In the Before Times, when the 2020 season was planned at 162 games — on February 12, to be exact — Major League Baseball officially announced a handful of rule changes that had been in the works for awhile, many of which concern teams’ active rosters. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, the season has been drastically shortened, and between a hasty reboot of spring training, a suspended minor league season, and voluminous health- and safety-related protocols, the league has been forced to put some of those changes on hold and adopt a very different set of roster rules than was initially planned.

What follows here is my attempt to sort through those rules and explain some of the new entries in the transaction lexicon. Additionally, I’ll use a couple of teams as examples in order to illustrate some of the roster considerations that may be in play. We’ll start with the easy stuff…

Active rosters

Instead of simply expanding from the tried-and-true 25-man active rosters — a limit that was introduced with the first Collective Bargaining Agreement in 1968 — to 26-man ones as planned, teams will begin the season on July 23 or 24 with rosters of up to 30 players, though they’re allowed to carry as few as 25 (a minimum that will remain in place all season). According to the 2020 Operations Manual, on the 15th day of the season (August 6 or 7) the upper limit drops to 28 players, and two weeks after that date, it drops again to 26. For any doubleheaders after that point, teams will be permitted to add a 27th player.

Additionally, the nit picky rules governing the makeup of those rosters, which were laid out in February (and panned here by yours truly), are on the shelf. Teams won’t be limited to carrying 13 pitchers, after all, and position players won’t be limited to pitching only in extra innings, or in games in which teams are ahead or behind by at least seven runs. In other words, all of this is as it was last year, and somebody damn well better sign catcher/blowout closer Russell Martin tout suite. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, an interesting question got me wondering about Billy Hamilton and the new extra-innings rules. As it turns out, he’s a valuable runner to have on second base! So valuable in fact, that he projects to gain his team roughly 0.3 wins in a 60-game season just by being fast.

For the Giants, that’s great. For the other 29 teams in baseball (or 28 if the Dodgers end up rostering Terrance Gore), that’s no help. What should their strategy be in extra innings? I had all these run expectancy tables, so I decided to dive in.

First things first: let’s set the parameters of this discussion. I’m going to be considering two decisions. First, does bunting to lead off the inning make sense, and does that decision change based on whether you’re the home or visiting squad? Second, assuming bunting doesn’t make sense, what about stealing third? Presumably you’d steal with one out, what with not making the first out at third base and all, so we’ll focus on those two decision points: bunting to lead off, and stealing if the first at-bat doesn’t produce any advancement.

The value of being a home team is immediately evident when looked at through this lens. Consider a situation where the visiting team scores two runs in the top of the inning. Right away, a bunt goes out the window. That’s a big edge; in 2019, and excluding extra innings so that walk-offs don’t interrupt a team’s run scoring, teams that reached the position of a runner on second base with no outs scored two or more runs 29.1% of the time.

In other words, nearly a third of the time, bunting the runner over serves no purpose at all; your team will need two or more runs just to tie, so the position of that runner is nearly immaterial. Getting to act after knowing how many runs your opponent scored is huge. Read the rest of this entry »

Many species of shark, most commonly lemon sharks, give birth in shallow, nutrient-rich mangroves teeming with small sea life that can easily sustain their offspring while also insulating them from the predators typically found in deeper, open waters. Most young sharks spend years feasting in these hazy, sandy green mangroves until they’ve grown, then head out to sea. Some leave the safety of the roots and reeds early and enter the blue black depths at greater risk of a grisly fate. Many of them won’t make it. The ones that do will likely become the strongest of all the adult sharks.

Now that teams have announced their 60-player pools for the upcoming season, we can see how they’ve balanced rostering players who can help them compete this season with prospects for whom they’d like to ensure playing time, while avoiding prospects whose service time clocks they don’t want to risk winding. Below, I have analysis of the prospects in the player pools for the AL East clubs. I’ll be covering every division in the coming days, with some divisions requiring their own piece and others combined where appropriate.

