Hope springs eternal on Opening Day, it is often said, and that may never be more true than in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic that stopped the world in its tracks and has thus far killed more than half a million people in the U.S. alone (and nearly three million worldwide) has not yet ended, but vaccinations are becoming more widely available, and the promise of some semblance of normalcy is on the horizon. In marked contrast to last season, major league baseball is starting on schedule, and with a limited number of actual paying customers in ballparks — too many in Texas, and none for at least the first two months in Toronto, but with most teams and their respective municipalities taking a fairly conservative approach. All told, the situation is definitely better than when the 2020 season belatedly kicked off just over eight months ago.

Beyond that, MLB planned to offer MAXIMUM BASEBALL on Opening Day, with all 30 teams set to play their first games of the season on the same day, with no night-before staggered starts and no holding some teams back for the next day. Alas, this potentially historic occasion was pre-empted first by the weather in Boston, as the Red Sox announced on Thursday morning that they’ve postponed their contest until Friday at 2:10 pm ET, and, after the initial publication of this article, by a COVID-related postponement of the evening’s Mets-Nationals contest (and Friday’s as well), yet another reminder of the difficulty of carrying out the season in the middle of a pandemic.

While it was not uncommon for teams to launch their seasons in unison during the pre-expansion era, when there were just 16 teams — it happened 18 times from 1910-56, according to the good folks at Baseball-Reference — it has happened only once since the first wave of expansion in 1961-62. More recently, it almost happened in 2018; while a full slate of 15 games was scheduled for Opening Day, two of those contests were postponed due to rain.

The only time it actually happened during the expansion era was in 1968, and under less-than-ideal circumstances. In the wake of the April 4 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all of American sports observed a three-day moratorium, though baseball, led by ineffectual commissioner Spike Eckert, left the decision of whether to go ahead with the Opening Day games scheduled on April 8 and 9 up to individual teams. Protests and unrest, and then an uprising by players, led by the Pirates’ Roberto Clemente (one of an major league-high 11 Black players on the team) and the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, keyed the postponement of those games. Finally, on April 10, all 20 teams got underway. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, after a winter spent fretting over the pandemic and the free agent market’s glacial pace (and what both might mean for baseball), the 2021 season is upon us. We made it. And on this, the morning of Opening Day, we engage in our annual tradition of asking our staff to open themselves up to public ridicule and predict the year in baseball. Some of these predictions will prove to be prescient; others will make their forecaster feel a little silly. Despite the 11th-hour format switcheroo, the FanGraphs staff ended up doing pretty well when it came to last year’s playoff field, though with eight teams in each league advancing to the postseason, the odds were in our favor. Still, with the exception of the Marlins (we thought the Nationals would do a better job defending their World Series title) and the Blue Jays (whither the Angels we picked instead?), we had October pretty well pegged. The 2020 individual awards? A big goose egg! Such is the prognostication business.

Folks from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs weighed in; here are the results.

American League

The American League once again appears to be stratified into the haves and the yet-to-arrives, though our writers see two of the three divisions as competitive at the top. Twenty of our voters submitted ballots with Houston and New York as division winners; their Central votes were split between the Minnesota (12 votes) and Chicago (eight). Meanwhile, four teams received no playoff votes (the Mariners, Rangers, Tigers, and Orioles), while two more (Royals and Red Sox) received just one. I expected Kansas City to be a more popular sleeper pick. I’m don’t think they’re ready to compete in earnest with the AL’s other Wild Card contenders, but they certainly seem to think they are, and it’s always good to have a little zag in a ballot full of zig. Better luck next year, Royals. Read the rest of this entry »

The teams are ready, and the rosters are (mostly) set, making it the appointed time for the electrons that make up the projections to dance in their required formations. This is the last run before the season starts, making these the Official ZiPS Projected Standings© for the 2021 season. Thursday starts the six-month marathon that determines which prognostications will achieve fame and which will attain infamy.

So, how do the ZiPS projected standings work? ZiPS makes baseline playing time projections heavily informed by our depth charts; after all, ain’t nobody going to beat Jason Martinez in this space. But rather than assuming that the baseline playing time is the playing time, I use a generalized model to estimate the range of playing time. So in some ZiPS simulations, Mike Trout will play 162 games. Sometimes he’ll play 130 games or 100 games; less often, he’ll play five games or even none. Then ZiPS fills in the “missing” playing time, giving a lot more playing time to Jo Adell and Juan Lagares in center in those injury seasons. Sometimes they’re injured, too; in projection No. 435,221, center field was mainly covered by Brandon Marsh and Scott Schebler. ZiPS then uses the percentile performance projections to (somewhat) randomize what versions of every player we get. There’s a generalized model here as well, as players will tend to get more time when they’re playing better and less when they’re not. After a million runs of this, using the actual schedules and opponents, ZiPS has its standings.

