On Monday, we projected what the Cactus/Grapefruit standings could look like given baseball’s radical proposal to base the 2020 season in team’s Arizona and Florida spring training complexes.

In my first piece, I went with division-less leagues, since I am the ZiPS Dictator — faber est suae quisque fortunae. With travel distances relatively limited compared to a normal season and many of the traditional divisional rivalries gone topsy-turvy, I felt there wasn’t any real need to have divisions. No divisions doesn’t mean that fewer teams make the playoffs, after all.

But being the ZiPS Dictator doesn’t make one the MLB Dictator, and there’s a very good chance that any Arizona/Florida league will have makeshift divisions. First, let’s re-project our temporary leagues using the divisions that Bob Nightengale laid out in his piece initially reporting the paln. For the number of games, I’m going with the proposed 108, consisting of 12 games against each team’s division rivals and six games against each of the non-division teams. We’ll start with the Florida teams:

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Last week, I revisited how the National League MVPs of the 1990s were acquired. Six were either signed as free agents or acquired via trade, which is in stark contrast to the American League list. Of the eight different AL MVPs, six were homegrown and one of the other two had been re-acquired by his original team at the time he won. Only one of those six homegrown players, however, remained with their respective team throughout their entire career, as Chipper Jones and Barry Larkin did on the NL side.

Here’s a look back at how the AL MVPs of the 1990s were acquired.

Rickey Henderson won his lone MVP award during his second of four stints with the A’s; the team originally drafted him out of Oakland Technical High School in the fourth Round of the 1976 amateur draft. Traded to the New York Yankees in December 1984 after six stellar seasons to begin his big league career, the A’s brought their former leadoff man back home four-and-a-half-years later. Read the rest of this entry »

Not long after Opening Day was originally postponed, I asked our readers for their thoughts on how and whether the 2020 season would play out. I wanted to get a sense of everyone’s expectations. Those results were published on the last day of March. At the time, some in the comments wondered how the results might change in the weeks to follow, given the speed with which new information on the pandemic was becoming available. To see if perspectives had changed, I asked the same set of questions again last week. In the first round, we generally ended up with 1,000 to 1,500 responses per question. This time around, we received about 500 more responses per question. Here are those results.

First, I asked whether there would be a 2020 season:

Overall, there was still a considerable amount of optimism, but the number of people who believed we will get a season dropped about three percentage points from late-March.

In looking at the number of games played, 76-100 remained the most popular response:

This is what the responses look like side-by-side:

Read the rest of this entry »

When was the last time you went to a major league baseball game? For me, it was Angels at Mariners, July 21 of last year: my younger brother and I got up at 5:30, took the train down from Vancouver, went in the stadium as soon as the gates opened. It happened to be Hall of Fame Weekend. We got big placards with all of Edgar Martinez’s hits plotted on them, and we carried them as we did laps around the stadium, trying to decide what to eat, trying to stay out of the sun, pausing behind pillars and watching as Brandi Halladay wept on the big screen. When Edgar showed up, the few thousand already in the stadium with us burst into cheers.

Our seats were out in the bleachers in right-center; for about an hour after the game started, they were fine, sheltered from the sun and central enough to give us a good view of Mike Trout’s back. It wasn’t long before the light moved and we began to roast. I’d meant to keep score, as I usually do, but I’d forgotten my pen, so the wandering began again — at first attentive wandering in a scoreless game, and then less attentive as the Angels piled runs on Yusei Kikuchi.

At 5-0, we looked out over the railway tracks and watched the trains pass through on their way to California, their rattlings and rumblings crashing down on our heads off the huge beams of the stadium roof; watched the ferries on their way to Bainbridge and Bremerton and maybe even all the way back to Canada; watched the people on the streets down below, busy streets, the busy waterfront piers — it was so hot and sunny, a beautiful summer day.

