Archive for Daily Graphings

It stands as a threat rather than an official proposal — heaven forbid the owners actually engage the players directly instead of attempting to negotiate through the media — but MLB’s latest thought balloon regarding a 2020 season centers around a 50-game schedule. In the wake of the players’ formal proposal that they receive the full prorated share of their salaries for a 114-game season that would begin on June 30 and end on October 31 (with a postseason to follow in November), the owners have let it be known that they’re not enthusiastic about that idea. Per ESPN, The Athletic, and other outlets, they’ve discussed a 50-game slate as a last-resort option.

The wee season would begin in July, and for it, the players would receive the full prorated share of their salaries, though those would amount to just 30.8% of their full-season salaries. Here it’s worth noting that the 50-game schedule is the same distance from the central 82-game proposal as the 114-game one is; if the two sides were to meet exactly in the middle, we’d be back at the number that’s been floating around since the owners voted to propose a 50-50 revenue split on May 11.

As Dan Szymborski illustrated in his latest round of ZiPS projections, a lot of strange stuff can happen in just 50 games, including a 28.1% chance of the Dodgers — projected as the best team in baseball over a full 162 games back in March — missing the playoffs and a 0.6% chance of the Marlins winning the World Series. “At 50 games, the ability to meaningfully differentiate between the great and the good, the mediocre and the bad, starts to fade significantly,” wrote Szymborski. “There’s a one-in-five chance that the winner of the World Series will be a team believed to be .500 or worse.” Read the rest of this entry »

Chi Sung Pil was born in Korea around 1900. His mother, Sun Sin So Kim, was a longstanding Presbyterian missionary. Sometime around 1909, Kim’s husband died. Thanks to the efforts of Christian missionaries in Honolulu, who assisted Korean Christian widows and divorcees in relocating to the United States, Kim moved to Hawai’i shortly thereafter, bringing young Chi Sung with her. Kim continued her missionary work with the other devout Korean immigrants she met, and soon remarried within the thriving community, having two more children.

In Roberta Chang and Wayne Patterson’s The Koreans in Hawai’i: A Pictorial History, 1903-2003, a photo from 1920 shows Kim and the family she built in Hawai’i. The photo is taken against an elegant forested backdrop, and both parents and children are dressed to the nines: mother and daughter in light dresses, father and son in suits — the son, Harry Kim, sporting a jaunty polka-dot button-up and bow-tie. Chi Sung, who would then have been around 20, is not pictured.

Only a few years later, Chi Sung’s photograph would be featured in newspapers across the country. There is one in particular that kept cropping up: an action shot, with Chi Sung’s left arm raised high behind his head, his right arm extended outward and down — the classic, instantly recognizable pose of the submariner. In the Los Angeles Times on April 5, 1923, this photo appeared alongside other images of other people making world news that day — Haran Elkuta, leading a revolution in Albania; a group of Hawai’ian legislators; the U.S.S Pennsylvania at sea.

The caption box beside Chi Sung’s picture reads: “Only Korean ball player is demon pitcher! Chi Sung Pil, now attending the University of Oregon, plans to organize a team of Koreans to tour the Orient.” Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been considerable movement from both the players and the owners since our last round of polling. For the first time, May will no longer be an option for the season start date. Thanks again for taking the time to answer these questions, and help us understand your perspective on a potential 2020 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in this interminable offseason, I set out to find the best bunters of 2019. Why? Partially it’s because with no major league games, digging through old ones is an acceptable substitute. Partially it’s because it highlights some interesting and undervalued skills. And partially it’s because I love a good bunt for a hit.

There was one disappointing problem with the 2019 bunts, however: none of them were that momentous. The best bunt of 2019 was worth .326 WPA; in other words, the batting team’s odds of winning the game went up by 32.6 percentage points. That’s a big play, but it’s only the 12th-most valuable bunt in the last 10 years.

How does a bunt improve one team’s odds of winning by 32.6%? Like this:

So yes, a bunt needs some help from the opposing team to be worth so much. There’s no way around that; a bunt gets the defense involved in the play, so the best ones are going to involve a combination of good bunting and bad fielding. The most valuable bunts swing entire games — in this game, both runners scored and the Phillies won 6-5. Again, that’s not even one of the top 10 biggest bunts. Read the rest of this entry »

As first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan in the latest episode of “Let’s Negotiate Through the Media,” MLB ownership will reportedly issue a counter-counter-proposal to the MLBPA’s counter-proposal of a 112-game season with the prorated salaries previously agreed upon in March. This time, rather than the weird pay-scaling or completely dead-on-arrival revenue sharing schemes, the owners proposed a 50-game season, played at the players’ prorated salaries.

