Caleb Smith has been a pleasant surprise for the Miami Marlins since being acquired from the New York Yankees prior to the 2018 season. That’s not to say the NL East club didn’t recognize his potential upon making the deal, but at the same time, he wasn’t exactly prominent on prospect lists. A 14th-round pick in 2013 out of Sam Houston State University, Smith was — and still is — a southpaw with underwhelming velocity and solid but nothing-special secondary pitches.

His path from New York to Miami included brief stops in Milwaukee and Chicago. The Brewers took Smith in the December 2016 Rule-5 draft and promptly flipped him to the Cubs. The following spring he was returned to the organization he was no longer all that enamored with playing for. Following a stellar Triple-A season that included a big-league cameo, he was off to his new baseball home.

In two seasons with the Marlins, the 28-year-old hurler has made 44 starts and logged a 4.52 ERA over 230.2 inning. Featuring a high spin rate fastball that gets good arm-side run — a pitch he augments with a slider and a changeup (with a curveball soon to join the mix) — Smith has fanned 10 batters per nine innings since coming to Miami.

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David Laurila: You were drafted in 2013. What did scouts like about you at the time?

Caleb Smith: “They liked how I used my fastball and my changeup. I didn’t really have a breaking pitch — I didn’t have a curveball or a slider — but they liked the life on my fastball. I think that’s it. They didn’t really say anything else to me.”

Laurila: Were you asked to make any specific adjustments upon reaching pro ball?

Smith: “What the Yankees wanted was for me to pitch down in the zone. That was their focus, and it was always a problem for me, because I have a hard time doing that. My ball just naturally stays at the top of the zone. Eventually I got better at it — I was able to work down in the zone a little bit more — but not as effectively as they wanted me to. I knew I could get outs at the top of the zone, but they just weren’t into that at the time.”

Laurila: What hinders your ability to work down in the zone? Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, Rob Manfred and Tony Clark met in Arizona. On Wednesday, MLB made an offer to the MLBPA that would give players pro-rated salaries for 60 games and a $25 million postseason pool. It also included $33 million in salary relief from the $170 million in advances players received, and a universal designated hitter. In exchange, the owners would get expanded playoffs for the next two years, and the players would agree to waive any grievance the MLBPA might otherwise have brought against MLB for failing to make its best effort to schedule as many games as possible, as is required by the March agreement. The players have countered that proposal; the two sides, it would seem, are very close.

As first reported by Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers, the player proposal is for 70 games at pro-rated pay, with the same or similar salary advance forgiveness as the owners proposed, $50 million in playoff money, and a 50/50 split of new postseason TV revenues in 2021. The deal would include grievance waivers from both parties over the March 26 agreement, as well as the universal designated hitter.

The major differences the players propose are as follows:

• The regular season would end on September 30 instead of September 27.
• Ten extra regular season games, which would provide players with $252 million in additional pay, and, even using only local revenue, provide around $155 million in revenue to the owners.
• $25 million more in postseason pool money.
• Fifty percent of 2021 expanded playoff money, which could amount to $100 million or more for the players, though it would also mean corresponding increases for owners in 2020 and 2021, given that they stand to receive roughly 75% of those rights.

Read the rest of this entry »

In baseball terms, eight years ago doesn’t seem that long ago. Last season, the American League Cy Young winner was Justin Verlander. In 2012, the AL Cy Young winner was David Price, but it definitely should have been Justin Verlander. A number of the guys who were good eight years ago are still good today, and some of the most modern baseball advancements were already being implemented around the game. Some sentences, though, do a lot of work in telling you just how much time has passed. For example: “Hello, would you like to watch a live major league baseball game?” Remember when people said things like that? Ah, to be young again. Here’s another: Eight years ago, R.A. Dickey was the best player in baseball.

Don’t be alarmed if you don’t recall such a time, as it lasted only a brief while. But it surely did exist, for a month-long stretch that reached its height on June 18, 2012. Dickey was coming off four straight outings of no earned runs allowed in at least 7.1 innings, including two complete games. In his most recent start, he’d allowed just one hit while striking out 12 batters in nine innings against the Rays, giving him the best start of his career.

It took him five days to outdo it.