At 8-0, at the stretch, we leaned out over the landing on the right-field view deck and tossed “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” down to the people below us. Some guy standing beside me said something to me about Ohtani, and I said something back, and when the Mariners finally scored a dignity run in the bottom of the seventh, we raised our hands and yelled and high-fived and pounded on the drink counter as if it was the only run we’d seen that day — the only run we’d seen that year, which, in a way, it was. Read the rest of this entry »

For the most part, our communally managed Out of the Park Brewers are like any other baseball team — minus the fact that they don’t exist in real life. In at least one way, however, these Brewers are unlike any real major league team. Over the weekend, they lost in a fashion that no team has ever done. Eno Sarris’s Mets trampled our Brewers 26-1, a score that hasn’t happened since 1904, and likely has never happened at all in the majors. Losing 26-1 is the kind of game you have to see to believe. We can’t see this one, though, so you’ll merely have to accept my narration, because such a tremendous beatdown is worth talking about.

How could a team implode so completely? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the team came into this Saturday’s confrontation nursing some injuries. Josh Hader was battling shoulder discomfort that made him unavailable for a few days. The previous day featured an 11-inning loss to the Mets, which left several bullpen arms tired. That brings up our first recipe for disaster: a short start.

Freddy Peralta didn’t have it on Saturday. He started off with a walk, and by the time Brandon Nimmo had finished his elaborate sprinting-and-pointing walk celebration, Pete Alonso launched a first-pitch home run. Peralta managed to escape the inning without allowing any further runs, but not convincingly so; his five first pitches resulted in three balls and two balls in play (there was a double play).

The game still looked normal in the bottom of the first. Avisaíl García drew a walk and Keston Hiura added a single, though the team couldn’t capitalize. Still, this isn’t how 26-1 games look after one inning. Heck, Steven Matz threw more pitches than Peralta in the first frame. Read the rest of this entry »

John Tudor quietly had an outstanding career. Pitching for four teams from 1979-1990, he finessed his way to a 3.12 ERA over 1,797 innings. A crafty lefty who broke in with the Boston Red Sox, he had his best seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1985, Tudor threw 10 shutouts on his way to 21 wins and a second-place showing in that year’s Cy Young balloting. In five seasons with St. Louis, his ERA was a sparkling 2.52.

Tudor talked about his career, and gave his thoughts on won-lost records (he finished 117-72), at a Red Sox alumni gathering at Fenway Park a handful of years ago.

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David Laurila: By and large you were what’s known as “a crafty lefty.” I’m guessing you approached pitching as more of an art than a science?

John Tudor: “I’d say I look at pitching as an art. An acquired art. If you consider the thinking aspect of pitching a science, then there’s probably a little bit of both. Let me put it from an old guy’s perspective: I think it was more of an art in the years that I played than it is now. Now it’s more power. Guys are judged by how hard they throw almost more than their ability to get people out.”

Laurila: Do today’s pitcher really throw that much harder?

Tudor: “According to the radar guns they do. I haven’t been in a batter’s box for a long time, so I don’t know for sure, but I have a hard time rationalizing 104 mph when I’ve stood in there and seen 94-95. That was from some of the harder throwers. I think the guns are juiced a little bit.

“I do know that players today are bigger, stronger, and faster. Hitters are more disciplined. The strike zone has shrunk. It’s a more difficult game for pitchers compared to when I was playing.”

Laurila: How hard did you throw? Read the rest of this entry »

Picking up where we left off in my series on the impact of missed time on Hall of Fame candidates, we turn to the active pitchers whose shots at Cooperstown might be harmed most due to the loss of a significant chunk or even the entirety of the 2020 season. In Part 1, I noted that whether we’re talking about the effects of military service during World War II and the Korean War or the strike-shortened 1981, ’94 and ’95 seasons, it appears that fewer pitchers were harmed in their bids than was the case for position players. Even so, lost time can prevent hurlers from reaching the major milestones — most notably 200, 250, or 300 wins, and 3,000 strikeouts — that so often form the hooks for their candidacies, and right now, there exists a cohort of starting pitchers whose electoral resumés are coming into focus.

