“Chaos, absolute chaos.”

That was the only way one agent was able to describe the current situation going on in professional baseball. Meanwhile, multiple minor-league players bleakly described their situation as being “an afterthought” — this after being sent home with no information on what their timeline for return might be, and whether they would be paid.

As Major League Baseball attempts to deal with the fallout from cancelling spring training, and the delay of the start of the season due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, players across all levels are feeling the pain, as questions continue to mount. When will their next paycheck come? From where? What preparation needs to be taken for the delayed start of the season?

The recurring theme during conversations I’ve had with players across all levels of professional baseball — from the majors down to rookie ball — is the stark contrast between the amount of information being given to major league and 40-man roster players versus that being provided to minor leaguers. As one minor league player put it, “Minor league guys don’t know anything until it comes out on Twitter.”

Once the season was officially suspended by Major League Baseball, each club had different ways of dealing with their rostered versus non-rostered players. Across the league, players on the 40-man have been given three options: First, to stay at the complex and continue to receive their $1,100 weekly spring training stipend paid by the club, and retain access to the facility with minimal staff present; second, go to the club’s home city and continue to train at the ballpark, again with minimal staff, and receive their stipend of $1,100 per week paid by MLBPA; and third, return home and receive their weekly $1,100, also paid for by the union. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Justin Dunn, Justin Grimm, and Tyler Mahle — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Justin Dunn, Seattle Mariners

“I had a curveball before I had my slider. I learned it from my dad at 12 years old. He used to play in men’s leagues, and while he never played at a real high level, he loves the game. He’s a student of the game.

“Essentially, I take a two-seam grip and put my thumb underneath, finger through the lace, pressure to the ball.When I was younger, he would tell me to just throw it like a football, to never turn my wrist down. It would be big, loopy, and slow. As I got older, I started to throw harder and understand finger dexterity and about pulling the ball down. I learned that I could pull a little bit more with my middle finger and get it a little tighter, and sharper. 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.

In yesterday’s roundup of COVID-19 news, Dan Szymborksi covered MLB’s fund for ballpark employees and the lack of clarity surrounding pay for minor leaguers, among other topics. The last 24 hours, not unlike every 24 hour period over the last week or so, has brought with it more news, including potential changes to the MLB draft and a Reds employee testing positive for COVID-19.

No MLB Draft?

According to an Associated Press story from Ronald Blum, among the issues the players’ union and MLB are discussing is what to do with the MLB draft, currently scheduled for June. With college baseball shut down and many high school teams following suit, scouting players for the draft is almost impossible, and the June date could come and go before the MLB season has even started. While the feasibility of holding the draft is one issue, the teams might also be angling to reduce costs by eliminating both the draft and international signings, per Blum.

In 2019, MLB teams spent $316.5 million on draft bonuses and another $100 million on international signings, per JJ Cooper. In Ken Rosenthal’s piece on the subject, he mentions the possibility of a combined draft in 2021, though working out the eligibility details could prove difficult, as currently eligible high school seniors will theoretically be freshman in college a year from now, and not ordinarily eligible for the draft.
Read the rest of this entry »

Poor Ernie Lombardi. The heavyset and heavy-hitting Hall of Fame catcher, who owns two of the position’s eight batting titles, was the player hardest-hit by Baseball-Reference’s latest update to their version of Wins Above Replacement. B-Ref rolled out a whole series of adjustments, both to current players and long-retired ones, into one big release earlier this week, which it explained via a Twitter thread on Tuesday morning and expounded upon at the site. Thanks to additional play-by-play baserunning and caught stealing data, Lombardi, whose career spanned from 1931-47, saw his career WAR total drop from 46.8 to 39.5. Well, he didn’t actually see it, as he’s been dead since 1977, but you know what I mean.

B-Ref’s version of WAR is different from that of FanGraphs, of course, though you may have noticed that our site also updated its Defensive Runs Saved totals after Sports Info Solutions made major changes to its flagship stat, in part to account for defensive shifting. I’ll get to that aspect in a separate follow-up post, but for the moment my concern is how the B-Ref changes affect my JAWS system for Hall of Fame evaluations. The overall answer is “not a whole lot,” though individual player WAR and JAWS, and thus the standards at each position, have shifted a bit, creating a ripple effect throughout my system. With no new baseball for the foreseeable future, it’s worth taking an inventory of these changes, in part because they give us a chance to dig into some baseball history and provide a bit of an escape from our current realities.

