Earlier this week, when I examined the potential landing spots for center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr., the Brewers stuck out as a team that didn’t appear to have a glaring need, particularly with center fielder Lorenzo Cain returning to the roster after opting out early in 2020. Yet FanSided’s Robert Murray, who previously covered the Brewers for The Athletic, had recently reported that the team was in the mix for them, and a week and a half later, they landed him via a two-year, $24 million deal that includes an opt-out after this season. The question is, how’s this going to work?

To these eyes, the bigger surprise than the Brewers adding to their stockpile of outfielders is that Bradley landed a multiyear deal in March, and at a healthy AAV at that. Aside from Bryce Harper‘s 13-year, $330-million megadeal, which was announced on March 2, 2019, in my research for the Bradley piece I was unable to find another multiyear position player deal that was completed in March during the past decade, with Manny Ramirez’s two-year, $45 million return to the Dodgers in 2009 the last one that came to mind. It’s just not a month for lasting commitments.

Given that slim history, plus Dan Szymborski’s less-than-glowing ZiPS projection for Bradley — WARs of 1.6 and 1.3 in the first two seasons over about 1,000 total plate appearances, a serviceable return if accompanied by a solid platoon partner — I figured it might be a stretch for him to approach the three-year, $27 million deal from the ZiPS contract model, to say nothing of the reports that he was seeking a contract of at least four years. Bradley (and agent Scott Boras) didn’t get the years, and his total guarantee is less than that of the model but not by much; with his opt out after the first season, he’s exchanged that for a good amount of control.

Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns, who’s been on the job since October 2015 (initially as general manager) has a history of overstuffing the roster and letting manager Craig Counsell figure out the playing time, and it’s helped the team to three straight postseason appearances for the first time in franchise history. On back-to-back days in late January 2018, Stearns traded for Christian Yelich and signed Cain to a five-year deal, that despite corner outfielders Ryan Braun and Domingo Santana — not to mention first baseman/outfielder Eric Thames — coming off solid seasons; Santana had bashed 30 homers in his age-24 campaign. In late July 2018, he dealt for Mike Moustakas while third baseman Travis Shaw was in the midst of a 32-homer season; Shaw took up playing second base seamlessly and the team came within one win of a trip to the World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, faced with the prospect of an undetermined amount of time with no baseball to watch, I started an experiment: with the help of the FanGraphs reader base, I would crowd manage a team in an online Out Of The Park Baseball league. The OOTP Brewers made a series of crowd-determined decisions throughout the season, with plenty of un-voted upon input by me in the bargain. We fell short of the playoffs, but managed to finish above .500.

That league didn’t end when the season did. Since the virtual 2020 season wrapped up, players have been flying around in free agency, and now that spring training has started, I thought I’d check in on the team and work out some 2021 plans.

The team’s biggest move last year was an in-season trade for Kevin Gausman, a pending free agent. He’s a bigger deal in the game universe than in real life, a borderline top-25 starter with elite control. Rather than let him walk, we signed him to a four-year extension at $23 million per year.

Sounds like a lot, right? Well, our league isn’t a perfect reflection of real life, because most teams are trying to win now. Role playing as a rebuilding team is understandably not everyone’s cup of tea. Take a look at some contracts that notable free agent starters signed this offseason, as well as my scouts’ estimation of them on the 20-80 scale:

The starting pitching market was indeed frothy, and half of those contracts had player options included as well, most notably Stroman, who has three separate chances to get out of the deal. I also left out another 55, because he’s now a Brewer. Collin McHugh signed a two year, $16 million deal with a team option for a third year at $6.5 million. His deal is the cheapest, but he’s the worst of the group; he’s more homer-prone than you’d like in our home bandbox. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Siani isn’t the sexiest prospect in the Cincinnati Reds system. With an arguably-limited offensive profile, the 21-year-old outfielder projects, in the words of Eric Longenhagen, as “a low-end regular in center field based on the quality of his defense.” In Longenhagen’s opinion, Siani will likely “end up hitting toward the bottom of a lineup” due to a lack of power.

Siani isn’t sold on the idea that he’ll continue to lack sufficient pop. At 6-foot-1 and 195 pounds, the No. 10 prospect in the Cincinnati system will never be a bona fide bopper — plus wheels will remain his calling card — but he’s also not about to sell himself short. Asked about his power potential, the oldest of three baseball-playing brothers pointed to his age, adding that his game is still developing. While striving to be a “consistent, gap-to-gap hitter” is his primary goal, settling for a low ceiling is by no means the plan.