Two of our site tools go hand-in-hand with this piece. The first is The Board, which is where you’ll want to go for scouting reports on all of these players (click the little clipboard), as this piece focuses on pathways to playing time and potential roles and strategic deployment rather than on scouting. Perhaps the more relevant visual aid are Jason Martinez’s RosterResource pages, which outline the player pools that have been dictated by all 30 teams in a depth chart format, and also include columns that indicate where the prospects in the pools rank within each club’s farm system.

A couple roster mechanics to keep in mind as you read: Teams are allowed a 60-player pool. They don’t have to roster 60 guys from the start; not doing so allows them to scoop up released or DFA’d players without cutting someone. Within those 60 players still exists the usual 40-man roster rules from which teams will field an active roster of 30 players, a number that will shrink to the usual 26 as the season moves along. Big league clubs are allowed a three-man taxi squad that can travel with the team but isn’t part of the active roster; that squad must include a catcher (this is clearly to mitigate the risk of some injury/COVID/travel-related catastrophe). Players not invited to big league camp, or who aren’t on the active roster (40-man players and beyond) when the season begins, will train at an alternate location, typically a nearby minor league affiliate. Lastly, only players in the 60-man pool (including prospects) may be traded during the season. Read the rest of this entry »

With players set to report to camp on July 1, yesterday was the day teams submitted their 60-man player pools to MLB. While there is certainly going to be considerably more maneuvering as teams set up their own camps (plus a satellite camp for those pool players not invited to major league camp), teams’ initial rosters can tell us a little about how clubs plan to operate over the next few weeks and potentially into the season. Here’s what we can say so far.

A 60-Man Player Pool is Not a 60-Man Player Pool

While we were perhaps expecting a 60-man player pool for every team, many clubs fell far short of that number. You can check every team’s initial selections on our Roster Resource Opening Day Tracker; those pages also project Opening Day rosters. Overall, teams put out rosters averaging 53 players. The Indians, Tigers, Royals, Astros, Angels, Yankees, Mariners, Rays, Rangers, Blue Jays, Braves, Reds, Marlins, Phillies, Pirates, Padres, and Nationals were all at capacity or were a handful of players away from reaching the 60-player limit. The Diamondbacks, Twins, and Giants didn’t even release rosters yesterday, while the Orioles, White Sox, Brewers, and Cardinals were all at 45 players or fewer. We will have to wait for full roster information on about half the teams.

Placement in the Player Pool is Pretty Permanent

Later this week, Jay Jaffe is going to analyze the roster rules contained in the 2020 Operations Manual and how they will affect the season, but one wrinkle in particular caught the attention of twitter yesterday, including The Athletic’s Levi Weaver. That wrinkle concerns how players are moved in and out of the 60-man pool depending on their 40-man status. Per the Operations Manual:

In the event a Club is at the limit and wishes to add a player to its Active Roster or its Alternate Training Site, the Club must select a player to be removed from the Club Player Pool by means of a bona fide transaction, as follows:

• 40-man roster players may be removed from the Club Player Pool by an approved trade, waiver claim, return of Rule 5 selection, release, outright assignment, designation for assignment, placement on the 60-day Injured List, placement on the COVID-19 Related Injured List, or placement on the Suspended List (by Club), Military, Voluntarily Retired, Restricted, Disqualified, or Ineligible Lists.
• Non-40-man roster players may be removed from the Club Player Pool by an approved trade, release, placement on the COVID-19 Related Injured List, or placement on the Military, Voluntarily Retired, Restricted, Disqualified, or Ineligible Lists. Injured non-40-man roster players will continue to count against the Club Player Pool limit unless removed through one of the permitted transactions listed above.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the world of Out Of The Park, the day is June 29, and the teams have played roughly 83 baseball games. Real life, of course, is markedly different; the day is the same, but pretty much everything else isn’t. There have been no games, to name one obvious discrepancy. In a month’s time, however, the lines will be blurrier. Real teams will be playing real games, which makes the prospect of following along with a fake baseball team somewhat less exciting.

To that end, I’d like to take today to lay out my future plans for this series, as well as take a quick look at some outstanding performances across the league this year. Let’s handle the outstanding performances first, because they’re more fun: who needs to plan for the future when you can watch hulking sluggers swat dingers left and right?