Incidentally, the Hall of Fame itself closed indefinitely as of Sunday, March 15, and has already canceled its 2020 Hall of Fame Classic Weekend, which was scheduled for May 22-24. Among other things, that weekend was to feature a seven-inning legends game featuring Hall of Famers and former major leaguers and a “Night at the Museum” program. Induction Weekend, scheduled for July 24-27, is still on the calendar and will hopefully take place as planned, but right now, there are no guarantees. Given that the advanced ages of many Hall of Famers put them at the highest risk for COVID-19 infections, attendance among the game’s legends could be more sparse than usual. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all entered a new condition. I’ve gotten a lot of questions in the last few days from friends, who are self-isolating in response to COVID-19 and newly working from home, about how best to get through the day. Some have struggled to maintain their productivity (I try to edit and take calls from a designated place, separate and distinct from both my bed and my couch), while others have wondered whether it really matters if you get dressed in real pants before you start your work (perhaps, though I’ve found it to be much less important than remembering to drink water). Everyone has their tricks and tips, and of course work has to get done, but I think it is important to recognize just how unusual a circumstance this is, how overwhelming it can feel. Sometimes, we’re going to need to set aside our work, and our real pants, and take a break. That’s a little harder to do while baseball, our usual distraction, is taking its break. So to help you pass the time, the FanGraphs staff presents a few of our favorite games to rewatch from the relatively recent MLB archives. Today, one game with playoff implications and four more that peppered the postseason landscape. Enjoy, and stay safe. – Meg Rowley

2013 NL Wild Card: Cincinatti Reds at Pittsburgh Pirates
It’s been a tough couple years to be a Pirates fan. It’s been a tough couple decades, in fact, but the last years have been even worse: after three straight Wild Card appearances from 2013-2015, it’s been downhill in Pittsburgh. The front office leadership that put those teams together is gone now, and a new group is trying to find a new way to construct a winner in western Pennsylvania.

There won’t be much joy in Pittsburgh this year. There’s no reason to watch the recent, futile Pirates teams, and no reason even to watch the 2014 and 2015 editions, who were both bounced in a single game. Instead, watch the glorious day when Pittsburgh broke through; the first playoff game in the city since 1992.

Even years later, the atmosphere in the stadium is electric. Knowing what’s going to happen doesn’t change the excitement. Is that Francisco Liriano pitching in the most important game the franchise has played in 20 years? It sure is. But don’t focus on how much of a flash in the pan Pittsburgh-era Liriano was. Focus on peak Andrew McCutchen, on native son Neil Walker, on wait-he-was-on-that-team Marlon Byrd. Read the rest of this entry »

Moms are scattered throughout the bleachers, using umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun; the rains that had flooded the outfields of Corona Del Sol High School and caused the cancellation of the first three days of the Boras Classic have passed, leaving the umbrellas free to resume their usual Arizona purpose. It’s almost just another March Saturday.

A few feet from the home plate stands, a group of teen girls huddle in short denim shorts and yoga pants, pony tails perched high on their heads, the day’s light reflecting back from sunglasses. Their grouping doesn’t seem especially concerned with the next pitch. Instead, they chitter about school gossip that is about to meet its own disruption.

On an adjacent soccer field, a group of boys, all of whom occupy that odd time in life when it is hard to tell exactly how old they are, goof around with a Wiffle bat and ball. One of those assembled comes set and pitches in; the batter he’s facing mimics charging the mound, but peels off a few feet before he reaches his friend. After all, their game isn’t serious.

Hand shakes pervade the scene, but they carry with them the air of habit, or good manners, rather than defiance. A few offer an elbow or a fist — “No one knows what to do” is uttered in an amused tone by one scout — but submit to an open hand offered by less bothered compatriots moments later.

The usual bad pop country pumps over the PA system. “Make ya wanna slide on in, like girl, what’s up. Yeah, tonight is bottoms up” intermingles with the announcement of the next batter. Read the rest of this entry »

Rick Miller had a solid, albeit unremarkable, big league career. A left-handed hitting center fielder known mostly for his speed and defense — he was awarded a Gold Glove in 1978 — Miller slashed .269/346/.350 in 4,440 plate appearances from 1971-1985. He spent his first seven seasons with the Red Sox, the next three with the California Angels, then returned to Boston for five more.

Miller entered pro ball on the heels of a Big Ten batting title. In his junior season with the Michigan State Spartans, the Grand Rapid native hit .429, prompting the Red Sox to take him in the second round of the 1969 draft. Little more than two years later — this despite a swing adjustment that may have been ill-advised — he was in the big leagues to stay.

Miller discussed the early and late portions of his career when the Red Sox held an alumni game at Fenway Park two summers ago.

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David Laurila: What do you remember about the start of your career?