Growing up, the plan was for Siani to attend public school in the Philadelphia area. Instead, he ended up matriculating from Ruben Amaro Jr.’s alma mater. Recruited in the seventh grade to play baseball, Siani spent his formative years at William Penn Charter School — founded in 1689 — before the Reds took him in the fourth round of the 2018 draft. Read the rest of this entry »

Framber Valdez was a revelation in 2020. After a forgettable debut in 2019, he threw 70.2 innings of pure excellence last season, the highest total on the team. His emergence buttressed a rotation that lost Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander from the last time we’d seen them. Even with Lance McCullers Jr. recovered, no Astros starter had a better projected ERA in 2021 than Valdez. Unfortunately, he fractured the ring finger on his pitching hand on Tuesday, and his availability this season is now in doubt after doctors recommended surgery.

The play where he hurt himself was nothing out of the ordinary:

The play where Framber Valdez fractured his left ring finger. pic.twitter.com/69wlrtNQaf

— Tony Adams (@adams_at) March 3, 2021

A comebacker, a reflexive stab, a quick grimace: you see it all the time. With Valdez awaiting further medical guidance, though, it’s worth both considering his rapid ascent and wondering what Houston will do to replace his innings in an already-shaky rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I woke up to a bit of a Chicago-area Twitter kerfuffle based on some things Cubs outfielder Ian Happ said on local sports radio about how RBIs are a skill and not based on luck. Let’s face it: When wins and RBIs are praised, somebody somewhere is going to get worked up about it.

Happ said these things on Dan Bernstein and Leila Rahimi’s morning show on 670 AM The Score, and based on the tweets, it sounded like an argument, which surprised me. Dan is a thoughtful guy who has been in fixture in Chicago sports radio since years began with a 1. Like most sports talk hosts, people love him or hate him, but he’s not your standard run-of-the-mill screamer. He’s smart about baseball, exceptionally clever, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

After hearing the conversation, it was clearly overblown on social media (as to be expected when Twitter is involved). The most intriguing part of the argument, though, was probably about the 2012 AL MVP voting. Happ insisted that Miguel Cabrera deserved his award based on winning the Triple Crown, with Rahimi agreeing with him; Bernstein went with Mike Trout, based on overall value. I’m with Dan. Cabrera and Trout were roughly equal players offensively, but the latter easily surpasses the former once you factor in defense and base running.

Still, this wasn’t a mud-slinging battle. Dan was respectful throughout the whole conversation, and Happ is a regular on the radio in Chicago. “You can talk wRC+ with [Happ], and he understands it,” said Bernstein. “I think more players understand these kind of numbers now that they know the correlation between the math and how they get paid. A lot of players are past statistics because they’re into so much more measurement now. They want to know about their Rapsodo data and exit velocities.”

The whole situation left me wondering about a couple things — some more serious — in terms of why anyone cares about how players see statistics. But on a more fun and silly level, I wondered if you could make a case where RBIs would matter.

Read the rest of this entry »

There is no video that I can find of the moment when, during Sunday’s inaugural spring training contest between the Phillies and the Tigers, the fans began to boo. One can imagine well enough what it might have sounded like, even in the absence of evidence: The bases were loaded, and the Phillies, despite using two pitchers who threw a combined 50 pitches, had failed to record a third out. In the interest of playing a complete game without anyone’s arm falling off, the inning was rolled, and the players left the field. And as they left, down came the boos.

What was the root of the booing? Phillies fans exercising their God-given right to boo their own players’ failures? Tigers fans, robbed of the opportunity to see a two-out grand slam in the very first inning of spring? I can’t imagine it was a wall of boos — not on the level of such concerted efforts as, say, when Rob Manfred presented the Commissioner’s Trophy last October, nor even comparable to the sound of a stadium of 22,000 on a pre-pandemic weeknight expressing their unhappiness at a throw to first. Fans, of course, can’t travel in the same way that they did last February, and the seats of the stadium in Lakeland can’t be packed, and there are reasons that one might think twice about loud, collective vocalizations in a public place. But, nonetheless, there they were, making their displeasure known.

The opening hours of last year’s spring training, too, made headlines for their booing. This was the first on-field appearance of the Astros after their cheating scandal broke during the offseason, and, while there were efforts underway to plan an Opening Day booing that would go down in the history books, every opportunity was taken to demonstrate to the Astros that even their pre-season efforts were not in the least appreciated. Read the rest of this entry »

Jackie Bradley Jr. may or may not be the best defensive centerfielder in the game. Metrics have never loved him quite as much as the eye test suggests they should — accordingly, he’s never been honored with a Fielding Bible award — but there are those who believe he’s without peer among his contemporaries. At worst, the soon-to-turn-31-year-old “JBJ” is on the short list of top defenders at his position.

Those talents will now be display in Milwaukee. According to The Boston Globe’s Julian McWilliams, Bradley, who ranked as the 18th best free agent this offseason per FanGraphs, has agreed to a two-year, $24 million deal with the Brewers that includes an opt-out after the first year, thus ending an eight-season tenure with the Red Sox that included a Gold Glove, an All-Star berth, and a World Series championship. Along the way, Bradley logged a cumulative 93 wRC+ that comprised both peaks and valleys. Notoriously streaky, the personable left-handed-hitter is anything but a sure bet to match last year’s 120 wRC+, .283/.364/.450 line, which came over 55 games.

