This is the latest installment of a daily series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Yesterday, the United States overtook China and Italy in terms of the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, becoming the world leader. While there are over 82,000 confirmed cases, the true number of infections in the U.S. continues to be underreported due to testing deficiencies. As the U.S. domestic situation continues to worsen, things are seemingly under better control in parts of Asia. A locally transmitted infection was reported for the first time in three days in China, and the country’s government has decided to bar the entry of foreign citizens in a continued effort to combat the spread of the virus. It highlights a stark difference in the response to this crisis by the two countries.

A Deal Is Reached Between MLB and the Players Association

With much of the baseball world watching the classic games included as part of the Opening Day at Home festivities, MLB and the MLBPA continued negotiations over what to do in the event of a cancelled season, with a deal reportedly reached in the afternoon:

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have a deal, sources tell ESPN. The players have voted on it already. MLB owners are expected to ratify it tomorrow. An excellent sign that draws a path forward as baseball tries to figure out when it will return.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 27, 2020

Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association have spent the past few weeks working through a long list of issues brought about by the coronavirus pandemic-driven delay to the 2020 regular season. On Thursday night — on what would have been Opening Day — the two sides announced a deal that settles several key questions that have hung in the balance since MLB postponed the start of the season. In general, the deal gives the league a great deal of flexibility in its attempt to salvage as much of the season as is feasible, and protects the players against the possibility that the season could be canceled entirely by addressing the thorny question of service time. However, it not only sells out amateur players with regards to this year’s draft and international signing period, it does so in ways that hint at more permanent and controversial changes sought by the league, such as a contraction of the minors and the institution of an international draft.

Despite the often-contentious relationship between the union and the league in drawing up the battle lines related to the next Collective Bargaining Agreement (the current one expires following the 2021 season), this deal represents an effort by both sides to avoid prolonged public bickering over billions of dollars in the face of an international crisis. Each side made key compromises that will leave some parties unhappy. The union voted to accept the deal on Thursday, and the owners ratified it via a conference call on Friday. With the ratification, a roster freeze is now in effect, barring teams from signing free agents and making trades, waiver moves, minor league assignments, et cetera, until both sides agree such transactions can resume. Towards that end, on Thursday dozens of players were optioned to the minors.

Per the deal, whose details were first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan and additionally fleshed out by the Associated Press, The Athletic, and the New York Post, MLB will advance the players $170 million in salary for April and May. At this point, it’s a virtual certainty that no games will be played during those months so long as the league adheres to the Center for Disease Control’s guidelines, which called for the cancellation or postponement of events consisting of 50 or more people through at least May 10. That best-case scenario, which may be a pipe dream given that the U.S. has now overtaken China in terms of the most confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections and is on an ominous trajectory as far as its further spread, would allow for a three-week resumption of spring training and the start of the season in June. Read the rest of this entry »

Tim Hyers has emerged as one of the game’s most respected hitting coaches. His resume speaks for itself. As Boston’s minor league hitting coordinator from 2013-2015, Hyers helped hone the skills of players like Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Rafael Devers. He then moved on to Los Angeles, where he was the assistant hitting coach for division-winning Dodgers teams in 2016 and 2017. Since returning to the Red Sox as their hitting coach prior to the 2018 season, the 48-year-old Georgia native has seen the club score the second-most runs in baseball. Moreover, he’s played a key role in the emergence of Betts, Bogaerts, and Devers as bona fide offensive machines.

Hyers discussed his hitting philosophies, and the strides made by multiple Red Sox hitters, late in the 2019 season.

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David Laurila: Is there such a thing as a Red Sox hitting philosophy?

Tim Hyers: “Yes. I think all hitters are different. I really do. That said, the Red Sox hitting philosophy is pitch selection, game planning, and mechanics. If we don’t dominate the strike zone, if we don’t have a good plan, if we don’t have solid mechanics — then we’re going to run into trouble. Every at-bat, those three things come into play.”

Laurila: The Red Sox probably aren’t different from most teams in that respect…

Hyers: “No. Teams are pretty similar. But when you’re talking about those basics, how do you peel back the layers? What is getting to the player? How is the player consuming the information? How is he buying into the importance of those three things?