As with the position players, I’ll focus on that group rather than younger hotshots who not only have more time to make up ground but also, inevitably, will probably face some kind of injury-driven challenge along the way (hello, Chris Sale). I’ll spare a thought for a trio of closers as well. As with the other pieces in this series, all WAR totals refer to the Baseball-Reference version. Read the rest of this entry »

While we don’t yet know for sure whether there will be a 2020 baseball season, any resumption of baseball will likely involve a year that looks like nothing that has come before. Among the many proposals out there, ranging from the tinkering to the radical, is one to eliminate the traditional AL/NL league structure for this year in the so-called Arizona-Florida plan. Teams would play at their Cactus and Grapefruit League spring training facilities (along with Chase Field, Tropicana Field, and Marlins Park), facing off against the teams in that state. Basing teams in the spring training leagues has the benefit of working with existing team facilities, and, as Ben Clemens wrote for the site earlier today, addresses some of the broadcast and climate difficulties, though of course it is as dependent on the widespread availability of testing as the Arizona plan.

Assuming that we go with the highly unusual Cactus/Grapefruit season, the races will naturally look very different than we’re accustomed to. The spring training league assignments adhere more generally to an east/west alignment than an AL/NL one, so many of the traditional rivalries would take on a very different character in 2020.

With a little bit of work, I was able to realign ZiPS to project the outcome of these new league races. Naturally, there’s a little bit of speculation required to formalize this strange new 2020 MLB. I’ve engaged in such speculation because, well, that’s my job!

For the new 2020, I’m assuming that both leagues use the designated hitter, as Bob reported. While the DH/Pitcher hitting battle still rages among baseball fans, in such an unusual season, when pitchers are already having a very odd training schedule, there’s a lot to recommend a universal DH rule, at least temporarily. Without pre-existing divisions, I’m also going to assume that we’d be seeing division-less leagues in 2020. Also, no interleague play, given that the whole idea of spring training leagues is to avoid lots of travel. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a regular series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Latest Florida-Arizona Plan Revealed

On Friday, Bob Nightengale reported a potential regular season plan that would divide teams not along American and National League lines, but instead by spring training site. Ben Clemens discussed the proposal at FanGraphs:

But short of that, I think it’s far better. The Florida weather is a smaller problem, in my eyes, than the difficulty of playing so many games in the desert heat. Any of several plans could handle the scheduling requirements, and all of those plans would make for better viewing than the Arizona-only plan. Some of the plans would also have their own weirdness; strange double headers or one team constantly resting or unbalanced leagues. But they’d all deliver on the key thing we need: baseball, and live baseball at times when people could watch it. Solve the non-baseball issues, and this Arizona-Florida plan could handle the rest.

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Clayton Richard has been busy preparing for a 2020 season that won’t be starting any time soon. He’s done so without a team — the 36-year-old southpaw remains a free agent — and in a manner to which he’s not accustomed. Fifteen years after being drafted out of the University of Michigan, and with 275 big-league appearances under his belt, Richard is endeavoring to revamp both his arsenal and his delivery. To say that he’s doing so in a meticulous, scientific fashion would be an understatement.

What you’re about to read is the result of multiple exchanges with Richard, as well as abbreviated reports (used here with permission) from his offseason visit to Driveline. We’ll start with Richard giving an overview of what he’s dubbed “Project 2020.”

“Before the baseball world came to a screeching halt, I was frequently asked ‘What are you doing now?’ by friends and family alike,” Richard told me. “Although the question was simple enough, I didn’t feel comfortable delving into exactly what I was doing with my time – mostly due to the fact that I didn’t think the majority of people really care where my spin axis was that week. It’s much easier to say, ‘Just throwing every day and waiting for the right opportunity.’
 
“The reality is that I’ve been up to a lot more than simply throwing a few baseballs. I’ve used the last few months to make significant changes. The effectiveness of my repertoire had changed for the worse over the past two seasons. Based on that, I could choose to continue down the same path — one with an aim to execute pitches at a higher rate but likely be relegated to a left-handed bullpen role — or I could veer headfirst into changing how my pitches profiled to right-handed hitters in an effort to level out the platoon splits for longer outings.

“I debated the choice many times over. My wife likely got sick of my asking her, or talking to myself. Ultimately, I came up with a plan to revamp my arsenal to return in time as a starting pitcher, the role I have worked to become since first pitching in my backyard with my dad squatting behind the plate and my mother standing in the box. Read the rest of this entry »