Like a fast-moving prospect, the novel coronavirus — or rather, concerns about what precautions to take in order to protect players amid the epidemic caused by its spread — has reached the majors. No games have been canceled yet, but on Monday, after a conference call with all 30 team owners, Major League Baseball announced its plans to join forces with the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer in limiting media access to players due to concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak. As of Tuesday, locker rooms and clubhouses have been temporarily closed to news media and any non-essential personnel, with media access to uniformed personnel shifted to designated locations, and barriers have been put in place to enforce a minimum distance of six feet between reporter and subject.

A barrier area has been set up for reporters outside the Yankees clubhouse: pic.twitter.com/rTmftoDa94

— James Wagner (@ByJamesWagner) March 10, 2020

Admittedly, this is hardly the biggest sacrifice to be made at a time when schools and other institutions are being closed, and people are getting sick or even dying amid an epidemic that has infected over 113,000 people in 110 countries and appears to be rapidly advancing in the US, with 647 confirmed cases and 25 deaths spread across 35 states as of Tuesday afternoon (the estimated total number of people infected in the US may be an order of magnitude higher, but a shortage of tests is slowing the pace of confirmations). Yet it’s a move that should hit home to anybody reading this, not only because the quality of the coverage will suffer but because the decision highlights the tension between for-profit leagues and public health concerns. It also raises questions about the steps that the league has not yet taken and what could happen if even more drastic measures are required. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros received some bad news about Justin Verlander’s health yesterday after he left his spring start early on March 8. The results of his MRI showed a lat strain and he’s been shut down without a timetable to begin a throwing program. His availability for opening day is definitely in jeopardy and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him miss at least the first month of the season as he ramps up his workload during extended spring training.

Losing Verlander for any amount of time is concerning for the Astros because their depth behind him is rather lacking, as Jay Jaffe explained yesterday. The loss of Gerrit Cole, Wade Miley, and Collin McHugh has left the back end of the Astros rotation rather open. And with Verlander out for the foreseeable future, that opens up another spot temporarily. Zack Greinke, Lance McCullers Jr., and Jose Urquidy should hold down the first three places, leaving two to a group filled with question marks. Josh James, who was likely leading the competition for the fifth spot, likely earned a role in the rotation with Verlander’s injury. That means the battle for the final spot comes down to Austin Pruitt or Framber Valdez, with Forrest Whitley an extreme long shot.

Both Pruitt and Valdez have collected less than 200 innings at the major league level, though Pruitt is already 30 years old while Valdez is just 26. Neither has been all that impressive during their short big-league careers. Valdez has the raw stuff, including a plus curveball and a mid-90s fastball, but he simply can’t control it. Pruitt doesn’t have the same raw stuff, but his repertoire has elements that are intriguing. There may be enough there that the Astros can tinker with to help him reach his ceiling. Read the rest of this entry »

If you follow the baseball news cycle, you’ve undoubtedly discovered that baseball players get hurt quite often. By the time the first official pitch was thrown to mark the beginning of the 2018 season, 118 players had been placed on what was still being called the Disabled List. There were 129 players on the Injured List prior to Opening Day 2019.

As of today, nine players have been placed on the 60-Day Injured List and 50 others are projected to begin the season on the IL; history tells us that this number will likely only grow as the season creeps closer. Injuries are a big part of the game and, thus, roster depth is integral to building a competitive team each offseason. But even our grim familiarity with injuries can’t lessen the frustration of a season-ending elbow injury, which can often interrupt parts of two seasons for a pitcher.

When an elbow injury is undiagnosed or unresolved, or its severity misunderstood, a player risks having surgery and the subsequent recovery process delayed by 4-6 months. Instead of missing just one full season and reporting to the following year’s spring training approximately 16 months removed from Tommy John surgery – see Lance McCullers Jr. – a starting pitcher can end up missing one full season and at least a few months of another, and that’s the best-case scenario. Relief pitchers can return sooner, although it’s not uncommon for the wait to be just as long.