“The mechanical realm is probably the one that can go in many different directions, depending on what organization you talk to, or what hitter you talk to. I really believe every hitter is different, but they also do similar things. How they go about them is what’s different.”

Laurila: You were in the organization [from 2013-2015], then came back [in November 2017]. Is the mechanical realm approached differently now than it was in your first go-round? Read the rest of this entry »

Good news, everyone! Our crowd-managed Brewers have started the season. Not well! Not well at all! But they’ve started the season. Game 1 was an absolute blowout; the Cubs put up 14 on the Brewers, including five runs against Josh Hader (on three walks, a hit by pitch, and a grand slam by Javy Báez). Our batters weren’t up to the task, scoring only three runs. Yu Darvish went eight innings and struck out 10 Brewers.

One game isn’t enough to say anything about this team, but it was an ugly one. Christian Yelich, Justin Smoak, and Avisaíl García all went hitless, and the team didn’t put enough pressure on Darvish to even make any interesting baserunning decisions. The pitching staff walked 10 and hit three while striking out only four Cubs, a desultory performance to match the offense’s slow start.

But it’s just one game. It’s time to start thinking about the rest of the season. First, let’s review the decisions we made last time. We had a few management sliders to move. You voted for aggressive baserunning, frequent infield shifts, and quick pitching hooks. The only place where there was a confusing result was on pinch hitting, where slightly aggressive pinch hitting was first, slightly conservative pinch hitting was a narrow second, and neutral tendencies came in third. I decided to resolve this by leaving pinch hitting pretty much middle of the road. Read the rest of this entry »

Among the many significant repercussions of yesterday’s agreement between the MLBPA and MLB in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic were alterations to the amateur talent acquisition processes, changes that will have both immediate and long-term effects on all stakeholders (owners, players, people in scouting, agents, college coaches and staff, international trainers, etc.) in that arena. Last night, after the details of the agreement were reported by Jeff Passan of ESPN and Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic, I spoke with several of those stakeholders for their immediate thoughts and reactions.

The splashy news, and the detail of yesterday’s agreement that will impact team personnel and the player population soonest, is the soft rescheduling of the 2020 draft — the specific date will be determined by MLB, but it will occur by “late-July” — and the straight razor shave it was given by the owners and player’s union, cutting the 2020 draft to five rounds with the option to trim the 2021 draft to 20 rounds, down from the usual 40. MLB can choose to add rounds to the draft if they wish, and a few people in scouting told me they thought it was a real possibility that MLB will, though there’s no clear financial incentive for them to do so.

MLB can also delay the start of the 2020-2021 international signing period, which typically begins on July 2, to as late as January 2021, and can also push the following period by six months so that it spans the 2022 calendar.

While these developments raise some obvious other questions (such as if and where 35 rounds worth of players end up playing baseball again), the two most significant conclusions drawn by many of my sources in baseball were that the trimming of the draft is a convenient opportunity for MLB to shed rostered players in advance of minor league contraction, and that the new flexible start date for the IFA period is another precursor to an international draft.

The seemingly imminent affiliate contractions means teams will soon need fewer minor leaguers, and cost-conscious MLB, ever seeking to save money where it can, is taking what industry people consider a shrewd and opportunistic approach to the culling of minor league rosters at a time when there’s a convenient pseudo-reason to do it now that their 2020 revenues have been dashed by a pandemic. Why draft and sign 40 rounds worth of players who may not play this summer because of a global health crisis when many will be released next spring after a significant portion of the minor leagues is contracted? Read the rest of this entry »

A pitcher’s swinging strike rate is one of the better measures of how well they are performing. It correlates well to their overall strikeout rate, and is one of the three gold standards I use (along with other methods) to evaluate a pitcher as a whole, in conjunction with O-Swing% (how often a hitter chases) and Z-Contact% (how little hitters make contact with pitches in the zone).

SwStr% can be used to inspect the effectiveness of either an entire arsenal or an individual pitch, and is a strong indicator of how good a pitcher’s “stuff” is. As such, an increased SwStr% is a desirable outcome for a pitcher. Obviously, some pitching styles don’t lend themselves to missing bats, and instead are good for timing disruption and/or weak contact.

One pitcher who fits the mold of a bat-misser is the young lefty prospect from the Oakland Athletics, Jesus Luzardo.

