This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Some Minor Leaguers Have Pay Extended, While Others Still Await Word

With the end of the month rapidly approaching, major league baseball teams are running into a deadline of sorts for whether or not they will continue to pay minor league players in the midst of what is all but certain to be a cancelled MiLB season. One of the first teams to announce their decision on this matter was the Oakland A’s, and as my colleague Dan Szymborski discussed in his Wednesday roundup, the news wasn’t positive — A’s minor leaguers will not receive their $400-per-week stipends after May 31. That set a rather ominous tone, but fortunately, many teams in the past 48 hours have come forward with renewed guarantees to their prospects. Here’s a table of what we know about which teams have promised future stipends to minor leaguers, and for how long.

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Modern baseball writers are a somewhat spoiled bunch. If you’re writing a story about an MLB player, you have seemingly countless resources at your disposal to gather more statistics than you might know what to do with. For example, say that I wanted to write about Cleveland Indians starting pitcher Shane Bieber. His player page on this site lists any standard or advanced metric I could want, along with info on things like how hard he throws his fastball and how often opponents chase his pitches out of the zone. If I see he struck out 259 batters in 2019, and want to know how many other pitchers in the live ball era struck out at least 250 batters in just their second big league season, I can use Baseball-Reference’s Play Index to find the answer. If I want to get more specific, and learn how many times Bieber struck out a right-handed hitter with a breaking ball out of the zone, Baseball Savant’s search feature has me covered there too.

When it comes to writing about foreign professional leagues, however, the wealth of information isn’t quite so grand for the American writer. Sites like MyKBO.net and Statiz are great resources, and our KBO leaderboards tell us a lot of great stuff — like the fact that NC Dinos left-hander Chang-mo Koo 구창모 leads all pitchers in both ERA and FIP after four starts – but if you want to dig into why or how he’s doing that, we don’t have the pitch-by-pitch data to identify things like velocity, spin rate, or how batters are performing against individual offerings. That hasn’t diminished my curiosity about Koo, though, so I used the tools available to me — Twitch and ESPN archives of game broadcasts, a notepad, and my own two eyes — to track his pitches over his first four starts, in the hope that doing so would reveal something interesting. Fortunately, both for myself and my editor who enjoys for me to have story ideas, it did. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

MLB’s Extensive List of Health and Safety Protocols Is Being Dissected

Last Saturday, a 67-page document laying out all of the health and safety measures considered necessary for a 2020 major league season was reported by The Athletic. In the week since, voices from inside baseball as well as the public health and epidemiology fields have weighed in on what the proposal means, where it goes too far, and where it falls short.

Beginning with medical experts — since they really are the most important voice here — the perspective seems to be that MLB’s proposal is extensive and thoughtful, but the actual execution of it will be challenging. That was the sentiment communicated by Andy McCullough and Marc Carig in a story for The Athletic that ran Thursday. Part of the challenge could be ensuring that measures are taken as seriously as they should be for as long as possible. If MLB’s protocols are effective, it will mean the virus isn’t spreading throughout clubhouses. That will make the threat seem less dangerous, which could lead to people letting their guard down and no longer following the rules as closely.

Troublingly, the steps toward that false sense of security has already begun. In a report by ESPN’s Jesse Rogers, players openly wondered why so many restrictions would be necessary in an environment where everyone has tested negative for the virus. As doctors have warned, however, false negatives exist, and allowing everyone to proceed with life as normal would be very risky regardless of test results. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

MLB’s COVID-19 Health and Safety Guidelines Laid Out In 67-Page Document

On Saturday, Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic obtained a lengthy document that meticulously outlines the health and safety measures MLB considers key to holding a 2020 season. Those protocols cover everything from how the game will be played on the field to what the behavior of players and essential team employees should look like away from the ballpark, and serve as yet another glimpse into just how physically and mentally challenging it will be to play baseball in the middle of a global pandemic.

One can read the details of the proposal as a bulleted list in Rosenthal and Drellich’s report, or absorb them in the day-in-the-life example Jeff Passan worked out at ESPN. Both reports paint an image of baseball in 2020 in which the reminders of what’s currently happening in the world are constant, unrelenting, and bleak. During games, non-playing personnel must wear masks in the dugout and may be relegated to the stadium seats, where they must sit at least four seats apart from and two rows behind each other. Once a baseball has been put in play and touched by multiple players, it’ll be tossed aside and replaced with a new one. Between pitches, players are encouraged to be as distanced from one another as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

On the mound is Ricardo Pinto. He’s 26 years old. At 6-feet and 195 pounds, he has a muscular build that immediately makes him look like an athlete. He’s struggling through this particular appearance, thanks to command issues and some iffy defense behind him, but he hasn’t really been hit hard. His low-to-mid 90s heat is on the faster side of what Korean Baseball Organization hitters typically see, and he leans on it heavily.

At the plate, with the bases loaded and two outs, is Yong Taik Park 박용택. He’s 41 years old. He wears glasses in the batter’s box. As he awaits each pitch, he stands with his front foot resting nearly on the edge of the box behind him. At 6-foot-1, 185 pounds, he doesn’t differ dramatically from Pinto in size, but his baggier uniform makes him look tall and thin.

Pinto begins his violent delivery, and Park brings his front foot square with the plate. As the ball approaches, he twitches it slightly, perhaps as a way to subtly maintain his timing. Finally, at the last moment, his bat explodes through the baseball as Park uncorks his whole body to turn on a pitch high and tight. It’s a gorgeous left-handed swing, and it produces a bases-clearing double.

And then the legendary Park Yong-taik does it again to break it wide open.