Let’s start with the American League.

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Burn After Reading, an oft-overlooked part of the Coen Brothers oeuvre, is quietly one of their best films and includes some of Brad Pitt and George Clooney’s the finest work ever captured on celluloid. I’m not going to spoil the ending by giving you the film’s last bit dialogue (you really shouldn’t worry about spoilers for a 12-year-old flick), but the final exchange is one I think about a lot, as it applies to numerous aspects of life.

CIA Supervisor: What did we learn, Palmer?
Palmer: I don’t know sir.
CIA Supervisor: I don’t f***ing know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
Palmer: Yes, sir.
CIA Supervisor: I’m f***ed if I know what we did.
Palmer: Yes sir, it’s hard to say.

Spring training is not especially informative. Team records don’t matter. Players’ performances rarely predict what will happen during the regular season, although access to underlying metrics like those provided by Statcast can help a bit in figuring out what’s small sample and what’s a real change in ability. Still, we all watch spring ball and try our best to glean some kind of insight from the six weeks leading up to real baseball. Here’s what I got from it this year.

Injuries will be the defining factor of the 2021 season

It’s already happening. The Blue Jays will likely be without George Springer on Opening Day due to a strained oblique, while their big offseason bullpen fix, Kirby Yates, is out for the year following Tommy John surgery. The Rays will be without first baseman Ji-Man Choi for a month following knee surgery, and already have five relievers on the 60-day IL due to a smorgasbord of elbow issues. The Yankees will begin the year without slugger Luke Voit and two crucially important lefties out of the pen in Zack Britton and Justin Wilson. Eduardo Rodriguez, Boston’s scheduled Opening Day starter, has a dead arm. Baltimore outfielders Anthony Santander and DJ Stewart are dealing with muscle strains. And that’s just the American League East. Read the rest of this entry »

Simeon Woods Richardson has big-time potential. Blessed with an impressive combination of power, finesse, and command, the 6-foot-3, 222-pound right-hander is No. 3 on our Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list, and No. 72 on our 2021 Top 100 Prospects list. Just 20 years old, Woods Richardson fashions himself — stylistically speaking — as a modern-day Satchel Paige.

More on that later.

Born and raised in Sugar Land, Texas, Woods Richardson was taken 48th-overall in the 2018 draft by the New York Mets, only to be traded a year later, along with Anthony Kay, to the Blue Jays in exchange for Marcus Stroman. The approach he brought to Toronto was one of a burgeoning craftsman. I learned as much when I asked — in a twist on a question I often ask hitters — if he views pitching as more of an art or a science.

“Both,” responded Woods Richardson. “With pitching you need some feel, and then you have the analytics of it. It’s, ‘Okay, you’re doing this and you’re doing that, you have this break and you have that break.’ So I think it’s a mesh of both worlds. But I like the art side of pitching, where you’re hitting a spot three, four times in a row. You’re keeping them off balance. That’s what I like.”

A self-described visual learner, Woods Richardson prefers video over number-crunching, although he does pay heed to the spin efficiency of his four-seamer — an impressive 98% that he aspires to improve. Delivered at 92-94 mph, it’s one of five pitches in his arsenal. He also throws a two-seamer, a curveball, a slider, and a circle changeup, the last of which he’s diligently honed. ”Shaky” when he broke into pro ball, it’s now considered by many to be his best weapon. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday was a busy day in the world of the White Sox. Slugger Eloy Jiménez underwent surgery to repair a ruptured left pectoral tendon, an injury that could sideline him for most of the season and alter the balance of power in the AL Central along the way. In an attempt to help offset the loss of Jiménez and to allow for some potential lineup flexibility in the near term, the team signed free agent infielder Jake Lamb to a major league deal. What’s more, general manager Rick Hahn announced that top prospect Andrew Vaughn has made the Opening Day roster, and could open the season in left field.