With a minuscule sample of just six games in 2019, amounting to 12 innings pitched, Luzardo had a strikeout rate of 34% (versus a 6.5% walk rate), and held hitters to a .119 batting average with an 0.67 WHIP while posting a 2.36 FIP (1.50 ERA). Luzardo was pretty good during the American League Wild Card game as well. Back in October against the Tampa Bay Rays, he pitched three innings, allowing one hit and two walks while striking out four. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a daily series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

On what was supposed to the Opening Day of the Major League Baseball regular season, fields will remain empty across the United States in an effort to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Death totals continued to climb worldwide Wednesday, with CNN reporting over 21,000 global fatalities from the virus as that number passed 1,000 for the first time in the United States. Exact numbers remain elusive as testing continues to expand. Last night, the U.S. Senate approved a $2.2 trillion stimulus package in response to the economic fallout.

The deepest cultural impact of the virus in the baseball world will be felt by players and fans today, when the 2020 season was supposed to have gotten underway. Questions remain on how a potential season could look and few exact answers are available.

ESPN Asked Rob Manfred: When Does He See Baseball Returning?

Rob Manfred, asked on ESPN what he _hopes_ could happen from here: “My optimistic outlook is that at some point in May we’ll be gearing back up. We’ll have to make a determination depending on what the precise date is as to how much of a preparation period we need."

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) March 26, 2020

While no one will guarantee an official end date for the countermeasures to the coronavirus (quite reasonably!), the commissioner took his best shot while talking with ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt late Wednesday night, saying his most “optimistic outlook” was that the sport could be back by May, though a 162-game season is likely out of the question. Manfred stated that “nothing’s off the table” as far as a solution, indicating that he will get to do his favorite thing in the days to come: tinker with the sport in order to determine a solution. Read the rest of this entry »

There should be baseball today, only there isn’t. Baseball has given way to more important concerns – health, safety, social distance – but its relative triviality doesn’t mean we aren’t feeling its absence. MLB is endeavoring to fill the gap with a day-long marathon of Opening Days and meaningful games past; Ben Clemens wrote a handy viewing guide for Opening Day At Home, allowing you to choose your own adventure. But it isn’t the same. As I was reflecting on what we lose without live baseball, I wondered if part of what moves us about Opening Day isn’t just the promise of the new and its attendant optimism, but also the memories we spirit in with us. Opening Day’s form and place on the calendar has changed as baseball has changed, but it has been home to some special games, and a good many special days spent with friends and family. Here are a few of the FanGraphs staff’s favorites. – Meg Rowley

March 31, 1998: Philadelphia Phillies at New York Mets
Despite 25 years of living in New York City and 22 as part of a Yankees partial season ticket plan, I can only remember attending a few Opening Days, all of them at Shea Stadium. It’s the first one that stands out. Before I was a baseball writer, or even a moonlighting blogger, I was a graphic designer, most notably at a company called Bill Smith Studio that specialized in textbooks and children’s books. Circa fall 1997, I was just another freelancer passing through, at least until the studio’s top project manager discovered I was a baseball fan. Soon Lillie, a Brooklyn-born Mets die-hard who annually purchased a four-seat partial season ticket plan through her one-woman corporation (she was an independent contractor) began inviting me to the occasional game. Suddenly, I also got placement on the studio’s more favorable projects, and quickly accepted an offer to join the staff.

Rightly, Lillie treated Opening Day as a holiday, and splurged for extra tickets, encouraging her guests to bring a friend or significant other. There may have been eight or 10 of us in tow at Shea Stadium for the 1998 opener, including one of my closest pals. On an unseasonably warm 82 degree afternoon, the Phillies’ Curt Schilling and the Mets’ Bobby Jones traded zeroes, with each team stranding several runners in scoring position. In the fifth, the Mets had first and second and one out, but Desi Relaford hit into a 4-6-5-6 double play in which Bobby Abreu (making his Phillies’ debut) was thrown out between second and third after the force play at second. In both the sixth and eighth innings, Philadelphia’s Rico Brogna made the third out, stranding a runner in scoring position. Schilling held the Mets to two hits and one walk while striking out nine over eight innings, while Jones worked around six baserunners in his six scoreless frames. Chants of “Yankees suck!” and boos for both mayor Rudy Giuliani and ex-Met Gregg Jeffries resonated, as they generally do in Queens. Read the rest of this entry »

