SAN DIEGO — In the wake of a record-setting season for total home runs — 6,776, or 1.39 per team per game, an increase of 21.4% relative to last year, and 11.0% relative to the previous record, set in 2017 — on Wednesday morning, Major League Baseball released its long-awaited report from a committee of scientists and Rawlings representatives in their attempt to account for what has happened during the 2017-19 seasons. Shortly afterwards, an eight-member panel consisting of representatives from the committee, Rawlings, and MLB then fielded questions from the media. It was a lot to absorb, even given familiarity with the topic, but the general impression from all that’s been put forth is that MLB and Rawlings don’t have the firmest of grips on their product and its performance.

The full 27-page “Preliminary Report of the Committee Studying Home Run Rates in MLB” (PDF) is highly technical, and worthy of further scrutiny, scientific study, and perhaps skepticism, but a few things came through in the press conference and a cursory trip through the report. First, Rawlings and MLB denied that there’s anything underhanded when it comes to changing the ball. Said President/CEO of Rawlings Michael Zlaket, “We have never been asked to ‘juice’ or ‘de-juice’ a baseball. And we’ve never done anything of the sort. Never would.”

Second, beyond a reiteration of the committee’s 2018 finding (PDF) that the ball-to-ball variability in aerodynamic drag is greater than the year-to-year change in average drag — a consequence, the league and Rawlings maintain, of using a product made of natural materials and constructed in part by hand — is that even the scientists involved in MLB’s committee are still grappling with the complex interplay of factors that affect drag. Seam height plays the biggest role, but hardly the only one. It will take further study to untangle the other factors — work that both Rawlings and MLB say that they’re committed to doing, via the committee. Read the rest of this entry »

Amidst a flurry of activity surrounding Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon at the Winter Meetings, the Blue Jays bolstered their starting rotation with an under-the-radar free agent signing. On Wednesday afternoon, Toronto agreed to a two-year, $24 million deal with Tanner Roark.

The Blue Jays had 21 different pitchers start a game in 2019, the most in the majors. While a handful of these starters were relievers acting as openers, it’s still a shocking amount to work through in a single season. With Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez traded mid-season, there were moments in September when the pitching probables for Toronto were filled with TBDs.

After trading for Chase Anderson earlier this offseason, the Blue Jays continued to shore up their thin rotation by adding Roark, and they paid a bit of a premium for his durability. He’s made more than 30 starts in five of the last six seasons, with a stint in the bullpen in 2015 as the lone outlier. And though his innings total dropped to 165 in 2019 after three straight seasons of 180 innings or more, he made 31 starts split between Cincinnati and Oakland. His new pact with the Blue Jays has an average annual value higher than Kiley McDaniel ($10m AAV) or the crowd ($9.6m AAV) projected. With such a shaky rotation, the consistency and reliability of Roark was likely a factor in that slightly elevated salary. Read the rest of this entry »

Just as an earthquake can send shockwaves across a region for days, a high-magnitude free agent signing can create ripple effects for other teams around baseball.

On Tuesday, the Yankees agreed to sign Gerrit Cole to the richest pitching contract in history, getting their man for $324 million over nine years. While the top free agent is now officially off the board, the decision-makers in front offices across the league aren’t resting quite yet. In fact, the Yankees began preparing for the reality of signing Cole before the deal was even completed, with Joel Sherman reporting on Monday that the team is “actively” trying to trade J.A. Happ.

Happ is entering the second year of a two-year, $34 million contract, meaning that he will count for $17 million for luxury tax purposes. We currently project the Yankees’ 2020 payroll to be approximately $250 million, already putting them above the $208 million tax threshold. Even if the Yankees clear Happ’s salary in a trade, Cole still puts them well above the threshold, but at that point, it’s more than worth it. For New York, the key isn’t as much getting below the tax as it is getting below $248 million. For every dollar spent up to $248 million, the tax is solely monetary. Beyond that point, however, a team’s highest draft selection is moved down 10 slots. That’s why the Yankees (or any team) can blow pretty far past the tax without having to worry about impacting anything other than their owner’s checkbook. Read the rest of this entry »

With the Red Sox trying to cut payroll and increase profits at the expense of the on-field product, it would make sense that the team might try to deal one of their most expensive players. David Price put up a very good season for the Red Sox in 2016 and helped the club win the World Series in 2018, but he made just 22 starts last year and began the offseason recovering from surgery on his wrist. When he did pitch this season, Price was effective, with a 3.62 FIP and 2.6 WAR despite just 107 innings, but the 34-year-old only threw 24 innings after the All-Star Break and his health is a huge question mark. Despite those concerns, Jeff Passan is reporting that teams are inquiring about the possibility of acquiring the left-hander.