The 24-year-old Jiménez, who last year bopped 14 homers while batting .296/.332/.559 (140 wRC+), was injured on March 24 when he caught his left arm on the outfield wall while trying to rob the A’s Sean Murphy of a home run:

Jiménez is expected to miss five or six months following surgery, a devastating blow considering that he was projected to clout 36 homers and provide 3.0 WAR as the team’s left fielder. Alas, it’s not even his first significant absence due to an injury suffered while playing defense. In his 2019 rookie season, he missed over three weeks due to a high right ankle sprain suffered while crashing into an outfield wall in an attempt to prevent a home run, and then another 10 days after colliding with center fielder Charles Tilson and suffering a right ulnar nerve contusion. Read the rest of this entry »

During the last few days of spring training, most teams are wrapping up position battles and preparing for Opening Day. The Angels, meanwhile, decided the waning days of March were a great time to revamp their bullpen. On Sunday, they signed Noé Ramirez to a minor league deal. Then on Monday, they acquired James Hoyt from the Marlins for cash considerations and signed Steve Cishek and Tony Watson to matching one-year, $1 million deals. Save Hoyt, all these pitchers were available because they had already been cut from other team’s rosters. That’s not a promising way to build a bullpen, but the Angels, who desperately need additional depth on their staff, didn’t have much of a choice.

Bolstering the relief corps was a priority for new Angels GM Perry Minasian, and he made a handful of moves in the winter to do so. In December, he acquired new closer Raisel Iglesias from the Reds in exchange for Ramirez and a player to be named later. Ramirez ended up getting cut by the Reds, and the Angels scooped him up again, effectively acquiring Iglesias for free. The team also added Alex Claudio and Junior Guerra via free agency, but even with those three new relievers, Los Angeles still lacked depth in the middle of their bullpen. The projected relief corps before this week included control artist Aaron Slegers, the raw but promising Chris Rodriguez, and veteran Jesse Chavez to hold the line during the middle third of the game. Conspicuously absent from that group is Ty Buttrey, who was a solid option out of the bullpen in 2018 and ‘19 but greatly disappointed last year. He was optioned to minor league camp last week. Felix Peña will likely be counted on for some high-leverage work as well, but he strained his hamstring this spring and will start the year on the Injured List.

With Hoyt, Ramirez, Watson and Cishek on board, here’s what Los Angeles’ bullpen now looks like:

Adding so many relievers has definitely increased the depth, but the flexibility isn’t all that improved. The first seven names on that list are either out of minor league options or good enough to hold a roster spot for the entire season. If the Angels carry eight relievers on their 26-man roster, that means the final bullpen spot will be a rotating door for whichever reliever is the freshest.

Of the four relievers added this week, Hoyt has the most interesting projection. He broke into the majors in 2016 with Houston and won a championship there the next year, though he was left off the postseason roster. He was traded to Cleveland mid-way through 2018 and spent what was left of that year as well as the majority of ’19 in Triple-A, logging just 8.1 innings in the majors that season.

When the Marlins faced a team-wide COVID outbreak at the start of last year, they acquired Hoyt for cash considerations to help fill out the bullpen. He enjoyed the best season of his short career in Miami, striking out over 30% of the batters he faced despite a huge drop in velocity across all four of his pitches. To combat that, he started throwing his slider more than two-thirds of the time. With a whiff rate over 40%, that pitch formed the foundation of his success.

Hoyt’s velocity hasn’t returned this spring: His fastball is topping out under 90 mph, and his slider is coming in around 80 mph. But if he maintains his approach from last year, he’s shown that his slider is good enough to thrive without elite velocity. The other important thing he possesses is a minor league option. The Angels’ bullpen has a lot less flexibility to call up fresh arms when the attrition of a full season starts to hit. Since Hoyt is one of the few relievers with an option still available, he’ll probably ride the shuttle between Triple-A and the majors regularly this season.

In Cishek and Watson, the Angels add two relievers with plenty of high-leverage experience and funk. Cishek scuffled through his worst season in the majors in the White Sox’ bullpen last year. The frisbee slider he whips in from an extremely low release point was as good as ever, but his sinker was crushed. In the past, he had relied on that pitch to maintain his above-average ground ball rate, but opposing batters elevated and celebrated against it in 2020. At this point, he’s best cast as a right-handed specialist so he can use his slider as much as he needs to. Facing too many left-handed bats will leave him exposed, especially now that his sinker is barely crossing 90 mph regularly.

Watson’s career arc closely mirrors Cishek’s. He was a solid high-leverage option for the Pirates, Dodgers, and Giants for a number of years, but the quality of his stuff has deteriorated recently. The 2019 season was his nadir — a 4.17 ERA, 4.81 FIP, and -0.2 WAR in 54 innings — though last year represented a small bounce back. And like Hoyt and Cishek, he had to learn how to survive with diminished velocity: He saw a three mile per hour drop across his entire repertoire, though his strikeout rate did jump up three points from ’19.

