There are many pieces detailing how the Astros appear to have cheated by using video to steal signs in real-time. Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich wrote a lengthy piece for The Athletic with quotes from former Astros’ pitcher Mike Fiers detailing the team’s practices in 2017. The basics are in that piece, but there are a several more that discuss what the team was reportedly doing and how they did it. We don’t yet know all the facts; it is still unclear precisely how long the team engaged in this practice, and who all of the responsible parties are. But what the evidence makes pretty clear is that the Astros stole signs with the aid of advanced technology and relayed those signs to hitters during games. That’s cheating.

What the Astros and their employees might receive in terms of punishment for engaging in that practice is less clear, though multiple precedents have been set to guide the league’s possible enforcement. Perhaps you’re of the mind that the consequences Astros deserve to suffer is to have won fewer games, including their 2017 World Series. But such an extreme result is unlikely. Astros wins and championship banners probably won’t be taken away or vacated like a farcical college athletics penalty. Even when players are caught cheating in the middle of games, the results aren’t vacated. So what might we expect? In looking to past scandals, we can get a glimpse at MLB and Rob Manfred’s approach. There are multiple factors that play into potential punishment, both for individuals and the franchise, but here are a few of the major ones:

• Is this the first time a team has been penalized for breaking the rules?
• Was the organization cooperative with MLB’s investigation?
• How high up the organizational chain does the knowledge and activity go?

For the first factor, let’s consider the Boston Red Sox’s penalty for breaking the rules surrounding signing international free agents. After the club exceeded the allowable pool amount to sign Yoán Moncada, it were restricted from signing any amateur international free agents for more than $300,000. To get around those restrictions, the Red Sox signed less well-regarded players for $300,000 with the expectation that money from some of those lesser players would go to the better players who should have received higher bonuses and were represented by the same agents. When the Red Sox penalty for circumventing the rules came down in 2016, they were prohibited from signing any international free agents for a year, and the players involved were declared free agents, with Boston unable to recoup their signing bonuses, which remained with the players. It was the first time a team had been penalized in this fashion. Read the rest of this entry »

The Camden Yards did not constitute what I would call a particularly inspiring work environment. The Orioles lost 108 games one season after it lost 115, with a pitching staff that set records for futility and an offense that was near the bottom of the majors as well. When the team initiated its rebuild in 2018, it did so by trading away its most sought-after talent — starting with Manny Machado, and later including Zack Britton, Brad Brach, Kevin Gausman, Darren O’Day, and Jonathan Schoop. Baltimore was finished pretending it could compete with the rest of the AL East and was going all-in on a scorched-earth plan in hopes to build the next 100-loss-team-turned-dynasty, giving away all the talent it could in the process. If you still found yourself on the Orioles’ roster at the start of the 2019 season, it’s probably because no contending team believed you could meaningfully improve their squad.

In many cases, those teams were right. They were right about Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo, and they were right about Dan Straily and Alex Cobb. There was good evidence to suggest those players, all of whom were once considered assets to teams trying to win, were not going to be of any value in 2019. Jonathan Villar, however, posed a more puzzling question. Contending teams might have seen his abysmal 2017 and continued struggles early in 2018 and concluded his skills were deteriorating. Instead, Villar then had the best season of his career.

Playing all 162 games for Baltimore, Villar finished with a .274/.339/.453 batting line with a career-high 24 homers, good for a 107 wRC+. He led the majors in baserunning runs with 10.5, and he stole 40 bases, good for third in baseball. All told, he finished the season with a career-best 4.0 WAR, ranking him fifth among all second basemen behind only Ketel Marte, DJ LeMahieu, Max Muncy, and Ozzie Albies. Read the rest of this entry »

With the offseason moving at it’s now customarily glacial pace, the story that’s dominated the baseball headlines for the past week has been the Astros sign-stealing scandal. Since the first story was published by Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich at The Athletic last Tuesday, we’ve seen bits of evidence confirming the Astros strategy: a crude system of live monitors and a trash can to relay the incoming pitch type to the batter. On Friday, Rob Arthur of Baseball Prospectus provided audio evidence from the TV broadcasts, on which the whacking of the trash can can be identified and analyzed. Rosenthal and Drellich followed up their post with another revelation that the Astros were exploring different ways to electronically steal signs. And then there’s the video evidence pulled from the 2017 Astros World Series documentary showing a computer — sometimes a monitor, sometimes a laptop — in the tunnel leading to the dugout with a trash can nearby.

