We’re digging deep into the archives today. I’ve been meaning to write about a weird mathematical phenomenon in baseball for more than a year, and now seems like a great time to break it out. It all starts, naturally enough, with an Effectively Wild episode from 2019. That episode was about the Grand Junction Rockies’ name non-change – but it was also about the annual congressional baseball game.

Unless you follow Louisiana politics, you may not have heard of Cedric Richmond, but he figures prominently in our tale today. After a 10-year career in the House of Representatives (Orleans Parish, Louisiana), Richmond left to head the Office of Public Liaison. It’s a good thing for the balance of the annual congressional baseball game, because as Nathaniel Rakich so ably put it, Richmond was that contest’s equivalent of Mike Trout crossed with Max Scherzer, only if Scherzer got to pitch in every game.

At the time of the episode, Richmond had played eight congressional baseball games and amassed 2.5 WAR, which works out to a 50-WAR pace in a 162-game season, a number that doesn’t make any sense in the context of major league baseball. Richmond pitched at Morehouse, and while his pitching skills weren’t enough to float a minor league career, they’re comically better than your average congressperson’s. We’re talking about Jacob deGrom level dominance on the mound – at the time of the podcast, Richmond had put up a 2.20 ERA and struck out more than a quarter of the batters he faced, and completed all but one of the games he started. In a high-scoring environment (well, for people not facing Richmond), that worked out to 1.8 WAR on the pitching side.

We’re not here to talk about Richmond’s pitching, though. That’s great, and good, and his hitting is much funnier. He was hitting .652/.758/1.087, which is, uh… yeah, it’s off the charts. It’s hard to comprehend how good that is, in fact, because we don’t have any .650 hitters or .750 OBP types to create a mental framework. Read the rest of this entry »

There might not have been a bigger surprise performer in 2021 than Cedric Mullins. With just over 400 plate appearances spread across parts of three years prior, he had put up a cumulative 72 wRC+ and accumulated -0.4 WAR; this season, he pushed his wRC+ up to 136 and posted 5.3 WAR, the 14th highest mark among all position players. He also became just the 11th player to reach 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in a single season over the last decade.

The catalyst for his breakout season was quite simple: Mullins quit switch-hitting and began batting exclusively from the left side. That discussion had begun all the way back in 2018, his debut season, when then-Orioles manager Buck Showalter suggested it to him. After struggling to establish himself in the majors for three seasons, he finally decided to rely on his natural swing during the offseason. “It was getting difficult to try and create two different swings,” he told MASN’s Steve Melewski in March. “I know my left-side is my natural side, so trying to develop my right-handed swing at the highest level was challenging.”

Switch-hitting has always been a scarce skill, but the number of players who can swing both ways has dwindled in recent years. In 2021, just 17 qualified batters (13.1%) were switch-hitters, right in line with the league-wide average over the last decade. Compare that to the decade between 1986 and ’95 (excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season), when more than one in five qualified batters (21.1%) hit from both sides, with a peak of 24.8% in ’89. With modern baseball strategy so heavily emphasizing the platoon advantage, it’s surprising to see so few switch-hitters these days. Giving up that advantage in every at-bat is a radical decision, and there’s barely any precedent for it.

The number of players who have dropped switch-hitting after making their major league debuts is tiny. J.T. Snow did it in 1999, halfway through his career. So did Orlando Merced in 1996. Shane Victorino flip-flopped between switch-hitting and batting right-handed after injuries forced him to give up left-handed batting at various points during his career. More recently, Tucker Barnhart gave up switch-hitting in 2019. But those previous examples were all players who had already established themselves in the majors. Mullins could have seriously damaged his chances of having a productive major league career if his decision went wrong.
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After a quiet 2020 offseason, and in advance of the ongoing lockout, the early 2021-22 free agency period saw a sudden burst of activity. Teams shelled out more than $1.5 billion in new contracts, a record-breaking pace. Not only did they act earlier in the winter than we’re used to, they also spent far more than last offseason. Is free agency fixed? We’ll need to dive into the data to find out.

See, “how much money was spent on free agents” is an inexact measure of teams’ spending appetites. Imagine an offseason where, due to strategic contract extensions and a wildly immoral use of cloning technology, the only players on the free agent market are 37 versions of Alcides Escobar and 25 copies of Jordan Lyles. Free agency spending would crater, and it would be hard to blame teams for it. It’s not as though you have to give the best player on the market a $300 million deal; contracts are, obviously enough, affected by the caliber of player signing the contract.

