close in on 100 wins and the top NL seed for the playoffs, the 2019 Dodgers are still a squad very much in flux. Lineup, rotation, bullpen — everywhere, key roles up for grabs, as manager Dave Roberts and his staff spend the remainder of September hoping to find a route through October that will end differently than the last two. 

This past weekend’s trip to Citi Field for a three-game series against the Mets, who had won four straight and nine out of their last 13, put all of that on display. Friday night’s 9-2 rout was keyed by a fourth-inning, three-run homer off Noah Syndergaard by rookie Gavin Lux, who despite having just 12 major league games under his belt at this writing is amid a successful audition for the starting second base job. Saturday’s lineup featured an outfield of familiar faces — A.J. Pollock, Cody Bellinger, and Joc Pederson — in a configuration that had been used on just two other occasions in the previous 149 games.

Saturday evening’s pitching matchup, though billed as as one between Cy Young hopefuls Jacob deGrom and Hyun-Jin Ryu, was in many ways a crucial test for the latter, who despite leading all major league starters in ERA had suddenly fallen into a four-start funk. He passed his test with flying colors, delivering seven shutout innings, but the bullpen that followed him did not, surrendering three eighth-inning runs that led to defeat. Sunday brought some familiar moving parts back into the mix, and the bullpen — particularly Kenley Jansen — fared much better in the team’s come-from-behind 3-2 victory.

To be clear, some of this was and will continue to be the usual September shufflings of a playoff-bound team trying to cover for injuries and rest some veterans before the postseason. With Justin Turner nursing a mild left ankle sprain, rookie Matt Beaty started on Friday and Saturday at third base, a position he hadn’t played at the major league level before September, though for as useful as he’s been off the bench, he’s no threat to unseat a healthy Turner. Ryu was starting on nine days of rest, while Walker Buehler, who started on Sunday, was pulled after 71 pitches (his fewest since his season debut on March 31) and five innings, pushing his season total to 171.1, 18 more than last year’s combined total in the minors and majors.

Of course, it helps to have expanded September rosters for such an endeavor, and with the Dodgers, Lux is no window dressing. By the time the team’s 2016 first-round pick made his major league debut on September 2, the Dodgers had already started six other players at second base, including July 31 acquisition Jedd Gyorko, who had debuted there on September 1. Led by Enrique Hernández (84 games, 63 starts) and Max Muncy (67 games, 59 starts) and limited somewhat by injuries to both, as well as to Chris Taylor (20 games, 13 starts), the group — including Lux — hasn’t fared badly, ranking ninth among all 30 teams in both WAR (2.9, led by Muncy’s 1.7 in that capacity) and wRC+ (104). But Lux’s torrid minor league season (.347/.421/.607 with 26 homers), his draft pedigree, and his prospect status (number nine on The Board, up from number 23 in February) earned him this shot, and Roberts has liked what he’s seen. “I see composure,” said the manager of the 21-old rookie prior to Saturday’s game. “There’s a confidence. It’s a really good skill set. I see him starting tomorrow against [Zack] Wheeler. And if he continues to play well, the at-bats will be there.” Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon folks, and welcome to another edition of my Monday chat. Apparently, I screwed something up and the queue has been open for awhile, but that just gives us a good stock of questions to start with.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: My piece for today, on the premature end of Mike Trout’s season, went up a little while ago https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mike-trouts-season-is-over-which-completel…. It’s a bummer, but not half as much a bummer as the death of Ric Ocasek, news of which reached me (and everybody else) last night. The Cars were an unstoppable hit machine when I was in grade school. Entry level new wave/post-punk, catchy as hell, icy cool. Only later did I appreciate the extent to which they were a gateway to so many great bands that influenced them — Kraftwerk, Roxy Music, Bowie, Suicide, the Modern Lovers, etc. Their first album is utter perfection, and the ones that followed are pretty damn good as well.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, on with the show.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: I address that in the piece. While we’ve seen a handful of players win while toiling for sub-.500 teams, and win while playing in 140 or fewer games in a 162-game schedule, we’ve never seen anybody who’s at the intersection of that Venn diagram. Alex Bregman is closing in on Trout, and while he won’t overtake him, I can see the strong possibility of voters screwing the best player on Planet Earth yet again. Brace yourselves.

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The transition from the regular season to the playoffs inevitably leaves us with a stripped-down cast of the game’s best players, but this is getting ridiculous. After a week in which NL MVP candidate Christian Yelich was lost for the year with a fractured kneecap, Javier Báez was ruled out for the remainder of the regular season due to a fractured left thumb, and both Byron Buxton and Shohei Ohtani elected to undergo season-ending surgeries, we’ve now lost Mike Trout as well. The best baseball player on planet Earth will undergo surgery on his right foot later this week, according to the Angels, bringing to a premature end yet another remarkable season.

Trout had not played since making a pinch-hitting appearance on September 7, a day after he took an early exit from a game due to what was termed “right toe discomfort.” Two days later, he underwent a cryoablation procedure (the insertion of hollow needles filled with cooled, thermally conductive fluids) to alleviate a Morton’s neuroma, an inflamed nerve located between the bones at the ball of the foot. The condition is more common among women than men because of the way high heels put pressure on the toes or the ball of the foot, but any kind of repetitive, high-impact activity can cause it, particularly when tight shoes are involved.

