Archive for Daily Graphings

Prior to today, MLB owners had made one offer to the Major League Baseball Players Association to resume the season, one that included a renegotiation of the pro-rated player pay agreed to back in March. That proposal, made on May 26, was for 82 games and included about $1 billion in pay cuts from the March agreement. The offer seemed to unite the players rather than divide them, and five days later, the MLBPA proposed to play 114 games with expanded playoffs over the next two years. MLB has floated a 48-game schedule at full pro-rated pay, but never made that offer. Now, more than a week after the players made their proposal, the owners have responded with a proposal that’s somehow worse than their offer from two weeks ago.

As Karl Ravech first reported, the owners made an offer for 75% of pro-rated salaries for 76 games. He noted that the deal came with playoff pool money and that draft compensation for free agents would be eliminated. Jared Diamond reported that players were only guaranteed 50% of their pro-rated pay and would need to complete the playoffs to receive the rest. Diamond further reported that 20% of the $170 million advance would be forgiven. While the free agent compensation issue isn’t nothing, given the likely market climate this winter and the potential reduction in qualifying offers to begin with, it’s not clear how much this will actually benefit players. Overall, this offer is likely to be another unfortunate setback in the negotiations between the players and the owners, as it guarantees players less money than the owners’ other offer and pays them no more money upon completion of the playoffs.

Here’s a quick comparison of the 82-game offer with heavily decreased salaries compared to the 76-game plan with 75% pro-rated pay upon completion of the playoffs. The numbers include around $200 million in mostly fixed costs for player buyouts, pro-rated signing bonuses, and money still owed to players who have already been released; the per game amounts for pro-rated pay come from Jeff Passan’s piece last week:

Read the rest of this entry »

The NPB season is currently slated to start on June 19th, with hopes of playing a 120-game schedule followed by a condensed playoff docket. The 120 isn’t arbitrary. Per the league’s bylaws, that’s the number required for a season to be considered official. In a normal year, each NPB team plays 143 games.

The MLB season? That remains an unanswered question. It is also an angst-inducing question. As everyone reading this knows all too well, there may not even be a season.

Frank Herrmann knows baseball on both sides of the planet.The Harvard-educated hurler is heading into his fourth NPB season after playing professionally stateside from 2006-2016. As you might expect, he’s monitoring not only what’s happening in Japan, but also what’s happening back home.

“The schedule alignment here is essentially the opposite of what is being proposed by MLB clubs, who want fewer regular season games with longer playoffs,” Herrmann told me via email from Chiba, Japan. “Like most things, the motivation in both cases is money. NPB doesn’t have the lucrative TV deals that MLB does. Japanese teams rely heavily on ticket sales, merchandise, and concessions to generate income and offset salaries. There have been discussions to incrementally allow fans into games starting as soon as July 10. More regular season home gates for each team, stretching into mid-November, affords teams the best chance to cover losses.”

Salary structures and legal language weigh heavily into that equation. As Herrmann pointed out, high-end salaries in Japan are “more in the $7-8 million a year range, as opposed to the $30Ms in MLB.” Moreover, NPB contracts differ from those in MLB in that they “lack a specific clause for national emergencies, therefore players have been receiving their full salaries since February.” Herrmann expects NPB will add such a clause once the season is completed. Read the rest of this entry »

Here, take a look at Clayton Kershaw throwing a 3-0 pitch in 2018:

Pretty straightforward, huh? Okay, now take a look at the same situation in 2019:

Can you spot the difference between the two? I’ll save you some time — I can’t either.

Not very interesting, right? Well, that’s not really what we’re here for. You see, Kershaw’s behavior when he throws a strike on 3-0 doesn’t look very different. In 2019, however, his overall 3-0 strike-throwing changed greatly. Was it real? Was it a fluke? Does it tell us something deeper about Kershaw? Let’s investigate. 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.

NBA Board of Governors Officially Greenlights Return

There’s more work to be done before the NBA’s tentative July 31 return date, but team owners officially officially approved the pending proposal for the league’s restart. The vote 29-1 in favor, with only the Portland Trail Blazers voting nay because of a disagreement on the structure, and clears the NBA’s next steps: finalizing the COVID-19 safety requirements and getting the final approval of the players. To mitigate the difficulties of traveling in the midst of the pandemic, the games will be played at Disney World at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.

The players will be having a virtual meeting Friday afternoon, but the NBA and the NBPA have consistently kept an open dialogue about the status of the season and what a return would look like.

