I’m writing this about 24 hours after Shohei Ohtani pitched in his first ever major-league game. Certain things, I probably don’t even need to tell you. Maybe you made a point of watching the game live. Maybe you made a point of watching some of the highlights. Maybe you made a point of reading about Ohtani in other places today. Whatever the case, I imagine many of you know what happened. Ohtani lasted six innings, and the Angels beat the A’s. The outing was good, without being spotless.

Ohtani’s game has been written about dozens of times. Every one of his starts is going to be written about dozens of times. We can’t really worry about that, though. FanGraphs needs its own Ohtani coverage. Which is why I’m here to talk about his pitching debut. We can’t yet say much of anything about Ohtani’s bat. We don’t have the information. And, truth be told, we can’t yet say much of anything about Ohtani’s arm. In time, his numbers will reflect his ability. For now, we can only observe and extrapolate. And looking over Ohtani’s six frames, there was a whole lot of good, and some things that were less good. The Angels, I assume, are generally pleased.

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Rougned Odor is the second baseman for the Texas Rangers. You read FanGraphs, you know that. Odor has good power, plays decent defense, and really ought to learn to take a walk.

Rougned Odor also has a mean right hook.

The man on the receiving end of Odor’s punching prowess, Jose Bautista, is currently out of work. That means he needs something to do. And since idle hands are the devil’s playground, let’s give Jose that something.

Let’s have Jose Bautista sue Rougned Odor for battery.

Now, we already know what battery is from our discussion of beanballs, but let’s refresh our memories just to make sure. Battery is a (1) harmful bodily contact, (2) with intent to cause that bodily contact, and (3) without consent. Assault is apprehension of that intentional harmful bodily contact. In other words, actual physical contact isn’t necessary for an assault charge, whereas it is necessary to qualify as battery. Some people just call assault “attempted battery,” but that’s not exactly right; it’s a little more complicated than that. Assault and battery vary a bit from state to state and are creatures of state law like this one.

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Don’t expect to see Yasmany Tomas at Chase Field anytime soon. The 27-year-old Cuban slugger was placed on outright waivers on Saturday, removing him from the Diamondbacks’ 40-man roster even as starting right fielder Steven Souza Jr. is sidelined for at least the first month of the season. The waiver move only further underscores the mistake the Diamondbacks made in signing Tomas to a six-year, $68.5 million contract in December 2014, a deal that has cost the team far more than money. He’s become the opposite of the gift that keeps on giving.

Tomas played in just 47 games for the Diamondbacks last year, hitting .241/.294/.464 with eight homers, an 89 wRC+, and 0.1 WAR before being sidelined by a groin injury that eventually required two surgeries, first in August and again in December. The additions of Souza via trade and Jarrod Dyson via free agency made clear at the outset of spring training that Tomas wasn’t guaranteed a starting job. Even with Souza’s pectoral strain, the Diamondbacks optioned Tomas to Triple-A Reno on March 25, and Sunday’s move now allows them to put that 40-man spot to better use. Given that he’s owed around $46 million through 2020, Tomas is unlikely to be claimed on waivers. Refusing an outright assignment and opting for free agency would void the remainder of his deal.

With the move, Tomas has become the game’s most expensive minor leaguer, making $10 million in salary plus another $3.5 million in the final installment of his signing bonus. You don’t see that every day, and for evidence how far out of sight and out of mind such a player can become, one need look only to the man he supplanted for that dubious title, countryman Rusney Castillo. The Red Sox signed Castillo to a seven-year, $72.5 million contract in August 2014. He recorded just an 83 wRC+ in 337 plate appearances spread over 2014-16 before the Sox outrighted him off their 40-man roster in June 2016. Now he’s buried in Triple-A — in part because adding him back would push them even further over the luxury-tax threshold. The Diamondbacks don’t have to worry about going over the $197 million threshold, but their $131.5 million Opening Day payroll nonetheless set a franchise record.

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BRADENTON, Fla. — The first pitch of the 2018 season was a home run. More and more hitters seem to have the intent to get the ball in the air. We’ve heard about more and more swing-change stories this spring. What can pitchers do to counteract the movement? I know many pitchers and coaches are thinking about that question.

I traveled to Pirates camp late this spring because in part because I am still familiar with a number of people within the club from my time on the beat in Pittsburgh, but also because so much has changed in the game — and in their clubhouse — since the last time I covered a Pirates’ game in September of 2016.

