How do you describe a batter’s plate discipline? I sometimes struggle with it. I might describe their walk rate and strikeout rate, maybe add in something about how often they swing. I’m never sure how much to weight walk rate and how much to care about strikeouts. How does someone with a 25% strikeout rate and 10% walk rate compare to someone with a 20% strikeout rate and a 7% walk rate?

What about Anthony Rizzo? He gets on base without swinging the bat fairly often, but it doesn’t show up in his walk rate, only in bags of ice and bruises. Getting hit by a pitch is marginally more valuable than a walk if you listen to our linear weights (because walks happen more often when there are bases open, while HBP tend to be random), but it doesn’t show up in the “plate discipline” numbers we’re used to looking at.

I’ve danced around this concept a few times here at FanGraphs. When I wrote about Joey Gallo’s new approach, I touched on how his strikeout and walk rates related to how good he needed to be on contact to succeed. When I wrote about Luis Arraez’s unique talents, I framed his walks and strikeouts in terms of what it meant for the rest of his contact. Behind the scenes, I’ve been using a standardized version of this calculation for quite a while. Today, with no baseball coming to save us, it’s time to explain my method.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first installment of what we plan to make a daily series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

With thousands of players in major and minor league camps this spring amid what has grown into a pandemic with nearly 170,000 confirmed cases worldwide, it was only a matter of time before professional baseball had its first player test positive for the novel coronavirus. That came to pass this weekend; on Sunday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that a Yankees minor leaguer has done so. The player in question, who did not spend any time this spring at the team’s major league camp a mile away in Tampa, Florida, has not been publicly identified, in accordance with HIPAA Privacy Rules.

Thus far among professional athletes, three NBA players — the Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, and the Pistons’ Christian Wood, the last of whom played against Gobert last Saturday and was diagnosed over the weekend — have tested positive. Gobert’s positive test led the NBA to suspend its season and set off a domino effect that led to other leagues and organizations suspending play as well, as governmental authorities moved to limit the size of gatherings well below thresholds that would allow sporting events to take place.

Per The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, the minor leaguer in question was symptom-free as of Thursday, but woke up Friday feeling feverish and fatigued. After tests for influenza and strep throat came back negative, the player in question was quarantined. The team learned that his COVID-19 test was positive late Saturday night. Meanwhile, the minor league camp, which has been used by more than a hundred players on a daily basis this spring, was closed on Friday morning and underwent a “deep cleaning” on Sunday — not its first of the spring, according to general manager Brian Cashman. The major league facility will receive another such cleaning as well. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2020, we estimate that the Dodgers will pay out $236 million in salary. That’s 10% more than any other team in baseball except the Yankees, and over $40 million more than their closest National League competitor, the Cubs. The Dodgers have been big spenders for some time now, and one of the ways they’ve chosen to use their money is to ensure that every position on their roster is stocked with two capable big league players at the very least, and sometimes more than that. It’s not spoiling our upcoming Positional Power Rankings series to note that Los Angeles falls into the top half of every single position on our depth charts, and in the top five of six. Most of those positions are filled with well-paid veterans. The purpose of this piece is to investigate the one position on their roster that isn’t: catcher.

In fact, not a single likely Dodgers’ starter at catcher will be paid more than $1.1 million in 2020. Last year’s starting duo of Russell Martin ($20 million, $16.4 million of which was paid by the Blue Jays) and Austin Barnes ($575,000 in 2019, and $1.1 million this year) morphed, over the course of the 2019 season, into Will Smith and Friends. Although Martin and Barnes caught more games overall last year (61 and 52, respectively), 38 of Smith’s 45 starts came in the Dodgers’ last 57 games of the season, and he enters 2020 — whenever that begins — as the favorite to start the lion’s share of games this year. At 25, with less than a year’s service time under his belt, he’ll make $555,000 in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

With the announcement last week that MLB would suspend spring training and delay Opening Day by at least two weeks, to say that the season’s future is uncertain would be an understatement. The most optimistic of scenarios — one in which the United States’ response to COVID-19 is suddenly and remarkably better than that of other, similar countries — had major league baseball resuming on April 9. The CDC has now recommended the postponement or cancellation of events with 50 or more people for the next eight weeks, which would prevent even spring training games. Update: MLB has announced further delays with a mid-May start the earliest possible date to begin the season in abiding by CDC guidelines. The two-week delay was merely be the first, with an unknown number of weeks of the season lost. The league’s announcement that spring training facilities would be shuttered, and that many players would be returning home, points to a much longer delay; a second spring training will almost certainly be required to allow players time to ramp back up. Some executives are simply hoping for games at some point in May, per Jon Heyman. We don’t yet know how many games the league will play this season, but we can use potential start dates, with a few October regular season weeks and some summer doubleheaders baked in, and attempt to determine how many games the sport might lose as the country attempts to contain this pandemic.

Shorter regular seasons in baseball have been incredibly rare. While the work stoppages in 1994 and 1995 might be fresh in the minds of some, 23 MLB seasons have been played since then. Ronald Acuña Jr., Cody Bellinger, Rafael Devers, Jack Flaherty, and Juan Soto weren’t even born when the start of the 1995 season was delayed. The graph below shows the total number of MLB games played in every year since 1903, the year of the first World Series:

Read the rest of this entry »

MacKenzie Gore struck me as a straightforward sort when I talked to him in San Diego Padres camp last Sunday. Polite but not loquacious, the 21-year-old southpaw perfunctorily answered each of my inquiries about his repertoire and approach. This is something he’s used to doing. As baseball’s top pitching prospect, Gore gets more than his fair share of media attention.

I didn’t walk into the conversation expecting to glean a boatload of fresh insight. I’m familiar with the scouting reports — all glowing — and as a FanGraphs reader you likely are as well. Even so, an opportunity to hear directly from the horse’s mouth wasn’t something I wanted to pass up.

A look at some numbers before we get to his words. In 20 starts last year between high-A Lake Elsinore (this in the hitter-friendly Cal League) and Double-A Amarillo, Gore logged a 1.69 ERA and won nine of 11 decisions. Moreover — this is the eye-popping part — he had 135 strikeouts, and allowed just 56 hits, in 101 innings.

“I’m a guy who attacks the zone with his fastball,” Gore told me. “I’m going out there looking to throw a lot of innings, so I’m trying to get people out early. I’m trying to throw the least amount of pitches possible.”

Fair enough. But given his explosive fastball and multiple plus secondaries, Gore is clearly blessed with the ability to overmatch. Is he ever on the mound hunting strikeouts? Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Major League Baseball delayed the start of the regular season. The decision, in retrospect, was an easy one: every major sport is now shut down. It’s a public safety concern in addition to a player safety issue, and the combination made it impossible to wait. Opening Day has been postponed by at least two weeks, and May might be a more realistic start date.

In their understandable haste to delay the season, MLB left some loose ends. Today, they’ve started to address those. Yesterday, players were simply waiting at team facilities, unsure of next steps. Some spring training games were played even after the announcement that the season would be delayed indefinitely. Teams had no games, but there was no official announcement of what their players would do.

Today, the league eliminated the confusion. Spring training facilities league-wide will be shuttered by mutual agreement of the commissioner and the player’s union:

https://t.co/VTXLnDTZsH spring training facilities shut, players allowed to return home means it is going to be quite a while until MLB games are played.

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) March 13, 2020

Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, Major League Baseball caught up to the rest of the world of U.S. sports in its response to the novel coronavirus, conceding that public health is the priority by shutting down its spring training schedules in both Arizona and Florida. The start of the regular season, which was slated to begin on March 26, will be delayed by at least two weeks, and if the responses from local officials are anything to go by — such as Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker banning gatherings of more than 1,000 people until May 1 and urging that those of 250 or more people be postponed — that period could run longer.

