Last week, the World Series started to look more like modern baseball. The best hitters batted more, the worst pitchers threw less, and there were fewer bunts than ever. Did that modernization continue into the 2000’s? Uh, nope!

2001

Here we are, at the World Series that led me to this article series in the first place. The Diamondbacks were an oddly constructed team; stars and scrubs to an extreme degree. They didn’t help things by batting Tony Womack and his 66 wRC+ in leadoff, and Mark Grace was overqualified in the seven spot, but this team simply didn’t have much offensive firepower outside of Luis Gonzalez and Reggie Sanders, who batted third and fourth respectively. Grace over Craig Counsell in the two hole would have helped, surely, but offense wasn’t this team’s calling card.

The Yankees had the same efficient lineup as always. Jeter held down the oft-misused second spot, Chuck Knoblauch remained an underqualified leadoff hitter, and everyone else was roughly where they should be. It’s still hard to know whether they got there on purpose or by accident — Knoblauch somehow got 600 PA as a no-bat left fielder/DH — but for the most part, they had good hitters batting where they should.

In Game 1, the 90’s came back in the most predictable way. Womack led off the third inning by getting hit. Counsell followed up with a sacrifice bunt — which Luis Gonzalez followed with a homer. Nice bunt! It had been a tie game, but still: third inning, no outs. That’s a pretty bad one.

Aside from that, the 9-1 blowout was more or less uninteresting. The Yankees indulged in a few intentional walks, but they were in spots that felt somewhat do-or-die; down three and four runs, to be precise. Bob Brenly pulled Curt Schilling after 102 pitches and 7 innings, and he used back-of-the-pen relievers to protect an eight run lead. By the book, as it were. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday afternoon’s FanGraphs Live stream, starting at noon ET, will feature a discussion of the OOTP Brewers, who have some crucial decisions to make.

Who should we target as a shortstop replacement? What should we offer? Should we bench Lorenzo Cain on-stream, or re-tool our pitching rotation? If you can think of something a general manager can do, we can try it. If you can think of something a manager can do, we can adjust our in-game tactics to attempt it. The Brewers sit at 14-14 in the virtual 2020 OOTP universe, and our decisions could help get them on the right track.

We don’t spend a lot of time talking about batting average at FanGraphs. While getting on base with a hit is still important in today’s game, getting on base via a walk is nearly as good as a single. Hitting doubles, triples, and homers is also very important and looking at batting average doesn’t factor in any of that production. It’s missing out on a lot of important results and thus, isn’t as useful as it was once thought to be when determining how good a hitter is at the plate. To some, this might be a slight, impugning players with great batting averages like Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn, two of the only three batters in the last 50 years with career batting averages over .320 (Rod Carew is the other). But it’s important to note that just because Boggs and Gwynn had high batting averages, doesn’t mean that they would be less valuable in today’s game.

Boggs and Gwynn both had career wRC+ marks of 132, with Boggs’ 88 WAR ranking sixth among all position players since 1969 and Gwynn’s 65 WAR making him a Hall of Famer as well. That combined the two players have fewer home runs than Ryan Zimmerman is of little concern to their overall value. The two were great hitters, though with ISO’s closer to .100 than .200, they might be referred to as singles hitters today. That’s a little unfair, and even a little inaccurate, as both rank in the top-20 of doubles-plus-triples over the last 50 years. I wondered what Gwynn and Boggs might do if placed in today’s game. The game has changed in the last few decades, with smaller parks and shrinking strike zones to go along with significant increases in average pitch velocity and many more offspeed and breaking pitches as well. Taking Boggs and Gwynn from the 80s and plopping them into today’s game wouldn’t be a fair test, but we can take a look at how they adapted to changes in their era to see how they may have adapted today. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Cape Cod Baseball League Cancels Season

The Cape Cod Baseball League announced Friday that its executive committee voted unanimously to cancel its 2020 season, which was originally scheduled to open on June 13.

“Following CDC guidelines and medical recommendations, the league determined it would be impossible to guarantee the safety of players, coaches, umpires, host families, volunteers and fans during this unprecedented health crisis,” the league said in its announcement.

The Cape Cod Baseball League is the second in the National Alliance of Summer College Baseball to cancel its season, following a similar decision by the Valley Baseball League in Virginia that was made earlier this month. In addition to cancelled seasons, stay-at-home mandates issued by individual states have pushed back the season-openers of the Northwoods League and the Hamptons League, while the Cal Ripken Collegiate Summer League made the proactive decision to delay the season until July 1. In the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League, there is still a plan to proceed with the season as scheduled, but three teams have already stated that they won’t be able to operate this year. Read the rest of this entry »

As baseball players continued to get bigger and stronger throughout the 1990s — by various legal and illegal means — the game was changing rapidly. Starting pitchers began throwing with ever increasing velocity. Meanwhile, a decrease in a typical starting pitcher’s innings per game, a heavier reliance on the bullpen, and a greater likelihood of injury — all trends that continue in today’s game — were all becoming part of this new era of baseball.