MLB is still conducting its own investigation, but the evidence that’s been dug up publicly is pretty damning. Sign-stealing has always been part of the game, but the Astros crossed the line when they began using electronic means to relay information in real-time. And this isn’t the first time they’ve been accused of baseball skullduggery of some sort. There’s little doubt that some form of punishment will be handed down by the commissioner’s office once MLB wraps up its investigation. The only question is how harsh will the penalties be; will it be a slap on the wrist, or will the hammer come down hard to deter other teams who are likely exploring other ways to use technology to steal signs.

Gamesmanship and various forms of cheating are as much a part of the fabric of baseball as the unwritten rulebook, all in an effort to gain an upper hand against your opponent. But how much of a benefit does sign-stealing give to a batter? Knowing what type of pitch is incoming gives the batter a distinct advantage — more information is far better than just guessing — but they still need to translate that information into action, whether its a swing or a take. Since we have plenty of data to analyze, can we measure the effect of sign-stealing on the outcome of a pitch, play, or game? Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

An underappreciated cornerstone of Boston’s 1970s and 80s contenders, Dwight Evans reached the majors two years ahead of outfield mates Fred Lynn and Jim Rice, both of whom would win MVP awards and spend far more time in the limelight. Durable and defensively adept — traits that pair could rarely combine — Evans outlasted both, spending the first 19 of his 20 seasons (1972-91) with the Red Sox while helping the team to four division titles and two pennants. Though merely an above-average hitter in the first half of his career, “Dewey” developed into a dependable slugger with a keen batting eye, totaling 11 seasons with at least 20 homers and six seasons with at least 90 walks, three of which led the league. An outstanding defender as well, he combined excellent range with a cannon-like arm while playing Fenway Park’s difficult, oddly configured right field.

While Evans won eight Gold Gloves, further recognition was harder to come by. He made just three All-Star teams and never got a first-place vote for MVP, let alone win one (he did have third- and fourth-place finishes). Bill James rated him as the game’s top right fielder in his 1982 and ’83 Baseball Abstracts, but had advanced statistics been more pervasive, Evans’ high on-base percentages and defensive value would have generated greater appreciation. Eight times he was worth at least 4.0 WAR, and at his best in 1981-82, he was one of the game’s five most valuable players. Yet when he became eligible for election to the Hall of Fame, he lasted just three years on the BBWAA ballot, topping 10% only in 1998, his second year of eligibility. Bypassed for both the 2014 Expansion Era Committee ballot and the ’18 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, he’s finally getting another chance in front of the voters. 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 — Nestor Cortes Jr., Randy Flores, and Vince Velasquez — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Nestor Cortes Jr., New York Yankees

“When I first got drafted, I was just fastball-curveball-changeup. One of my pitching coaches in Rookie ball, Jose Rosado, told me I needed [a slider]. I was throwing a bullpen and he was, ‘Hey, you’ve got the slow curveball, and you’ve got your heater. There’s about a 15 mph difference, so you need something in between.’ We started messing around with the grip.

“It’s come a long way since then, but there’s still a lot of room to improve it. It’s basically like a cutter, and I’m trying to get more depth to it. I’ve tried to make it better, but I haven’t been able to get the result I wanted, so when I was back in Triple-A this year I went back to the one that’s more like a cutter. But I still call it a slider. It’s bigger and slower than a true cutter.

