For the last half-decade, Anaheim (the city — the team is just the Los Angeles Angels these days) has been home to the best shortstop defense on the planet. That’s because in 2015 the Angels traded for Andrelton Simmons, the best defender in the game by UZR, DRS, OAA, the eye test, general acclaim, and common sense.

Simmons reached free agency after the 2020 season, and a reunion seemed unlikely after he opted out of the last week of the season. The team is trying its luck in the trade market again, though: last night, they acquired José Iglesias from the Orioles in exchange for two pitching prospects:

Orioles announce they have acquired RHP Jean Pinto and RHP Garrett Stallings from the Los Angeles Angels in exchange for INF José Iglesias.

— Dan Connolly (@danconnolly2016) December 3, 2020

Iglesias, too, is a brilliant defender at the position. He’s rangy and sure-handed, but his standout defensive attribute might be his strong, accurate arm. In fact, he graded out as the best defensive shortstop in the majors in 2020 per Statcast’s Outs Above Average. In fairness, he only played 24 games at the position due a strained left quad, which means the sample is even smaller than the already-small 2020 season would normally entail, but still: best in baseball! Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Gentile’s big-league career was filled with peaks and valleys. Short in duration — seven full seasons preceded by two cups of coffee — it was bookended by a lack of opportunity. In between, Gentile was a beast with the bat. From 1960-1964, the slugging first baseman logged a 139 wRC+ and made three All-Star teams. His 1961 campaign was Brobdingnagian. Playing for the Baltimore Orioles, “Diamond Jim” slashed .302/.423/.646 with 46 home runs and 141 RBIs — the last of those numbers being noteworthy for more reasons that one. Five decades later, it made his bank account just a little bit bigger.

Gentile — now 86 years young — reminisced about his bygone career over the phone earlier this summer.

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David Laurila: You were signed out of (a San Francisco) high school by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952. What was that experience like for you?

Jim Gentile: “Well, we didn’t have a draft. Once you graduated, you hoped your phone rang. I knew I was going to get signed, it was just a matter of with who. I talked to the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Phillies, and then the Dodgers scout came over last. We had dinner with him at the house, and we liked their offer. I signed for a bonus of $30,000 with a Double-A contract. Once I got a big-league contract, I got $7,500 more.

“This was in June of ’52 and they said, ‘Let’s wait until ’53; then you can go out to spring training.’ So I was home, and around August they called and said that one of the pitchers in Santa Barbara — that was the California State League, Class C — had gotten hurt. Would I like to go down there and see what professional baseball was like?

“I walked into the clubhouse, and [manager] George Scherger met me. We talked, then he handed me a baseball and said, ‘You’re pitching tonight.’ [San Jose] had just signed two guys for $80,000, and Marty Keough for $125,000. They were all my age, but starting out in Class C. I pitched against them. I had a no-hitter for seven innings, then they beat me in the eighth inning, The score was 3-2.”

Laurila: So your first professional game went pretty well…

Gentile: “Yes, but after that it was ‘Get the married men off the infield,’ because they started hitting me all over the place. I won two and lost six. The two I won, I won with my own home runs, so when ’53 came around they asked if I wanted to pitch or play first. I said, ‘I really like to hit, so let’s try first base.’ They put me at first, and that’s where I stayed. Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday was the deadline for teams to offer contracts to their arbitration-eligible players, and the expectation going into the night was that plenty of players would be added to the free-agent pool. As Eric Longenhagen noted, non-tenders have been on the rise over the last few years, and 2019 gave us the busiest deadline in recent memory, as we saw players coming off injuries, quality second basemen, and sluggers with other deficiencies all get cut — 53 in total.

This year was even busier, as close to 60 players lost their roster spots. With the moves now official, here are a handful of takeaways from the deadline and what they mean for the coming winter. (For a full list of non-tenders, Roster Resource has you covered.)