Rather than come up with some new form of analysis, I decided to use a methodology advanced by former FanGraphs writer Craig Edwards. The idea is straightforward: take players projected for 2 or more WAR by Steamer in the upcoming season, apply a naive adjustment for aging, and project how much WAR each free agent will accrue over the life of their contract. Like Craig, I applied some discounting for playing time projections. That lets us create expected $/WAR numbers for each year’s free agency class:

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Caleb Kilian made giant strides in 2021. Unranked as a San Francisco prospect at season’s start, the 24-year-old right-hander now profiles as one of the most promising arms in the Chicago Cubs system. The NL Central club acquired Kilian, along with outfielder Alexander Canario, in exchange for free-agent-to-be Kris Bryant at the July trade deadline.

The degree to which Kilian stepped up this year is apparent in his numbers. Pitching almost exclusively at the Double-A level, the 2019 eighth-round pick out of Texas Tech University put up a 2.42 ERA while allowing just 75 hits and 13 walks in 101 1/3 innings. Augmenting his signature plus command with increased velocity and an improved pitch mix, he punched out 112 batters.

Kilian’s repertoire revolves around a sinker and a cutter, the latter of which he began developing in the rookie-level Arizona League.

“It was early, almost right when I got there,” explained Kilian, who had pitched in a pair of College World Series with the Red Raiders. “When I got to pro ball, my slider was kind of just a worse curveball, so the Giants recommended a cutter. That way, I’d basically be throwing what felt like a fastball — same arm speed, just a different grip. I supinate with the ball anyway, so by turning it in my hand, it kind of just comes out naturally with cut.” Read the rest of this entry »

Graham Spraker will be available when this year’s lockout-postponed Rule 5 draft is eventually held. The 26-year-old right-hander wasn’t added to the Toronto Blue Jays 40-man roster prior to last month’s deadline. While this was not exactly a surprise — the former 31st-round draft pick out of a DII school has never graced our prospect rankings — Spraker is nonetheless coming off an eye-opening season. In 31 relief outings, all but one of them at Double-A New Hampshire, the erstwhile Quincy University Hawk logged a 2.62 ERA and fanned 65 batters in 46-and-two-thirds innings.

Spraker’s breakout culminated in an award-winning stint in the Arizona Fall League. Pitching for the Mesa Solar Sox, the righty threw 11-and-a-third scoreless innings, allowing just four hits and a pair of walks, with 17 strikeouts. He was named the AFL’s Reliever of the Year at the conclusion of the campaign.

All that aside, just who is Graham Spraker?

“I am who I am,” the righty responded when asked about his pitching M.O. “I’ve changed a lot every year. I’m a pretty adaptable player — that’s why I’ve had success — but I feel that I’ve found a good blueprint now. It’s something I’m going to try to stick to for the rest of my career.” Read the rest of this entry »

Major league baseball remains in a holding pattern. There’s a lockout, the two sides are intermittently negotiating, and nothing can happen until they reach an agreement. That’s major league baseball, though, not all of baseball, and some interesting economic shenanigans are afoot across the minors.

As Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper reported last week, Endeavor Group Holdings is purchasing nine minor league baseball teams: the Gwinnett Stripers, Mississippi Braves, Rome Braves, Augusta GreenJackets, Iowa Cubs, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, Memphis Redbirds, Hudson Valley Renegades, and San Jose Giants; The Athletic’s Daniel Kaplan and Evan Drellich first reported the possibility in October. These transactions aren’t yet final, but they’re very likely to be approved, which will make Endeavor (via new subsidiary Diamond Baseball Holdings) the largest MiLB owner.

Endeavor, a publicly traded company partially owned by private equity group Silver Lake Partners, is already in the business of sports, though not specifically minor league baseball. They own a little bit of everything, from agencies to sports organizations. Their marquee holding is the UFC, but seriously, the list is endless: Professional Bull Riding, Euroleague Basketball, the IMG Academy that turns out baseball prospects, the Madrid Open, the William Morris Endeavor agency. It’s a broad portfolio, much of which is made up of directly-sports-related operations; an arm of the company also sells media rights for the Olympics.
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Luis Robert debuted in 2020 as our No. 7 prospect in baseball and put up up a strong rookie season with league average offensive numbers (100 wRC+), and stellar center field defense (8 Defensive Runs Saved), helping the White Sox return to the playoffs. Under the hood, though, there were some red flags. He had the worst SwStr% in baseball at 22.1%, as well as a 32.2% strikeout rate. His O-Swing rate of 43.1% was fourth worst in baseball, and even when he did make contact, he had a below-average exit velocity of only 87.9 mph. The 2021 season started off with a similar level of production until Robert suffered a torn hip flexor in early May that would end up costing him the middle three months of the season.

