The Royals have got all of us thinking. It’s not so much about the Royals finding the only way to win, but they’ve definitely found an interesting way to win, and given their accomplishments you can’t just sweep it away as luck. The Royals have won with a bullpen-heavy model, and now it’s going to be interesting to see if other teams respond by putting more resources toward their relief. On the one hand, according to reports, there are a lot of excellent relievers on the market, as sellers try to meet perceived demand. On the other hand, I guess, every reliever addition is also a reliever subtraction, so. The point is, expect bullpens to be in focus.

And bullpens, I think, are something we struggle to measure. So much attention is paid to the difficulty of evaluating defense, but we also run into some trouble trying to value really good or really bad relievers. We’ve got reliever WAR, which takes leverage somewhat into consideration, but there’s an argument reliever WAR is missing something, something that, say, underrates how much a great reliever is really worth.

The goal here isn’t to try to answer everything. Bullpens are complicated and I can’t develop a model for everything in a day. I’ve simplified, to try to address one point. We already have reliever WAR. How have teams with an elite reliever actually done, compared to teams without one?

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“A pitcher, you throw 100 miles per hour, you are the shit.”

That’s Omar Vizquel, former longtime Cleveland Indians shortstop and current Detroit Tigers first base, fielding and baserunning coach, in a Maxim.com article by Hunter Atkins last month.

Vizquel’s not wrong. We love guys who can throw 100. It’s not much different than throwing 99 — no more different than 99 is to 98, at least. But there’s something about that number, 100, that appeals to us. For a while, there just weren’t that many guys who could do it, so the ones who could really stuck out. Even now, when plenty of guys can do it, the number is enticing. Maybe it’s the third digit. Maybe it’s the fact that the number starts with a one, when all the rest start with sevens, eights and nines. Maybe it’s those nice, round zeroes, their cleanliness and sense of closure. In the Maxim piece, Joba Chamberlain describes it as “sexy.”

So we’ve got 100, this big, clean, round, even, sexy number that pitchers can make appear on a radar gun for which crowds cheer regardless of the result or quality of the 100. But there are times when baseballs travel 100 miles per hour not having been thrown by a pitcher, and those aren’t given nearly the same attention.

This was the year of the exit velocity. It was our first season with Statcast data, and the number that infiltrated the public domain more than any other was batted ball velocity. Hitting 100 off the bat is nice, too, but it isn’t nearly as impressive as a pitcher throwing 100. For exit velo, the holy 100 is more like the holy 110, and that’s not nearly as fun a number. Let’s stick with 100.

Occasionally, an outfielder will get a running head start, whether on a single or a sac fly, and throw a bullet to home plate, just like a pitcher, and it elicits a response. We can see with our eyes that the ball was thrown exceptionally hard, but we don’t see it on the radar gun, so these throws go unrecognized. You’ll hear about “pitchers who can throw 100,” but you never hear outfielders regarded in the same light. The pitchers who can throw 100 have their own exclusive, little clubs. Some can do it, but most just can’t. Outfielders are the same way, just without the club.

This season, there were 24 pitchers who threw a pitch that registered in the triple digits. There were 15 outfielders. Let’s give them their own club.
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Baseball’s hot stove season got off to an uncharacteristically early start this time around, as the Rays and Mariners made a “challenge” type of trade, centering around two young, inexpensive players with plenty of years of control remaining, shortstop Brad Miller and starting pitcher Nate Karns. I agree with most of Dave Cameron’s thoughts in the immediate wake the trade: one’s opinion of this deal largely depends on whether one believes Miller is truly a regular shortstop, and whether ones believe Karns is a long-term rotation fixture.

While there are no absolutes in the projection of either player’s future, and there are other players in the deal who will eventually impact the net result, this trade will likely come down to Miller vs. Karns. What does the weight of the evidence suggest at this point in time regarding those two players?

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With Major League Baseball’s 2015 season in the books, focus has shifted to 2016. And one of the story lines that you’ll be hearing a lot about in the next year is the upcoming negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association. Indeed, rather than wait for the current agreement to officially expire on December 1, 2016, the league and the players union will likely begin discussing a new agreement sometime in the next few months.

For the uninitiated, the CBA is the contract that governs the relationship between MLB (and its 30 teams) and the players. It dictates the rules governing free agency, players’ salaries, revenue sharing, and the length of the playing season, among a host of other issues.