Pre-Tenders Were a Big Deal for Small Deals

Sometimes the threat of a non-tender is enough to strike a favorable deal with players. There were a huge number of one-year deals agreed to, including some fairly recognizable names. Matt Olson, Eduardo Rodriguez, José Berríos, Byron Buxton, Hunter Dozier, Jorge Soler, Johan Camargo, Jesús Aguilar, Omar Narváez, Steven Matz, and Alex Dickerson all agreed to one-year deals, likely below what they would have received in arbitration.

The fear of becoming a free agent in a pandemic winter likely played a big part in that. While free agency is generally a good thing, more players in the pool means more minor league deals and fewer major league guarantees for players on the fringes of the roster. By signing now and receiving a guaranteed deal, players also head into spring training without the risk of being cut and making considerably less money.

The Biggest Names Stayed Put

Ahead of the deadline, both Eric and our readers made their predictions on which players might get the axe, with some relatively big names potentially on the chopping block. But among the stars who might have been non-tendered, not much happened. Gary Sánchez received a contract from the Yankees, as Kris Bryant did from the Cubs. Tommy Pham looks like he’ll return to San Diego for another season. These weren’t exactly surprises, but after a shortened season and with teams scaling back payroll, big changes were still a reasonable possibility — if not via a non-tender, then as a potential trade. Some of these players — Bryant in particular — will resurface in trade rumors down the road, but for now, they’re staying put.

Sluggers Get Non-Tendered

The biggest name jettisoned was Kyle Schwarber, whose tenure in Chicago comes to an end after six seasons. The former postseason and World Series hero was still productive just a year ago, but his 2020 was a mess, as he struck out too much, hit way too many groundballs, and put up a 90 wRC+, though he was closer to average against right-handers. Though he’ll be just 28 years old next season and looks to be a big bounce-back candidate if he can find a nice platoon, the Cubs decided his $8 million salary would be better spent elsewhere. Given that they also jettisoned Albert Almora Jr., their outfield should look a little different in 2021.

Schwarber and Almora aren’t alone among hitters looking for a new home. Eddie Rosario and Hunter Renfroe were put on waivers and went unclaimed. Maikel Franco was not offered a deal by Royals. Adam Duvall, Danny Santana, Nomar Mazara, José Martínez, and Travis Shaw will all hit free agency, too. One of the more interesting players to be let go is David Dahl, who struggled in Colorado and battled injuries but was once a top prospect.

There wasn’t a crowded crop of corner outfielder-types on the market, with Marcell Ozuna in the top tier and Joc Pederson occupying the step below. But the likes of Rosario, Renfroe, Duvall, Dahl and Mazara will join the Robbie Grossman/Adam Eaton/Yasiel Puig tier that suddenly has a lot more available players.

Add a Few More Available Relievers

The veteran relief group was already pretty deep, and it got deeper on Wednesday. Archie Bradley was good last year and in 2019, and he might be the second-best reliever now on the market. The rest of the relievers now available don’t have Bradley’s upside, but Hansel Robles, Keynan Middleton, Ryne Stanek, Matt Wisler, A.J. Cole, Alex Claudio, John Brebbia, Chasen Shreve, Jonathan Holder, and Justin Anderson are all capable arms for bullpens in need. In the semi-intriguing starter/maybe reliever category, Trevor Williams, Tyler Anderson, and Carlos Rodón weren’t tendered contracts, either.

This Was As Bad As it Was Expected to Be

While the non-tender deadline is generally more of a minor date in the offseason calendar, it was a much bigger deal this season. With a greater number of players expected to become available, teams have, for the most part, opted to wait on signing free agents to see who got let go. With the pool of available players now larger, we will see if teams choose to wait out the available options to get even more favorable terms in free agency. We also saw a large number of arbitration-eligible players agree to deals before the deadline to avoid the possibility of being non-tendered. The uncertainty surrounding how arbitration will play out after a shortened season also likely played a role in the increase of these deals.

The starting pitching market in free agency appears to be moving rather quickly, and the Mets’ signing of Trevor May could get the reliever market moving too. But the non-tender deadline was a snap back to the reality of the long, cold winter players face ahead.