No pitcher took it in the JAWS quite as hard as position players Ernie Lombardi and Josh Donaldson did via Baseball-Reference’s latest update to its version of WAR, which I’ve spent the better part of the past two weeks unpacking — at least when I wasn’t stocking my freezer and my pantry while reading the grim COVID-19 news. B-Ref’s latest influx of data resulted in alterations to five different areas of the metric that affected players as far back as 1904 and as recently as last season. Lombardi, a Hall of Fame catcher, lost a whopping 7.3 WAR due to the introduction of detailed play-by-play baserunning and caught stealing data from the 1930s and ’40s, while Donaldson lost 3.8 WAR due to a change in the way Defensive Runs Saved is calculated. By comparison, the largest swing for a pitcher, either positive or negative, was the 2.2 WAR gained by Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson.

B-Ref’s version of WAR is different from that of FanGraphs, particularly when it comes to pitching; it’s based on actual runs allowed, with adjustments for the qualify of the offenses faced and the defenses behind it, where the FanGraphs version is driven by the Fielding Independent Pitching categories as well as infield flies. As bWAR is the currency for JAWS, it’s of particular interest to me, even at a time when the Hall itself is closed due to the pandemic. I’ve grazed by the pitchers in my two recent updates, mentioning a few tidbits here and there while trying to avoid a typical Jaffe-length 3,000 word epic, but in this installment I’ll take a closer look at the those most affected. To review, here are the five areas where B-Ref’s WAR update has incorporated new (or recently unearthed) data, ordered for chronological effect:

• New Retrosheet Game Logs (1904-07)
• Caught Stealing Totals from Game Logs (1926-40)
• Baserunning and Double Plays from play-by-play data (1931-47)
• Defensive Runs Saved changes (2013-19)
• Park factor changes (2018)

So the big thing for history buffs, as the site itself noted last month, is the addition of four years worth of box scores that account for every game of the careers of Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson. The latter’s major league debut, on August 2, 1907, happened to be against Cobb’s Tigers. B-Ref’s play-by-play data doesn’t go back quite so far (the earliest boundary is now 1918, though it’s incomplete), so it’s not apparent via the aforementioned link, but it turns out that the first hit Johnson surrendered was to Cobb, who was batting cleanup that day. It was one of six hits Detroit rapped out in the Big Train’s eight innings. Cobb, just 20 years old but en route to his first of 11 batting titles, came away quite impressed. In the aftermath of the game, he said, “We couldn’t touch him … every one of us knew we’d met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.” Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last several decades, revenues for Major League Baseball have soared, nearing $11 billion last season. The league’s unprecedented prosperity has turned MLB franchises into cash cows in ways not seen in prior generations. It will likely take some time to gauge the extent of the revenue teams will lose due to COVID-19-related delays, but given that some or perhaps all of the 2020 season will be lost, baseball isn’t likely to be a great moneymaker for owners this year. And while league expansion has been talked about for quite some time, it’s possible the losses suffered this season due might actually be the precipitating factor in MLB moving beyond 30 teams.

For the last few decades, owners haven’t felt compelled to expand because they were making plenty of money without the need for a cash grab. The dirty truth about expansion is that it isn’t about growing the sport. It’s about injecting cash into ownership pockets now, with those same owners willing to share a slice of their pie with a couple more teams in the future. If the owners don’t feel the need for that expansion money, they aren’t going to welcome more teams to take a share of overall MLB revenues. In addition, the threat of relocation from teams looking for new stadium deals serves to slow expansion; MLB likes to have potential expansion cities available to threaten municipalities into providing new ballparks.

Modern expansion isn’t about the talent levels available or growing to meet the needs of an increasing population. If it were, we would have seen expansion at some point in the last decade. The talent pool has gotten incredibly good, with fastball velocities and strikeout levels rising to the point that diluting the talent pool could have a positive impact on the game, resulting in more action and balls in play. And in terms of population, the number of people per team is approaching levels last seen in 1960 when baseball had just 16 teams. The graph below shows the U.S. population and the number of major league teams in five-year intervals, to show how the number of people per team in the U.S. has changed since 1960:

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