Diagnostic delays contributed to Luis Severino’s suboptimal recovery timeline. The Yankees right-hander, who underwent Tommy John surgery on February 27, experienced forearm soreness during the 2019 playoffs after missing much of the year with a rotator cuff injury. While MRI and CT scans during the offseason did not reveal any issues, it wasn’t until he experienced renewed soreness in spring training that a dye contrast MRI revealed a partial ligament tear. (The explanation for not having the dye contrast MRI done earlier, despite a more accurate detection rate, was that it can sometimes cause joint inflammation.) The Yankees will now be lucky if Severino is back in action by next July. Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Boyd, 29, has increasingly become a bright spot for a Tigers team that has lost an astonishing 310 games over the last three major league seasons. Last year, after posting a 24.8% K-BB% and 2.87 FIP over 72 2/3 innings pitched through May 30, he emerged as a popular trade candidate for a rebuilding Detroit squad. Those rumors cooled over the next two months, as Boyd allowed 10 home runs in June and five more in July to drive his ERA up to 3.94; his FIP rose to 3.46 by the end of that month.

Boyd ended the season with a 4.32 FIP, a 23.8% K-BB%, and 3.3 WAR — all career highs — but that progress was somewhat obscured both by the Tigers’ poor performance and by a second half so markedly worse than his first, particularly in terms of home runs allowed. That’s a shame, because 2019 was in fact the third consecutive year of material improvement for a pitcher who, despite his obvious talents and relative youth, hasn’t yet put together a full season in which he looks the way he did in the early part of 2019:

The challenge Boyd faced in 2019, as Craig noted in July, was that his heavy reliance on his fastball and slider — he threw those two pitches a combined 90% of the time — made his approach at times too predictable for big league hitters, resulting in an awful lot of home runs allowed. Boyd used to throw a curveball, too (18% of the time as recently as 2017), but a redesign of his then-weak slider after the 2017 season left his two breaking pitches looking a little too similar to one another, and Boyd dropped the curveball from his repertoire almost entirely over the course of 2018 and ’19. By the end of last season, hitters could expect a fastball nearly 75% of the time on three-ball counts. In consequence, they hit .309 against the pitch in June, .304 in July, and .344 in August. Read the rest of this entry »

The three-batter minimum rule is coming to a regular season game near you in just a couple weeks. The stated desire of the rule is to reduce those time-consuming and action-relieving breaks late in games as a parade of relievers come in to get just a couple of outs. (The rule, for those who need a refresher, requires pitchers to either face a minimum of three batters in an appearance or pitch to the end of a half-inning, with some exceptions allowed for injury and illness.) If pitchers are forced to stay in games, then we’ll end up with fewer pitching changes and fewer breaks. That’s the idea, anyway. Ben Clemens took a look back in December and found that the number of times the rule would have actually come into effect in 2019 was actually pretty minimal. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be an effect on strategy.

Over at The Athletic, Jayson Stark talked with multiple managers to get a handle on how much they’ll have to plan, and to figure out how the new rule could affect deployments when it comes to lineups, pinch hitters, and when to use relievers. It seems the rule will invite intentional walks and, as Buster Olney had previously mentioned, mid-batter pitching changes as pitching the last ball to a batter in a walk gets a pitcher credit for facing a batter. In some cases, this could even result in the return of pitchers using four actual pitches to intentionally walk a batter in order to set up the next reliever to come in before the intentional walk is complete.

While the resulting strategy will be much-discussed and analyzed in the context of a number of game-states, there is one situation that interests me the most: two outs, late in the game, with runners on base and a good lefty hitter coming to the plate. Read the rest of this entry »

You shouldn’t trust spring training statistics. Opposition quality is, to put it kindly, uneven. Non-roster invitees and overmatched minor leaguers get their turns in the spotlight. A home run off Johnny Washedup or Mike Minorleague isn’t the same as one off a fifth starter, let alone Gerrit Cole.

So of course, today I want to talk about an off-the-radar reliever putting up good numbers in spring training. “But Ben,” you might say. “Did you read the paragraph that you yourself just wrote?” Good point, conveniently voiced reader. But here’s a trick to writing about spring training performances that might stick. I want to talk about Jonathan Hernández. And while he’s looked sharp this year, I want to talk about him not because he’s been good for the last month but because I think he was already good.