Mets fans have waited a long time to be as optimistic about an offseason as they are this winter. After decades in which conservative spending was only part of the self-destructive tactics the Wilpons inflicted upon the franchise, new owner Steve Cohen has stated plainly he bought the team with the purpose of buying up talent and transforming the team into something “iconic.” With no shortage of star players available both in free agency and via trade, Mets fans can let their imaginations run wild imagining what the roster could look like in 2021 and beyond.

Before this week, though, the Mets had yet to make a major move of any kind. That finally changed Tuesday, when they signed former Twins reliever Trevor May to a two-year deal. SNY.tv’s Andy Martino was the first to report a completed deal, while MLB Network’s Jon Heyman was first on the terms.

Mets have signed Trevor May, per source. Deal is pending physical. @AnthonyDiComo first mentioned talks.

— Andy Martino (@martinonyc) December 1, 2020

Trevor May’s 2-year deal with the Mets is for about $15M

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 1, 2020

May ranked 21st on Craig Edwards’ Top 50 Free Agents list at the beginning of the winter, the second reliever listed behind ex-A’s closer Liam Hendriks, and ahead of big names such as Brad Hand, Blake Treinen and Kirby Yates. That might seem like an aggressive ranking considering his age, injury history, and production. At 31, it isn’t as though May is hitting the market as a young man. He has a Tommy John surgery in his past, which cost him the 2017 season and a good portion of ’18. Since his return from that injury, he’s posted a 3.19 ERA, 3.56 FIP and 1.8 WAR in 113 games. Those are perfectly solid numbers, but not what you would call elite.

But as Edwards notes, the ranking isn’t so much a reflection of May’s past as it is the potential teams see in him. That sounds strange to say about an over-30 pitcher with a surgically rebuilt elbow, but it does apply here. When May broke into the majors in 2014, his average fastball velocity sat around 92.6 mph. When he returned from Tommy John surgery in ’18, he was at 94. Then he jumped up to 95.5 in ’19 and 96.3 last season. He’s also increased the spin rate on his fastball in each of the past two years. May’s stuff just keeps getting better despite him being 12 years into his professional career.

May aims high with that fastball to make it even tougher to catch up with. Of the 233 fastballs he threw in 2020, nearly 70% were in the top third of the strike zone or higher:

Opponents swung and missed on 46.9% of the cuts they took at May’s fastball in 2020, a rate usually reserved for a good breaking ball; the league as a whole ran a whiff rate of 22.6% against four-seamers. He also generated whiff rates of 34.4% against his slider — a pitch with hard vertical drop that May says has more in common with his old curveball than the slider he had when he first broke into the majors — and 38.7% against his changeup, which was actually his most difficult-to-hit pitch inside the strike zone last season.

Put all of that together, and May had the eighth-highest whiff rate in all of baseball last year. His strikeout percentage of 39.6% ranked ninth among pitchers with 20 innings thrown. He’s one of the game’s very best strikeout arms, so why aren’t his run prevention numbers proportionately strong? Part of it is some bad luck. He had a HR/FB rate of 21.7% in 2020 — tied for 16th-highest among all qualified relievers — and also allowed a career-high fly-ball rate, leading to an icky HR/9 rate of 1.93. You’d prefer May allow fewer flies, but that’s not likely to trend down much given the way he pitches. Instead, you have to hope that such an outsized number of those fly balls stop leaving the yard. If that were the case in 2020, his 3.62 FIP would have been closer to his 2.74 xFIP, and his case as a top free-agent reliever wouldn’t be the slightest bit controversial.

With a $7.5 million AAV over two years, May’s contract beat both Edwards’ prediction and the crowdsource on this site, as well as the figure over at MLB Trade Rumors. He did it by a relatively small amount, but it is a continuation of a trend that provides reason for cautious optimism: Of the free agents ranked at each site (not counting qualifying offer guys), Edwards was under on two and exactly right with one of the free agents he listed; MLBTR has been under on all five of their signees. It’s still early, the predictions haven’t missed badly, and all of the big money players are still out there. But it’s good to see players signing for more money than analysts and fans alike thought they would receive then for less.