NHL Playoff Format Agreement

After an agreement between owners and players on this very subject, the NHL officially announced what the league’s playoffs will look like. After five-game qualifiers, teams will play seven-game series, with teams being re-seeded after every round instead of bracketed. An official start date has not been set, but this clears one of the remaining hurdles for the NHL to return to play, along with the NBA. What remains for the NHL is to finalize agreements for training camps, game protocols, and game hubs, the last as the NHL is unlikely to take the same “one location” tack the NBA is. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were one of the enthusiastic baseball fans who got an early start on tuning into ESPN’s first several broadcasts of the Korean Baseball Organization, there’s a good chance you’re already somewhat familiar with the Samsung Lions. The network carried their games four times in their first week of coverage, and the Lions spent a good amount of that time losing. A 4-0 loss to the NC Dinos on KBO Opening Day quickly turned into a three-game sweep, during which the Lions were outscored 16-5. They bounced back with two series wins against the Kia Tigers and Kiwoom Heroes, but that was undone by a stretch of seven losses in eight games, which set the Lions’ record back to 5-12.

The sluggish start was an unwelcome one for an organization that went from winning four straight Korean Series championships from 2011-14 to missing the playoffs entirely in each of the last four seasons. With a 60-83-1 record in 2019, the Lions are coming off the second-worst season by win percentage in the history of the franchise. Fortunately for them, however, the last couple of weeks have seen them trending in a much better direction. They’ve won seven of their last 10 games, including two series victories against the Dinos and Twins — the top two teams in the KBO by record. And the difference in that turnaround has been the team’s starting rotation.

Through the Lions’ first 17 games, they allowed 106 runs, the second-highest total in the KBO. During their 7-3 run, they’ve allowed just 43 — the second-fewest in that time frame. That’s a significant improvement, and the team’s starters have been the driving force behind it. In fact, the rotation was already beginning to turn the corner two full weeks ago. Here’s a breakdown of the team’s starter and reliever splits from the first 13 games, compared to their last 14:

Read the rest of this entry »

We seem to be faced with the prospect of a 50-game season in 2020. Getting 50 games is better than getting no baseball at all, but one of the great joys of the sport is seeing Mike Trout, the game’s best player, play baseball three times that often every year. Since the start of the 2012 season, Mike Trout has played in 1,159 games, an average of 145 games per year. During that time, he’s put up 72.7 WAR, an average of 9.1 WAR per season. On a per-50-game basis, Mike Trout has been worth 3.1 WAR, roughly equivalent to the marks put up by Manny Machado and Brian Anderson in 2019.

In 50 games, Mike Trout does what above average ballplayers do over the course of the entire season. To provide some context for Trout’s prowess, here’s a graph showing Trout’s rolling 50-game wRC+ average over the course of his career:

Remember that rough stretch Trout had near the end of 2014, where for a period of 50 games, his wRC+ was only 124? What struggles he must have been having. Or near the beginning of the 2018 season, when his rough patch carried over from 2017 and his wRC+ was a measly 134 over his previous 50 games? During his eight-plus years in the majors, Trout has spent more time with a 50-game rolling wRC+ above 200 than he has below 150. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that we’re clear of Even Year Magic and rapidly approaching the modern day, you might expect there to be fewer strange decisions to take issue with. You’d be right — we’re no longer inundated by a flood of sacrifice bunts. Bad pitchers aren’t heading through lineups a fourth time. Better hitters bat higher in lineups.

But these two World Series, while light on truly baffling decisions, featured a number of interesting ones. A decision that obviously lowers a team’s chances of winning — well, what can you say about that? It’s bad! But a decision that’s a coin flip, a 50/50 proposition with offsetting costs and benefits? That’s a gold mine for analysis, and both 2015 and 2016 were rich with them — particularly 2016.

2015

You know this one. We’re going to end up talking about Matt Harvey talking his way into pitching the ninth inning of Game 5. But let’s go through the motions of the rest of the series first. The Mets brought a powerful lineup with new-age leadoff hitter Curtis Granderson and newly powerful Daniel Murphy keying the top of the order. The Royals countered by batting their worst batter, Alcides Escobar, first. In fairness to Ned Yost, the rest of the lineup looked fine, but Escobar hit .257/.293/.320, and it’s not like it was a down year; his career line is .258/.293/.343.

Naturally, Escobar led off the game with an inside-the-park home run, courtesy of some of the worst outfield routes you’ll ever see from center fielder Yoenis Céspedes and left fielder Michael Conforto. That amusing diversion aside, the game was straightforward; both teams got six innings out of their starters before relying on a parade of bullpen arms, and the Royals eventually prevailed in 14 innings.

Game 2 was all about the struggles of a good, but not yet transcendent, Jacob deGrom. He struggled through the first four innings with only two strikeouts, and the wheels fell off in the fifth; walk, single, single to lead off the inning, two quick outs on a grounder and a line drive, and then three more consecutive singles. The four-run outburst was hardly preventable; pulling your 5-WAR starter in the fifth inning a day after a 14-inning game is a tough decision to make. Read the rest of this entry »

Colin McKee has exceeded expectations since being featured in a July 2017 Sunday Notes column. At the time, the Mercyhurst University graduate was not only a year removed from being drafted in the 18th round by the Houston Astros, he was playing short-season ball as a 23-year-old. To say the odds were stacked against him would be an understatement.

To a lesser extent, they still are. While McKee earned Texas League All-Star honors last season, he’s a soon-to-turn-26-year-old right-handed reliever who failed to impress after being promoted to Triple-A. Even so, some of his numbers suggest that he’s more than capable of taking those final steps. In 64 innings between Corpus Christi and Round Rock, McKee punched out 82 batters and allowed just 32 hits. Moreover, he’s studious about his craft. His post-playing career plans no longer include med school, but rather a position within pitching development.

——-

David Laurila: When we talked three years ago, you were 23 years old and playing short-season ball. I recall you being open about the long odds you were facing.

Colin McKee: “I definitely wasn’t ultra optimistic. I’m lucky that the Astros gave me the leash they did, because over the last couple of years I’ve started to figure some things out. I’m enjoying playing baseball, and hopefully I can continue to build on the progress I’ve made.”

Laurila: What were you thinking when you reported to spring training the following year? I assume your mindset was something along the lines of ‘sink or swim.’

McKee: “I wouldn’t say I was in desperation mode, but I was certainly aware of my age and the fact that I hadn’t played above short-season. Patrick Sandoval, who is with the Angels now, and I went down a week early. All I was thinking was, ‘Do anything to make a full-season roster.’ All I was hoping was to break camp with somebody and see what happens from there. Luckily I broke with Quad Cities, in the Midwest League, and pitched well enough that after three weeks they moved me up to the Carolina League.”

Laurila: What were your biggest development strides that season? Read the rest of this entry »

If the 2020 season does happen — and right now, that’s an open question — it will be without Chris Archer. The Pirates announced on Wednesday that the 31-year-old righty underwent surgery to correct for thoracic outlet syndrome, ruling him out for whatever transpires this season, and perhaps ending his time in Pittsburgh given his contract situation. Given the track record of pitchers who have undergone the procedure, we can only hope that this doesn’t mark the end of the two-time All-Star’s run as an effective pitcher.

As I’ve written before, thoracic outlet syndrome is caused by a compression of the nerves and/or blood vessels somewhere between the neck and the armpit. Symptoms commonly include numbness or tingling in the fingers and hands, or fatigue or weakness that doesn’t go away with physical therapy and rest. Pitchers tend to be particularly vulnerable to TOS because of their repetitive overhand movements and the way their arm muscles build up. The condition is generally remedied by the removal of a cervical rib and two small scalene muscles.

Archer, whom the Pirates acquired from the Rays on July 31, 2018 in exchange for outfielder Austin Meadows and pitchers Tyler Glasnow and Shane Baz (the latter as a player to be named later) — a steal of a deal for Tampa Bay, the way things have gone — endured the worst season of his eight-year career in 2019. Though he struck out a respectable 27.2% of hitters faced, his walk and home run rates jumped significantly from their 2018 levels, the former from 7.7% to 10.5%, the latter from 1.15 per nine to 1.88. Both of those were career highs, as were his 5.19 ERA and 5.02 FIP, which were respectively 20% and 13% worse than league average. Per Pitch Info, his average four-seam fastball velocity fell a full tick from 2018 (95.3 mph to 94.3 mph) and was down 1.5 mph relative to ’17 and 1.9 mph relative to ’15. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in the week, there seemed to be a growing sense of optimism regarding a potential deal between the players and team owners to get the baseball season started. MLB’s initial proposal may have been met with near-universal criticism, but the MLBPA’s response of a 114-game schedule, while obviously proposing significantly more games, left considerable room for negotiation. Just a day later, Jeff Passan reported that the owners were considering responding with a 50-game schedule played at the pro-rated salaries agreed to in March. The two sides were still far apart, but the players seemed willing to compromise on the playoff structure and deferrals, with the owners giving up a renegotiation of pro-rated pay; everyone seemed well on their way to somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-season’s worth of games.

Sadly, the owners never made such an offer. Indeed, they have since rejected the union’s proposal, reportedly with no intention of countering per Ken Rosenthal, who broke the news. The step back from ownership makes it difficult to determine where the parties stand on a potential 2020 season. While MLB didn’t formally propose a 50-game season, it’s apparently still a consideration for the league, as well as a negotiating tactic to get the player’s to play more games for less money per game. As Rosenthal and Evan Drellich noted in their piece on the subject for The Athletic:

Though the language in the March agreement between the parties is subject to interpretation, [MLB] believes the wording enables commissioner Rob Manfred to determine the length of the season as long as the league pays the players the prorated salaries outlined by the deal.

According to the agreement, it is up to MLB to propose season length:

using best efforts to play as many games as possible, while taking into account player safety and health, rescheduling needs, competitive considerations, stadium availability, and the economic feasibility of various alternatives.

Read the rest of this entry »