The Boston Red Sox continue to pursue ways to shed salary, and multiple teams have targeted starter David Price, sources tell ESPN. He is owed $96 million over the next three years. Red Sox could either attach player with value or potentially pay down some of Price's remaining $.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 11, 2019

Given the present injury concerns, determining Price’s trade value is a bit difficult. Dan Szymborski provided the following ZiPS projections for Price over the next three seasons:

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Wacha was once one of the most promising young pitches in the game. In 2013, he pitched the Cardinals to the World Series, winning NLCS MVP. Through his first dozen starts in 2014, Wacha put up a 2.78 FIP, 2.45 ERA, and a 1.8 WAR that was among the top 15 pitchers in the game. Shortly thereafter, Wacha was diagnosed with a scapular stress injury that would ruin the rest of 2014, leaving him an innings eater the following three seasons, and something less than that over the last two years. Wacha hit free agency for the first time having barely held on to a rotation spot for most of the season and having failed to make the Cardinals postseason roster. The Mets, seeking depth in a rotation that already includes Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Marcus Stroman, and Steven Matz, opted for a low-risk deal to position Wacha to close out the rotation with a one-year, $3 million contract that, with incentives, could bring the total to $10 million, as first reported by Joel Sherman.

Wacha still has his signature changeup, but his fastball rarely missed bats and he allowed 16 homers on the pitch last season. His strikeout rate dipped below 20%, and he might have been hurt by the rise in home runs last year. While Busch Stadium is a home run suppressor, Wacha gave up a ton of long balls both at home and on the road, though his road numbers were particularly brutal, with a 6.17 FIP. An indication that he probably wasn’t fully healthy, Wacha’s velocity moved all over the place throughout the season. Mike Shildt did say that Wacha was healthy as the season ended, but that he didn’t make the postseason roster due to a lack of need for an extra starter. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the dead-ball era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts, and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year. But despite the verdicts, the specter of PEDs won’t leave Clemens’ case anytime soon, even given that in March 2015, he settled the defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount.

Amid the ongoing Hall of Fame-related debates over hitters connected to PEDs — most prominently Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa — it’s worth remembering that the chemical arms race involved pitchers as well, leveling the playing field a lot more than some critics of the aforementioned sluggers would admit. The voters certainly haven’t forgotten that when it comes to Clemens, whose share of the vote has approximated that of Bonds. Clemens debuted with 37.6% of the vote in 2013 and only in 2016 began making significant headway, climbing to 45.2% thanks largely to the Hall’s purge of voters more than 10 years removed from covering the game. Like Bonds, he surged above 50% — a historically significant marker towards future election — in 2017, benefiting from voters rethinking their positions in the wake of the election of Bud Selig. The former commissioner’s roles in the late-1980s collusion scandal and in presiding over the proliferation of PEDs within the game dwarf the impact of individual PED users and call into question the so-called “character clause.”

Clemens’ march towards Cooperstown has stalled somewhat in the two years since, as he’s added just 5.4% to reach 59.5%. Whether or not the open letter from Hall of Fame Vice Chairman Joe Morgan pleading with voters not to honor players connected to steroids had an impact, the end result is time run off the clock. He still has a shot at reaching 75% before his eligibility runs out in 2022, but like Bonds, needs to regain momentum.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, Gerrit Cole signed a record-breaking contract with the Yankees. Jay Jaffe broke down the signing, and mentioned one important part: the contract includes a player option after five years. In a contract as lengthy and lucrative as Cole’s, an opt out might seem like mere ornamentation. That’s not the case, though: as Stephen Strasburg’s earlier contract shows, sometimes the market in the future is simply better for a pitcher than we think. With that in mind, I took a stab at valuing the player option.

We use two player projection systems here at FanGraphs, and I ran both of them through the option pricing tool, as well as a hybrid. First, let’s take a look at the most optimistic: Steamer projects Cole for 6.3 WAR this year. From there, I applied a standard 0.5 WAR/year aging penalty and ran the numbers. You can read the methodology here, but as a quick refresher, I take an aging-inclusive projection, then bump each year by a random, normally distributed number to account for fluctuations in talent level.