The owners didn’t explain how they got to a 50-game season, but it coincidentally averages with the players’ 114-game proposal to come out exactly to the 82-game season that was originally proposed. While a season shorter than 82 games might not be the same bright shade of red flag the we’re-partners-but-only-when-times-are-bad revenue sharing proposal was, there’s a general belief that the players aren’t interested in assuming the risks of playing during a pandemic if they’re not even getting half-season of games in. One priority for the owners is finishing the postseason before a possible second wave of COVID-19 cases hits in order to safe guard lucrative playoff TV contracts — money, it should be noted, that wasn’t fully accounted for when the league claimed $640,000 per game losses in a presentation to the players. Read the rest of this entry »

While the NC Dinos bolted from the gate by winning 17 of their first 20 games — the best start in the history of the Korea Baseball Organization — the LG Twins have been the league’s hottest team of late. After starting the season 2-4, the Twins have won 14 of 18; through Tuesday, they stood just two games behind the Dinos (18-6). This run has been largely powered by first baseman Roberto Ramos 라모스, who recently homered four times in five games, and leads the league with 10 dingers overall.

Ramos, a 25-year-old lefty swinger who spent 2014-19 in the Rockies chain, began his latest jag with a walk-off grand slam against the KT Wiz’s Min Kim 김민 김민 on May 24, turning a 7-5 deficit into a 9-7 win :

LG's Roberto Ramos wins the game with a walk-off grand slam in the 9th against KT.

?SBS Sports with the call pic.twitter.com/EgcdYeTWFQ

— Dan Kurtz (@MyKBO) May 24, 2020

Two days later, in a 3-0 shutout win over the Hanhwa Eagles, he put the Twins on the board first with a solo shot off reliever Yi-hwan Kim 김이환:

https://twitter.com/AlexMicheletti/status/1265315036630827009

Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob Cruz played with some great hitters from 1996-2005. Teammates bookending his career included Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr., and in between he shared the field with stalwarts such as Manny Ramirez and Larry Walker. Ever studious, the Arizona State University learned from them all.

Cruz’s now teaches hitting. He’s done so for the past decade, beginning with a six-season stint in the Arizona Diamondbacks system, followed by two seasons — the second of them as a minor-league hitting coordinator — with the Chicago Cubs. Cruz then spent 2019 as the assistant hitting coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates, which is the role he now has in Milwaukee. This past November, the Brewers brought Cruz on board to work alongside hitting coach Andy Haines.

In the 27th installment of our “Talks Hitting” series, Cruz addresses his philosophies, as well as Bonds and some of the players he’s worked with in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.

———

David Laurila: Has hitting changed much since your playing days?

Jacob Cruz: “Hitting has really changed. When I started coaching [in 2011], a lot of the terminology was different. It was Dusty Baker talking about ‘step on ice,’ ‘squish the bug,’ and ‘make sure you hit your back with the bat on your followthrough.’ That’s not the terminology that’s being used today, and a lot of it has to do with the tech side of it. We’ve grown. We now know how to measure things, whereas before hitting was more of a guess.

“The players have changed as well. They don’t expect you to give your opinion; they want facts. It’s now ‘Show me the data on why I need to make this change.’ As a coach, that means making sure you’re an expert on every facet of hitting, which includes the technology and the analytics. Everything you can possibly be asked, you want to be able answer. There is a lot of information out there, from the K-Vest to Ground Force data to the bat sensors. All of those are pieces of the puzzle.”

Laurila: You used the term ‘stepping on ice.’ I’m not familiar with that. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, MLB proposed that major league players take a $1 billion pay cut beyond the pro-rated salaries they’d already agreed to under their March deal. Last Tuesday’s proposal was not met positively by most players, and they had pretty good reasons to be upset. Now the MLBPA has responded to MLB’s proposal, with Jeff Passan first reporting the details followed quickly by Evan Drellich and Jared Diamond. The focus of the union’s response centers around more games, which would take regular season play into October, but it also includes potential salaries deferrals and expanded playoffs for this season and next.

On it’s face, this proposal might not look much of a step forward to getting baseball back in 2020. After all, the MLB proposal asked for a billion dollars in cuts to player pay; adding 32 games to the schedule and increasing player pay by nearly 40% means an extra billion dollars for the players. A source told Jon Heyman the deal was a “non-starter” for owners. But while the deal might not be looked upon favorably by ownership, there are several aspects of it that invite negotiation.

