Remember the 107-win Giants, the only team to take an NL West flag away from the Dodgers over the past decade? Last year’s crash to an 81-81 record marked a rude awakening, as the post-Buster Posey era got off to a rocky start following the future Hall of Famer’s abrupt retirement after the 2021 season. Now the Giants enter the post-Brandon Belt era as well, as the regular first baseman from their last two championship teams joined the Blue Jays in January.
I mention the Giants because in this National League counterpart to my examination of the weakest spots on American League contending teams, their catching and first base options occupy the first two spots, as they did little to address either position over the winter — a point that’s been overshadowed by the Padres’ spending spree and the Dodgers’ free agent exodus (a phrase I’ve now used for three straight articles and expect to deploy at this year’s Passover seder). The Giants are projected to finish third in the NL West with 84 wins, and while they do have a 41.8% chance of making the playoffs, improvements in both spots could have bumped them up by a good 20 percentage points.
As with the AL installment, here I’m considering teams with Playoff Odds of at least 10% as contenders; that threshold describes 10 NL clubs (all but the Cubs, Pirates, Reds, Rockies, and Nationals). It’s worth noting that because of the general tendency to overproject playing time and keep even the weakest teams with positive WAR at each position (in reality over 10% of them will finish in the red), our Depth Chart values at the team level are inflated by about 20%. That is to say, instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, we have about 1,200. Thus, I am discounting the team values that you see on the Depth Chart pages by 20%, and focusing on the lowest-ranked contenders among those whose adjusted values fall below 2.0 WAR, the general equivalent of average play across a full season. The individual WARs cited will remain as they are on the Depth Chart pages, however, and it’s worth noting that many of the players here — particularly youngsters with shorter track records — don’t project particularly well but aren’t without upside; hope springs eternal. Read the rest of this entry »
As Gavin Lux’s season-ending knee injury reminded us, the Dodgers had quite the free agent exodus during the offseason. Nearly two months ago, they led the pack when Ben Clemens examined which teams were at the extremes in terms of production lost and gained via free agency. With all but a few free agents of note now signed, I thought it would be worth circling back to those rankings before moving on to highlight some notable holes on contending teams, something of an offseason version of my Replacement Level Killers series.
When Ben checked in just after the New Year, the Dodgers were runaway leaders in terms of net WAR lost to free agency, having already parted ways with Tyler Anderson, Cody Bellinger, Justin Turner, Trea Turner and a dozen other players in an effort to trim payroll and lessen (if not eliminate) their Competitive Balance Tax burden. Towards that end, only two of their incoming free agents (J.D. Martinez and Noah Syndergaard) will make more than $10 million annually. To put it another way, the team won 111 games last year with a payroll just south of $270 million for CBT purposes, but after falling short of the National League Championship Series, they’re hoping to get as far or further by winning 80-something games and spending maybe $25 million less. Such are the vagaries of postseason baseball that it just might work. Read the rest of this entry »
Broken Bat: Looks to me the Dodgers must procure a shortstop to support the aging Rojas who all of a sudden the light is shining on. I don’t think they one ready in MILB. So… what team do they toss one of their pitching prospects to get one from? Would they dare pay Baez? I think Tigers would be content to get out of that contract for a decent tier 3 SP. What about trading with Reds? The ex Pirate Frazier? Might be available cheap. Thoughts on what they do?
2:08
Jay Jaffe: I don’t think the Dodgers see anything as “must” at least in the near term. They have reason to hope that after undergoing wrist surgery, Miguel Rojas can provide something closer to a league-average bat with plus defense filling in for Lux, and that they have enough depth to allow Chris Taylor to play there as well. There’s no way on God’s green earth they’re taking on Javier Baez’s contract or giving up a starting pitcher prospect for him, and I doubt they see Isiah Kiner-Falefa as an option, either. Not sue who you see on the Reds as an option, but ex-Pirate Adam Frazier (now an Oriole) isn’t a shortstop, totaling just 26 innings at the position in the majors.
One guy worth keeping an eye on is the Cardinals’ Paul DeJong, who after being displaced by Tommy Edman worked to rebuild his swing after being sent down last year, though the dividends certainly weren’t apparent at the major league level. If he’s recovered his form, he could be of interest.
2:08
Oaktown Blues: Is a Cristian Pache DFA in the cards this spring or will the A’s give him one more shot?
2:10
Jay Jaffe: he’s out of options but as the A’s are playing for crickets, I imagine they’ll give him every chance to hold onto a roster spot unless they have a crunch that they need to alleviate.
Still not sure I can name six A’s even after looking at their depth chart.
2:11
TheVoiceInYourHead: Why are people so stubborn about Rojas taking over for Lux?
In the wake of a free agent exodus that included shortstop Trea Turner and third baseman Justin Turner, the Dodgers entered the spring with a new-look infield that offered considerable uncertainty relative to the previously star-studded unit. Now the team will have to adjust its plans, because on Monday, Gavin Lux, who was slated to be the starting shortstop, tore the anterior cruciate ligament of his right knee, which will require surgery that is expected to sideline him for the entire season.
During the sixth inning of an exhibition game against the Padres in Peoria, Arizona, the 25-year-old Lux began running from second to third base on an infield grounder to third baseman Jantzen Witte. In ducking to avoid Witte’s throw to second base, Lux lost his balance, first stumbling and then tumbling into third as his right leg bent awkwardly. Upon crash-landing at the base, he clutched his right knee, clearly in pain, and could not leave the field under his own power, so the Dodgers called for the trainers’ cart. The video is here, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Read the rest of this entry »
Joey Votto has yet to play a spring training game, and he probably won’t for at least a little while longer as he recuperates from the surgery on his left shoulder that ended his 2022 season. That hasn’t stopped the 39-year-old future Hall of Famer from filling reporters’ notebooks now that camp has opened, particularly as he heads into the final year of his 10-year contract and perhaps his final year in the majors.
Votto hit just .205/.319/.370 with 11 homers in 376 plate appearances last year; all of those slash stats were career lows, as were his 92 wRC+ and -0.9 WAR. His performance was particularly dismaying given his 2021 resurgence. Reversing a 2019-20 skid during which he had managed just a 101 wRC+, 26 homers, and 1.1 WAR, he hit .266/.375/.563 (139 wRC+) with 36 homers in 533 PA; all told, it was his best season since 2017.
That made the sudden arrival of Votto’s worst season all the more jarring, even though we’ve all become accustomed to seeing even great players in their late 30s fall apart. Last week, Votto offered an eye-catching, blunt assessment of his season:
Joey Votto said he felt like he was getting better last year after he ditched his "bullshit bat" and "greedy" approach. "But again, maybe I played like shit because I’m not good anymore, we’ll see. I doubt that, but we’ll see. I’m excited about the challenge."
As an East Coast dweller with a habit of watching West Coast broadcasts (and particularly Dodgers games) after the work is done and the kiddo tucked in, I’m well aware of Kenley Jansen’s evolution toward what we might politely call a more deliberate approach to pitching. Indeed, over the course of his 13-year major league career, he has evolved into one of the majors’ slowest workers on the mound. With this year’s introduction of a pitch clock, he spent the offseason working to adjust his delivery and is facing as much pressure as any pitcher to adapt to the new rules, though he’s hardly alone.
On Thursday, The Athletic’s Andy McCullough and Jen McCaffrey had some choice quotes from Jansen, who joined the Red Sox this year via a two-year, $32 million deal, on the subject of his tempo. Last year, while a member of the Braves, he saw his name atop an MLB Network graphic of the slowest-working pitchers. “I was so embarrassed,” he toldThe Athletic. “Like, dude, you’ve got to clean it up.”
“It drives me crazy,” he added. “Because I’m like, when did I get this slow?”
The topic is particularly relevant because Major League Baseball is adding a pitch clock this year, one that gives pitchers 15 seconds to begin their deliveries with the bases empty and 20 to do so with men on. MLB is also planning strict enforcement of the balk rule, because the aforementioned times require clarity on when a pitcher’s delivery starts, thus presenting an additional problem for Jansen.
The 35-year-old righty believes that the addition of a double swivel of his left (front) hip to start his delivery may have slowed his delivery down even as its addition catalyzed his resurgence. Stung by his reduced role in the 2020 postseason as the Dodgers finally won that elusive championship and hoping to regain velocity and command, he added the move in April ’21. By repeating a hip swivel that he’d previously introduced at the start of his delivery, he improved his balance, avoided drifting toward third base, and lengthened his delivery toward home plate. His results certainly improved: his average cutter velocity increased from 90.9 mph to 92.5, and his ERA fell from 3.33 to 2.22 (though his FIP and xERA barely budged). Last year, Jansen’s cutter averaged 92.2 mph, still faster than his 2018–20 velocities.
As you can see from the video above, the hip swivel is pretty subtle when viewed from the center field angle via which we typically watch pitchers, but the batter and umpire have a better view. That little movement matters because under the new rule, the clock stops at the start of the delivery, but what Jansen’s doing is a false start that can disrupt a hitter’s timing. Now in addition to speeding up his internal clock, he has to work on simplifying his delivery so as not to commit a balk.
While his hip swivel helps at least somewhat in explaining Jansen’s rebound in performance — mixing in his sinker and slider have helped as well — the data tell us he’s been throwing the brakes on his pace of work more or less since he assumed closer duties for the Dodgers in 2012, just three years after switching from catching to pitching and two years after reaching the majors. Last year, Statcast began publishing Pitch Tempo data, which measures the median time between pitch releases; not every pitch is accounted for, only those that were called strikes or balls. The Statcast measure differs from our lost-and-found Pace metric, which divides the time difference between the PITCHf/x timestamps of the first and last pitches of a plate appearance by the number of pitches in the PA minus one. Statcast also splits the data into into times with the bases empty and with men on base. Here’s what the data looks like for Jansen; by happy coincidence, the start of Statcast’s data coverage is the same year as his major league debut.
Jansen’s delivery times have generally been on the rise since he began pitching, with 2012, ’16, and last year standing out as points where he went from slow to slower to slowest. Pitchers as a group have been taking even longer between pitches over the same timespan, with the average with nobody on base increasing from 15.8 seconds in 2010 to 18.1 seconds in ’22, and from 22.2 seconds with nobody on in ’10 to 23.3 in ’22. Taking a page from contributor Chris Gilligan’s big-picture look at the attempts to improve the pace of play, here’s how the leaguewide tempo data looks alongside pace and time of game over the span of Jansen’s career:
Pace of Play Metrics
Season
Avg Empty
Avg Men On
Pace
Time of Game
2010
15.8
22.2
21.0
2:50
2011
15.8
22.2
20.9
2:51
2012
16.3
22.7
21.4
2:55
2013
16.7
23.1
21.9
2:58
2014
17.2
23.5
22.2
3:02
2015
17.6
24.2
23.2
2:56
2016
17.8
24.4
23.3
3:00
2017
17.3
23.5
22.7
3:05
2018
17.2
23.3
22.5
3:00
2019
17.7
23.9
22.9
3:05
2020
18.0
23.9
23.2
3:07
2021
18.3
24.3
23.7
3:10
2022
18.1
23.3
23.1
3:03
Note that last year reversed a years-long trend; the average time between pitches decreased relative to 2021, as did the length of the average nine-inning game. Those improvements have largely been attributed to the PitchCom signaling system, though two-year declines in strikeout and walk rates have helped as well.
While I could give you a pair of graphs comparing Jansen’s splits to the league averages, I chose attempt to index his splits (pitcher tempo divided by league tempo times 100) into what I’ll call Tempo+, which I think similarly gets the point across:
From 2012 to ’21, Jansen was around 30% above average with the bases empty and about 17% above average with men on, but last year he set highs in both categories, climbing to 42% above average with the bases empty and 35% above average with men on. Good thing he moved out of the Pacific time zone, or I’d have been even more sleep-deprived.
Anyway, among pitchers with at least qualifying 100 pitches with the bases empty in 2022, Jansen actually had only the third-longest time between pitches:
Jansen did edge Loáisiga for the highest percentage of slow pitches, with 22.3% of his offerings with the bases empty taking at least 30 seconds, compared to 21.2% for Loáisiga. Meanwhile, with men on base, Jansen took over the major league lead in average time…
… but took a backseat to Gallegos in percentage of slow pitches, 58.2% to 57.4%; Williams (54.6%) and Colomé (51.7%) were the only other pitchers who topped 50% under those conditions. Gallegos might be the heavyweight champion of dawdlers, as his 33.8 seconds with men on in 2021 is the highest mark of the past seven seasons, and his 26.5 seconds with the bases empty that same year ranks third behind only Rafael Dolis (27.2 seconds in 2020) and Chapman (26.9 seconds in 2021). Jansen’s former teammate, the infamously slow Pedro Báez, has the second-longest split with men on, 32.9 seconds in 2015, and shaved just one second off that the following year.
if I had six months to live, I'd spend it watching Pedro Baez throw an inning because it would feel like eternity
It’s important to point out that Pitch Tempo doesn’t directly line up with the new pitch timer, which starts when the pitcher receives the return throw from the catcher and ends once he begins his delivery. Statcast publishes a Timer Equivalent that just subtracts six seconds from the tempo measure. Jansen’s Timer Equivalent measures of 19.6 seconds with the bases empty and 25.6 seconds with men on base would both constitute what former teammate Clayton Kershaw cheekily called “a shot clock violation” given the new regulations.
In terms of cleaning it up, Jansen is hardly alone. Using 100-pitch cutoffs for each split, last year 81 out of 523 qualifiers (15.4%) had timer equivalent averages over 15 seconds with the bases empty, and 56 out of 467 (12.3%) had averages over 20 seconds with men on. In both categories, the vast majority of the pitchers above those thresholds were relievers. In fact, only five pitchers who made at least half a dozen starts last year had timer equivalents greater than 15 seconds with the bases empty: Shohei Ohtani (15.7), Tylor Megill (15.3), JP Sears, Corbin Burnes, and Michael Kopech (15.1 apiece). Meanwhile, 16 starters had timer equivalents of at least 20 seconds with men on base, led by Montas, the only pitcher who cracked the tables above:
In an odd coincidence, not only is Montas here but also Sears, one of the pitchers he was traded for last August, and just missing the cut with an average right at 20 seconds is another, Ken Waldichuk. To be fair, Montas was bothered by shoulder problems that sent him to the injured list late last year and resulted in surgery earlier this week; his 28.0-second tempo average with men on base was 1.5 seconds higher than in ’21, suggesting he might have been trying to give himself a little extra time to recharge between pitches.
Indeed, that’s the general theory for the increased time between pitches, particularly for relievers; they’re throwing short stints at maximum effort and so need a bit of extra time to get that velocity to where it can have the greatest effect. FiveThrityEight’s Rob Arthur previously found that every second of delay adds .02 mph to average fastball velocity, which is to say that waiting 10 seconds can add 0.2 mph. Earlier this week at Baseball Prospectus, Darius Austin took a deeper look at the tempo-velocity link in light of the rule change, particularly searching for pitchers able to avoid losing velocity while improving their tempo from beyond the new clock limits to more acceptable times:
[P]itchers in the slower tempo group were 32 percent more likely to have increased their velocity with runners on. It’s the bases empty comparison that shows the notable difference here, though: only 24.3% (17 of 70) pitcher seasons saw an increase in average fastball velocity accompanying a reduction in time between pitches. By contrast, 41.4% of the pitchers who took more time on the mound added something to their fastball, making it over 70% more likely that fastball velocity increased relative to those who sped up between deliveries.
Particularly as he’s now 35 years old, Jansen is at least well aware of the continuous work it takes to adjust, but maintaining his effectiveness while adhering to the new rules is as big a challenge as he’s faced on the field. Here’s hoping he can get time on his side.
On the heels of what was arguably the best season of his career — one in which he set career highs in wRC+ (152) and WAR (7.4), helped the Padres to the NLCS for the first time in 24 years, and finished second in the NL MVP voting — Manny Machado has informed the Padres that he intends to exercise the opt-out in his $300 million contract after this season and test free agency again.
Last Friday, at the Padres’ spring training site in Peoria, Arizona, the All-Star third baseman confirmed that in December prior to the Winter Meetings, agent Dan Lozano gave the Padres a February 16 deadline to reach agreement on extending the 10-year, $300 million contract Machado signed in February 2019. According to a report by the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Kevin Acee, the Padres made just one offer after hearing from Lozano; two days before the deadline, they offered to add five years and $21 million per year ($105 million total) to the five years and $150 million that will remain on his deal after this year. The proposed package of 10 years and $255 million wasn’t enough to satisfy Machado, and so with the deadline having passed, he told reporters that now that he’s in camp he wants to focus on the upcoming season rather than on contract negotiations. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of February and my first in my new (and maybe very old, I’d have to check) time slot. I’m back in circulation after a bout of COVID (boo) among other things. Yesterday I did a piece on the contentious arbitration hearing of Corbin Burnes and what some fair contract offers for him might look like based on ZiPS (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/milwaukee-burnes-a-bridge/). Next up is a piece on Manny Machado’s plans to opt out. Anyway, on with the show…
2:04
Wireless Joe Jackson: How is it that Helton is going to walk into the HoF but Olerud got one-and-done’d with 4 votes? I am OUTRAGED! Or at least as outraged as possible regarding a HoF thing.