May’s signing is particularly reassuring when it comes to the reliever market. Again, this is one top reliever getting signed by a new owner who wants to be ambitious with his money. But when Hand and his $10 million option were spurned in November by not only penny-pinching Cleveland but also every other team, it cast a shadow over what top-tier relief talent may be worth on the market, as well as the market the dozens of merely good relievers may be subject to. If May can get a multi-year deal and a $7.5 million AAV, that should bode well for Hendriks and Hand at the top of the ladder, as well as players like Shane Greene and Jake McGee lingering a couple of rungs below them.

It is also good news for the Mets, who were in need of another good power arm to pair with Edwin Diaz at the back of the bullpen. Diaz was his old self in 2020, striking out nearly two batters an inning and keeping homers in check en route to a 1.75 ERA and 2.18 FIP. But the arms who were in line to throw ahead of him in next year are less imposing. Dellin Betances didn’t look right last season coming off an Achilles injury, and pitchers like Chasen Shreve and Miguel Castro are interesting but probably shouldn’t be the second-best arms in a contender’s bullpen. When spring arrives, May’s assignment will be to tide Mets fans over until the bigger star arrives. Come to think of it, that might be his job right now.

Sabermetrics has had all kinds of effects on the baseball world. One of the big ones, for me at least, is that it’s changed the way I listen to announcers almost completely. When I was younger, they were my only gateway to understanding the game, so I treated every pearl of analyst wisdom like a fundamental truth of the game.

That’s simply not the case anymore. Obviously so, in my case: It would be pretty embarrassing for me if I wrote about baseball five days a week for years and still used announcers as my only source of knowledge. Even before I was a writer, however, I was a consumer of baseball writing and analysis, and the sheer deluge of data and thinking has long weaned me from needing to get my learning exclusively in the form of pronouncements from on high.

One thing that gets missed in the rush to overthrow the old order and install new quantifiable gods and goddesses of baseball truth, though, is that a lot of the things announcers taught me when I was a kid are true! It really is important to hit the cutoff man, and some fastballs do really look like they’re rising as they cross the plate. I’ve been looking into another such piece of received wisdom recently, and it’s absolutely real: lefty batters struggle to hit pitches on the low and away corner.

You know the pitch I’m talking about, because you can picture Cody Bellinger taking a defensive swing in your mind’s eye:

Or Juan Soto taking a borderline pitch and grimacing or shuffling appropriately:

Instinctively, I was sure that this was true, but I couldn’t exactly explain why. What is it about lefties that makes their swing look awkward in that location? I simply couldn’t tell you, and so I began to doubt myself. Is it really an unhittable spot, or was I falling victim to the same old thing from my youth, over-relying on something I’d been told without proving it myself? Read the rest of this entry »

In recent days, the NC Dinos have asked the KBO to post outfielder Sung-bum Na 나성범. Once MLB and the KBO make the posting official, big-league clubs will have 30 days to sign the 31-year-old outfielder. Na’s posting isn’t official quite yet — neither is Ha-seong Kim 김하성’s — but should be after the Dinos send MLB additional medical information.

Na has had a decorated career in South Korea. He’s a six-time All-Star, two-time Gold Glove winner, and annual MVP candidate. He’s won Gold in the Asian Games and starred on this season’s Korean Series winner. A .317/.384/.542 career hitter, he’s notched a 150 wRC+ in two of his last three full seasons, and probably would have made it three out of four had he not blown out his knee in May of 2019.

That injury is the main reason you’re reading this article now instead of a year ago: Na has long dreamed of playing in the majors, and he’d originally planned to test MLB waters following the 2019 season. At the time of the injury, he was loosely considered a five-tool player. He’d already shifted from center to right field at that point, but he was good there on the strength of above average speed and a strong arm. He wasn’t quite the same guy in the field last season, as he played more DH than right, and only attempted four steals. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Bobby Abreu could do just about everything. A five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, and enough power to win a Home Run Derby, he was also one of the game’s most patient, disciplined hitters, able to wear down a pitcher and unafraid to hit with two strikes. While routinely reaching the traditional seasonal plateaus that tend to get noticed — a .300 batting average (six times), 20 homers (nine times), 30 steals (six times), 100 runs scored and batted in (eight times apiece) — he was nonetheless a stathead favorite for his ability to take a walk (100 or more eight years in a row) and his high on-base percentages (.400 or better eight times). And he was durable, playing 151 games or more in 13 straight seasons. “To me, Bobby’s Tony Gwynn with power,” said Phillies hitting coach Hal McRae in 1999.