…

“He has been the story in baseball this year,” Keith Hernandez said of Dickey as the Mets’ home broadcast team hyped him up entering his June 18 start against the Orioles. They were hardly alone in their admiration. The day before, a lengthy profile of him authored by Tyler Kepner was published in The New York Times. A couple of days before that, he was covered by Shane Ryan at Grantland, and a couple of days before that, he was officially christened a Cy Young candidate by David Schoenfield at ESPN. A day after his start against the Orioles, Jay Jaffe — then of Sports Illustrated — would join the chorus of writers enthralled by Dickey, as would former FanGraphs editor Dave Cameron on this site. Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Mann has had a fascinating career. Drafted out of a Seattle-area high school by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2002, the now-36-year-old southpaw has played for six major league organizations, and he’s had multiple stints in both independent ball and NPB. His big-league experience consists of seven games with the Texas Rangers in 2018. With the Chiba Lotte Marines last year, Mann rejoined the Rangers this past offseason, only to be released on June 1.

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David Laurila: You’ve been in pro ball for nearly two decades, with almost none of that time spent in the majors. Why have you kept at it?

Brandon Mann: “I’ve asked myself that question a lot. Pretty much every year I go into the offseason thinking, ‘Man, this might have been my last one.’ But I’ve always had that desire. I know that I can pitch in the big leagues, so I’ve just never felt ready to walk away. Every time I’ve been released has kind of built up the ‘I’ve got to prove somebody wrong’ mentality that I have.

“Over the years I kept training harder and harder, and as I got older I actually started throwing harder. Meeting Driveline, and a lot of the right people, has been a big part of that. But it’s a great question, because I’ve contemplated it many, many times.”

Laurila: How much money have you made in baseball? Read the rest of this entry »

After a week of waffling that would make Belgium jealous, Rob Manfred threw a curveball yesterday:

Manfred statement… pic.twitter.com/Z2NgD95F9T

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) June 17, 2020

Of course, it couldn’t be that easy, and I don’t just mean avoiding mixed metaphors. The MLBPA agreed that new substantive discussions had occurred, but disagreed that an agreement was in place or that a final deal was imminent. We’ll have to wait for another offer from the players, and likely a final counter from the owners, though the fact that their latest proposal includes full prorated salaries — and please, let’s never use the phrase “full prorated” again, like ever — suggests that the two sides will reach a deal.

Lost in the tick-tock of the negotiation and Manfred’s wild swings towards dealmaking and obstructionism, however, baseball is changing shape. When (and if) the game returns this year, it will look different than it ever has before. I don’t mean the season length, though that will certainly be novel. There are two major changes to the game in the owners’ most recent proposal: a universal DH, which Jay Jaffe will cover in greater detail tomorrow, and an expanded 16-game playoff field in 2020 and 2021.

The length of the season, while not yet final, looks likely to fall between 60 and 70 games. There’s not much difference between those in terms of how “real” the season will feel — it’s going to feel short, and that’s fine. Nothing in 2020 has felt normal so far, and baseball is merely following the trend.

That’s not to say there’s no difference between 60 and 70 games. Each additional game nets players roughly $25 million in extra salary, which explains their steadfast desire for more baseball. Owners may or may not also profit from extra games, but do make the majority of their profit from the playoffs. To them, extra games are simply a lever to pull in negotiations with the players. For our viewing purposes, however, it will feel short and random. Dan Szymborski is sitting in the ZiPS situation room as we speak, projections at the ready, to fire off win total predictions and playoff odds as soon as the exact season structure is announced, but suffice it to say that 60 and 70 game seasons don’t produce significantly different outlooks. Read the rest of this entry »

With 2020’s amateur draft consisting of just five rounds, much of the strategy teams typically use related to shifting bonus pool money around was rendered moot. There were no high schoolers to woo with big bonuses after the 10th round, no saving money on a seventh rounder to sign a better first rounder. This served to decrease the incoming talent pool by quite a bit, with many good players going undrafted or unsigned, but it also makes an immediate analysis of the exercise a little bit easier.

With just 160 picks, we can evaluate a team’s decision to take a lesser player early in the draft in order to use the money saved on picks later and vice versa. With less scouting time and fewer looks, there might have been a bit more variation in terms of the quality of the players taken on draft day. Likewise, determining who might improve and surprise is trickier. As such, we shouldn’t consider this analysis ironclad. However, using Eric Longenhagen’s rankings and the selected players’ actual draft positions, we can compare how well each team did with their picks based on those rankings. To determine the value of each player and each pick, I’ll be using my draft pick valuation research from last year, which examined expected production from every draft slot. Read the rest of this entry »

With talks taking a contentious turn over the last week, as players asked owners to tell them “when and where” to play and Rob Manfred made public statements backing away from his earlier 100% guarantee of baseball in 2020, this season seemed very much in doubt. According to Jon Heyman, the players and owners have an agreement in principle that will give players pro-rated pay while providing expanded playoffs and a waiver of a potential player grievance for failing to live up to the March 26 agreement. Heyman was also the first to report that Rob Manfred and Tony Clark had an in-person meeting yesterday, as Manfred flew to Arizona in an attempt to restart talks.