While the game became more favorable towards hitters, many of the best pitching performances during this era are legendary. Here’s a look back at how the AL Cy Young winners of the 1990s were acquired.

After a successful 10 year stint with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team that drafted him in the first round (20th pick overall) of the 1977 amateur draft, Bob Welch was traded to the Oakland Athletics following the 1986 season in a three-team, eight-player deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets. The A’s, believing they were a team on the rise and close to playoff contention, fulfilled an offseason goal of adding a veteran starting pitcher to pair with Dave Stewart, who had just had his first of what would end up being four consecutive 20-win seasons.

In his debut season with the A’s, Welch won a career-high 17 games, helping his team capture a division title and a World Series appearance. This was followed by another 17-win season that ended with a World Series championship in 1989. While he would spend another five seasons in the majors, 1990 would be one for the ages.

With assistance from one of the best bullpens in the game and, arguably, the best offense, the 33-year-old Welch won an astounding 27 games in 35 starts. But he also had a sub-3.00 ERA and allowed two earned runs or fewer in 60% of his starts, making it easy for his teammates to finish the game with a lead.

Sure, it was clear to most observers that Roger Clemens was the best pitcher in baseball. But that was no longer a huge story. He had already won two Cy Young awards and wasn’t slowing down a bit. As can happen, even today, voters will focus on the shiny new thing. In this case, that would be the “27 wins,” which hadn’t been achieved since Steve Carlton did it in 1972 and hasn’t been accomplished since. Read the rest of this entry »

Things were looking up for our Out Of The Park Brewers. We’d scrapped our way back to .500 after a rough start to the season. Were there some pitching injuries? Indubitably. But they were mostly of the replaceable variety; no one’s happy that virtual Josh Lindblom is out for a few months, or that virtual Brett Anderson missed two weeks, but Eric Lauer and Corbin Burnes aren’t so different as replacements.

Likewise, no one’s overjoyed that Lorenzo Cain is hitting like Michael Caine, if he decided to switch from acting to baseball. But the team has options; outfield depth is hardly the Brewers’ problem this year. The only truly bad scenario would be for Cain to continue being awful while getting the lion’s share of the playing time; all of the backup options are interchangeable and acceptable.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case at shortstop. Orlando Arcia simply hasn’t panned out; that’s why the real-life Brewers traded for Luis Urías over the offseason. It was a buy-low trade for a touted prospect who had some growing pains last year, the kind of move that, should it work, could pay huge dividends.

Urías broke his hamate in January. The way the recovery and the timing of the regular season stacked up, that cost us roughly a month of playing time — the injury wasn’t fully healed until last week, and given his missed spring, the league decided a one week rehab assignment would be reasonable — in theory, OOTP players don’t need rehab assignments, but we’re striving for realism here.

Well, rehab just hit us in a place where we don’t have depth. While playing in Triple-A San Antonio, Urías broke his foot. That’s a complete fluke — as best as I understand it, OOTP injuries are treated independently, and a broken hand and broken foot are definitely not correlated. Regardless, though — it’s broken.

This is adding up to a lot of time without a credible shortstop on the team. The foot, if it heals well, will be fine in four or so weeks. After that, he will rehab again; his brief stint in the minors is still his only in-game baseball in 2020. Tack on 10 days or so for the rehab, which looks like a reasonable guess based on previous rehab timelines, and it could be June before Urías takes the field in a Brewers jersey. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of last year, it looked like the Wilpon family might sell the New York Mets to Steven Cohen for around $2.5 billion. The proposed sale was an unusual one. It did not include SNY, the Mets’ regional sports network, which is owned by the Wilpons; the Wilpons were also set to maintain some degree of control of the team for years after the sale. In what didn’t come as much of a surprise given the deal’s unusual nature, things fell apart and the Mets are once again looking for new owners. Enter Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez.

As reported by Scott Soshnick in Variety, Rodriguez and Lopez have sought help from JPMorgan Chase to raise funds to purchase the team. The piece notes that A-Rod and J-Lo have a combined net worth of around $700 million, which is obviously well short of what is needed to meet a potential purchase price over $2 billion. While that gap might appear insurmountable, an A-Rod/J-Lo owned Mets team isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem. First, consider that any purchase of this type is going to be financed with a considerable amount of debt. As Tom Ley wrote in his analysis of the Cubs’ previous sale — in the Ricketts’ initial plans to purchase the Cubs, there was talk of financing as much as $750 million of a potential $1.15 billion deal, though in the end, they paid $845 million and financed $450 million — teams are bought with significant amounts of financing:

Ted Lerner purchased the Nationals for $450 million in 2006, and the “Debt Primer Presentation” GSP sent to the Ricketts includes the details of that sale as a case study for how a highly leveraged purchase can work. Lerner took on the maximum amount of debt—$360 million—in order to purchase the team. Jim Crane bought the Houston Astros for $615 million in 2011, reportedly by taking on $300 million in debt; the Dodgers ownership group assumed $412 million in debt when they purchased the team in 2012.

