Over at ESPN, Jayson Stark talked to Rob Manfred about the fact that, a year after chopping six minutes off the length of the average Major League game, those gains have been almost entirely lost in the first six weeks of 2016. Included in that piece was this chart, which shows the trend over the last 11 years.

Average Time Of Game

SEASON	TIME OF GAME
2006	2:48:11
2007	2:51:13
2008	2:50:38
2009	2:51:47
2010	2:50:46
2011	2:51:57
2012	2:55:58
2013	2:58:51
2014	3:02:21
2015	2:56:14
2016	3:00:26

SOURCE: ESPN.com

The four minute and 12 second gain from last year to this year is actually larger than any of the per-season gains made during the 2011-2014 stretch when MLB games lengthened quickly; that kind of rise in game length is clearly frustrating to Manfred, especially after the gains they made last year. As the commissioner notes to Stark in the piece, MLB believes there are a variety of factors contributing to the longer games, with players not taking the pace-of-play initiatives as seriously this year, cold weather, and simply the structural change in results all contributing. Stark points out that walks and strikeouts are both up again, so overall pitches are up, and more pitches equals more time. But let’s try to go beyond that and look and see if we can quantify the differences in game length this year.

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The early part of the Major League Baseball season presents an interesting paradox when it comes to interest and attendance. Fans have waited all winter for real live baseball, and Opening Day comes with big crowds and pageantry. After Opening Day, crowds tend to thin out a bit as people come to terms with the long season, and in many places, weather that is still less than hospitable to baseball. Comparing attendance this season to attendance at this time last season shows a still-healthy game with a few teams having made major jumps after successful seasons a year ago.

When looking at per-game attendance so far this season, it should come as no surprise that the usual names remain atop the board, per Baseball Reference.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants, and New York Yankees were the top four in attendance last season — in that order — and those same four teams continue their grip on the attendance lead this year. The Chicago Cubs have swapped spots with the Los Angeles Angels while the Toronto Blue Jays have taken an edge over the Boston Red Sox. The bottom five teams are the same as the end-of-the-season numbers last year, although in a different order, as Tampa Bay Rays finished the end of the season last while Oakland A’s were ahead of the Chicago White Sox and the Miami Marlins.

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Cuban righty Yadier Alvarez was the $16 million crown jewel of the Dodgers’ 2015/2016 international free-agent class. It was the second-highest bonus ever given to an international amateur and reports on Alvarez prior to last July were so good that I ranked him #1 on my J2 board at the time. Alvarez ventured stateside this spring and has consistently pitched every fifth day, only missing one start to attend the birth of his child. Reports coming out of Camelback Ranch have been superlative. On Monday, I got to see it for myself along with a number of other interesting prospects.

Yadier Alvarez, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers

Current Level: Extended Spring Training, Age: 20.2, Height/Weight: 6’3/180
Signed: IFA at age 19 on July 2, 2015 out of Cuba by LA for $16.0 million bonus

Alvarez was electric. After opening his start with a few fringe fastballs, he began to loosen up and was sitting 92-97 before long. He has been up to 100 this spring, which is especially notable given that there were rumors over the offseason that his velocity had been down. Mixed in along with the fastball was an 82-86 mph slider with late, two-plane bite. It flashed plus, but the line between that pitch and his 76-82 mph curveball was sometimes blurry. The curveball is a bit more vertically oriented than the slider and Alvarez decelerates his arm a bit to throw it, but it flashed average and it should solidify there once he becomes more comfortable with its release.

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One problem you’ll hear with last year’s underachieving Chicago White Sox roster is that it was too heavy on the stars-and-scrubs model. Plenty of production came from guys like Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Jose Abreu. Very little production came from the rest of the infield, the back end of the rotation, and both corner-outfield spots.

But this year’s White Sox have improved — they’re currently tied for the best record in the American League. They improved during the offseason by adding guys like Todd Frazier, Brett Lawrie and Mat Latos to ensure that they’d have fewer black holes on the roster. Melky Cabrera and Avisail Garcia are each having bounceback seasons thus far, erasing two more holes from last year. Overall, there’s a more even talent of distribution around Chicago’s stars, and it’s a big part of this year’s success. Less scrubs is good. But so is more stars! And alongside the big guns, they’ve added another player who doesn’t yet have this type of reputation, but is making the case to be tossed into the “star” category. I’m talking about Adam Eaton, who, going back a whole year now, has quietly been one of baseball’s very best players.

We talk a lot about sample sizes, particularly this early in the season. What can we take away from small samples? When is a sample large enough to draw meaningful conclusions? Certainly not yet this year, but we’ve got a nice little feature here on the leaderboards in the “Past Calendar Year” split that helps with that. People are comfortable using full-season stats to evaluate players, and the Past Calendar Year split is just like an improved version of a full season’s stats, where the arbitrary endpoints are less arbitrary. It’s just “what have you done for me lately?” where “lately” is a full year, and everyone is on a similar playing-time scale.