As Heyman was reporting the deal, multiple reporters confirmed that MLB had made an offer, but indicated a deal had not yet been made. The MLBPA added this:

Reports of an agreement are false.

— MLBPA Communications (@MLBPA_News) June 17, 2020

Read the rest of this entry »

I was hoping the last round of polling would be our last, but here we are. Thanks again for your time. For consistency’s sake, all questions have remained the same since the end of March. Read the rest of this entry »

After taking the 2020 season to the brink of nonexistence on Monday, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred might actually be less popular than the coronavirus pandemic. Five days after “unequivocally” guaranteeing that there would be a season “one hundred percent,” even one of minimal length imposed under the terms of the owners’ March 26 agreement with the players union, he told ESPN he was “not confident” one would happen unless the players waive the right to file a grievance — contending MLB did not make its “best efforts to play as many games as possible” — that could potentially be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This latest round of inflammatory action follows in the immediate wake of a drastically shortened amateur draft, one that suggests that a proposed contraction of the minor leagues is closer to reality than ever, and all of this comes after a winter dominated by MLB’s investigations into the illegal sign-stealing of the Astros and Red Sox, whose punishments many consider too light — and oh, somewhere in there, Manfred fanned the flames by referring to the World Series trophy as “a piece of metal.”

Manfred’s actions over the past several months may have some pining for the charisma and warmth of Bud Selig — that guy really knew how to call off a season — but it’s important to remember that pleasing all of the people, all of the time isn’t and wasn’t the job of either commissioner, or of their predecessors. Manfred isn’t some mad genius twisting the game to his own nefarious ends, and while he’s supposed to act in the best interests of baseball, the reality is that he works for the owners, who pay his salary and have the power to hire and fire him. When he speaks for the owners, implicit in whatever tack he’s taking is that he’s got the backing of the three-quarters of them (23 out of 30) needed to govern.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, after rejecting Major League Baseball’s latest offer, the Major League Baseball Players Association agreed to abide by the threat MLB had floated at the beginning of the month and allow the commissioner to set the schedule. In response, MLB sent a letter to the MLBPA indicating it would not set a schedule unless the players agreed not to file a grievance over a shortened season. Before looking at why MLB might be taking this approach, let’s take a look at how we got here. It’s been almost a week since the first day of the amateur draft, when Rob Manfred spoke to Tom Verducci about the start of the season on MLB Network. Early in the interview, Verducci asked about the possibility of imposing a shorter schedule:

Tom Verducci: Obviously, you want an agreement. In the absence of an agreement, according to the March 26 agreement with the players the owners believe that you as commissioner can schedule a season that “uses the best efforts to play as many games as possible”. How close are you to that point, how many games are we talking about.

Rob Manfred: I remain committed to the idea that the best thing for our sport is to reach a negotiated agreement with the MLBPA that plays as many games as possible for our fans. We do have rights under the March 26 agreement and there could become a point in time where we’ll exercise those rights.

Manfred went on to say the two sides were “very, very close” on health and safety protocols. After he also indicated that finishing the season in November was not practical due to a potential second wave of the coronavirus and the difficulty of moving the playoffs around for television partners, Verducci got to the heart of the matter and asked whether there would be baseball this season.

Tom Verducci: Negotiations are complicated. Simple question for you. Can you guarantee we will have major league baseball in 2020?

Rob Manfred: We are going to play baseball in 2020. 100%. If it has to be under the March 26 agreement if we get to that point in the calendar, so be it, but one way or the other we are playing major league baseball.

Two days later, MLB provided the players with its “Final Counterproposal for 72 games,” along with a letter from deputy commissioner Dan Halem to union negotiator Bruce Meyer complaining that players were not entitled to pay to begin with and that MLB could have opted to not have negotiated a deal in March at all. The letter did not mention the owners’ fears of the players suing for full salaries in the event of a partial season, the elimination of the roughly $20 million in minimum postseason bonus pools, the relaxation of debt rules that might otherwise have opened up the CBA completely, or the $400 million in amateur signing bonuses that were deferred or eliminated. The March agreement was not an act of generosity, but rather a pact between two sophisticated parties trying to reach the best deal possible. And as Manfred noted, the March agreement gives the commissioner certain rights, including the right to set the schedule. Read the rest of this entry »