This is the last of a set of articles I’ve written over the past few weeks. Each one tries to determine what’s real and what’s noise when it comes to the outcome of a plate appearance. For the batted ball articles, the conclusions generally tracked. Variations in home run rate are largely due to the batter. Pitchers and batters both show skill in groundball rate. And line drives and popups are somewhere in between — batters exhibit a little more persistence in variation than pitchers, though neither does so strongly.

Strikeouts and walks are a different beast. It’s pretty clear that pitchers and batters can be good or bad at them. No one looks at Chris Davis or Tyler O’Neill and thinks “eh, that’s pretty unlucky to have all those strikeouts, I bet they’re average at it overall.” Likewise, Josh Hader isn’t just preternaturally lucky — he’s good at striking batters out.

So rather than attempt to prove that pitchers can be good or bad at striking out batters and vice versa, I’m interested in whether one side has the upper hand. I’m adapting a method laid out by Tom Tango here, but I’ll also repeat the same methodology I used in the previous pieces in this series. Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time in several offseasons, a slow winter for free agency was not the theme of winter. Not that a slow winter wouldn’t have been overshadowed by the Astros cheating scandal, but free agency activity started at a fairly brisk pace and nearly all the good players were signed by January. As camps open up, only Yasiel Puig remains unsigned from the FanGraphs Top-50 Free Agent list. The winter was notable not just for the pace of signings, but also for the amounts as well as Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, and Anthony Rendon all exceeded expectations. With nearly all spending complete this offseason, it’s an appropriate time to check in on where teams stand with their payrolls and how much has been spent, including in comparison to 2019 figures.

First, here’s a look at where every team’s payroll is as of today, per our Roster Resource pages. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this offseason, I wrote a few articles about whether pitchers or batters had more influence over different events. There’s nothing groundbreaking about my conclusions — in fact, they specifically reinforce prior studies. Despite that, however, I think there’s value in these refreshers.

Concepts like “batters control home runs” and “pitcher groundball rate matters” are implicit in many of the statistics that you see on this site and certainly in many of the articles that you read here. When we cite xFIP or talk about what a pitcher can do to control his groundball rate, we’re drawing on these concepts.

You don’t need to know these basic concepts to accept the conclusions, but it certainly helps. Appealing to authority (hey, these stats are good because smart people made them) is a pretty bad way to convince someone, and understanding the reason behind a metric is the quickest way to accept its conclusions.

In that spirit, I thought I’d round out the series by looking at a few more common events and working out whether pitchers or batters do more to influence them. Today I’ll be looking at line drive rate and also popup rate, the percentage of fly balls that become harmless popups. Later this week, I’ll cover walks and strikeouts. Then we can move on to more pressing matters, like I don’t know, José Altuve tattoo investigations or what would happen if Mike Trout knew what was coming.

Before looking at line drive rate, I had a rough idea of what to expect. There are plenty of hitters I think of as line drive machines — peak Joey Votto, Miguel Cabrera, even Nick Castellanos. I had trouble placing a pitcher in the same category, unless you count “your favorite team’s fifth starter.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have received a fair amount of criticism for trading Mookie Betts. Owner John Henry tried to clear the air a bit, clarify some misconceptions that are out there, and justify trading Mookie Betts. If his explanation felt lacking, it’s probably because the real explanation isn’t pretty. The Red Sox traded Betts to save money at the expense of a potentially winning team in 2020. That they received some talent in return can’t obscure the primary goal of the trade. Financial flexibility might remain a popular catchphrase, but there’s little reason to think the Boston Red Sox couldn’t just keep payrolls at similar levels over the foreseeable future and continue to add talent considering nearly $100 million in salaries comes off the books over the next three offseasons.

A few specific passages in Henry’s statement stuck out to me:

“It is not the system’s fault that the Red Sox ended up in this position. We were faced with a difficult choice.”

Henry called this an “extraordinary challenge,” a “difficult choice,” and characterized “tough decisions” for the organization. To frame trading Betts as a difficult choice, one must first frame the options and the results. It’s not just get prospects versus a draft pick. It’s contending in 2020 versus not. It’s attaching a bad contract to the trade versus getting the best possible future value. It’s decreasing spending by $60 million versus maintaining an already profitable level.