Watson’s extreme release point nearly matches that of fellow lefty sidearmer Claudio. But where the latter has historically struggled with a significant platoon split, the former’s has been much less dramatic. In 2020, that handedness split was mitigated even further as Watson increased the usage of his changeup to 45%, making it his primary pitch. But like Hoyt, his velocity failed to show up this spring, and he opted out of his minor league deal with the Phillies, who had signed him over the winter.

With Cishek and Watson now in the fold, the Angels’ bullpen has another pair of sidearming relievers to pair with Claudio. It brings to mind the multi-faceted bullpen the Rays put together last season, where nearly every reliever threw from a different arm slot. The Angels aren’t as extreme as the Rays were, but they have a couple of different looks they can trot out to throw off the opposing team.

The velocity issues each of these pitchers are dealing with certainly doesn’t inspire confidence. But when you’re bringing in relievers off the scrap heap, there isn’t much you can do about warts like that. Hoyt, Cishek, and Watson have all shown a willingness to adapt their approach and have had some success with their diminished repertoires. Luckily, the Angels aren’t counting on them to handle critical innings for them — only to provide a competent bridge to the back end of the bullpen.

Four years ago, the Rangers viewed Rougned Odor as a foundational piece, signing him to a six-year, $49.5 million extension. By the time he arrived at spring training this year, he’d lost his starting second base job, the result of a string of bad seasons and adjustments that simply hadn’t taken. The 27-year-old instead competed for the third base job, but on Monday, the team — which is in the midst of a multiyear rebuild after going 22–38 last season — told him and the rest of the baseball world that he would not make their Opening Day roster and will be designated for assignment, effectively ending a 10-year run with the organization that signed him out of Venezuela in 2011.

Odor hit just .167/.209/.413 with 10 homers — but just nine singles — in 148 PA last year; his .157 BABIP was the majors’ third-lowest mark among hitters with at least 120 PA. His 60 wRC+ wasn’t a career low, but it was the third year out of the past four that he was below 80, and his -0.3 WAR marked his second season in that span that he was below replacement level, though his 0.3 WAR in 581 PA in 2019 was hardly more acceptable. His 1.6 WAR while playing second is the lowest among the 19 players who have received at least 1,000 PA at the position over the past four seasons.

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In January, we at FanGraphs put out a call for radio broadcast ratings. The votes are now all in, and over the following days, we’ll be releasing a compilation of those rankings, as well as selected commentary from each team’s responses.

As a refresher, our survey asked for scores in four areas. If you’d like a thorough explanation of them, you can read the introductory article, but I’ll also recap them briefly here before starting off with the bottom third of the league.

The “Analysis” score covers the frequency and quality of a broadcast team’s discussion of baseball. This isn’t limited to statistical analysis, and many of the booths that scored best excelled at explaining technical details of playing. This score represents how much listeners feel they learn about baseball by listening.

“Charisma” covers the amount of enjoyment voters derive from listening to the broadcasters fill space, which takes on many forms. The booths that scored best on charisma varied wildly, from former players recounting stories of their glory days to unintentional comedy and playful banter between long-term broadcast partners. Read the rest of this entry »

Addressing one of his pitchers in a mid-month Zoom session, Colorado Rockies manager Bud Black said that his velocity was “good for this point of the spring.” (That may not be an exact quote, but it’s close.) The statement prompted me to ask a question that elicited an expansive response. In a nutshell, I wanted to know how often Black is seeing guys who, having trained for velocity over the offseason, come into camp already throwing gas. Moreover, does he find that concerning?

“I could get longwinded here,” Black began. “As you can imagine, when we talk about velocity and what pitchers have done, really over the last five years… maybe it started about 10 years ago with programs to truly increase velocity. We’ve seen that over the years, with many pitchers pumping their velocity.

“Coming into camp, I think there are certain pitchers, on certain clubs, that are trying to make the team. They have to show their stuff right away, from Day One, whether it’s in bullpens, batting-practice games, or B-games, trying to impress coaching staffs [and] front offices of their ability. They want to show that they can make a big-league roster. Other guys have trained in the offseason, and they want to see if those training methods have resulted in increased velocity in games. They might turn it loose right from the get-go. Read the rest of this entry »