The Brewers would likely consider it gravy if he did match that level of production. This acquisition was largely about making an already improved defense better — Kolten Wong at second base being another key acquisition — and it unquestionably will. Bradley will be joining an outfield alignment that includes not just Christian Yelich, but also Lorenzo Cain, who is back after opting out last season due to COVID concerns. Cain, who turns 35 next month, is a two-time Fielding Bible winner as a center fielder, and has rated well by the various defensive metrics both over his career and in 2019, when he posted a 7.0 UZR, 22 DRS, and 16.0 Outs Above Average, with BP’s FRAA of -1.6 the exception. Read the rest of this entry »

For the last three seasons, Willy Adames has been the Rays’ everyday shortstop, and he enters 2021 with that same job locked up. Tampa Bay continues to sport one of the most flexible rosters in baseball, but there’s no one on the 26-man roster currently who can handle shortstop regularly outside of him. On any other team, he could probably look forward to years of job security before he hits free agency in 2025. But on this team, Adames’ 2021 season is full of added pressure.

Adames made his major league debut in late May 2018; the month and a half he spent in the minors earned Tampa Bay an extra year of service time, which means he’ll go through his first round of salary arbitration after this season. Over his first three years in the majors, he’s been a player who’s above-average at many things but not good at any in particular, compiling a 106 wRC+ at the plate, oscillating between good and bad defensive seasons, and posting a total of 5.7 WAR. He’s a solid contributor to a team with championship aspirations. The problem is that he’s about to get a raise at exactly the wrong time.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite yearly preseason pieces is also my most dreaded: the breakout list. I’ve been doing this exercise since 2014, and while I’ve had the occasional triumph (hello, Christian Yelich), the low-probability nature of trying to project who will beat expectations means that every time you look smart, you’re also bound to look dumb for some other reason. Looking back at last season’s breakout list, there were a number of selections I was happy with once the season ended — Eloy Jiménez, Dinelson Lamet, Dansby Swanson, Dylan Bundy — but then I remember Mitch Keller’s walkalicious 2020 and Victor Robles dropping 27 points of wRC+ and my cringe-sense starts to tingle. Since I’m doing separate lists of hitters and pitchers this year, let’s waste no more time with the opening spiel. To the hitters!

Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Toronto Blue Jays

Perhaps not the gutsiest call, but it feels to me like people have soured way too much on Vladito. A 112 wRC+ won’t win any Silver Sluggers, but we have to remember he was just 21 last season. Let’s imagine that Guerrero Jr. wasn’t part of the imperial-Vlad bloodline and was just a guy in Triple-A in 2020 (in an alternate universe where the minor league season existed). If we translate Guerrero’s actual major league performance into a Triple-A Buffalo line, ZiPS estimates that he would’ve been hitting .288/.370/.526 as a 21-year-old in the International League. Would anyone be disappointed with this line? There would be cries of Free Vlad! echoing through the streets by June. I think players like Juan Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr. have spoiled us for normal awesome prospects.

While I don’t usually fall for the whole “best shape of his life” stories in spring, I think I’ve fallen for it this time. Guerrero was carrying a lot of weight for a 21-year-old; I weighed less at 21, and my main aerobic exercise was hauling cases of beer into my house. He dropped a lot of weight this winter, so I take this one more seriously than the usual stories, which involve a guy losing 10 pounds or having some secret abs that people gush about.

Read the rest of this entry »

On a day when the COVID-19 headlines in the U.S. ranged from very good to very bad, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Major League Baseball plans to delay the start of the Triple-A season by at least four weeks, and perhaps longer. Though it’s a bummer to at least some degree, the move — which does not affect MLB’s scheduled opening on April 1 — was anticipated within the industry. It addresses significant safety and economic concerns that come with operating the sport amid the ongoing pandemic, in part by reestablishing alternate training sites for each team to draw players from if and when roster moves are made.

The Triple-A season was scheduled to begin on April 6 — that’s for the Triple-A East teams (ugh on the generic league names), with Triple-A West teams starting on April 8 — but with the change, teams at that level are tentatively slated to open on May 4 (East) and May 6 (West), about the same time that Double-A and Single-A classifications open (the delay to their seasons was reported at Baseball America in January). The Triple-A schedule will be shortened from 142 games to 120, the planned length of the lower levels, with the season running until September 19 for East teams and September 21 for West teams.

MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations Morgan Sword said in a statement, “This is a prudent step to complete the Major League and Minor League seasons as safely as possible, and we look forward to having fans back in ballparks across the country very soon.” The league sent a memo notifying teams of the delay, and many minor league affiliates relayed the message to the public via their social media accounts. For example:

pic.twitter.com/msmCuIywIn

— SWB RailRiders (@swbrailriders) March 3, 2021

Read the rest of this entry »