Pittsburgh, of course, made three consecutive playoff appearances from 2013 to -15. While those clubs featured a collection of talented players, the teams was also notable for its run-prevention plan. In each of those three seasons, the team led the majors in ground-ball rate, compiling a three-year mark of 51.5%. They allowed the fewest home runs (339) over that three-year period, as well.

The Pirates made a point either of acquiring pitchers with quality sinking fastballs or developing those sinkers internally. The club led baseball in sinker usage during that three-year span, targeting the lower part of the zone. The Pirates had built a philosophy around the pitch: to pound batters inside to create discomfort and weaker swings. The Pirates executed their philosophy well: they led baseball in hit batters (233), collateral damage from pitching inside.

Of course, much has changed — and changed quickly — since that three-year window.

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Now that real baseball has finally started, we are very likely going to spend a lot more time here at FanGraphs discussing the game on the field. That’s a very good thing for all of us who love the sport. Before wading too deeply into the new season, however, let’s take one more look at how this offseason affected payrolls.

This past winter was an unusual one, with a number of free agents receiving significantly less than expected, and players and teams holding out for contracts all the way until the season’s start. Most of our pieces contained a general caveat that we would need to wait until all players had signed to really determine the effects of this offseason. I even spent some time wondering if we would have to wait until after next offseason to determine the longer-term effects of this past winter.

As we have now reached Opening Day, we have the opportunity to look at current payrolls and compare them to the same point last year. Here’s where we sit on Opening Day, per Cot’s Contracts.

The Boston Red Sox are well out in front of all teams, followed by the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, and Washington Nationals. Notable by their omission, the New York Yankees don’t appear among the top five. This is notable for several reasons.

• The Yankees haven’t placed outside the top three in MLB payroll since 1992, the year Marlins owner Derek Jeter was drafted. Melido Perez and Danny Tartabull were the team’s top-two players.
• The Yankees haven’t been outside the top two in MLB payroll since 1994, the last time a baseball season ended without a World Series.
• The last time the franchise had an Opening Day payroll lower than $167 million before this season was 2003, before Alex Rodriguez had ever played a game for the club.

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Ian Happ had a solid rookie season with the Chicago Cubs in 2017. The switch-hitting outfielder slashed .253/.328/.514 and went deep 24 times in 413 plate appearances. He learned a lot of lessons along the way, and they began early with an influx of high heaters.

“I was pretty successful in the first week or two,” said Happ, who logged 10 hits in his first 28 big-league at bats. “Then I started seeing a lot of elevated four-seamers. It took me a long time to figure out how to hit that pitch.”

The method he adopted was antithetical to the launch-angle swing.

“Belt-high four-seam fastballs, especially when guys have ride, or something that looks like it’s jumping at you… that’s a pitch where you need to be able to adjust your swing plane in oder to handle it,” explained Happ. “You have to be flatter. You almost have to be above the baseball and attacking with a downward plane. That’s the only way to be direct and get on that pitch, which is different than hitting an off-speed pitch or something low in the zone where you can kind of create a little more lift.” Read the rest of this entry »

This is Alexis Brudnicki’s fifth piece as part of her March residency at FanGraphs. Alexis is the Director of Baseball Information for the Great Lake Canadians, an elite amateur baseball program in London, Ontario, Canada. She has written for various publications including Baseball America, Canadian Baseball Network, Sportsnet, The Hardball Times, and Prep Baseball report. She won a 2016 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award for Contemporary Baseball Commentary. She can also be found on Twitter (@baseballexis). She’ll be contributing here this month.

This is also the third installment of a three-part series exploring whether the Australian Baseball League is in the midst of their own juiced ball and bat controversy. In this installment, league officials and the equipment manufacturers respond. You can find Part 1 and Part 2 here.

The Response

Increasingly aware of the way the numbers were adding up throughout the season, the Australian Baseball League’s general manager, Ben Foster, understands the natural inclination for players, fans, and others to draw their own conclusions about what led to the spike in home runs and the offense on a whole.

“One of the great entitlements for sports fans is their right to speculate and to try and figure out why something as unpredictable as sport always surprises us,” Foster said. “As a fan myself, I love to speculate on things like, ‘Will this player or that player have a great year?’ Or, ‘Why did he go to the bullpen in that situation?’ So I do think it is natural for people to speculate about every aspect of the game when they see unexpected results.”

But the league’s GM does not believe that the numbers point to any one thing in particular. Acknowledging that equipment might have been a part of the equation, he does suspect that the standard of baseballs used during the recent season were of superior quality to those used previously.

