Archive for Daily Graphings

At least until May 5, when the Korea Baseball Organization plans to hold its Opening Day, the Chinese Professional Baseball League isn’t just the only game in town, it’s the only pro sports league in the world that’s up and running during the COVID-19 pandemic. The four-team circuit plays in a time zone that’s 12 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time — currently to empty ballparks due to safety concerns — and while the league has begun streaming English-language broadcasts on Twitter, its official site and its on-demand streaming service are mainly in Mandarin, creating a hurdle even for fans willing to get their baseball fixes over morning coffee or by watching rebroadcasts later in the day.

Enter CPBL Stats (@GOCPBL on Twitter), the Mike Trout of English-language resources devoted to the league, and a must-see for anybody attempting to, well, figure out Who’s Hu in Taiwanese baseball. In assembling the aforementioned piece last week, I found CPBL Stats’ site to be a godsend. Its Quick Guide to the 2020 Season pulls double duty as a season preview and a guide to the league’s recent history. Its English-language rosters, and stats (including advanced metrics like wRC+ ad FIP), and its guide to streaming are all indispensible features. While I was writing about the league, the site’s proprietor, Rob, was most helpful in filling in some gaps in my understanding. Earlier this week, he agreed to an email interview that further enhanced my appreciation of the league and his site, and I hope will do the same for FanGraphs’ readers.

First things first: Rob is a Taiwan native who speaks Mandarin as well as English. He described himself as “just an everyday 9-5 office worker in the marketing industry based outside of Taiwan,” and asked to further limit his disclosure of certain personal details, including his surname. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript of our exchange. I have used the English naming order, placing Chinese surnames last instead of first. Read the rest of this entry »

For whatever his transgressions both on and off the field — and he amassed an unenviable collection of them to go with the highlight reel from his 19-year major league career — nobody could ever say that Manny Ramirez doesn’t love baseball and wouldn’t go to the end of the earth, or at least halfway around the globe, to play it. After a brief, unsuccessful comeback bid in the A’s organization in 2012, the then-41-year-old slugger surprised the baseball world by heading over to Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League, where he played 49 games with the EDA Rhinos. Seven years later and more than two years removed from his last stint at any level, he’s itching to go back to the only professional league currently playing amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The people of Taiwan treated me like ‘baseball-royalty’, and I was truly overwhelmed by the island’s love for the game,” the soon-to-be-48-year-old Ramirez told Mark Buckton of The Taiwan Times. “My goal for 2020 is to find a roster spot in the CPBL,” he said, adding:

I have been itching to get back in the batter’s box and be able to compete again. I also miss being around teammates and team dinners post-game.

I know if I was given the opportunity to come in an organization as a player-coach, it would do great things for the organization and the league.

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.

MLB Floats More Plans For Opening the Season

Another day, another new idea for restructuring the 2020 season surfaces. On April 28, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported a new variation on some of the plans we’ve already heard, this one set to take effect no later than July 2:

MLB is considering a three-division, 10-team plan in which teams play only within their division – a concept gaining support among owners and executives. It would abolish the traditional American and National Leagues, and realign the divisions based on geography.

The plan, pending approval of medical experts and providing that COVID-19 testing is available to the public, would eliminate the need for players to be in isolation and allow them to still play at their home ballparks while severely reducing travel.

The report goes on to suggest that some at MLB even envision having “several thousand fans” in attendance when playoff season rolls around — a playoff season that would be extended, given the divisional reorganization.

Read the rest of this entry »

It happens so fast, sometimes. A moment ago, two runs behind, the game seemed almost over, the stadium lethargic; too much of the same thing has already happened this season. The Mariners have trailed almost the entire game after the Twins got to Doug Fister early. Only two months in, and they’ve already seen eight walk-off losses, 14 losses that came down to the game’s final plate appearance. They’ve had an eight-game losing streak. And who’s up this inning? No one to inspire. Jose Lopez, Josh Wilson, Rob Johnson. Edge-of-your-seat kinds of baseball guys.

But Jose Lopez hits a double into the right field corner, and Josh Wilson slaps a single up the middle, and all of a sudden, there is hope. It’s 5-4, nobody out, and the go-ahead run is coming to the plate.