Why bring up home runs first? Giancarlo Stanton’s superlative season demands it. The Yankees have played 84 games this year, and Stanton’s health has been uncharacteristically excellent; he’s appeared in 83 of them, almost exclusively in left field. More important than his position, however, is his bat:

That’s right: 40 home runs through 84 games. That’s a 77-dinger pace for a full season! The .300 average is mostly a byproduct of the home runs, but not exclusively; when you’re Stanton, getting down to 26.6% strikeouts is actually a big deal. He’s on pace for a season for the ages; not by WAR, necessarily, where his indifferent outfield defense holds him back. Even accounting for that defensive hit, however, his offensive prowess has him on pace for a 9-WAR season. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Deshaies will be experiencing a first this summer. Along with his TV partner, Len Kasper — this assuming the season goes off as planned — Deshaies will be calling road games remotely. The Cubs duo won’t be alone. Per reports, broadcasters across both leagues are slated to do the same.

Deshaies hopes to be in Wrigley Field for the entire 60-game schedule. Rather than broadcasting away-action from a studio, the pitcher-turned-analyst envisions doing so, alongside Kasper, from the friendly confines of their home booth. He doesn’t see safety being an issue. As Deshaies put it, “Up there we’re in a wide open, well-ventilated space, and there wouldn’t be anyone else around. Plus, it would give us a little more of a ballpark atmosphere.”

Regardless of where they’re perched, things won’t be business as usual.

“It’s going to be kind of surreal, and weird,” said Deshaies, who is heading into his eighth season in Chicago after 16 in Houston. “I’ve never done [games remotely], but our tech people, producers, and directors are all really good. One thing they’ll need to make sure of is that we have monitors, and camera shots that will give us a live view. We’ll want to be able to see who is walking into the on-deck circle, who is warming up in the bullpen, and things like that.”

The nuts and bolts of the broadcasts will in some ways be the same. Read the rest of this entry »

When baseball returns next month, it will be a little weird. Not just because of the empty stands, though of course that will be weird too. Not because of the NL DH — despite the bellyaching about the sanctity of the game, baseball with a DH feels more or less the same as baseball without one. No, I’m talking about the new extra innings rule, which will place a runner on second base to start each half inning beyond the ninth.

A runner on second by itself isn’t weird, but having it happen every inning without a leadoff double will definitely take some getting used to. It’s not all dark clouds, however, because weird baseball rules create weird baseball situations. Effectively Wild listener Brett Mobly wrote in about a particularly interesting angle, and via the magic of Ben-to-Ben communication (read: Meg emailed me about it), here we are.

Mobly wondered about a hypothetical that Jeremy Frank posed on Twitter. What if Billy Hamilton comes to the plate with two outs and no one aboard in the bottom of the ninth? Given that the runner who starts on second base is, by rule, the player on the batting team due up last in the batting order, a Hamilton out comes with a huge carrot: the best baserunner in baseball starting the next inning in scoring position. How should that change his behavior at the plate?

We can start by eliminating the extreme scenario of Hamilton purposefully making an out. Even if he were intent on starting the next inning on second base, he could do better by taking a regular at-bat and then simply running until he’s thrown out. Single? Steal second, then try to steal third, then try to steal home. The end result will either be an out — the same result as purposefully making an out — or a game-winning run. Heck, he might luck into a home run, unlikely as that sounds. Read the rest of this entry »

At last we have a 2020 MLB season, or plans for one at least. Based upon what we know about the 60-game schedule — that teams will play each other 10 times within their own division, and have a total of 20 games against the geographically corresponding interleague division — Major League Baseball may need to revisit its tiebreaker procedures, because going by the handful of 60-game slices I examined from last year’s results, they could have some ties to unknot.

You may recall that earlier this month, when a 50-game schedule appeared to be a distinct possibility, I reviewed increments of that size from the 2019 season to illustrate how different the playoff picture might look, depending on when the snapshot was taken. In examining the 50-game segments, which began with Games 1, 26, 51, 76, and 113, I found that nine teams that actually missed the playoffs would have made it at some point. An average of 3.8 actual division winners matched their final positions over those increments, and likewise, an average of 1.2 Wild Card teams did so, with an overall average of 2.6 party crashers per period; division/Wild Card flip-flops accounted for much of the discrepancy. However, not once in those five sets of samples did I find ties for division titles or Wild Card spots, and only once did two Wild Card qualifiers even “finish” with the same record, a rather odd and seemingly improbable result given the limited range of outcomes.