“I cannot rule out that equipment played a part, too,” Foster said. “But I think it’s an oversimplification of just the baseballs. In conversations I had with players and coaches, many commented on the improved quality of the bats we supplied this season.

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Whatever their other uses, records are valuable for the drama they’re capable of facilitating. Wondering if Player X or Team Y will surpass a standard established by their predecessors is part of how many enjoy baseball. While each era is distinct in some ways — Dazzy Vance’s 21.5% strikeout rate meant something very different in 1924 than it would have in 2017 — the raw numbers still possess their own considerable weight.

Some records seem nearly insurmountable, others less so. At the moment, the Mariners’ single-season record of 264 home runs, set in 1997, is seeming particularly vulnerable. And it wouldn’t be surprise if the Yankees were the ones to topple it.

Provided they remain healthy, Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Giancarlo Stanton are going to do plenty of damage. There are lots of yet-to-be-launched home runs littered elsewhere on the roster, as well. The game is trending toward the optimization of launch angles, the ball might be juiced, and the Yankees have unreal power.

I suspect we are all curious to observe the individual damage Stanton, the reigning NL MVP, will do in his new home. He’s going from Marlins Park and its 80 home-run park factor for right-handed hitters — 100 is average — to Yankee Stadium’s 124 right-handed HR factor. He’ll be able to splinter his bat and hit homers to right and right-center at New Yankee. Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago today, the author of the current post published his own contribution to FanGraphs’ positional power rankings — an examination, specifically, of designated hitters. In the context of the positional rankings, DH occupies a slightly uneasy place. For one, the position (or non-position, as it were) doesn’t actually exist in the National League, which means the pool of players is necessarily smaller. Also, attempting to understand the contributions of a DH in the context of wins presents some difficulties. On the one hand, owing to the absence of any defensive responsibilities, designated hitters are subject to a robust negative adjustment in the calculation of WAR. On the other hand, though, hitters who are deployed in the DH role tend to hit worse than when playing the field — what analysts typically characterize as a “DH penalty.”

While one, duly motivated, could dedicate some time and energy to improving upon the extant methodology for evaluating the position, it’s also true that good hitters, when utilized in a DH capacity, tend to be well acquitted by WAR, poor hitters less so — a point illustrated by the image below.

Here one finds the chart that accompanied the aforementioned power-rankings post. Teams further to the left are projected to produce more wins out of the DH spot in 2018; teams on the left, fewer of them. The Yankees and Red Sox, who employ Giancarlo Stanton and J.D. Martinez, respectively, are expected to fare well this season. The Mariners and Indians (Nelson Cruz, Edwin Encarnacion), too.

It’s the rightmost bar of this chart that probably deserves some attention, because it largely concerns Your 2018 WAR Leader.

The White Sox were forecast, just a week ago, to receive the fewest wins from the DH position of any American League club — and not just the fewest wins, but actually negative wins. Certain current events might serve to cast that projection in a curious light.

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A celebrity chef and restauranteur, a philanthropist, an icon in two cities, an All-Star in three, and the only player to collect at least 500 hits with four different franchises — Rusty Staub was all that and more. “Le Grand Orange,” who played in the major leagues from 1963 through 1985 and collected 2,716 hits including 292 homers, passed away on Thursday, hours before the start of the 2018 season and three days shy of his 74th birthday. If he wasn’t quite a Hall of Famer as a player, he most certainly was as a humanitarian, raising more than $100 million to combat hunger and to benefit the widows and families of police, firemen, and first responders killed in the line of duty.

“He was a George Plimpton character who didn’t have to be invented,” wrote Faith and Fear in Flushing’s Greg Prince.

A native of New Orleans, Daniel Joseph Staub — the son of a minor-league catcher — gained his first nickname from a nurse at the hospital he was born, for the red fuzz covering his head. Playing alongside older brother Chuck, he helped Jesuit High School to the 1960 American Legion national championship and the 1961 Louisiana State AAA championship. Major-league scouts from 16 teams beat a path to his door, and Staub wound up signing for a bonus of either $90,000 or $100,000 (sources differ) with the expansion Houston Colt .45s in 1961. He put in a big season for the Class-B Durham Bulls in 1962, leading the league with 149 hits and the next year, just eight days past his 19th birthday, was the Colts’ Opening Day right fielder. He went 1-for-3 that day, collecting an RBI single off the Giants’ Jack Sanford for his first hit, but batted a dismal .224/.309/.308 with six homers in 150 games for the 96-loss team, which was in its second year of existence.

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