***

Today is Monday. On Saturday, the Mariners played the Angels in Anaheim; Félix Hernández pitched eight innings, allowing only a single run, but the Mariners batters failed to back him up with anything more than a single run of their own. After walking Hideki Matsui, the first batter of the Angels ninth, Hernández gave way to Brandon League — who, after a scoreless ninth and top of the 10th, ended the game by allowing a grand slam to Kendrys Morales. On Sunday, still playing the Angels, the Mariners led 7-2 in the fifth. But a gradual crumble led to a final death-blow — a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth. Another walk-off loss for Seattle. They returned home defeated and demoralized. Here, now, the tables are turned. One win can’t erase the memory of all the losses. But it can, for a moment, give everyone something to celebrate — give everyone something meaningful to hold on to. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, readers answered the survey questions regarding what the upcoming season will look like that I have posed several times since the end of March. In late March, nearly 72% of respondents believed some sort of major league baseball would be played this year. That number dipped slightly two weeks ago, and with another 1,500 or so votes, the confidence level has dropped further.

This is how the results look over time:

Fewer readers believe major league baseball will be played this season, but a majority still fall on the optimistic side of the fence. As for how many games will be played… Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, conflicting reports regarding the state of Major League Baseball’s ongoing effort to contract and realign the minor leagues surfaced. While Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper and the Associated Press both reported that MLB is nearing an agreement with Minor League Baseball that would result in the loss of 42 affiliated teams, MiLB countered with a statement disputing the accuracy of the reports. Regardless of exactly where things stand in the negotiations, particularly with the COVID-19 pandemic endangering the entirety of the 2020 minor league season, some thinning of the herd appears likely.

While I’ve lived in New York City for 25 years and attended hundreds of Yankees games and dozens of Mets games in both recreational and professional capacities, I grew up on minor league baseball, primarily in Salt Lake City, where I lived from 1973-88 (and where my parents still reside), and Walla Walla, Washington, where my paternal grandparents lived and where I visited for several summers in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Thus I’m all too familiar with the pain that comes from a city losing its minor league affiliate — and two of the 42 teams reportedly on the chopping block hit close to home, both my current one and the one of my youth.

When I began attending games circa 1977-78, the Salt Lake Gulls were the Triple-A affiliate of the California Angels, and part of the storied, high-scoring Pacific Coast League. They featured future big leaguers like Willie Aikens, Rance Mulliniks, and Dickie Thon, all of whom Angels general manager Buzzie Bavasi made sure to trade away for aging veterans (not without some success), a pattern that continued through the remainder of the two teams’ relationship. While I had no affinity for the big club, I enjoyed following the careers of the aforementioned players and their successors, like Tom Brunansky and Brian Harper, as they fanned out across the majors.

My father would take my brother and me to a few Gulls games each year — often against the Albuquerque Dukes, the Dodgers’ Triple-A team and therefore of considerable interest in our household — and highlights from those games still stick out, particularly from 1979, the year they won the PCL championship. In one game we attended, Ike Hampton, a catcher-turned-designated hitter who clubbed 30 home runs for the Gulls that year, bookended a 17-inning epic with a pair of homers, though I was safely tucked in bed by the time the latter landed. In another game, Floyd Rayford, a third baseman whom Earl Weaver later used as a backup catcher, mashed a dramatic eighth-inning three-run homer that turned a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 lead, creating pandemonium; we could have turned cartwheels all the way home. Once my fascination with baseball statistics had begun, I’d pore over the Gulls’ daily box scores and update a hand-kept stat sheet, annexing my mother’s pocket calculator to figure out batting averages and ERAs. A few years later, I’d even apply rudimentary Bill James formulas to calculate runs created, though this involved some guesstimation when it came to counting walks via a standard four-numbered box score (AB R H BI). Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Woodruff made it to the big leagues without one of his old friends. He dramatically upped his game when he reintroduced that old friend to his arsenal. The results speak for themselves.

Woodruff debuted with the Brewers in August 2017 after logging a solid but unremarkable 4.30 ERA with Triple-A Colorado Springs. The righty then put up a 4.81 ERA and a 4.37 FIP in 43 innings after reaching Milwaukee. Respectable, but once again unremarkable.

The career-altering reunion happened midway through the ensuing season; a coming-out party of sorts took place down the stretch. With the Brewers chasing a playoff berth, Woodruff made seven September relief appearances and allowed just a lone one run in 12.1 innings. His October performance was every bit as good. In an identical number of innings, the former Mississippi State Bulldog surrendered two earned runs over four postseason outings.

Last year, Woodruff moved into Milwaukee’s starting rotation and fashioned a 3.62 ERA and a 3.01 FIP. Moreover, his 10.6 strikeouts per nine innings was the best of his professional career. Piggybacking on his previous postseason success, he proceeded to pitch four-innings of one-run ball in the National League Wild Card game.

This spring, I asked the 2014 11th-round draft pick about his ascent. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »