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On Sunday, Christian Yelich powered the virtual Brewers to an emphatic 9-3 victory over Trevor Bauer and the Reds. It was part of a week long five-homer outburst, the driving force behind a .303/.361/.818 slash line. And it brought Yelich to 2.9 WAR on the season, the third-best tally in the majors. In other words, Yelich is picking up right where he left off in 2019.

So, too, are the Brewers. That rout was part of a 3-1 series victory over the Reds. The other series of the week was a 2-1 triumph over the Cubs. Together, they left us eight games over .500 and in first place by four games in the NL Central. Perhaps most impressively, the team’s run differential is now positive despite a 25-run loss earlier in the year.

But the good times weren’t universal. In Thursday’s contest against the Reds, starter Corbin Burnes felt a twinge in his shoulder as he pitched in the third inning. He left the game and immediately returned to Milwaukee for an MRI, which revealed severe shoulder inflammation. Within a day, team doctors ruled him out for the remainder of the season — he’ll hopefully be ready for rehab over the winter and pitch the entire 2021 season, but 2020 is out of the question at this point.

The pitching casualties are starting to pile up. Burnes joins Josh Lindblom 린드블럼 and Alex Claudio on the out-for-quite-a-while list — Lindblom will be able to begin rehab assignments in late July, while Claudio is out for the year. Brett Anderson is, for the moment, healthy, but he’s already hit the IL twice this year with forearm stiffness and a hamstring strain. There’s no guarantee he’ll be able to keep it together the rest of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, MLB presented documents to the player’s union regarding the financial implications of playing the 2020 season without fans. In an exclusive report, the Associated Press has revealed a considerable amount of the contents of those disclosures. The main takeaways are in the title — “MLB projects $640K per game loss with no fans” — and the third paragraph, which reads:

Teams say the proposed method of salvaging a season delayed by the coronavirus pandemic would still cause a $4 billion loss and would give major league players 89% of revenue.

That $4 billion figure was echoed by Commissioner Rob Manfred on CNN on Friday, except that he indicated in that interview those would be the losses if no season is played. Given that these documents are an attempt to convince the MLPBA to take less money and to put public opinion on the side of the owners against the players, it is fair to take these figures with a bit of a grain of salt. Let’s try to work through the numbers and answer some of the questions raised by the information in the presentation as reported in the AP piece.

First, the big question.

Are the owners going to lose $4 billion?

No. At least, they won’t if games are played. There’s a graph in the AP piece that shows team-by-team losses from an 82-game schedule played with no fans in the stands. The losses range from $312 million for the Yankees down to $84 million for the Tigers. The total losses come to around $4.4 billion, an average of $147 million per team and a median of $135 million. But this figure is misleading as it does not include MLB’s estimate of central revenues, which amount to $1.35 billion. Even taking MLB at its word, the losses immediately move down to $3 billion.

And depending on how revenues and costs are interpreted, the losses might be considerably lighter. First, there’s the issue of amateur spending. In the March agreement, the players agreed to let the owners defer about $425 million in spending to future years, but that $425 million is still included in the loss figure for this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I explored how each of the National League Cy Young winners of the 1980s were acquired. Six came to their teams in trade, while two were acquired through the amateur draft and one had his contract purchased from the Mexican League. Highlighting the American League list is a 19th overall draft pick, a 19th round draft pick, and two players who are probably better known for their post-playing careers than they were for their time as big league pitchers. Here’s a look back at how the AL Cy Young winners of the 1980s were acquired.

Eight years into his big league career, Steve Stone had played on just two winning teams. As a rookie in 1971, he made 19 starts for a first place Giants team with four future Hall of Famers on the roster. Six years later, he was a 15-game winner for a third place White Sox team that came won 90 games. The following season, they lost 90. A 31-year-old free agent entering the 1978-79 offseason, Stone had plenty of suitors. Playing for a winning ball club was certainly a top priority, which made his decision to sign a four-year, $760,000 contract with the Baltimore Orioles an unsurprising one. Read the rest of this entry »

Greg Jones has a quiet demeanor and loud tools. The former rang apparent when the 22-year-old shortstop called himself “kind of a mellow guy” in a recent phone conversation. The latter is why he’s No. 12 on our Tampa Bay Top Prospects list. Last summer, the Rays tabbed Jones 22nd overall as a draft-eligible sophomore out of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

He’d bypassed an earlier opportunity to turn pro. In 2017, the Baltimore Orioles had taken Jones in the 17th round out of Cary (NC) High School. He didn’t think he was ready. Moreover, his family wanted him to further his education. It would have taken more than the Orioles were willing to offer to change that.

“I had a number in mind, but they weren’t going to come up to it,” Jones explained. “So I was like, ‘I’ll just go to college.’ I took my talent to [UNC-Wilmington] and molded it into what I really want to be.”