Trout had been dealing with pain in the foot for nearly a month, according to the Los Angeles Times’ Maria Torres. Said the 28-year-old center fielder after the cryoablation, “Once it flares up, it doesn’t go away. It calms down at night and when you do baseball activity, it flares up again… This procedure today, they say it helps it.”

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This is the second installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

It’s been 12 days since I launched this year’s Team Entropy series, and I’m happy to report that for connoisseurs of chaos, the news is generally good, at least when it comes to the Wild Card races. The division races… eh, we’ve seen some tightening in both Centrals, but of greater significance are the pages torn off the calendar; there are but 16 days remaining in the regular season.

The Dodgers became the first team to clinch a division title this year, claiming their seventh straight NL flag on Tuesday, September 10. No other clinching is imminent, but by coincidence, the magic numbers for both East division leaders (the Yankees and Braves) and that of the AL West (the Astros) all stood at eight entering Thursday; the Yankees, with the sweep of their doubleheader against the Tigers and the Rays’ loss to the Rangers, cut theirs to five, though the other two remain at eight. It’s only a matter of time for them; there’s no reason to hold your breath in those races.

In the AL Central, the Twins — who since my last installment have lost both Michael Pineda and Byron Buxton for the season, the former to a drug suspension and the latter to shoulder surgery — have lost ground since the previous check-in. At 89-57, they now lead the Indians (86-61) by just 3 1/2 games, but with the shrinking schedule, their odds have only dropped by 0.6%, to 93.8%. The two teams face off for a three-game series this weekend in Cleveland, their last head-to-head matchup. The Indians lead the season series 9-7, and realistically probably need to sweep to keep things interesting given that they have the harder remaining schedule of the two (.487 vs. .443).

As for the NL Central, the Cardinals (82-64) have a four-game lead over both the Cubs and Brewers (78-68), each of whom has recently lost a key player for at least the remainder of the regular season, namely Javier Báez (fractured thumb) and Christian Yelich (fractured kneecap). Since reaching their season high-water mark in terms of leading the division (3 1/2 games on August 8), the Cubs are just 15-16, while the Cardinals are an NL-best 24-9 and the Brewers 18-12; the latter has won seven in a row despite the loss of the reigning NL MVP and a few other players. Since the previous Team Entropy installment, St. Louis’ odds to win the division have jumped a honkin’ 12.3%, to 76.7%, with the Cubs’ odds more than cut in half to 16.3% and the Brewers’ odds now visible to the naked eye at 7.0%. The Redbirds host the Brew Crew this weekend, and with a 9-7 series lead, need just one more win to clinch the upper hand. The odds of a season-ending tie atop the division, which would require a tiebreaker game, are at 10.1%, 0.4% higher than when we last checked in. Read the rest of this entry »

September has been a cruel month when it comes to contending teams losing key players. On Tuesday alone, the Twins placed Byron Buxton on the injured list with a left shoulder subluxation for which he subsequently underwent season-ending surgery, and the Brewers lost Christian Yelich for the duration due to a fractured right kneecap. The day before that, the Cubs found out that Javier Báez would not return before the end of the regular season due to the severity of the fractured left thumb he suffered on September 1, though at least the door is open for him to return at some point in the postseason. Each of those losses compound other injury woes — at this time of year, everybody hurts — but for the Cubs the loss of Báez is particularly acute, as the team has slid from first place into a tie for the second NL Wild Card spot in the span of five weeks.

On August 8, the Cubs’ season reached its high-water mark in terms of both their division lead (3 1/2 games ahead of the Cardinals) and playoff odds (90.8%). Since then, they’ve stumbled to a 14-16 record, and at 77-68, find themselves tied with the Brewers with 17 games remaining. Here’s the graph of the NL Central teams’ playoff odds over the course of the season, with the aforementioned date highlighted:

The 26-year-old Báez initially injured his thumb while sliding into second base in the third inning following a pickoff attempt by the Brewers’ Gio Gonzalez. Though visibly shaken up on the play, he did not depart until the seventh inning:

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Christian Yelich won NL MVP honors while leading the Brewers to a division title and within one win of a trip to the World Series last year, but hopes for repeating that magic took a severe blow on Tuesday night. In the first inning of the Brewers’ game against the Marlins in Miami, the 27-year-old right fielder fouled a pitch off his right kneecap and was forced from the game. In the aftermath of the team’s 4-3 victory, general manager David Stearns told reporters that Yelich had fractured the kneecap and will be out for the remainder of the season, a crushing blow to a team that has overcome a slew of injuries to win five straight games and climb to within one game of the second NL Wild Card spot.

Ouch. Ugh. F***. A player with a reasonable claim as the NL’s best is down for the count as far as 2019 goes, and while thankfully it’s not an injury with career-altering ramifications, right now there’s no joy in Mudville or Milwaukee. This completely sucks.

Facing righty Elieser Hernandez, Yelich fouled a 1-1 slider squarely off his right knee, crumpled to the ground, and remained there for several minutes while being tended to by Brewers athletic trainer Rafael Freitas. He could not complete the plate appearance (pinch-hitter Trent Grisham completed the strikeout, which was charged to Yelich) and limped off the field under his own power (you can see the video here).

Stearns said that Yelich would be flown back to Milwaukee to meet with team doctors and determine whether surgery would be necessary and what the prognosis would be going forward. He praised his star slugger, saying, “Look, I think first and foremost, we feel awful for Christian. This is a guy who has carried us in a number of ways over the last two years. He could have been two and a half weeks away from a repeat Most Valuable Player Award. That’s where our thoughts go first.” Read the rest of this entry »