It’s the governmental restrictions on large gatherings — first in Seattle an San Francisco, and since put into effect in Illinois, New York, and Ohio — that forced the hands not only of MLB but other leagues and organizations when it came to canceling games. As previously noted (this bears repeating), such social distancing measures have been proven to slow the spread of a virus — to “flatten the curve” in order to avoid overwhelming health care systems and force grim decisions on triage — that has shown a 33% daily rise in the cumulative number of cases, and that may ultimately infect 70 million to 150 million people in the U.S. amid this pandemic.

At this point there are still more questions than answers as to where things go from here for MLB, which like just about everybody else, is working without a roadmap. Per the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, the league passed along the recommendation of health experts that players remain in camps:

1/MLB sent a memo to teams stating that both minor and major league players should not leave their spring locales through Sunday except for extraordinary reasons and with MLB knowledge/permission. MLB told me this was the recommendation of its health experts. That keeping

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) March 13, 2020

2/players under care of club physicians that know them and away from affected areas was the best short-term course of action. How many players will stay working out at club sites beyond the weekend, especially if they don't truly believe the season will start up again on 4/9?

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) March 13, 2020

Read the rest of this entry »

After a whirlwind 24-hour period in which the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer all announced suspensions of their regular season games in the wake of local restrictions on the size of mass gatherings as a means of slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus, Major League Baseball has followed suit. Following a conference call involving commissioner Rob Manfred and the 30 team owners, the league has shut down its spring training schedules in both Arizona and Florida and will delay the start of the regular season, which was scheduled to begin on March 26, by at least two weeks.

Here’s the statement from MLB:

This is the first time since 1995 that the start of the season has been delayed; that year, following the resolution of the strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series, the schedule was shortened to 144 games. MLB’s two-week assessment should be taken with a grain of salt given the fluidity of the situation; just two days ago, the aforementioned leagues banded together to issue a joint statement regarding the closure of locker rooms and clubhouses to the media, a comparatively minor deviation from business as usual. The situation escalated rapidly on Wednesday, as the World Health Organization officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic and a top U.S. health official (Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) recommended against the assembly of large crowds for sporting events. It took around two hours between the revelation that an NBA player (Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert) had tested positive and the league’s decision to suspend play due to the need to quarantine players or advise those who had been exposed to Gobert to self-quarantine. The NBA reportedly told teams on Thursday that its suspension would last for a minimum of 30 days.

Via the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, the expectation is that MLB teams will ask players to remain at spring sites, where they have access to team medical personnel and can continue to work out; however, players can go as they please. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters that players will be allowed to continue training at their Camelback Ranch facility but that the pace of workouts would be dialed back, and players could go home if they choose. The Brewers are hosting optional workouts for players on Friday and Monday but not over the weekend, and there will be no media availability until Monday. Meanwhile, the Yankees’ current plan is to remain in Tampa, and potentially play intra-squad or simulated games, though that may also change.

Schedule-wise, while nothing official has been announced, The Athletic’s Zach Buchanan reported via Twitter, “Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall said the idea now is to pick up the season at whatever point on the schedule play resumes. If only a short time has been missed, MLB could add those games on the back end.” Such a situation would be similar to how MLB handled the 2001 season following September 11, when a week’s worth of games was postponed and then made up after the previously scheduled end of the regular season, such that all teams except the Yankees and Red Sox completed 162-game schedules.

Such policies have not been announced officially, however, and a host of other unanswered questions involving salaries for major and minor leaguers (none of whom get paid during spring training, except per diem meal money), and service time, also loom. Per the Associated Press’ Ronald Blum:

If regular-season games are lost this year, MLB could attempt to reduce salaries by citing paragraph 11 of the Uniform Player’s Contract, which covers national emergencies. The announcement Thursday said the decision was made “due to the national emergency created by the coronavirus pandemic.”

“This contract is subject to federal or state legislation, regulations, executive or other official orders or other governmental action, now or hereafter in effect respecting military, naval, air or other governmental service, which may directly or indirectly affect the player, club or the league,” every Uniform Player’s Contract states.

The provision also states the agreement is “subject also to the right of the commissioner to suspend the operation of this contract during any national emergency during which Major League Baseball is not played.”

Ugh. Obviously, this is sad news for the sport we love and the season we’re hotly anticipating, but those concerns are secondary in the face of a public health crisis during which schools and other institutions have been closed and people have become sick or died; the worldwide confirmed case count as of Wednesday is upwards of 127,000 as of Wednesday, and the death toll is approaching 5,000. We can hope that the games return to us in short order, but right now, nobody really knows what’s in store.

On Wednesday, the dominoes began falling across the landscape of US sports with respect to the spread of the novel coronavirus. A day that included the World Health Organization officially declaring the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, and a top U.S. health official telling a Congressional committee, “Bottom line, it’s going to get worse,” saw leagues and organizations take unprecedented steps in order to comply with governmental restrictions on large gatherings. Such social distancing measures have been proven to slow the spread of a virus — to “flatten the curve” in order to avoid overwhelming health care systems and force grim decisions on triage — that has shown a 33% daily rise in the cumulative number of cases, and that may ultimately infect 70 million to 150 million people in the U.S. alone, one for which a vaccine is at least a year away.

Where on Tuesday Major League Baseball’s closure of locker rooms and clubhouses went into effect, by late Wednesday that measure and the concerns that surrounded it looked like small potatoes compared to the NCAA’s announcement that its signature basketball tournament would proceed without spectators, and the NBA’s indefinite suspension of its season following a player testing positive for the virus. While MLB began addressing its most acute situations in Seattle and San Francisco on Wednesday due to decisions made by local authorities, it’s now quite apparent that the league will soon need to move beyond piecemeal solutions and be forced to make a choice between delaying its March 26 Opening Day or playing games behind closed doors. Reporters such as ESPN’s Jeff Passan and MLB Network’s Jon Heyman have suggested that spring training could soon be suspended.

[UPDATE: Via Passan, MLB is expected to suspend spring training after a conference call among owners on Thursday afternoon, and the league “likely will delay the beginning of the regular season as well.” Passan quoted Dodgers pitcher David Price, “”It’s gotta happen. This is so much bigger than sports. I’ve got two kids.”]

As noted previously, such measures are hardly the biggest sacrifice to be made at a time when schools and other institutions are being closed and people are becoming sick or even dying amid an epidemic whose worldwide confirmed case count is upwards of 127,000 as of Wednesday, and whose death toll is approaching 5,000. Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday was not the first time that COVID-19 cracked the headlines, but it was the day the disease made its most significant impact yet on American culture. Early that morning, Washington governor Jay Inslee banned gatherings of more than 250 people in the state’s three most affected counties, urging citizens to practice social distancing in an effort to limit the virus’ spread and, by extension, all but ensuring that the Seattle Mariners season opener will not be played as scheduled. By day’s end, the federal government had implemented significant travel restrictions, Tom Hanks tested positive for COVID-19, the NCAA announced plans to restrict attendance at its events, and the NBA suspended its season. Finally, belatedly, the novel coronavirus hit the sports world.

COVID-19 is a deadly disease. The latest estimates project that more than 120,000 people have contracted the virus, and that nearly 4,500 of those infected have died. For a variety of reasons, we don’t know what the precise fatality rate is, but the World Health Organization recently trotted out 3-4% as a crude mortality ratio estimate. That’s a very high number, particularly considering how easily this coronavirus spreads. The virus is transmitted by fluid-to-fluid contact, and it’s a resilient bug, capable of living on metal surfaces — the kinds we touch on buses and in elevators and stadium handrails — for hours, or possibly days. Worse, people who do have it are contagious for long periods of time, and have ample opportunity to pass it off even after they’ve started feeling better.

Sporting events are prime places for the virus to thrive. Because the disease gives some carriers very mild symptoms, you can bet that plenty of sick people will shrug off what they perceive as a routine cold to support their team in person. Once at the game, they’ll eat, drink, shout, and share space with thousands of other people. In these dense quarters, COVID-19 will inevitably spread. Read the rest of this entry »