An origin story is in order. Hernández signed with the Rangers as an international free agent in 2013, when the Rangers were the unquestioned best team at finding international talent. He slowly but surely climbed the minor league ranks as a starter. His sinker/slider combination was good enough to tread water, but never dominant.

Early in his career, he’d shown excellent command. As he ascended the minors, he added exciting velocity to the sinker. But the command waned as the velocity increased, a classic tradeoff. In 2018, he walked 13% of the batters he faced in Double-A. We put him 19th on the Rangers prospect list heading into 2019, reflecting excitement about his velocity and concerns about a relief role. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2020’s scariest baseball moment so far, on Sunday, Willie Calhoun’s face took a direct hit from a Julio Urías fastball, leaving Calhoun on the ground in a great deal of pain. Any baseball to the head is a scary situation, and Calhoun hopefully is escaping from this incident with “just” a broken jaw. Further tests are scheduled for Monday, which will tell us more about the extent of the damage to Calhoun’s face. While the team’s first concern should be the health of their player, the Rangers still need to make baseball decisions.

The result, in the short-term at least, appears to be using Nick Solak in left field. Both the ZiPS projections and I are big fans of Solak, but this move likely simply shifts where Solak gets his playing time, and doesn’t necessarily represent a significant increase in usage.

Even before the Calhoun injury, the Rangers’ offense looked the worst of the plausible playoff contenders, at least if you buy into projections. As of this morning, assuming that Calhoun comes back and manages 448 plate appearances combined in left field and designated hitter, our Depth Charts rank Texas position players 28th in baseball. That’s ahead of only the Orioles and Tigers; the Rangers’ 11.3 projected wins are barely half that of the worst-projected playoff teams from last season, the Brewers and Cardinals.

I don’t believe the Rangers think of themselves as being among the most serious of Wild Card contenders in 2020. But I also don’t think they would have signed Kyle Gibson, Todd Frazier, and Robinson Chirinos if 2020 was seen as a lost cause, nor would they have been so insistent on getting a good price for Mike Minor at the trade deadline last year in order to make a deal. The most recent ZiPS run has the Rangers at 77 wins, while the Depth Charts forecast 78 wins; that’s a team that could at least make a little noise if things broke the right way.

That’s where Yasiel Puig comes in. The Rangers are light on offense, light on corner outfielders, and light on power from the right side. Puig is a fairly limited player these days, no longer the kind of star he was when he broke into the league. What Puig does remain, however, is a roughly league-average slugger who will give you right-handed power and not embarrass you in the outfield. After two years of lefties throwing fastballs against Puig with impunity, he finally made them pay in 2019. My colleague Jay Jaffe wrote more about this, but Puig slugged just .203 with a single homer against lefty fastballs in 2017-2018 combined. In 2019, Puig flipped the script, slugging .540 against lefty fastballs.

While a lot of teams would be able to find fill-ins for Calhoun from their backups or minor-league depth, outside of the starters and Nick Solak, the Rangers don’t really have any interesting options. If you don’t believe me, here are the ZiPS projections for the at least minimally possible internal options in left, with everyone re-projected as a left fielder:

Not a single one of these options projects as better than replacement-level in left. Suffice it to say, Puig murderizes these projections.

Even Puig’s 10th-percentile projection adds a win over a full season compared to the rest of the team’s options (he forecasts as an average player in 62% of his projections, an All-Star in 12%, and replacement level in just 3%). He’s also good enough that, like Hunter Pence was last year, he can carve out a significant role even as a non-starter, though he likely won’t match Pence’s surprising 2019 production.

Texas would be smart to treat a Puig signing with a bit of urgency rather than taking a wait-and-see approach. Puig was ineligible to receive a qualifying offer from the Indians, so unlike last year’s free agent stragglers, most notably Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel, there is no particular incentive to force him to spend April in street clothes. Nor are the Rangers the only team with a reason to give Puig a call. The Yankees are now without Aaron Judge and while Giancarlo Stanton ought to return from his calf injury soon, his recent injury record is likely enough to give the Yankees’ front office pause.