The self-described late-bloomer went on to log a 1.034 OPS in his second, and final, collegiate season. He could have returned for a third, but given how much his stock had risen, bargaining power was now on his side. In what he called “a position to get the most money I possibly could,” Jones landed a signing bonus just north of $3M.

After putting pen to paper, he made the nine-plus-hour drive from the Tar Heel State to Fishkill, New York, where he joined Tampa Bay’s short-season affiliate, the Hudson Valley Renegades. Upon arriving, he ambled into the clubhouse and found his locker. A uniform top was hanging there, but no pants. “I had to go pick them up,” Jones recalled. “Luckily they had some that fit me.” Read the rest of this entry »

As I’m still scaling the learning curve when it comes to the Korea Baseball Organization, I got a little confused during this week’s conversations with Josh Lindblom 린드블럼 and Eric Hacker 해커, two pitchers who found greater success in the KBO than they had in MLB — to the point that both were recognized with end-of-season awards. Here I’ll offer some clarity, with a hat tip to MyKBO’s Dan Kurtz for pointing me in the right direction.

Every year, the KBO recognizes one player at each position (outfielders are grouped together) for its Golden Glove Awards, as voted upon by baseball writers, broadcasters, and analysts. In its inaugural year (1982), the awards were intended to be defense-based, as with its stateside counterpart, the Rawlings Gold Glove Awards, but they now recognize the overall best player at each position. League leaders in major offensive and pitching categories earn automatic nominations, while other candidates must meet certain thresholds to qualify. For position players, it’s defensive innings at a position, while for starting pitchers, it’s enough innings to qualify for the ERA title (144, one per scheduled team game, as is also the case in MLB). Relievers can qualify by recording at least 10 wins, 30 saves, or 30 holds. Read the rest of this entry »

When Michael Augustine wrote about Zac Gallen’s repertoire back in February, he called the 24-year-old Arizona Diamondbacks right-hander “a potential future ace.” Raw stuff wasn’t the reason. None of Gallen’s offerings grade out as plus-plus (although his changeup comes close). In terms of velocity, the former University of North Carolina Tar Heels hurler averaged a pedestrian 93.1 mph with his heater last season.

What makes Gallen good is his command, as well as his ability to mix, match, and tunnel his five-pitch mix. The numbers back up the promise. After debuting with the Miami Marlins last June — he was dealt to the D-Backs at the trade deadline — Gallen put up a 2.81 ERA and a 3.61 FIP over 15 starts. Despite the lack of a power profile, he punched out 96 batters in 80 innings.

Three months after Augustine addressed Gallen’s pitches from an analytical angle, we’re going to learn about them from the pitcher himself. Gallen chronicled the origin and development of each in a phone conversation earlier this week.

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David Laurila: What is your full repertoire?

Zac Gallen: “Four-seam, changeup, curveball, and… I call it a cutter, but it’s like a hybrid cutter/slider. You could characterize it as a hard slider, I guess.”

Laurila: No two-seamers?

Gallen: “Maybe one here or there. On rare occasion I’ll kind of squeeze one inside on a righty, maybe behind in the count, or to a lefty to see if I can get him to roll over. But my four-seam is a much better pitch, so I tend to stick with that. I probably throw a [two-seamer] once a game, or every couple of games.”

Laurila: When did you start mixing in an occasional two-seam? I’m assuming the four came first?

Gallen: “No. I actually grew up throwing a two-seamer. My dad coached our Little League team and when I was younger, maybe six, we had a guy who had played pro ball come out and teach us some things. He had me toy around with a two-seamer, so I started out throwing that. I didn’t make the full switch to a four-seamer until probably my junior year of college.”

Laurila: Why the switch to almost exclusively four-sam fastballs? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I discussed the significant disadvantage NL teams will have if the universal designated hitter is adopted for this season and NL teams were then forced to compete with AL teams for playoff spots. I did the best I could to estimated which players might be the greatest beneficiaries of playing time and then looked at how their teams might be impacted. One team jumped out in a negative way — the Mets finished dead last, receiving no benefit at all from Dominic Smith’s increased playing time at designated hitter. I did note that putting Yoenis Céspedes at the designated hitter spot would put the Mets in the middle of the pack in the NL, though that’s still hardly what one might consider a good situation. Still, it’s probably worth a deeper look.

Before we start moving playing time around to potentially maximize designated hitter production for the Mets, let’s take a look at the team’s projections. Below is every player projected to take at least 100 plate appearances in the field (over a full season), how those players project in their expected playing time, and their projections based on 600 plate appearances. Note that the fielding column is at their position and a positional adjustment has not been applied; only their time in the field is accounted for:

Read the rest of this entry »

Should baseball return in 2020, it will likely do so with a DH in both leagues. That makes sense — given shorter training times and an increased prevalence of interleague play, getting pitchers ready to bat wouldn’t be easy. Losing sacrifice bunts is no great sacrifice, either; no one is tuning into the game to watch Johnny Cueto try to get a bunt down against Zac Gallen.

But there’s one thing I’ll greatly miss about pitchers hitting: the moments where the opposing pitcher decides to play a little unfair. Pitchers are terrible hitters — terrible! The standard way to pitch to them is generally by throwing them fastballs until they take a seat in the dugout. But sometimes, that’s not how it goes. Sometimes the pitcher on the mound is a little cruel. Sometimes, they throw a pitch that moves.

The results of throwing a tough-to-hit pitch to a bad hitter should be pretty obvious — they don’t hit it. That’s not to say there are no downsides; breaking balls and offspeed pitches miss the zone more often than fastballs, and batters are less likely to put them in play, which means longer at-bats. No one wants long at-bats against the opposing pitcher. Leashes are short enough these days without a six-pitch battle against a guy who might as well be up there holding a ham sandwich instead of a bat.

Still, it happens more often than you’d think. Pitchers saw 18,502 pitches last year as batters. Exactly 6,200 were some variety of funky; curves, sliders, cutters, splitters, change-ups, and even eephuses. That’s a low proportion, even taking into account that Statcast couldn’t classify every pitch; only 33.5%, as compared to 47.3% for hitters as a whole. But it’s noticeably higher than zero. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday morning in Southlake, Texas, a Dallas suburb nearly 7,000 miles away from Changwon, South Korea, Eric Hacker 해커 celebrated the NC Dinos’ Sok Min Park 박석민’s game-winning home run against the KT Wiz. “Walk off by the most interesting teammate I have ever played with,” he tweeted. “#18 Awesome teammate and most definitely has his own style.”

Walk off by the most interesting teammate I have ever played with. #18 Awesome teammate and most definitely has his own style. #ncdinos #kbo #espn #mlb @espn @karlravechespn @Kurkjian_ESPN @JeffPassan @PerezEd pic.twitter.com/U4uBf5a2yd

— Eric Hacker (@Hacker_E) May 12, 2020

Park’s home run, his second of the game and third of the young KBO season, capped an impressive comeback. Down 6-3 in the eighth inning against the Wiz, the Dinos’ star third baseman hit a solo shot to trim the lead to 6-4. In the ninth inning, with the Dinos down to their final strike, designated hitter Sung-bum Na 나성범 launched a 425-foot two-run homer to tie the game, setting up Park’s walk-off shot. The win lifted the Dinos — arguably the league’s most entertaining team for the flair players like Park, Na, catcher Euiji Yang 양의지 and others bring to the game — to 5-1. At this writing they’re a KBO-best 7-1, one game ahead of the resurgent Lotte Giants.

Hacker, now 37 years old and selling residential real estate in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, spent 2013-17 as a rotation mainstay for the Dinos, starting from the time they joined the KBO as an expansion team. He helped the team to postseason appearances in the last four of those seasons, including a trip to the best-of-seven championship Korean Series in 2016, when the team was swept by the powerhouse Doosan Bears. Including a half-season spent with the Nexen Heroes (now the Kiwoom Heroes) in 2018, he ranked second only to the KIA Tigers’ Hyeon-Jong Yang, the league’s 2017 MVP, in pitching WAR (24.1, all advanced stats via Statiz), and fifth in innings (935.1). Read the rest of this entry »

On the mound is Ricardo Pinto. He’s 26 years old. At 6-feet and 195 pounds, he has a muscular build that immediately makes him look like an athlete. He’s struggling through this particular appearance, thanks to command issues and some iffy defense behind him, but he hasn’t really been hit hard. His low-to-mid 90s heat is on the faster side of what Korean Baseball Organization hitters typically see, and he leans on it heavily.

At the plate, with the bases loaded and two outs, is Yong Taik Park 박용택. He’s 41 years old. He wears glasses in the batter’s box. As he awaits each pitch, he stands with his front foot resting nearly on the edge of the box behind him. At 6-foot-1, 185 pounds, he doesn’t differ dramatically from Pinto in size, but his baggier uniform makes him look tall and thin.

Pinto begins his violent delivery, and Park brings his front foot square with the plate. As the ball approaches, he twitches it slightly, perhaps as a way to subtly maintain his timing. Finally, at the last moment, his bat explodes through the baseball as Park uncorks his whole body to turn on a pitch high and tight. It’s a gorgeous left-handed swing, and it produces a bases-clearing double.

And then the legendary Park Yong-taik does it again to break it wide open.

A 3-run double for the 41-year-old DH. pic.twitter.com/NJmjw7kQO4

— Locked On Orioles (@LockedOnOrioles) May 13, 2020

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