“I’m trying to create more spin with it. I’m substituting the velo for spin, trying to get more break. I’m also kind of messing around with the grip. I’m keeping it the same to where I can feel I’m ripping through it, but I’m maybe getting more on top of it, to where I can create the angle of my fastball. I think my fastball angle is good with the slider from that slot. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the last of a six-part series — the AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, and NL Central pieces have been published — in which I’m highlighting each team’s most notable free agents and how it could fill the resulting void on the roster. A player’s rank on our recently released Top 50 Free Agents list, along with Kiley McDaniel’s contract estimates from that exercise, are listed where relevant. In some cases, the team already has a capable replacement ready to step in. In others, it’s clear the team will either attempt to re-sign their player or look to the trade or free agent markets for help. The remaining cases are somewhere in between, with in-house candidates who might be the answer, but aren’t such obvious everyday players to keep the team from shopping around for better options.

Here’s a look at the National League West.

Arizona Diamondbacks | Depth Chart | Payroll

Wilmer Flores, INF

Flores could still fit on the Diamondbacks’ roster in 2020, but in what capacity depends on how the team plans on using Ketel Marte, who made 89 starts in center field and 45 starts at second base last season.

If Marte moves to the outfield full-time, Flores would have more value to the team as a semi-regular at second base while filling in occasionally at either corner infield spot. There are several other middle infield options, however, including Domingo Leyba, Josh Rojas, Ildemaro Vargas, and Andy Young, which could be why the team declined Flores’ $6 million club option despite his career-high 120 wRC+ in 285 plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the Baseball Writers Association of America released its 2020 Hall of Fame ballot, with 14 holdovers, four of whom received at least 50% last year, joined by a group of 18 newcomers headlined by Derek Jeter. Lately, the writers have been working through a massive backlog of candidates, producing an unprecedented flood of 20 honorees in the past six cycles, including four apiece in each of the past two years. The flood is about to begin receding, however. If not for Jeter, this would rate as the weakest ballot for first-time candidates since 2012, when Bernie Williams was the only first-year candidate who even broke 5%. This year’s two top returnees, Curt Schilling (60.9%) and Larry Walker (54.6%), the latter in his final year of eligibility, are hardly slam dunks for immediate election.

Over the next six weeks, I’ll profile all 32 candidates, either at length or more in brief, examining their cases in light of my Jaffe WAR Score (JAWS) system, which I’ll be using to break down Hall of Fame ballots in an annual tradition that began at Baseball Prospectus (2004-12), then moved to SI.com (2013-18), which gave me an opportunity to go into greater depth on each candidate; last year, I brought the series to FanGraphs. The candidate profiles will begin later this week, after I complete my series covering the Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot. Today I’ll offer a quick look at the biggest questions attached to this year’s election cycle.

First, a review of the basics. To be eligible for election to the Hall of Fame via the BBWAA ballot, a candidate must have played in the majors for parts of 10 years (one game is sufficient to be counted as a year in this context), been out of the majors for five years (the minors or foreign leagues don’t count), and then been nominated by two members of the BBWAA’s six-member screening committee, which is usually a formality but can create some head scratching omissions down the ballot. Since the balloting is titled with respect to induction year, not the year of release, the current slate of players will have last appeared in the majors in 2014. Each new candidate has 10 years of eligibility, a reduction from the 15-year period that was in effect from 1936-2014. The last candidate grandfathered into the full run was Lee Smith, whose eligibility expired in 2017; six current candidates (Walker, Schilling, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Jeff Kent, and Sammy Sosa) had their tenures unilaterally reduced mid-candidacy by the Hall.