As in any collective bargaining process, the league and union will discuss a variety of topics during the 2016 negotiations. And while new issues will inevitably emerge between now and next December, based on statements made over the last couple years by MLB and MLBPA officials, we can generate a pretty reliable list of what are likely to be among the most pressing issues the parties will face during the upcoming negotiations.

I’ll be examining these bargaining issues in a two-part preview of the 2016 CBA negotiations. In this initial post, we’ll take a look at: (i) the new leadership dynamic at MLB and the MLBPA, (ii) various economic-related issues that are likely to be discussed during the negotiations (including the players’ declining share of league revenues, the qualifying offer, and service time manipulation), and (iii) possible changes to the league’s Joint Drug Agreement.

Part II will then consider bargaining issues related to the draft (both domestic and, potentially, international) as well as various pace-of-play and scheduling-related issues, before offering a preliminary assessment of the likelihood that a work stoppage will impact the 2017 season.

New Leadership

While not a bargaining issue per se, one story line that is likely to emerge during the 2016 collective bargaining process is the fact that both MLB and the MLBPA will be represented by new leadership during the upcoming negotiations. On MLB’s side, the talks will be the first of Rob Manfred’s commissionership. Manfred is well acquainted with the collective bargaining process himself, having negotiated the 2002, 2006, and 2011 CBAs on behalf of MLB as its Executive Vice President for Labor Relations & Human Resources. However, with Manfred now in the commissioner’s chair, MLB’s chief legal officer, Dan Halem, will likely serve as the league’s lead negotiator.

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Michael Brantley hurt his shoulder in late September, diving for a ball in Minnesota. He took four games off, and then played two more times, and then called it quits, planning to spend the early offseason rehabbing the joint. He told MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian that he hoped to avoid surgery and that the team had developed a three-week plan for him.

Unfortunately, three weeks later, his shoulder still hurt. Another four weeks after that, the team decided to have surgery, which found a small labral tear. Team doctor James Quinlan thought that Brantley would be ready to start his hitting progression in four months, rehab would be complete in five months, and that the player would see the major leagues again in six months.

Six months from today is May 9th, so no matter what, Brantley looks set to miss a month next season. The question on many Indians’ fans minds is what he’ll be like when he returns.

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Pitching in the major leagues is almost incomprehensibly difficult. It’s easy to pick up on that fact by watching the revolving door of pitchers who simply don’t have the talent, health, or stuff to make it. There is no leeway in pitching, no slack, no grace period to ease into: major league baseball is a wood chipper that pitchers are fed into with the hope that they’ll emerge on the other side with a manageable amount of damage.

This is the main reason why pitchers live and die by velocity. With increased velocity, a pitcher’s margin of error grows, and they can get away with making more mistakes. With lower velocity, a pitcher has to rely on guile, movement, and strategy to be successful. Then, of course, there is the extreme low end of the velocity spectrum, which is what we’ll be look at today: the seldom-seen outlier, heir apparent to Jamie Moyer. These are the rare pitchers who have either figured out a way to get by with diminished stuff, or are simply (and cruelly) not long for starting duties.

The particular pitcher we’re talking about is Jered Weaver, whose fastball velocity dropped five miles per hour between the 2014 and 2015 seasons. With his fastball clocking in at just above 88 mph in September of 2014, Weaver was another veteran pitcher in the midst of a lucrative five-year, $85 million contract; a year later, after a month-long stint on the disabled list for hip inflammation, he was throwing at an average of 83-84 mph and had entered the rare territory of soft-throwing starters who are still offered a full workload. Here’s a good visual from Brooks Baseball that tells the story of what happened to his fastball velocity:

The main question today is this: what does Weaver need to do to be able to survive at this unique velocity level, and what might we learn about it from those who came before him?

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Hello friends, and welcome to the National League version of Monday’s American League poll post. This is part of a little project, and after this I’m done gathering information, which means you’re done having to participate. (You don’t have to participate. But please do!) I don’t know exactly where the project is going to go, but I know I’d love to have the data.

I’ll copy and paste. This post is for fans of teams in the National League. If there are multiple teams you hold near and dear, feel free to vote in multiple polls. If you consider yourself more a fan of the game in general, then you can either sit this out, or vote in the poll for the team you feel most strongly about.