The bumps persist year-to-year; if Cole improves to a 7 WAR projection for 2021, his mean projection for 2022 would be 6.5 WAR after the aging penalty, and I then apply another random talent bump to that projection. I do the same thing with the cost of a win in free agency; it generally trends upward, but jumps around, and the jumps persist year-to-year. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I had some fun putting Austin Hedges into generic NL and AL lineups. It wouldn’t have been fun for those lineups, of course: Austin Hedges is a terrible hitter! He cost lineups something like 30 runs over a full season, and that’s with him replacing the worst hitter on the team.

So while the mental gymnastics of seeing how much damage Hedges would do was fun, it was a macabre kind of amusement. Look how bad your team could be at offense without being worse at baseball overall! That doesn’t really get the people going.

With this lineup approximating tool assembled, though, there’s no reason to limit its use to Hedges. Instead, let’s put Mike Trout in some lineups — all over lineups — and see if we can create some fun statlines.

I’ll be honest, this exercise started with me wondering what the Astros would look like with Trout. So to start, I plugged Trout into the Astros’ regular lineup. Their team now looks like this:

First of all, hoo boy. That’s almost too hot to print. I wasn’t really sure where to put everybody; I briefly considered having Altuve bat seventh, and it didn’t even look all that wrong, which should tell you everything you need to know about how good the lineup is. (I left Chirinos in as the catcher because I’m using 2019 season stats for this exercise, but that hardly matters to the results.) Read the rest of this entry »

While Silver Slugger awards reward the best hitters at every position and Gold Gloves are awarded to the best fielders, there hasn’t been a single award for the best player in every role. Now there is. Major League Baseball unveiled a pair of All-MLB teams on Tuesday at the Winter Meetings, with the squads including a player at each position to go along with a full five starters and two relievers. Since the main other piece of news today has involved Scott Boras’ love of birds, let’s take a quick look at the All-MLB teams and see what WAR has to say.

Here are the teams:

The 2019 All-MLB First & Second Teams!

LOVE seeing this concept for baseball… Love the idea of honoring the full season's contributions from players, MLB-wide.

More info on the honorees from @castrovince:https://t.co/vz7VU4eYsj pic.twitter.com/lU2nHncwnB

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) December 10, 2019

Let’s run them down position by position. Read the rest of this entry »

Last winter, as Manny Machado and Bryce Harper became the first free agents to reach the $300 million plateau, the Yankees kept their powder dry, deciding both that they had enough depth at those players’ respective positions and enough money spent beyond the Competitive Balance Tax threshold. Despite a considerably more glaring need in their rotation, they bypassed the market’s top free agent pitcher, Patrick Corbin, as well, unwilling to go to a sixth year to secure his services, which ended up selling for $140 million to the Nationals. On Tuesday, the Yankees spent the money they had been squirreling away, agreeing to a nine-year, $324 million contract with 29-year-old righty Gerrit Cole.

The Yankees reportedly outbid the Dodgers, Angels, and multiple mystery teams (possibly the Astros and Giants) for Cole, a pitcher whom they have coveted since selecting him in the first round of the 2008 draft (28th overall), only to lose out to his commitment to attend UCLA. Three year later, he was the first overall pick by the Pirates, for whom he pitched from 2013-17 and helped to two Wild Card berths, before being traded to the Astros for four players in January 2018, just two and a half months after Houston had won its first World Series.

In Houston, Cole reconfigured his arsenal, scrapping his sinker and relying more upon his four-seamer and breaking balls, and ascending into elite territory. Over the past two seasons, only Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer have outdone his 13.4 WAR and his 2.67 FIP, while only deGrom and Justin Verlander have bettered his 2.68 ERA; no starter in that span has outdone his 37.3% strikeout rate. In 2019, Cole set a record for an ERA qualifier by striking out 39.9% of all hitters while also leading the AL with 326 strikeouts, a 2.50 ERA, a 2.64 FIP, and 7.4 WAR. Not only was he poised to hit the market at the apex of his value to date, he was positioned to hit a trifecta unseen since the winter of 1974-75, when Cy Young winner Catfish Hunter of the three-time defending world champion A’s was suddenly declared a free agent after owner Charlie Finley failed to make deferred annuity payments in a timely fashion as stipulated by his contract. Read the rest of this entry »