Henry appears to be accepting responsibility for big contracts for David Price, Chris Sale, and J.D. Martinez that put the Red Sox in a bind where keeping Betts wouldn’t be possible, except it is Henry that decides what it is possible and what is not. It is Henry who has decided he wants to cash more checks and write fewer ones. We’ve heard about a rumored $300 million offer, but that was another offseason ago before Betts accumulated $47 million in arbitration awards. An offer of just $250 million in free agent money when Mike Trout was accepting $100 million more (on a bargain deal) with Betts a full year younger and coming off his 2018 MVP season isn’t exactly much of an effort at all. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s according to Ken Rosenthal, anyway, and the last time Ken got one of these signings wrong was never. We don’t have contract information yet, but you guessed two years and $8 million at the beginning of the offseason, and that sounds roughly correct to me. It’s possible that this late signing date is a clue that either the years or the dollars will be somewhat less than our expectation for them, but in the absence of any hard information, I’d bet there was enough interest in Brock Holt’s services that he hit what he was aiming for.

In Milwaukee, Holt will join a host of players competing for the role of Craig Counsell’s Favorite Son in spring training: Ryon Healy (who played first and third in 2019), Jedd Gyorko (first, second, and third), Eric Sogard (second, third, short, left, and right), and Luis Urías (second, third, and short) have already joined the Brew Crew this offseason. Holt, who did everything but pitch, catch, and play center field for the Red Sox last season, has been a more consistent hitter — especially over the last two seasons — than any of those four men, and so he probably has an inside track for a roster spot come April.

Given Milwaukee’s revamped outfield configuration — Christian Yelich in left (where he spent most of his time in Miami), some combination of Lorenzo Cain and Avisaíl Garcia in center, and Garcia and Ryan Braun in right — Holt will likely pick up much of his playing time in the infield, I’m guessing primarily on the left side. Sogard (third base) and Urías (shortstop) are both stronger starters if their bats hold up, but the odds of that happening for both men seem reasonably low. I wouldn’t be shocked if the 350 or so plate appearances we’re projecting for Holt this year end up being low. I also wouldn’t be shocked if Holt gets most of his defensive chances at second base, depending on how Keston Hiura’s sophomore campaign proceeds. Read the rest of this entry »

Even if the team isn’t quite a contender, there are plenty of reasons to follow the 2020 Pittsburgh Pirates. Bryan Reynolds and Josh Bell are interesting hitters, though there’s a decent chance that neither ever replicates their 2019 success. Chris Archer is a fun puzzle; can he regain the scintillating form he flashed at times on the Rays, or will he be more 2019 Chris Archer, all homers and walks? Mitch Keller is awesome, except when he’s terrible. Those are all storylines you can follow as a Pirates fan. Me? I’m going to be watching Joe Musgrove.

Musgrove put together a nice season in 2019, his second straight year of more than 100 innings and more than 2 WAR. That sounds great, but it’s a little less impressive under the hood. His RA9-WAR has been significantly lower, and if you’re more of an underlying skill person than a runs allowed type, his above-average FIP’s have been misleading; they’re largely down to his suppression of home runs, and if that skill fades, his results might start to look more like his xFIP:

I’ll admit I’m not doing a good job of explaining my fascination with Musgrove so far. Even if you dig into the component parts of his game, nothing jumps off the page. He strikes out fewer batters than average but makes up for it by walking even fewer. He allows a roughly average number of grounders, gives up hard contact at a roughly average rate, and overall blends into the background. Read the rest of this entry »

Miami Marlins right-hander Sandy Alcantara showed a lot of promise when he was given a spot in the starting rotation last year. His 2.3 WAR and 3.88 ERA were impressive, but there’s much more going on that meets the eye. Alcantara has a very cohesive pitch ecosystem; the design of each offering makes for a lot of interchangeable parts. Being able to adapt to situations with flexible pitch options gives Alcantara an edge that a lot of pitchers don’t have with their arsenal.

Most pitchers have one, maybe two, pitch combinations that pair well together. Alcantara actually has four, which can allow him to easily flex and keep hitters on their toes.

Alcantara operates with five pitches: two fastballs (four-seam and sinker), a slider, a tight, classic curveball, and a heavy, fading changeup.

Below is the 2019 data on all five pitches: Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, Jake Seiner and Ben Walker of the Associated Press reported that Major League Baseball has opted to raise minor league player pay to, at minimum, $4,800 dollars a year. As usual, the change was announced unilaterally: minor league players are not unionized and cannot help but accept this compensation. Specifically, MLB decided to set minimum pay levels (not including spring training, which is unpaid, and not starting until the 2021 season) at:

• $400/week ($4,800 for a three-month season) for Rookie or short-season (up from $290/$3,480)
• $500/week ($10,000 for a five-month season) for Class A (up from $290/$5,800)
• $600/week ($12,000 for a five-month season) for Double-A (up from $350/$7,000)
• $700/week ($14,000 for a five-month season) for Triple-A (up from $502/$10,040)

Assuming that players work an eight-hour workday five days a week (which is an assumption you’d make only if you both knew nothing about how long minor leaguers work and also were feeling extremely generous towards the league), the new pay scale works out to an hourly minimum wage of $10, $12.50, $15, and $17.50, respectively. Assuming even 50 hours a week puts everybody below $15 an hour; 60 hours a week puts everyone below $12. And all of the scenarios assume either that players are independently wealthy or that they’ll fit their year-round conditioning and training in around finding some other way to make money seven or nine months out of the year. Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday afternoon, commissioner Rob Manfred held a press conference at Atlanta’s spring training facility in Florida. Per the typical protocol, the league tried to keep the news relatively muted. The conference was not broadcast on MLB Network — Bull Durham aired instead — nor did it stream on MLB.com. Whether this reflects a continuation of the league’s misguided damage control policy or a misunderstanding of the scandal’s resonance to fans, it was a strange way to downplay the commissioner’s remarks on such a topical issue.

Manfred’s comments themselves will likely not please any of those already skeptical about his ability to manage the biggest scandal the sport has seen in a generation. He again defended the league’s response while offering few fresh details. Listening to his remarks, one gets the impression that the league will remain in reactive mode perpetually as new details emerge, and that Manfred himself wants nothing more than to reach the other side of this. At one point he clumsily exclaimed “we’ll have baseball in 2020!” We’re all excited too, Rob.

Here are some takeaways from his press conference: Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, Kris Bryant lost his grievance against the Cubs for manipulating his service time. The arbitrator, Mark Irvings, ruled that Bryant hadn’t proved that the Cubs held him down for nefarious reasons, essentially requiring a smoking gun, even though Irvings didn’t rule on whether teams have the right to manipulate service time if they so choose. As I wrote at the time, the decision essentially pushes any action on the question to the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, which expires at the end of the 2021 season. The result is that Bryant won’t become a free agent until after the 2021 season. The Cubs have yet to make any significant roster moves this offseason, and there are rumors, as there have been all winter, that Bryant could be dealt.

Over the weekend, Bryant emphasized to reporters that he bears no hard feelings against the Cubs:

I’ve always had the stance I want to play here, I love the city,” Bryant said.

The only thing that matters is what comes from my mouth, and never once have I said I never wanted to play here. … I’m always open to it, I’m always here to talk, it’s fun to talk about stuff like that. It’s a city that I love so much, people I love so much, fans, teammates, everybody here that I’m so comfortable with. Of course you want to be here. I don’t hold those cards.”

It’s the Cubs that hold those cards. Bryant’s statement comes on the heels of David Kaplan reporting that the Cubs were “absolutely motivated” to trade for Nolan Arenado. On the surface, trading Bryant makes little sense. He’s the Cubs’ best player, Chicago is expected to contend in 2020, and Bryant’s salary isn’t exorbitant at $18.6 million, roughly half the AAV Anthony Rendon just received in free agency. On the other hand, of the six Cubs making more than $15 million, Bryant is the only one with good trade value at the moment. If the Cubs are looking to make a change — and a change seems to be desired after a disappointing 84-win season that resulted in a new manager — trading Bryant is the most realistic option to move salary and get good, young talent in return. And based on the Rockies’ reports, Bryant might also provide an opportunity to actually upgrade at third base with a long term commitment. But first, a note about the competitive balance tax. Read the rest of this entry »