All I want to know: how did you feel about the 2015 season? As far as following your favorite team was concerned, how would you rate your overall fan experience? Use whatever criteria you like. How you feel is how you feel — vote according to that feeling. How was the regular season? Did the end spoil the middle? Did your team have a bunch of exciting young players? Did you love going to the ballpark? I understand there’s a lot of input here — there are months of individual days, each day with its own feeling. I just want to know your overall grade, as you reflect on the season that was. There are no wrong answers. Unless you lie to me for no reason.

All the polls are below. Click a team name to go straight to that part and bypass the others.

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With the World Series a week and change behind us, but with the offseason still almost entirely ahead and unknown, now seems like the right time to try a little project I’ve had on my mind for a month or so. The annoying(?) bit is that the project requires your participation, in the form of voting in a poll, but then that’s a really easy thing to do, and the question should be pretty simple, and on my end, I get to spend a couple posts embedding polls for your own feedback. Something easy for you, and something easy for me? Everybody wins!

This post is for fans of teams in the American League. The National League post will go up Tuesday morning. If there are multiple teams you hold near and dear, feel free to vote in multiple polls. If you consider yourself more a fan of the game in general, then you can either sit this out, or vote in the poll for the team you feel most strongly about.

All I want to know: how did you feel about the 2015 season? As far as following your favorite team was concerned, how would you rate your overall fan experience? Use whatever criteria you like. How you feel is how you feel — vote according to that feeling. How was the regular season? Did the end spoil the middle? Did your team have a bunch of exciting young players? Did you love going to the ballpark? I understand there’s a lot of input here — there are months of individual days, each day with its own feeling. I just want to know your overall grade, as you reflect on the season that was. There are no wrong answers. Except probably in the Royals poll.

All the polls are below. Hopefully the anchor text works to send you to your team directly!

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Major League Baseball teams are not in the habit of revealing their expected payroll numbers for the following season prior to free agency. Revealing such figures would provide agents negotiating deals with their clients important information regarding how much teams planned to spend. Additionally, telling fans how much a team plans to spend could be harmful from a public relations perspective: if a team misses out on a desired target, it is not always a great idea to spend money for the sake of meeting a budget if that spending would not improve the team and the money could be better spent elsewhere. None of those reasons obscure the fact that we still want to know how much money teams will spend.

Last year’s spending should provide a pretty good proxy for where teams will end up on Opening Day next season. By looking at guaranteed salaries and arbitration estimates, we can come with a decent idea of how much money each team has to spend going into the winter unless they make significant changes to the budget from previous seasons. In the American League, teams like the Tampa Bay Rays, Oakland Athletics, and more recently the Houston Astros have kept spending to a minimum while the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Detroit Tigers have had no issues with payrolls double or even triple the size of those at the bottom. Much of next year’s spending has little to do with potential free agents, and more to do with players who have already signed.

American League teams have already committed more than $1.2 billion in guaranteed contracts to 2016 payrolls, equal to roughly two-thirds the amount of 2015 AL Opening Day payrolls. As we might expect, there are considerable differences across the league, per Cot’s Contracts.

The Yankees have committed nearly $200 million in salaries before the offseason even starts. At close to $185 million, the guarantees in the Bronx are roughly equal to Oakland, Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Houston, and Cleveland combined. In Oakland, the team has signed Billy Butler, Coco Crisp, and Sean Doolittle to contracts already, giving them around $24 million in 2016 before arbitration and free agent signings.

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A few days ago, it was reported Miguel Sano would play some outfield during winterball. That’s easy enough to evaluate in isolation — there’s nothing wrong with trying to increase flexibility, and Sano is a bit young to permanently stuff into the DH box. But that’s also easy to interpret as part of a larger process. Word’s out the Twins placed the high bid to negotiate with South Korean first baseman Byung-ho Park. The winning bid of $12.85 million is more than double the winning bid a year ago for Jung-ho Kang, and it’s more than the total value of the four-year contract Kang later signed. It’s pretty clear now that Kang opened some eyes, and though the Twins and Park will still need to reach an agreement, you assume something will get done. The Twins are among baseball’s Byung-ho Park believers.

The question following any transaction is always, is it good? Is it worth it? That can be hard enough to answer when we have a ton of information. It’s far more difficult here. Park, obviously, has no major-league experience, no American track record to examine. We don’t know what the terms of his contract are going to be. We don’t even know that much about the market, or about how the Twins evaluated all their options. I don’t know if this is going to be “worth it,” to the dollar. What I do know is it’ll be good to see what Park can accomplish at the highest level. He’s earned this opportunity, and he’s earned it by demonstrating that he can hit the living crap out of a baseball.

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