To be elected, candidates must receive at least 75% of the ballots cast, and in this case, they don’t round up; 74.9% won’t cut it. Likewise, candidates who don’t receive at least 5% fall off the ballot and can then only be considered for election by the Today’s Game Committee, an entirely separate process — but not until what would have been their 10-year run of eligibility expires. Read the rest of this entry »

26-year-old southpaw John Means put together an impressive rookie season for the Baltimore Orioles. As the most valuable pitcher on a team that placed at the bottom of the league in 2019 for pitching WAR, Means was one of only three Orioles starters to exceed 100 IP. The runner up to Yordan Alvarez for American League ROY, Means managed 16 second-place votes on the back of a 3.00 WAR campaign. His 3.60 ERA was the lowest of any Orioles pitcher (minimum 100 IP) since Wei-Yin Chin put up a 3.34 in 2015. Means also led the team in wins (12) and had the pitching staff’s lowest hard-hit rate (27.5%). Granted, the Orioles were one of the worst teams in baseball, so that alone doesn’t mean much, but when compared to the 75 other pitchers who threw at least 150 innings in 2019 (the cutoff used for all the stats to follow), his chase rate was the seventh-lowest, his zone contact rate was the 24th-lowest, and Means fell just outside of the top-50 in swinging strike rate.

Means hasn’t shown he has the stuff to blow hitters away. His 19% strikeout rate was well below the league average of 23%, though his walk rate (6%) ratioed well with his strikeouts when compared to other starters. Means does, however, surrender quite a lot of fly ball contact, the vast majority coming from his changeup (45%) and four-seam fastball (40%). Still, he managed to keep his FB/HR rate stunted enough to be one of the five lowest in baseball.

Regardless of the kind of contact Means surrendered, his hard-hit rate topped all other pitchers by a fair amount. Messing with hitter’s timing through good sequencing, command, and control work just as well as an elevated strikeout rate. Read the rest of this entry »

The current landscape of the game might charitably be called an era of superteams. Last year, the Yankees, Astros, Twins, and Dodgers all won more than 100 games. In 2018, it was the Red Sox, Astros, and Yankees; the year before that, the Dodgers, Indians, and Astros all won at least 100 times. The Cubs won 103 on their way to a World Series title, bringing the total number of 100-win teams over the past four seasons to 11. In the 10 years heading into 2016, only four teams hit the 100-win mark, and only the 2009 Yankees and 2011 Phillies won more than 100 games. Superteams are made possible by great players and smart organizations, but they are also made possible by having a bunch of bad teams to beat up on. The lack of competitive balance in today’s game is worse than it’s been in more than 60 years, back when there were only 16 teams and the reserve clause kept players from ever choosing their own employer.

One way to test baseball’s competitive balance is simply to take every team’s winning percentage in a single year and find the standard deviation. The smaller the standard deviation, the more teams are bunched toward the middle in a more competitive atmosphere. The bigger the standard deviation, the more teams are spread apart. Going back to 1903, this is what the standard deviation for team winning percentage looks like:

Read the rest of this entry »

When the White Sox traded Chris Sale to Boston, they received a pair of top-shelf prospects in return. Yoan Moncada was seen as possessing superstar potential, while Michael Kopech was a first-round pick who pumped 100-mph gas. Also coming to Chicago in the deal were a pair of midrange prospects, Luis Alexander Basabe and Victor Diaz.

Which team got the better of the December 2016 blockbuster? It’s too early to say, but one thing is certain: The Red Sox dodged a bullet. Basabe and Diaz became part of the package only after then GM Dave Dombrowski balked on including a 20-year-old corner infielder who’d yet to advance beyond A=ball.

“At one point, I asked for Rafael Devers,” acknowledged White Sox GM Rick Hahn, when asked about the trade. “Marco Paddy, who runs our international operation, had mentioned him back when he originally signed with Boston [in 2013], and our pro scouts had obviously seen him in Greenville and Salem. Joe Butler, Joe Siers, and John Tumminia — John has since retired — were all high on him, and made sure he was in the mix. The reason we liked Devers so much was because of those guys.”

As for Kopech, the 23-year-old right-hander is currently recovering from Tommy John surgery. A pair of other notable White Sox pitching prospects are, as well. I asked for an update on all three. Read the rest of this entry »