The Rangers already had a narrow path to the playoffs, and losing Calhoun and his possible upside makes that path even narrower. Texas is absolutely awash in cash, nowhere near any of the luxury tax thresholds, and Puig can help the team long after a Calhoun recovery. Sign Puig. Do it yesterday.

Sunday afternoon was a worrisome one for the Astros, as Justin Verlander made an early departure from his Grapefruit League start against the Mets, complaining of right triceps soreness. While manager Dusty Baker said the move was precautionary, the 37-year-old righty underwent an MRI on Monday, which revealed not a triceps injury but a strain of his latissimus dorsi, albeit a minor one. Even if it’s not a major injury, any potential sidelining of the two-time Cy Young winner highlights the uncertainty within an Astros’ rotation hit hard by free agency.

Coming off a season in which he brought home that long-sought second Cy Young award on the strength of a 21-6 record, 2.58 ERA, 3.27 FIP, 300 strikeouts, and 6.4 WAR, Verlander waited until January to begin his offseason throwing program, and lately, his spring has not gone as planned. He was scratched from his February 27 start due to discomfort in his right groin, instead throwing a simulated game. After getting roughed up over the course of 2.2 innings and 53 pitches — but touching 97 mph with his fastball — against the Cardinals on March 3, he was scheduled to go four innings on Sunday against the Mets. He held them scoreless for two innings while throwing 29 pitches, but after his second inning, informed pitching coach Brent Strom that he was experiencing triceps soreness. Via MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart:

“We don’t know if he is hurt,” Baker said. “Like I said, it’s precautionary. I was surprised his velocity [91-94 mph] was down a tick from the last time, but you know Verlander can dial it up when he gets ready. We didn’t see anything. I was quite surprised when Strommy came over and told me he had to come out of the game.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Curveballs can be fairly vexing to classify. Though not as vast as the kingdom of sliders, curveballs have more personality than other pitch types. Some curveballs have heavy sweep like a slider (slurve), or have a grip variation that will kill spin (knuckle curve); others can fall like a hard changeup (churve), while another variant seems to float in slow motion on the way to home (eephus).

Most tend to fit the more stereotypical slicing shape (sweep with comparable drop), or have a heavy arch that fits the 12-6 style. Each variation has its own identity and benefits depending on factors such as arm slot, spin direction, and axis orientation.

There are situations where a pitcher adopts a particular style but fails to execute the pitch, so it fits into its sub-category. You can have a 12-6 curveball that plots normally on the x-axis but fails to drop far enough down the y-axis. Or, you can have a more classic curveball that doesn’t separate itself enough from either plot point, which causes the pitch to hang in the zone.

But we can make adjustments to these undesirable results, and that’s what we’ll be focusing on in this piece. What can be done to add depth to a curveball that regularly demonstrates a lack of life or separation from the center of the pitch zone chart? Read the rest of this entry »

“We feel like we’ve got starting pitching depth, we have impactful championship caliber players at every position that will allow us to compete for multiple championships.” — Marlins president Michael Hill

***

This isn’t a bad time for Marlins fans. There aren’t many organizations you could credibly make that claim about following a 105-loss campaign and consecutive last place finishes, but this is Miami, where the standards are comparatively low.

Much of the positivity stems from an absence of negatives: Jeffrey Loria isn’t the owner, there’s no fire sale in progress or on the horizon, no scam contract extension on the books, no stars desperate for greener pastures, no silly stories about management bilking fans out of their premium parking spaces. This franchise usually trades in disappointment, and there are comparatively few sources of it right now.

There are also a few actively good signs. The club has cobbled together a functional pitching staff from spare parts, and have turned Brian Anderson and Sandy Alcantara into, if not building blocks, then at least the kind of productive players who wouldn’t look out of place in a contender’s lineup. The farm system itself seems rejuvenated: The Fish landed seven prospects on our most recent Top 100 list, most of whom already have Double-A experience. The organization as a whole is teeming with depth for the first time in ages, and they’ll add more impact talent in June’s draft. Read the rest of this entry »