When he returned to action in early August, he immediately looked like a different hitter, putting up a 173 wRC+ over the rest of the season and, perhaps most impressive of all, dropping his SwStr% all the way down to 14.5% — not quite league average, but nowhere near the outlier he had been prior to his injury. Check out the contrast in his career numbers before and after his injury:

As you can see, his gaudy offensive performance is now being backed up by a huge improvement in his strikeout rate, as well as much better quality of contact. Read the rest of this entry »

John Means is the best pitcher on the Baltimore Orioles. In a different world, that might be exciting to Baltimore fans as the team builds a contender. An 11th round draft pick in 2014, Means climbed the minor league ladder, burst into the majors with a 3.60 ERA in 2019, and started throwing harder over the subsequent years. Can he be the best pitcher on a playoff team? I’m skeptical. But can he be the third-best? Definitely, and that’s a really cool outcome for someone who was never supposed to make it this far.

Of course, modern baseball being what it is, Means likely won’t be on the next playoff team in Baltimore. Instead, he’ll probably get traded for whatever the O’s can get, because he’s arbitration-eligible and only three years from free agency. You don’t build generational team wealth by passing up the opportunity to trade your good players for future considerations, at least not the way Baltimore is attempting to build for the future. The team is reportedly looking to trade Means, and I think they’ll find a match. So let’s talk about what the team that wins the Means bidding will be getting for their prospects and salary relief.

If you trade for Means, you’re not doing it for the strikeouts. You could look at his career numbers to tell you that, or you could look at his performance in his last 14 starts after returning from an IL stint. He struck out only 20% of the batters he faced, which isn’t cover-your-eyes bad but definitely shouldn’t top your rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeremiah Jackson made meaningful developmental strides this season. More mental than mechanical, they came amid an injury-interrupted campaign that saw him miss 11 weeks with a torn quad. Playing almost exclusively with the Low-A Inland Empire 66ers, the 21-year-old middle infield prospect homered 10 times while putting up a healthy 128 wRC+ over 218 plate appearances.

How satisfied was he with his performance?

“Satisfied is a word you kind of don’t use in baseball,” said Jackson, whom the Los Angeles Angels drafted 57th overall out of a Mobile, Alabama high school in 2018. “But under the circumstances, I was happy with how I played when I did play. I obviously could have been better, but I’m by no means mad. I learned a lot.”

Jackson feels that his time on the shelf — he was out from late June until early September — contributed to his education. Having more time on his hands allowed him to take a step back and study pitchers throughout the course of a game. How are they attacking certain hitters? What are they seeing that makes them want to throw a certain pitch? What are their mindsets on the mound?

Translating those observations to the batter’s box remains the objective. Read the rest of this entry »

With last week’s lockout of the players by ownership, the league has frozen all transactions for the foreseeable future. That’s bad news — but it also makes this a good time to take a snapshot of team payrolls, because there are no new deals coming down the pipe to mess up the analysis midway through. As such, the following is an update on each team’s payroll as it stood at the start of the lockout. Here are our team-by-team RosterResource projections:

A few notes, some of which will likely be familiar to you if you followed past versions of this exercise written by former FanGraphs writer Craig Edwards. The above data counts salaries for 2022, not average annual values. It includes estimates for arbitration, as well as estimated minimum salaries paid throughout the season; our payroll pages currently use the 2021 league minimum, but that number could change in the upcoming CBA. The numbers don’t include incentive bonuses, or a few specific CBA wrinkles, such as the approximately $2 million that teams pay to players who aren’t in the majors but are on the 40-man roster or the roughly $16 million per team spent on player benefits. They also don’t include as-yet-unsigned free agents, naturally.

The Mets’ recent signing spree, combined with the Dodgers’ losses in free agency, has seen the two teams change places at the top of the payroll standings (somewhat surprisingly, the Mets finished as the second-highest spenders in 2021). All told, there are three teams (the Mets, Dodgers and Yankees) that are currently projected for more than $200 million in player salaries in 2022, the same number (and the same teams) as last year. Meanwhile, there are two teams (the Pirates and the Guardians) with projected payrolls below $50 million, one more than last year, and neither of those teams is likely to make meaningful free agent signings when transactions resume. Read the rest of this entry »