“Bobby was way ahead of his time [with] regards to working pitchers,” said his former manager Larry Bowa when presenting him for induction into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2019. “In an era when guys were swinging for the fences, Bobby never strayed from his game. Because of his speed, a walk would turn into a double. He was cool under pressure, and always in control of his at-bats. He was the best combination of power, speed, and patience at the plate.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the final 2019 standings, fourth-place teams in their respective divisions finished an average of 30 games behind the first-place team. In 2018, that number was about 22, and in 2017, it was about 25. The distance between your average fourth-place team and their division’s first-place team fluctuates a bit year-to-year depending upon how super that season’s super-teams are, but it’s never close. The worse team will sneak in a few victories against the superior team over the course of 18 or so matchups throughout the season, but the two really aren’t supposed to be on the same level. One of these teams has a good chance of hosting a playoff series, and the other is having trouble selling tickets in September.

Our preseason playoff projections tend to reflect that space. Before the season was postponed and the schedule still ran 162 games, our projected fourth-place finishers in four of the six divisions were given a 1% chance or less at finishing first. The Phillies, the presumed fourth-place finishers in the NL East, were given less than a 5% chance of winning their division. Then there was the NL Central, where the Cardinals were pegged for fourth but given a 17% chance to finish on top, with a projected record that was within four games of the first-place Cubs. That would have been the tightest grouping of the top four teams in any division since the AL East in 1988.

When the new 60-game season was done, just five games wound up separating the top four teams in the NL Central, and from the looks of our Depth Charts projections, the race figures to be incredibly tight again in 2021. While the Pirates lag far behind the pack, the top four teams in the division stand incredibly close in talent level.

Read the rest of this entry »

Watch any amount of baseball these days, and you’ll see a familiar pattern: a catcher giving a pitcher a high target for his fastball. This is hardly a secret; it’s so obvious, in fact, that I don’t really know how to make a good introduction out of it. Did you know that pitchers throw four-seam fastballs high in the zone? You did! I don’t need to tell you that. But this article is about four-seam fastballs, so the paragraph feels necessary.

Anyway: Four-seamers work better when they’re thrown up in the zone. That’s not some silly contextual thing, or even really up for debate. It’s just how the pitch works. The backspin on the pitch means that hitters generally make contact under the center of the ball. Given that the normal launch angle for a ball up in the zone is already high, hitting under a high pitch means pop-ups and lazy fly balls. It also means whiffs.

Don’t believe me? I mean, first of all, just watch some baseball. The pitch that dots the top of the strike zone makes hitters look foolish with great frequency. You can also take a look at this table, which divides the strike zone into vertical thirds and looks at only four-seam fastballs:

Fastballs in the upper third of the strike zone are the best of both worlds. Batters miss them more frequently than the other two sections, and even when they make contact, they’re not doing so with authority. Fail to find the top of the zone, and things get worse. Fastballs that wind up in the middle third of the plate still miss bats at an acceptable clip, but if the hitter connects, you might be in for a bad time.
Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a pitch learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA.

Lacking the longevity of Mariano Rivera or Trevor Hoffman, Wagner never set any saves records or even led his league once, and his innings total is well below those of every enshrined reliever. Hoffman’s status as the former all-time saves leader helped him get elected in 2018, but Wagner, who created similar value in his career, has major hurdles to surmount. There are, though, fewer hurdles than before: In his fifth year on the ballot, his share of the vote nearly doubled, from 16.7% to 31.7%, the third-largest gain among returning candidates. His advantages over Hoffman — and virtually every other reliever in history when it comes to rate stats — provide a compelling reason to study his career more closely. Given how far he’s come, who wants to bet against Billy Wags?

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