A 3-run double for the 41-year-old DH. pic.twitter.com/NJmjw7kQO4

— Locked On Orioles (@LockedOnOrioles) May 13, 2020

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This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

MLB To Communicate Return Plans Early This Week

Major League Baseball owners and commissioner Rob Manfred will convene over a conference call Monday to approve plans for the league’s return, according to a report by Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic. If approved, a proposal will be passed on to the players’ union on Tuesday.

The details of the proposal, Rosenthal says, are likely to address many of the questions that have been batted around in the public sphere over the last few weeks. Spring training would get rebooted for three weeks in mid-June, setting up a regular season that begins in early July and lasts between 78 and 82 games. Teams would open in their home ball parks where possible, and play regionalized schedules that include only teams in their typical divisions and those in opposite league’s corresponding division (AL East teams would face AL and NL East teams, and so on). Teams whose home cities are not containing the virus at the level the league requires could temporarily locate to their spring training sites. Rosters could be expanded to include 45 to 50 players.

This proposal would also expand the playoffs from five to seven teams in each league. Each No. 1 seed would get a first round bye, while the other two division winners and the top Wild Card team would host the three other Wild Card teams in a best-of-three Wild Card round. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Cleveland Tells Players to Prepare For Season To Start July 1

Speaking to players and other members of their organization via Zoom, officials with the Cleveland Indians provided a target date of July 1 for the start of MLB’s regular season, according to a report by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. According to the story, that July start date would follow a three-week “Spring Training” period beginning around June 10. Both of these dates are “fully expected to change,” but are supposed to act as placeholders for members of the organization as they plan for what this season could have in store.

While this is just one team, these dates mirror those communicated in a somewhat controversial tweet sent by former major league infielder Trevor Plouffe on Monday. Because it was sent by a former nine-year big league veteran, the tweet gained some steam, even getting corroborated by Plouffe’s former teammate Phil Hughes. Meanwhile, some established MLB reporters such as The Athletic’s Keith Law disputed the reports, saying no date has been proposed. Read the rest of this entry »

Even the first home run of the NC Dinos’ season turned out to be an exercise in waiting.

It had been more than five weeks since the Korean Baseball Organization’s regular season was originally scheduled to begin, and nearly eight weeks since sports across North America came to a near-uniform halt in response to the accelerating spread of COVID-19. Then, just as ESPN was preparing to broadcast the KBO season-opener between the Dinos and the Samsung Lions, rain intervened, delaying the game’s start by about 30 minutes.

Finally, just before 2:30 AM on the east coast of the United States, viewing audiences got their first spark — a towering fly ball down the right field line in the top of the fourth inning off the bat of Na Sung-Bum, disappearing somewhere over the foul pole. But ESPN commentators Karl Ravech and Eduardo Perez, calling the game on a remote feed from their own homes, struggled to find the ball, warily calling a home run only as Na began to circle the bases. A replay review ensued and lasted for several minutes, with a tricky camera angle seeming to show the ball flying directly over the pole.

After several moments, the homer was confirmed. It was the first run scored in a nationally televised regular season baseball game this year, and it set the Dinos on a path to their 4-0 victory over the Lions.

Na Sung-bum provided us with an absolute BOMB for the game's first run pic.twitter.com/DPaFSIJozV

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) May 5, 2020

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Three weeks ago, Jeff Passan of ESPN reported a proposal for starting the 2020 season that involved all 30 teams playing in Arizona, using Chase Field, Cactus League parks, and other area facilities. It was the first thing resembling an actual plan to be connected to MLB decision-makers, and predictably, it was full of holes. After wide-ranging skepticism and a league-issued statement of, “Alright, let’s all just take it easy,” the Arizona plan ceded ground a few days later in favor of a new proposal that explored using teams’ spring training facilities in Arizona and Florida, completely re-arranging the divisions to do so. Right on schedule, another state was added to the mix last week, when CBS Sports reported that Texas was being discussed as a potential third site for games.

Finally, MLB’s newest reported plan was brought to light on Tuesday, and it is far and away the most ambitious yet. According to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, MLB is now discussing a proposal that would allow the season to open in late June or early July, with all 30 teams playing in their home stadiums, without fans in attendance. What would make this possible, MLB hopes, is a complete rebuilding of divisions, eliminating the AL/NL structure to construct three, 10-team geography-based divisions.

The details of this plan, and ones like it, are important in as much as they provide a window into MLB’s top officials’ thinking right now. But as we’ve seen in recent weeks, they can also change dramatically from one iteration to the next. That’s understandable, given how quickly conditions on the ground can change, and how much we still don’t know about how soon and how widely testing will be available, when states and municipalities will lift their stay-at-home orders, and when a vaccine will be developed and mass-produced. The more time MLB takes to finalize a plan, as Passan and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal noted in columns earlier this week, the more information they’ll have at their disposal. No matter how many reports we read now, it will almost certainly be weeks before anything concrete is established by MLB and the MLBPA. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Cape Cod Baseball League Cancels Season

The Cape Cod Baseball League announced Friday that its executive committee voted unanimously to cancel its 2020 season, which was originally scheduled to open on June 13.

“Following CDC guidelines and medical recommendations, the league determined it would be impossible to guarantee the safety of players, coaches, umpires, host families, volunteers and fans during this unprecedented health crisis,” the league said in its announcement.

The Cape Cod Baseball League is the second in the National Alliance of Summer College Baseball to cancel its season, following a similar decision by the Valley Baseball League in Virginia that was made earlier this month. In addition to cancelled seasons, stay-at-home mandates issued by individual states have pushed back the season-openers of the Northwoods League and the Hamptons League, while the Cal Ripken Collegiate Summer League made the proactive decision to delay the season until July 1. In the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League, there is still a plan to proceed with the season as scheduled, but three teams have already stated that they won’t be able to operate this year. Read the rest of this entry »