At least publicly, there seems to be a fundamental disagreement between the players and owners regarding whether regular season games make money for baseball’s owners without the presence of fans. In MLB’s presentation to players from last month, their claims of a $640,000 loss per game missed huge chunks of revenue that need to be included to arrive at a more realistic revenue figure. When I ran the calculations based on MLB’s own numbers, I found that MLB generally would make, after accounting for pro-rated salaries, about $170,000 per game. Those numbers actually edge slightly higher the more games are played due to MLB’s inclusion of some fixed costs, like buyouts. Even by these conservative numbers, which come directly from MLB and leave out considerable baseball-related revenue as well as marketing opportunities (or losses), that means that in 32 more games, owners make another $974 million while paying the players another $840 million or so, netting MLB another $134 million overall. While MLB’s public posture is that regular season games cost money, former MLBPA lawyer Gene Orza theorized in an Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal piece that Rob Manfred and the owners want more games just like the players do, but it is a better negotiating tactic to have the players ask for those games. So while more games might be something that the players have a strong desire for in order to make more money, it appears to be mutually beneficial, though certainly some teams will end up better off than others. Read the rest of this entry »

Usually, these results would have been posted last week, but the holiday combined with having some other business to attend to meant a delay until today. The polls closed early last week, before the most recent news cycle of proposals began. We again received more than 1,000 responses, similar to the first four rounds. In the fourth round of voting, the results showed more optimism that some sort of baseball season would be played than in any of the three prior rounds of polling. The results weren’t quite as rosy this time, but two-thirds of the responses believed there would be a 2020 season.

Here’s how the results have tracked since late March:

We saw a couple wild swings the last few rounds, and it will be interesting to see what the next round brings, but this week has settled in between.

In terms of the number of games, here’s how the responses looked the first four rounds:

And this round:

We see 76-100 maintaining the top spot, falling a bit as zero picks up some votes. The big change came in the outlier groups: those thinking there will be more than 100 games are basically non-existent, while the 51-75 group has picked up a bunch of votes.

As for when the season will start, this will be the last poll with May as an option, though it’s not as if it was a popular choice:

These results are basically in line with the last poll, with July or Never leading the way, though certainly some of the July responses might move to August before switching to Never.

As the league’s public plans have shifted from spring training facilities to home ballparks for game sites, the crowd has shifted its answers in response:

A month ago, 60%-65% of responses thought spring training sites would host regular season games. Two weeks ago, those responses dropped around 10 percentage points and they dropped again this round, with the majority believing no regular season games would take place at spring training sites.

As for games without fans, the results mostly line up with the number of regular season games, though there’s a small percentage of the 76-100 votes above that do shift downward, meaning a small percentage of respondents do expect some games with fans this season:

As for when the season will end…

Late November was about 10 percentage points higher in the last round of voting and it appears those lost votes split between No Season and early November. It appears MLB’s stated preference of a relatively normal postseason schedule if not format has caused some answers to move a little earlier in the year.

As for that format, we’ve seen a massive shift, as the clear majority of fans believe there will be expanded playoffs this season:

Expanded playoffs has nearly doubled in terms of responses since just a couple weeks ago.

Later this week, we’ll take another crack at polling our readers. Given the spate of news across the last week, it will be interesting to see how the mood has shifted.

To call Foley’s NY Pub and Restaurant a sports bar would be like summarizing Citizen Kane as a movie about a sled. Sure, the bar at 18 West 33rd Street in Manhattan stood out as a place where one could enjoy a beer while watching whatever games were in season — and on some nights, you might find three sports vying for attention on its numerous screens. But for nearly two decades, Foley’s has served as a pillar of the baseball community, a beacon not only for local denizens but for out-of-towners — players, umpires, scouts, celebrities, and writers. “Foley’s was a baseball writer’s Cheers,” wrote MLB.com’s Alyson Footer via Twitter.

Sadly, the occasion for Footer and hundreds of others to share their thoughts about the venerable watering hole on social media was a somber one. On Friday, owner Shaun Clancy posted a video announcing that the bar, which shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 16, will not reopen. “There’s just no way that I can see that we can do it,” he said in the two-minute video, “and I don’t really know what to say except thank you all… This is the end of the inning but not the end of the game.”

A message from @ShaunFromFoleys. Sad news regarding Foley’s. #WeHadBeer pic.twitter.com/i1uimhZQL2

— Foley's NY (@FoleysNY) May 29, 2020

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