With the 60-game slate now a reality, I decided to revisit the study. While many of the answers it returns are similar to those from the 50-gamer — a fair bit of variation in the selection of playoff teams from snapshot to snapshot, but perhaps not as much as if it were based upon a season that didn’t hit a low point as far as competitive balance was concerned — I went forward with this largely because it promised substantially more fun from a Team Entropy standpoint, which is to say a greater potential for end-of-season chaos via more ties for playoff spots, whether division or Wild Card. That may be a function of selecting a larger number of increments, beginning with Games 1, 16, 31, 46, 61, 76, 91, and 103, or it may just be dumb luck. Obviously, there’s no guarantee such results will be replicated in the upcoming 60-game slate (assuming it can be played to completion, a rather large elephant in the room), but they’re something to hope for, at least if you can get past the anxiety produced by [broad gesture at everything].

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re not familiar with Don Buford, perhaps the first thing you should know is that he was quietly very good. He averaged 4.5 WAR from 1965-1971, and in the last three of those seasons he logged a .405 OBP for Baltimore Orioles teams that captured American League pennants. A speedy switch-hitter who spent the first half of his career with the Chicago White Sox, Buford had a 117 wRC+ and 200 stolen bases from 1963-1972. He played on three 100-plus-win teams, and four more that won 90-plus. A spark plug throughout his career, he never played for a losing team.

Prior to breaking into pro ball in 1960, Buford excelled on both the diamond and the gridiron at the University of Southern California. USC’s first African-American baseball player, he followed his 10 big-league seasons with four more in Japan. Then came Stateside stints as a coach, manager, and front office executive, as well as time spent running MLB’s Urban Youth Academy in Compton, California.

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David Laurila: You played both baseball and football at USC. Where did you see your future at that time?

Don Buford: “I was leaning toward baseball, because of my size. I was 5-foot-7, 150 pounds, so I didn’t see much of a future in football. I had an offer from the Pittsburgh Steelers — they were interested in me as a kickoff and punt return guy — but I wasn’t interested. That’s the suicide squad in football.”

Laurila: What do you remember about breaking into professional baseball?

Buford: “Coming out of college, I thought I was well-prepared as far knowledge of the game, because I’d had such an outstanding coach in Rod Dedeaux. He was a legendary college coach. We won the NCAA championship in 1958.

“I had offers from the Dodgers, the Yankees, and the White Sox. The Dodgers and Yankees were offering such a minimum — a $1,000 bonus and a $400 salary — and coming out of college, I said, ‘No way; I could make that teaching school.’ That’s why I selected the White Sox. Hollis Thurston and Doc Bennett were the scouts who had followed me, and they felt I had the ability to make it.” Read the rest of this entry »

Throughout the last few months of hectic, sometimes nasty negotiations between the players and the owners to resume the 2020 season, one issue operating in the background was the expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement at the end of next year. For those who watch, cover, and love baseball, losing the 2020 season would be sad, but understandable; there’s a global pandemic. To turn around 18 months later and lose all or part of the 2022 season because the players and owners can’t agree to a new CBA would be considerably less so. Still, while MLB and the MLBPA’s inability to agree to modify their March agreement in such a way as to provide mutual benefit (and more games) is frustrating, no deal today doesn’t mean no deal after 2021.

The recent negotiations offer a preview into the tone, tenor, and general degree of trust (or lack thereof) both parties are likely to bring to the table as they work toward an agreement for 2022, but achieving a different result is possible because 2022 is going to be much different than both 1994 and 2020. There will be a lot of issues to resolve, as Dayn Perry laid out at CBS Sports in May and Andy Martino examined yesterday for SNY, and the process will be contentious. But the owners will also be looking to maximize profits after 2021 rather than minimize losses. And while the negotiations over the last month didn’t result in a new deal, they might actually prove to have been fruitful practice for the next time the two parties come to the table. Read the rest of this entry »