Rick Miller: “I was drafted in 1969 out of Michigan State. There were a lot of contact hitters at the time, and I got some bad advice when I first came up. This was from one of the people in the Red Sox organization. I’m not going to name him, but when I signed, I went to Pittsfield [Massachusetts], which was Double-A. They watched me take batting practice. I was told, ‘You’ll never be able to hit that way in the big leagues” — the way I was hitting.”

Laurila: What were you doing that they didn’t like?

Miller: “Well, I don’t know. But wherever it was, they didn’t like the way I was swinging. And I was hitting pretty well at the time. But I listened. I was young, naive, and stupid. I didn’t know any better. I’d hit that way on my life, and in my opinion you don’t tell somebody, ‘You can’t hit that way,’ until they get a chance to show if they can do it.

“So I changed. And I never hit that well in the minor leagues. I played two-plus years in the minors, and never did a lot with the bat. My defense is pretty much what got me to the big leagues. Once I was there, I did improve my hitting. It was a longer process, because I used to hit a certain way. I think I would have been successful had I… of course, I wasn’t a big guy. I didn’t hit a lot of home runs.”

Laurila: I recall you having success when you first came up [in September 1971]. Read the rest of this entry »

The worst thing you can do when you put a ball in play is hit a popup. That’s the worst thing usually, at least: right now, the worst thing you can do is be playing baseball at all, because you plus the opposing team makes 10 people, you jerk. But most times, it’s hitting a popup.

You’ve seen the reasoning for this before, but I’ll quickly lay it out again. When you hit a popup, you don’t reach base. Per Baseball Savant, balls hit with a launch angle of 50 degrees or higher produced a wOBA of .016 in 2019. Given that an out is worth 0 and league-average wOBA is .324, that’s pretty close to being an automatic out. Want it in a triple slash line? If you hit the ball at a 50 degree angle or higher, you bat .015/.015/.022. That’s ugly.

There’s good news, however. Want to avoid popping up and slamming your bat to the ground in disgust? There’s a simple solution: avoid swinging at high pitches. I’m no physicist, but the relationship between high pitches and popups seems straightforward. Your bat is likely to contact the ball from below, there’s some angle-of-incidence angle-of-reflection magic, and bam, Eric Hosmer is camping under the ball. Either that or you get some Alex Bregman magic:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I discussed what 2019 might have looked like with a shortened season. At the same time, Dan Szymborski showed us how a shortened season impacts playoff odds. The main takeaway from both posts is an understanding that a shortened season creates more randomness and a greater possibility of teams having a chance to make the postseason. The corollary here is that is that it is much tougher in a shortened season to tell which teams are actually better that their competitors. Ben Clemens showed earlier in the offseason that expanded playoffs as reportedly proposed by the league would actually disincentivize competition. However, in a shortened season in which good teams might be left out of the postseason due to the random variation that usually takes care of itself over 162 games, there’s an argument to be made for getting creative and expanding the playoff field, if only for this season.

When addressing the playoff structure, it’s important to keep certain objectives in mind. Winning the division should be of some importance so that two good teams battling it out still have a reason to play hard toward the end of the season even if both are comfortably in playoff contention. Making the playoffs needs to give teams a chance at eventually winning the title, or at least an easy shot at home games that fans (and owners) enjoy. Both problems were issues in MLB’s expanded playoff proposal as most division winners saw their playoff odds go way down and the additional teams making the playoffs weren’t very likely to have a single home game if they even made the playoffs.

The current playoff format is fine enough, but to ensure that good teams aren’t being excluded from playing for a championship, I am proposing that for this season, the field of teams in the playoffs expands. I have two potential proposals, but both have the same key feature: a round-robin tournament at the end of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

MLB appears to be inevitably headed to a shortened schedule, and at this date, we don’t really have a great idea what that might look like. Fewer games is likely to mean a little more randomness. The 162-game schedule is long by design. With the talent levels of major league teams clustered fairly close together even at the extremes, playing 162 games exacerbates the differences that do exist. In a three-game series where one team has a 65% chance of winning each game, the underdog still wins more games a quarter of the time. If the same teams played a 45-game series, the odds of the underdog winning drop below 2%. That’s an example at the extremes. If a team was favored to win every game 55% of the time, they would still be considered much more talented in baseball terms, yet over 81 games, half a season’s worth, the underdog still wins nearly one in five series.

Dan Szymborski wrote earlier today about how the ZiPS 2020 playoff odds change based on different season lengths. I’m going to take a different approach. To provide some sense of how a different schedule can change outcomes, we can look how things unfolded last season. Here’s what the season would look like if it had ended on September 8, 2019, after roughly 144 games:

Read the rest of this entry »