Read the rest of this entry »

You know the legend of Steve Dalkowski even if you don’t know his name. He’s the fireballer who can summon nearly unthinkable velocity, but has no idea where his pitch will go. His pitches strike terror into the heart of any batter who dares face him, but he’s a victim of that lack of control, both on and off the field, and it prevents him from taking full advantage of his considerable talent. That, in a nutshell, was Dalkowski, who spent nine years in the minor leagues (1957-65) putting up astronomical strikeout and walk totals, coming tantalizingly close to pitching in the majors only to get injured, then fading away due to alcoholism and spiraling downward even further. Dalkowski, who later sobered up but spent the past 26 years in an assisted living facility, died of the novel coronavirus in New Britain, Connecticut on April 19 at the age of 80.

Ron Shelton, who while playing in the Orioles’ system a few years after Dalkowski heard the tales of bus drivers and groundskeepers, used the pitcher as inspiration for the character Nuke LaLoosh in his 1988 movie, Bull Durham. In 2009, Shelton called him “the hardest thrower who ever lived.” Earl Weaver, who saw the likes of Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, and Sam McDowell, concurred, saying, “Dalko threw harder than all of ‘em.”

“It’s the gift from the gods — the arm, the power — that this little guy could throw it through a wall, literally, or back Ted Williams out of there,” wrote Shelton. “That is what haunts us. He had it all and didn’t know it. That’s why Steve Dalkowski stays in our minds. In his sport, he had the equivalent of Michelangelo’s gift but could never finish a painting.”

In 1970, Sports Illustrated’s Pat Jordan (himself a control-challenged former minor league pitcher) told the story of Williams stepping into the cage when Dalkowski was throwing batting practice:

After a few minutes Williams picked up a bat and stepped into the cage. Reporters and players moved quickly closer to see this classic confrontation. Williams took three level, disciplined practice swings, cocked his bat, and motioned with his head for Dalkowski to deliver the ball. Dalkowski went into his spare pump, his right leg rising a few inches off the ground, his left arm pulling back and then flicking out from the side of his body like an attacking cobra. The ball did not rip through the air like most fastballs, but seemed to appear suddenly and silently in the catcher’s glove. Read the rest of this entry »

Drew Hedman’s title with the Arizona Diamondbacks is Major League Run Production Coordinator. The 33-year-old Pomona College graduate was promoted to that position in January 2019 after spending the previous 12 months as a pro scout. His backstory is interesting, in part because he bypassed business school along the way.

Hedman played four seasons in the Red Sox organization, and while he topped out in Double-A, that alone qualifies an accomplishment. A total of 1,521 players were selected in the 2009 draft, and only three of them went later than Hedman. As a 50th-round pick, the writing was on the wall by the time the ink dried on his first contract. Not that he didn’t give pro ball the old college try.

“I certainly knew the odds weren’t in my favor, but with that being said, I always tried to be stubborn enough to think I’d be the exception,” Hedman told me. “I did everything I could to put myself in the best possible position to make it. Obviously it didn’t happen.”

Staying in the game beyond his playing days was a goal even before his release. The question was, in which capacity? A front office role made sense — Hedman has a B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, with a focus in Economics — but his alma mater wasn’t yet the baseball breeding ground it’s become. Over a dozen Pomona alums have gone on to work for MLB teams since Guy Stevens, who now runs the Kansas City Royals’ R&D department — broke the ice in 2013. Hedman was cut loose in spring training that same year.

“Back then it wasn’t really a path that people [at Pomona] were exploring,” Hedman told me. “It wasn’t something I really knew existed, or knew how to approach if I wanted that to be a reality.”

A coaching role at the collegiate level ended up being Hedman’s “impactful first step” toward a return to professional baseball. In August 2013, he was hired as an assistant to Tim Corbin at Vanderbilt. Read the rest of this entry »

When you see the “we said, they said” press release exchanges in the media between MLB and the MLBPA concerning salaries in a fanless baseball world, it serves as a reminder that baseball’s biggest fight is actually the one on the horizon. By comparison, that fight might make the COVID-19 policy squabbling look like a nursery school shoving match.

Baseball’s current collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2021 season, and long before the novel coronavirus altered the 2020 baseball landscape, players had real grievances they wished to see resolved in the next labor agreement. After two tepid winters of free agency — it did thaw a bit this last winter — and teams treating luxury tax thresholds as soft salary caps, players have expressed varying degrees of unhappiness with baseball’s current economics. Service time shenanigans like the Cubs swearing that Kris Bryant’s services were needed exactly one the day after a call-up would have otherwise resulted in free agency following the 2021 season are not conducive to good-faith negotiations between equal parties.

The players are no doubt going into these talks with a wish list of things they want. Some they’ll get, others they won’t. But the negotiation on both sides will be hard-fought; dealings between owners and players usually only go smoothly when the subject is taking away money from people with no voice at the table.

If I were the evil dictator of the MLBPA — I made myself the evil dictator of MLB last week when mixing up some new divisions — here are what my priorities would be for the next CBA. (I’ll let someone else answer the question of why I always label myself an evil dictator.) Read the rest of this entry »