I’ll often use this feature throughout the season to sort of help mentally readjust my perception of who the best players in baseball are “right now,” for whatever that’s worth. I went for a mental readjustment the other day, and something at the top of the leaderboard immediately caught my eye:

Position-player WAR, last calendar year

1. Mike Trout, 9.5
2. Bryce Harper, 8.5
3. Josh Donaldson, 8.2
4. Manny Machado, 8.1
5. Yoenis Cespedes, 7.1
6. Kris Bryant, 6.7
7. Chris Davis, 6.4
8. Adam Eaton, 6.3
9. Paul Goldschmidt, 6.2
10. Joey Votto, 6.2

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A few days ago, in the FanGraphs chat room, there was a little discussion about whether Statcast more favored run production or run prevention. I’m of the mind that having so much information works to the advantage of the pitchers and defenders, myself. I wrote about that a couple Hardball Times Annuals ago. But it’s by no means a settled matter. Someone during our conversation pointed out that, while Statcast is new to us, teams have had access to HITf/x for years, so they probably already had their ideas. Yet, perhaps Statcast makes everything easier. Perhaps more teams are just on board now than before. I don’t know. Many angles are interesting!

There’s something about Statcast that I think might be underappreciated. And it would be true about HITf/x, too, but Statcast is the thing that we get to see, so let’s roll with it. As a demonstration, I’m going to use Jose Abreu, of the White Sox. Abreu hasn’t been terrible, but he hasn’t quite been himself, not yet. Why is that? Could be any number of things, but it could have to do with how he’s been pitched. This is where Statcast can serve a purpose.

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News broke earlier that the Pirates agreed to a three-year contract extension with Francisco Cervelli. It’s an easy enough story to analyze in isolation, but to really add depth, you can compare and contrast Cervelli and Russell Martin, who was Cervelli’s predecessor. When Martin left the Pirates, it seemed like it ought to have delivered a massive blow, but if anything Cervelli has been the superior catcher since. This year in particular, they’ve shot off in completely opposite directions.

Cervelli’s not someone who’ll hit for power, but in 2016 he’s reached base nearly 40% of the time. And the defense is there, so the Pirates are pleased. The Blue Jays like Martin, and there’s no question he’s one of their leaders, but — well, maybe you haven’t noticed this. I don’t know which things you have noticed. Russell Martin has been one of the worst hitters in baseball. Like, worse than you’d believe. Did you know Erick Aybar has a wRC+ of literally 7? That’s a 7, where a 100 would be average. Martin’s all the way up at 11. The next-worst mark: teammate Ryan Goins, at 22. The Blue Jays don’t have a good record yet, and while that’s because of a number of things, Martin has been horrible. He’s made it tough to be successful around him.

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Yesterday, we tackled the best final seasons for pitchers. Today, let’s tackle the position players, so we can get to the heart of the question of just how good David Ortiz needs to be to crack one of these lists. The rules and breakdowns are the same as before, so I would encourage you to read yesterday’s post to peep those. Once again, big ups to Jeff Zimmerman for data help.

30-39 WAR

Best Final Season, Position Players with 30-39 WAR

Player	Final Season	Age	WAR	Career WAR
Roy Cullenbine	1947	33	4.4	33.8
Chick Stahl	1906	33	3.7	33.1
Tony Cuccinello	1945	37	3.0	32.2
Gil McDougald	1960	32	2.8	39.7
Joe Adcock	1966	38	2.5	34.2
Elbie Fletcher	1949	33	2.4	30.7

The guys on this list are definitely not household names, but there are some interesting, if also tragic, stories here. Let’s deal with the tragic first. There are six players here because one of them, Chick Stahl, committed suicide during spring training of the 1907 season. He had been named the Americans’ (Red Sox) player/manager over the winter, and something drove him to take his own life. This was surely a big loss for the team, as they had been counting on him to help lead them. He was the fifth-best hitter in the game just a couple years earlier in 1904.

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Like many of you, I grew up listening to baseball on the radio. And while I’m now at a ballpark over 100 times each season, and see many games on TV, listening to pictures being painted over the airways remains a wonderful way to follow the action. To me, baseball’s best radio play-by-play broadcasters are gems.

To coincide with the broadcaster rankings currently being released at the site, I asked a cross section of players, coaches, and managers who they enjoyed listening to growing up. I asked some broadcasters as well, for the simple reason that they chose to follow in the footsteps of the voices who helped shape their love of the game.

———

Vince Cotroneo, Athletics broadcaster: “My experience was different. I saw Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek on the Game of the Week. I saw Al Michaels doing games on Monday night. I watched a little bit of the Braves on weekends when they were on TV in Orlando. But in terms of sitting in the car, or having a transistor under my bed, I didn’t have that luxury. I didn’t have Bill King or Vin Scully or Jack Buck or Harry Caray.

“My first full-time job was in 1984, in Lynchburg, Virginia, and that’s when I could hear Jon Miller doing the Orioles. When I got to the big leagues in 1991, all of a sudden I’m around Ernie Harwell and Vin Scully, and I was working with Milo (Hamilton).

“My first year, I went into the press room in Lakeland during spring training. Ernie Harwell was there with Paul Carey and he introduced himself to me. It should have been the other way around. Instead, this grand Southern gentleman was coming over to me. It was surreal. I met Vin at Vero Beach. It was the whole nine yards, where I was seeing greatness in front of me. When Vin goes to work, he paints pictures.”

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It seems impossible, but when it comes to pitching, Marcus Stroman is just a baby, man. “I’m still fairly new to pitching — I just started really pitching my junior year in college,” Stroman pointed out when we talked before a game against the Giants. He was a junior at Duke University in 2012.

Even if you count the first two years pitching at Duke, it’s only six years. Six years might seem like a long time. Six years ago, I decided to take a leap into writing about baseball for a living. Six years is not a long time, at least not to me. I’m still trying to figure out how to arrange my words in the right order, so it’s no surprise that the pitcher is “starting to learn sequences” better now.

And so, as good as the righty starter has been — top 20 by any overall per-inning measure — his latest work, and words, put into focus how he might get better.

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It’s important to remember that most everyone is trying their hardest. (Goodness, is this a sad start to a blog post about professional athletes). Disgruntled fans are quick to accuse Player X who’s making a ludicrous Y number of dollars to “play a kid’s game” of “just going through the motions,” but almost always, every player on a major-league baseball field is either giving it his all, or at least something that’s very close to maxing out his physical capabilities at that moment. They’re all making good money, some even unthinkable money, but we’re all motivated by the prospect of more money, and if not that, we’re at least motivated by the prospect of success, or of not feeling ashamed of ourselves in front of our peers and tens of thousands of onlookers, or at the very least, of not totally embarrassing our family. Nobody is out there trying to lose, individually.

The Reds bullpen is trying its damnedest to get batters out. They really are. Even if the front office isn’t motivated to field a competitive team, these guys all want to eventually earn a contract that sets their family up for life, and they want the spotlight, and they want to not get booed, and they want their loved ones to be even more proud of them, beyond the pride that comes with achieving their dream of making it to the highest level of organized baseball. Each and every one of them. It’s just, well:

Reds bullpen stats and ranks, 1961-present

• ERA: 6.44 (1,476th out of 1,476)
• FIP: 6.09 (1,476th out of 1,476)
• HR/9: 2.04 (1,476th out of 1,476)
• BB%: 11.6% (1,390th out of 1,476)

What the Reds can hang their hats on, at this moment, is that they don’t have the single worst walk rate of any bullpen in the post-expansion era. Just the 1,390th-best! Beyond that, though, they’re running literally the worst bullpen ERA ever, literally the worst bullpen FIP ever, mostly because they’re running literally the worst bullpen home-run rate, ever. Since baseball is currently going through an extremely pitcher-friendly run environment, things get even worse when you adjust the numbers for era, but they’re bad enough as is, so let’s take it easy on Cincinnati.

In fact, let’s take it even easier on Cincinnati. This is a rebuild year, so it’s not like the losses to which the bullpen is contributing are really hurting the franchise in any way. In the long run, it might even be for the better. It’s not the wins and losses that matter in a rebuild, it’s the potential seen. This year is all about finding out which players on the roster might be a part of the next winning team in Cincinnati. It’s hard to see much potential in a 6.44 ERA and 6.09 FIP through 38 games, but there’s got to be something in here worth rooting for, right? It feels like piling on to write a negative article about something that’s so obviously negative, and these guys are all trying their hardest to succeed, so let’s ignore the nasty numbers for a minute and try to find some glimmers of hope in the Cincinnati bullpen. Everyone has redeeming qualities!

Tony Cingrani

• Who is he? A 26-year-old left-handed pitcher, currently serving as the closer for the Cincinnati Reds. A third-round draft pick in 2011. Lots of promise, dating back to his rookie year! (2.92 ERA, 3.78 FIP, 104.2 innings, mostly as a starter.)
• What are his numbers this year? 3.18 ERA! Don’t worry about the rest.
• Redeeming qualities? Fastball velocity is up two ticks from last year, when he was also serving (almost) exclusively as a reliever! Is also throwing a slider 21% of the time — a career-high rate. When Cingrani debuted, scouts had concern that his lack of, well, any other pitch beside the fastball would limit his upside. He’s attempted to incorporate, and subsequently scrapped, a changeup, so he’s still a two-pitch pitcher, but he’s throwing the slider more this year than he’s ever thrown any one secondary pitch in the past, suggesting increased confidence. And it’s getting whiffs on nearly half its swings! Good pitch!

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