2:10
Jay Jaffe: It’s a bummer that Olerud went one-and-done on the 2011 ballot, but it’s not that hard to understand why. He came along as a candidate at a time when the electorate was rather stingy and largely paying no mind to advanced statistics. His raw totals of both hits (2,239) and home runs (255) did not read as Hall of Fame-caliber totals. A look at JAWS shows that he’s 24th at the position, just above contemporaries Jason Giambi and Will Clark (both one-and-done as well) but below Keith Hernandez. He’s 3.6 WAR behind Helton in career WAR and 7.6 WAR behind him in peak WAR — more than a win per year at his very best — and the 5.6-point gap between Helton (54.2, 0.8 above the Hall standard) and Olerud (48.6, 4.8 points below) is a big one where dreams of Cooperstown vanish into thin air.
2:10
Fan: Hello Jay, what are the chances Kenny Lofton gets voted in by the Veteran’s committee any time soon?
2:11
Jay Jaffe: very very low. It’s harder to get on to a ballot with the committee change and so long as this is hanging over his head it’s tough to see another candidate being bumped off the ballot to make room for him and thus drawing negative publicity to the process. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-22/kenny-lofton-accus…
2:11
Guest: Merrifield starting at 2B in Toronto? Roster Resource has him starting over Espinal.
Arbitration is by definition a contentious process, but even so, it’s difficult to recall a recent case that left a star player so vocal about the damage done to his relationship with his team like that of Corbin Burnes. Last week, the Brewers went to trial with the 2021 NL Cy Young winner over a difference of just under $750,000 and prevailed, after which Burnes sounded off over the team’s conduct during the hearing. In all likelihood, this marks the beginning of the end of his time in Milwaukee; it’s difficult to imagine him agreeing to any kind of deal that would delay his free agency after what just transpired.
The 28-year-old Burnes has been the majors’ most valuable pitcher over the past three seasons according to our version of WAR:
Among pitchers with at least 300 innings in that span, Burnes also owns the lowest FIP and K-BB% (26.9%, virtually tied with Scherzer), and is second in strikeout rate and ERA (again in a virtual tie with Scherzer). It’s been a pretty good run, to say the least. That said, his 2022 campaign couldn’t quite live up to the high standards he set in 2021, as his strikeout rate receded and his home run rate nearly tripled:
Corbin Burnes 2020-22
Season
IP
HR/9
K%
BB%
K-BB%
ERA
FIP
WAR
2020
59.2
0.30
36.7%
10.0%
26.7%
2.11
2.04
2.4
2021
167.0
0.38
35.6%
5.2%
30.4%
2.43
1.63
7.5
2022
202.0
1.02
30.5%
6.4%
24.1%
2.94
3.14
4.6
Yellow = led National League.
Even so, Burnes led the NL in strikeouts (243) and starts (33) and placed third in K-BB%, fourth in innings, fifth in WAR, eighth in FIP and 10th in ERA. He made the NL All-Star team for the second season in a row and received Cy Young votes for the third time, finishing seventh; one voter had him as high as second, two more in third, and a total of 12 (out of 30) considered him among the league’s top five. Read the rest of this entry »
No sooner had pitchers and catchers begun reporting to Tampa, Florida than the Yankees rotation sustained a double blow. On Monday, Nestor Cortes revealed that he had suffered a hamstring strain that will keep him from participating in the World Baseball Classic and sideline him for at least part of spring training. On Wednesday, the team announced that Frankie Montas will undergo arthroscopic shoulder surgery next week and at best will be limited to a late-season return. While the team has the depth to cover for both losses — indeed, their rotation currently tops our preseason Depth Charts by a full win — the Yankees can’t afford for much more to go wrong with the unit.
The 28-year-old Cortes is coming off a breakout campaign during which he made the AL All-Star team and blew past his previous career high of 93 innings. His 158.1 innings fell just short of qualifying for the ERA title but among AL pitchers with at least 150 innings, his 2.44 ERA ranked ninth, his 3.13 FIP eighth, and his 3.6 WAR tied for 10th. He missed a couple of turns due to a late-season groin strain that recurred in the Yankees’ final game of the season, their ALCS Game 4 loss to the Astros.
Cortes had agreed to pitch for Team USA in next month’s World Baseball Classic, and so like other participants in the tournament, he reported to camp on Monday, three days ahead of the Yankees’ official report date for pitchers and catchers. Upon reporting, he revealed that he had suffered “a low Grade 2” strain of his right hamstring while running sprints on February 6 near his home in Miami. He has been able to continue his throwing program, and manager Aaron Boone and pitching coach Matt Blake bothtold reporters on Wednesday that they believe Cortes will be ready by Opening Day; he even threw a bullpen on Friday morning. Looking ahead, the Yankees open at home against the Giants on March 30, and thanks to an off day on the 31st, they won’t need a fifth starter until April 5 against the Phillies. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe
