The Dodgers couldn’t have asked for much more from Clayton Kershaw than what he gave them in his first start of the 2022 season, and so they didn’t. Faced with the unenviable choice of letting the future Hall of Famer push himself into the red in pursuit of a perfect game — under frigid conditions in Minnesota, no less — or take a more prudent course with a 34-year-old hurler whose last regular-season appearance placed his future in doubt, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts went against all sentimentality. He pulled Kershaw after seven spotless innings and 80 pitches, a move that the pitcher later called “the right choice,” and the Dodgers settled for a combined one-hitter and a 7-0 victory at Target Field.
For those seven glorious innings, it felt as though the three-time Cy Young winner had turned back the clock. Kershaw struck out 13 of the 21 batters he faced, generating 20 swings and misses, including 17 (out of 27 swings) with his slider. He added another 13 called strikes, including four with the slider and seven with his four-seam fastball, which averaged a modest 90.6 mph, 0.7 mph below last year’s mark. His 41% CSW% for the day was a mark he surpassed only twice last year, first with a 44% CSW% in his 13-strikeout June 27 outing against the Cubs — his last unfettered start of the season, as he landed on the injured list with inflammation in his left forearm following a four-inning start on July 3 — and then a 42% CSW in his September 19 start against the Diamondbacks, the best outing of his abbreviated September. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Phillies signed Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos to free agentdeals within a three-day span in March, there were more than a few giggles about the moves’ effect on what already figured to be a shaky team defense. Monday night provided ample demonstration of those concerns, though neither of those two new sluggers figured in the mishaps. Instead, the misadventures of third baseman Alec Bohm were in the spotlight, drawing attention to an area that might be of even greater concern.
The 25-year-old Bohm, who has struggled mightily at the hot corner during his brief major league career, was charged with throwing errors on three separate plays in the first three innings of Monday’s game, though the runs that scored in the wake of the first one were earned. He later found a measure of redemption by sparking a five-run rally in the team’s come-from-behind win over the Mets.
In the first inning, after Brandon Nimmo led off with a single, Starling Marte hit a comebacker that deflected off pitcher Ranger Suárez and over to Bohm, who made an awkward, sidearmed throw on a ball that he should have just kept in his pocket. The throw went into foul territory about 15 feet up the right field line as Marte took second and Nimmo third; while Bohm fielded grounders on the next two batters cleanly, Nimmo scored, and Marte soon did as well as part of a three-run inning. Read the rest of this entry »
The Yankees and Aaron Judge found a way to bring extra drama to Opening Day. Even with an additional 24 hours of negotiations due to the postponement of their season opener against the Red Sox, the team did not reach an agreement on a contract extension with the slugger in time to meet his self-imposed deadline. Judge, who turns 30 on April 26, had said that once the 2022 season opened, all negotiations would cease, and he maintained that stance on Friday morning amid a flurry of reports detailing the Yankees’ offer, telling the assembled media, “First pitch is at 1:08 pm.”
His status did not change, and so on Friday night Judge toldThe Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, “At the end of the year, I’ll be a free agent. I’ll get to talk to 30 teams. The Yankees will be one of those 30.”
“I’m just disappointed because I think I’ve been vocal about — I want to be a Yankee for life, and bring a championship back to New York,” Judge told reporters after Friday’s 6-5 win. “I want to do it for the fans here. This is home for me, and not getting it done right now stings, but I’ve got a job to do on the field and I’ve got to shift my focus to that now and go play some ball.”
In a break from the way that the Yankees normally do business, general manager Brian Cashman laid out the offer to Judge “for transparency purposes” rather than rely on leaks to the media that he would have to confirm. According to Cashman, the team offered Judge seven years at $30.5 million per year, plus $17 million for this year, his final one before free agency, for a total package of $230.5 million. Read the rest of this entry »
Judging by their 69-win projection and negligible odds of winning the World Series, the Pirates don’t have a great deal to look forward to from a competitive standpoint in 2022. But Opening Day is a time for celebration and optimism nonetheless, and early on Thursday afternoon, FanSided’s Robert Murray reported that the team had agreed to an eight-year, $70-million extension with third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, the largest contract in Pirates history.
The contract for the 25-year-old Hayes is also a record for a player with between one and two years of service time. It covers his final two pre-arbitration years, his three years of arbitration-eligibility, and the first three years of his free agent eligibility, through his age-32 season. The exact details have not been reported at this writing, including the value of his club option for the ninth year (2030).
The celebration was almost immediately dampened when Hayes left the Pirates’ opener against the Cardinals in the bottom of the first inning due to an apparent injury to his left wrist. He dove trying to catch a bloop into left field by Dylan Carlson, but the ball fell and turned into a double. After Tyler O’Neill singled Carlson home two batters later, Pirates head athletic trainer Rafael Freitas and manager Derek Shelton came out of the dugout to check on Hayes, unwrapping his left wrist and taking him out of the game.
Last Saturday, the White Sox rotation took a hit when Lance Lynn limped off the mound in pain after tearing a tendon in his right knee. In the wee hours of Tuesday, just before Lynn underwent surgery, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that Chicago signed free agent Johnny Cueto to a minor league deal. The move helps to replenish the team’s depth and offers the promise of another go-round for for a pitcher who has been beset by injuries in recent years but has long ranked among the game’s most entertaining hurlers.
Via ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the 36-year-old Cueto will make a prorated share of $4.2 million dollars if he’s in the majors. According to MLB Network’s Jon Heyman, he has a May 15 opt-out date if he’s still in the minors.
Cueto spent the past six seasons with the Giants via a $130 million deal, but the team cut bait last November by declining his $22 million option for this season, instead paying him a $5 million buyout — a move that was hardly a surprise given his ongoing injury problems. After making a full complement of 32 starts in 2016, he never made more than 25 in a season during the remainder of his deal. Blisters limited him to 25 turns in 2017, and an ankle sprain and Tommy John surgery to just 13 in ’18-19. He did make 12 starts during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but just 21 last year, scattered around separate trips to the injured list for a grade 1 lat strain, a flexor strain, COVID-19 protocol, and then an elbow strain that limited him to just one September appearance, the first relief appearance of his major league career.
Despite those maladies, Cueto’s 4.08 ERA (101 ERA-), 4.05 FIP (100 FIP-), and 1.5 WAR made for his best season since 2016, even though his 114.2 innings were 32.2 fewer than his total in ’17, when he produced 1.2 WAR. He struck out 20% of batters, right at his career average but placing him in just the 25th percentile according to Statcast; walked just 6.1% (good for the 75th percentile); and allowed 1.18 homers per nine, 0.15 lower than the major league average for starters. Though his exit velocity and barrel and hard-hit rates were better than average, with his 6.4% barrel rate coming in at the 71st percentile, his low strikeout rate inflated his xERA to a gaudy 4.99. Read the rest of this entry »
On Tuesday, ESPN’s Buster Olney reported that Major League Baseball is expected to allow players to use wearable signal devices to call pitches this season. Later in the day, the Associated Press reported that the league did indeed approve the use of such devices and sent a five-page memorandum to teams’ general managers, assistant GMs, managers and equipment managers outlining the rules regarding such devices. Known as the PitchCom system, the devices were tested in the minors last season and have made their way around the majors during this year’s spring training, drawing glowing reviews. Aimed at improving the pace of play and countering sign stealing — by both legal and illegal means — their adoption addresses two issues that have been hot-buttons in recent years and have resurfaced this spring. In that light, the league could be doing more to reassure the public that it’s on top of potential abuses of the system.
Created by a company called ProMystic that provides modular technology to mentalists and magicians (!), the PitchCom system consists of a push-button transmitter that fits into a wristband worn by the catcher, and receivers that fit into the padding of the catcher’s helmet and the sweatbands of the caps worn by the pitcher and other fielders. In the transmitter’s nine-button grid, each button corresponds to a given pitch type as well as a location, the latter akin to the familiar three-by-three strike zone grid. From the AP report: “four seam high inside, curve hi middle, slider hi outside, change mid inside, sinker middle, cutter mid out, splitter low inside, knuckle lo middle, two seam low outside.” The other three buttons to the left of the grid are to cancel the selection and to adjust the volume up or down.
Through an encrypted signal, the choice of pitch and location is conveyed, with an audio output that uses a proprietary variant of bone-conduction technology (bypassing the ear canal) and has preprogrammed English and Spanish options, though players can record their own audio. Olney reported that as many as three teammates besides the battery will be allowed to wear receivers so as to aid defensive positioning; generally those will be the middle infielders and the center fielder. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year, Shohei Ohtani returned from a string of injuries and put together a season for the ages, excelling both on the mound and at the plate en route to a unanimous American League MVP award. On the days he pitched, however, he left the Angels vulnerable, because his exits from the mound generally meant his removal from the game, costing the Angels the services of their best (active) hitter and placing the team’s relievers in the batting order. That problem is no more, as last week Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association formally announced a handful of rule changes going into effect for 2022, one of which allows a starting pitcher who also serves as his team’s designated hitter to remain in the game in the latter capacity after he’s done pitching.
That rule, and other more mundane ones, had been proposed earlier in March and tentatively agreed to later in the month. They weren’t part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, so implementing them required a separate vote of the owners, which did not happen until last week. MLB did utilize the “Ohtani Rule” in last year’s All-Star Game; after Ohtani threw one scoreless inning as the AL starter, he stuck around to bat out of the leadoff spot a second time and then was replaced by other DHs.
In theory, the Ohtani Rule encourages other teams to develop such two-way players, but the ones who showed promise in recent years such as Ohtani’s teammate Jared Walsh and 2017 first-round picks Hunter Greene and Brendan McKay, eventually wound up on one track or the other. Thus in practice the rule is very specifically targeted at a single player — and an international superstar, at that. In baseball, the closest precedent for such a singularly oriented rule dates back to the 19th century and is linked to three-time batting champion Ross Barnes, though in that case, the change was designed to hinder his play, not aid it.
From 1871 through ’76, a batter could reach base safely on a ball that first landed in the infield and then bounced or rolled into foul territory. Barnes, a second baseman first with the National Association’s Boston Red Stockings and then the National League’s Chicago White Stockings, particularly excelled at hitting balls (not all of them bunts) that landed fair and went foul, making them nearly impossible to defend against. Via such tactics, he topped a .400 batting average four times, leading the NA in both 1872 and ’73 with marks of .430 and .431, and the NL in ’76 with a .429 mark. After the 1876 season, the NL adopted a rule defining balls that went into foul territory before passing first or third base as foul balls.
As MLB official historian John Thorn told FanGraphs, “Ross Barnes may have been the principal target of fair-foul hit change but the bunt (or ‘baby hit’) game had long been criticized as unmanly … or worse, a remnant of cricket.”
Barnes never hit higher than .272 after the adoption of the rule, though to be fair, a debilitating malaria-like chronic disease limited him to just 22 games in 1877, and 146 over the next four seasons, two of them washouts, before he retired in ’81. Notably, he lost a court case over whether the White Stockings had to pay him while he was sick.
Thorn offered the 1893 change of the pitching distance — from 50 feet at the front of the box (and 55 feet 6 inches at the back) to home plate to the now-familiar 60 feet 6 inches — as another example of a targeted rule. “It could be argued that the retreat of the pitching distance in 1893 was designed to muffle the speed of Amos Rusie and Cy Young.”
Indeed, the fastball velocities of Rusie (who had to that point led the NL in strikeouts twice and walks three times) and Young, the league leader in wins and ERA in 1892, were said to strike such fear into the hearts of batters that they insisted the league increase the distance. Peter Morris’ A Game of Inches traces the change to a more generalized aesthetic concern regarding the restoration of the equilibrium between batter and pitcher in the wake of the legalization of overhand pitching in 1884, and a distaste for the proliferation of strikeouts (does this sound familiar?). While Rusie and Young continued to flourish at the new distance, many of the game’s most accomplished hurlers to that point, such as John Clarkson, Pud Galvin, Tim Keefe, Tony Mullane, and Mickey Welch, retired just before or shortly after the distance change.
In the past decade, MLB has introduced two rules that have been closely identified with individual players, namely the “Posey Rule” that protects catchers from collisions and the “Utley Rule” that protects middle infielders from egregious takeout slides, but both of those are generalized rules, and oddly enough, they’re linked to those players from opposite directions — and, in Buster Posey’s case, perhaps the wrong player, at that. The former was adopted in 2014, three years after Posey suffered a season-ending broken leg on a collision; its advent was more directly preceded by Alex Avila’s knee injury in the 2013 ALCS, but one way or another, it protects all catchers. The latter was adopted in in 2016 after Chase Utley broke infielder Rubén Tejada’s fibula while attempting to break up a double play the previous season, and it protects all middle infielders. (Where do Avila and Tejada go to claim their royalty checks?)
Anyway, the Ohtani Rule should help the Angels by granting its namesake extra plate appearances. By my count, players batting in his stead in games from which he was removed as a pitcher — including the dud in the Bronx that I attended, where he took a first-inning exit — totaled 22 PA last year, about one per start; he also made three starts in April and May where he did not hit and the Angels used a conventional DH. At the level at which Ohtani played last year, an extra 30 to 35 PA would have worth something on the order of two runs relative to a replacement level hitter. Not nothing, but hardly season-turning (have you seen the Angels lately?), and a good way to showcase a singularly talented superstar.
The Ohtani Rule does not preclude other teams from using their pitchers as DHs, but the likelihood of, say, the Diamondbacks using Madison Bumgarner in that capacity seems vanishingly small as even they can surely offer a better hitter than one with a 44 wRC+ (21 since 2018) to bat four times a game. Incidentally, one previous candidate for two-way duty, Michael Lorenzen, is now an Angel himself, and a starting pitcher at that, though he’s lost interest in the double-duty exploits he pursued with the Reds. Lorenzen made 34 appearances in the outfield from 2018-21, starting six times (all in 2019). He owns an 84 wRC+ for his career; last year, the Halos gave over 2,000 PA to non-pitchers with lower marks, including David Fletcher, José Iglesias, Juan Lagares, Kurt Suzuki, and Albert Pujols.
The Ohtani Rule is in place for the life of the new CBA, while the other new rules to which the league and the union have agreed — the ones that weren’t part of the CBA (which you can read about here) — are applicable to 2022 only, under the health and safety protocols related to the COVID-19 pandemic. What follows is a quick rundown of those.
Roster Sizes
As in 2020, the abbreviated spring training has not allowed starting pitchers enough time to build up their pitch counts to where they would typically be at the start of the season. Thus, teams will be allowed to carry 28 players instead of 26 from Opening Day through games of May 1, with an extra player added on days in which teams play doubleheaders.
For those first few weeks, the limitation on the number of pitchers on the active roster — 13 out of 26, per a rule put in place for 2020 that has yet to be enforced — will be relaxed as well. Which, alas, means some very bloated pitching staffs. The Dodgers, who open their season against the Rockies at Coors Field, are apparently planning to use 16 of their 28 roster spots on pitchers:
Dave Roberts said the Dodgers will open the season with 16 pitchers. The Dodgers open the season in Colorado.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. The good news (?) is that they’re probably going to carry five left-handed relievers, so we can really watch Roberts dig into those matchups. The Yankees, who don’t even have the Coors Field excuse, are “leaning towards” carrying 16 pitchers into their opening series against the Red Sox as well.
May 2 can’t come soon enough.
Injured List
For the 2017 season, MLB reduced the minimum number of days for a player to be on what was then the disabled list from 15 to 10 (not including the 7-day concussion list); the next year, they renamed it the injured list. Given the general consensus that some teams were using the IL as yet another means to expand their pitching staffs, the league planned to implement a rule lengthening the minimum stays for pitchers and two-way players to 15 days in 2020, but that one fell by the wayside with the COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
Now, it will be implemented as of May 2. Until then, pitchers, position players, and two-way players can be placed on the 10-day IL, but from that point onward, only position players can use the 10-day IL. The various other ILs (COVID, 7-day concussion and 60-day) will continue to function as they did last year.
Minor League Options
The minimum number of days that a pitcher or two-way player must remain on option or outright assignment prior to being recalled or re-selected is 10 days until May 2, and 15 thereafter. This is another throwback from 2020 that’s finally going into place, designed to reduce the amount of churn in bullpens.
Additionally, those option assignments before May 2 don’t count against the seasonal limit of five, which was put in place by the new CBA.
Extra Innings
As was the case in 2020 and ’21, each extra inning will begin with a runner on second base, namely the player occupying the spot in the batting order preceding that of the inning’s leadoff hitter (unless it’s a pitcher, which is much more unlikely now with the universal DH). As of last summer — hell, as recently as early March — the Manfred Man (or zombie runner) was presumed to be a relic of the past, but according to The Athletic’s Matt Gelb and Jayson Stark, it returned as part of the league’s health and safety protocols.
This one isn’t a popular rule among fans; when I polled FanGraphs readers after the 2020 season, just 23.6% favored keeping the rule, an even lower percentage than favored retaining seven-inning games for doubleheaders (32.9%). Gelb and Stark cited a March 2021 Seton Hall Sports Poll in which just 17% of the general population approved, with 28% of sports fans and 41% of avid fans approving. Here’s the thing, though: the players like it, as pitching staffs don’t get burned out as often by epic contests and pitchers with options remaining aren’t “rewarded” for emptying the tank with another trip to the minors. Managers favor it, too, with the likes of the Yankees’ Aaron Boone, the Brewers’ Craig Counsell, and the Diamondbacks’ Torey Lovullo among those speaking up on the rule’s behalf.
Speaking of doubleheaders, if and when they’re necessary, games will be of the nine-inning variety. The seven-inning ones have been sent back to the minors, where they belong.
…
Beyond those changes, a few others have been made that will persist beyond 2022, but merit mention here. The first concerns rookie qualification. As before, a player is still considered a rookie if he hasn’t exceeded 130 at-bats (not plate appearances), 50 innings, or 45 days on the active roster (time on the IL doesn’t count). Amid the abbreviated 2020 season, the powers that be decided that September (and October) days on the active roster would no longer be excluded from the 45-day count, and last year, with September rosters limited to 28 players instead of 40, that rule was retained. Now it looks as though it’s becoming permanent.
Shortly before this article was published, ESPN’s Buster Olney reported that MLB will allow teams to use wearable PitchCom signaling devices during the regular season as a means of countering sign-stealing efforts and improving pace of play. Several teams have tested the devices this spring and they’ve drawn glowing reviews. We’ll have a closer look at the ramifications of that in a separate article soon.
As for the other changes you’ll see in 2022, from the universal designated hitter and the five-option limit to the expanded playoffs, those are part of the new CBA. So is the 45-day notification window for the league to implement new rules, which will likely introduce a pitch clock, larger bases, and some kind of ban on infield shifts next year. There will be ample time to yell at those clouds, I promise.
Having lostKenley Jansen to the Braves via free agency, the Dodgers felt that they needed a closer, and that they had an outfielder to spare. Feeling uncertain about outfield depth in the wake of Andrew Vaughn’s hip injury, the White Sox were willing to part with a pricey setup man. Fittingly, then, the two contenders teamed up on a trade on Friday, with Chicago sending Craig Kimbrel to Los Angeles in exchange for AJ Pollock.
The 33-year-old Kimbrel spent less than half a season with the White Sox after being acquired from the Cubs in a crosstown deal at last year’s trade deadline, in exchange for second baseman Nick Madrigal and righty reliever Codi Heuer. Where Kimbrel had built on a late-2020 rebound and dominated for the Cubs — posting a 0.49 ERA, converting 23 out of 25 save chances, and making his eighth All-Star team — he slotted into a setup role in front of All-Star closer Liam Hendricks with the White Sox, notching just one save and getting hit for a 5.09 ERA. At least on paper, the Sox appeared ready to utilize a similar arrangement this year, though paying Hendriks $13 million and Kimbrel $16 million made for a particularly pricey late-inning combination.
Even with the late-season hiccups, Kimbrel still finished with his best rate stats since 2017 via a 2.26 ERA, 2.43 FIP, 42.6% strikeout rate, 9.8% walk rate, and 32.8% strikeout-walk differential. Among relievers, only Josh Hader had a higher strikeout rate, and only Hendriks, Hader, and Raisel Iglesias had a better strikeout-walk differential.
The 59.2-inning workload was Kimbrel’s largest since 2018; after helping the Red Sox win the World Series in what was a comparatively lackluster season, he didn’t sign with the Cubs until June 6, 2019, after the draft pick compensation that encumbered his free agency had expired. He threw just 36 innings in 2019–20, with a 6.00 ERA and 6.29 FIP, but during the latter season, the Cubs identified a mechanical issue. “Kimbrel was getting too rotational and was flying open early,” as The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma described it in March 2021. “This led to multiple issues, all connected in various ways: his arm slot dropped, he was pulling his fastball, his velocity was dipping and he had no control of his breaking ball.” Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the April 1 edition of my chat. This April fool is still recovering from having accidentally sent my mom’s birthday gift to my Brooklyn apartment instead of her Salt Lake City residence.
Jay Jaffe: But… that’s about to change. I’ll cover the Pollock/Kimbrel trade for Monday — had to see it about 18 times before I was willing to concede it was real and not an April 1 conspiracy on the part of the industry’s newsbreakers.
Yesterday Jason Martinez and Jon Tayler previewed left and center field. Now we round out the outfield positions in right.
Last year was a banner one for right fielders. For starters, Bryce Harper and Juan Soto finished first and second in National League MVP voting, that after ranking first and third in the majors in wRC+, and finishing in a virtual tie for third in WAR. Aaron Judge and Kyle Tucker both ranked among the majors’ top seven hitters by wRC+ as well, with the former cracking the top 10 in WAR, too. Seven of the top 30 qualified hitters by wRC+ were right fielders, even with Mookie Betts grinding through a comparatively subpar season where he was beset by a bone spur in his hip and Ronald Acuña Jr. falling short of qualifying due to a torn ACL that ended his season in July, perhaps costing him the NL MVP award. Meanwhile, Nick Castellanos, who ranked 13th in the majors in wRC+, was one of seven position players to net a $100 million free agent contract this winter, though he’s bound for more DH and left field duty with the Phillies. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe
