Amid the bevy of rule changes and health and safety precautions accompanying the return of major league baseball in 2020, there’s one in particular that feels like it comes straight out of Little League: the addition of a runner on second base at the start of extra innings. Initially one of Rob Manfred’s many trial balloons floated with the idea of shortening games, the rule has worked its way slowly up the organized-ball ladder, debuting in the World Baseball Classic in 2017, getting added to the Gulf Coast and Arizona Leagues that summer, and eventually becoming the law of the land throughout all levels of the minors in 2018. Not that it was bound for the bigs any time soon: Back in 2017, Manfred said he “[didn’t] really expect that we’re ever going to apply [the rule] at the major league level.”

Well, times have changed — or more accurately, the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent shortening of the season have led Manfred and company to bring the rule into play, likely for this year only. And on the surface, that makes sense: With only 60 games on the calendar and a potentially limited window in which to play them, it’s in everyone’s best interests to wrap things up quickly. As with the season on the whole, the less baseball, the better.

But how much less baseball is that rule going to create? We have two years’ worth of data from the minors to work with, and per MiLB, the results are notable. Over the last two seasons, just 43 total games went more than three extra innings, compared to 345 in 2016 and ‘17 combined. And as Baseball America’s JJ Cooper notes, nearly three-quarters of all extra-innings minor league games last year and the year before ended in the 10th, as opposed to just under half in the two seasons prior. And nearly all of them — 93% — finished in the 10th or 11th, representing a 20% increase.

That stands to reason. The rule — which puts a runner on second base to lead off the inning — creates a situation in which runs are the norm. A quick check of run expectancy tables shows that a runner on second with no outs led to an average of 1.1 runs scored and created a 61% chance of at least one run scoring from 2010 through ‘15. Both teams get the runner in their half of the inning, so it’s not an unfair advantage for either side, but it does allow the visiting team a chance to take a quick lead or give the home team an immediate opportunity to walk things off. Minor league fans have also noted how the rule immediately ups the drama of extras while also putting a new focus on fundamentals and putting the ball in play. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the cautious optimist in all of us got to hope there would be major league baseball in 2020, with Rob Manfred implementing a 60-game season contingent on the players confirming that they would report to team camps on July 1 and agree to the health and safety protocols required to move the season forward. Although the 5 PM deadline for the players to respond passed without word on Tuesday, the MLBPA later confirmed that “All remaining issues have been resolved and Players are reporting to training camps.” While there is still a pandemic to contend with, one that will alter the game and could still cause it to stall out, it appears the disagreements between the players and the owners over economic questions will not further impede a 2020 baseball season.

MLB also made its own announcement, revealing a July 23 or 24 Opening Day, with some additional information about the potential schedule:

MLB has submitted a 60-game regular season schedule for review by the Players Association. The proposed schedule will largely feature divisional play, with the remaining portion of each Club’s games against their opposite league’s corresponding geographical division (i.e., East vs. East, Central vs. Central and West vs. West), in order to mitigate travel. The vast majority of Major League Clubs are expected to conduct training at the ballparks in their primary home cities.

The full schedule is expected within 72 hours, though Jon Heyman has reported there will be 40 games in-division (10 games vs. each division opponent) and 20 games against teams in the opposite league’s corresponding geographic division. Ronald Blum of the Associated Press reports that teams will play four games each against their interleague opponents and will make just one visit to all of their opponents during the season.  Read the rest of this entry »

The universal designated hitter will be a reality in 2020, assuming that the Major League Baseball Players Association agrees to the health and safety protocols connected to the March 26 agreement, which is to say, that it will be part of the revised rules for this weird, short season. But because the league and the union were unable to agree to any of the subsequent proposals that have been batted back and forth in recent weeks, the status of the universal DH for 2021 and beyond — with the expectation that it would slip smoothly into the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement — is not a done deal, after all. Rather, it’s something that will have to be revisited within discussions over rules changes for next year, which typically begin at the November owners’ meetings.

Even so, as it’s the rare point upon which both sides agreed amid the otherwise rancorous negotiations, I think I’m still on solid ground in discussing the longer-term changes that could come with such a move. On Friday, I discussed the apparent end of pitchers’ often-pathetic attempts at hitting, and last month, Craig Edwards took an initial stab at how NL teams might handle their DH slots given their roster construction, with special consideration given to the Mets’ situation. This time around, I’d like to consider which players might stand to benefit in the longer run.

For starters, it’s worth noting that the demise of the DH has been somewhat exaggerated. Several years back, the AL saw a notable decrease in the number of players reaching significant thresholds of plate appearances at the spot, but those totals have largely rebounded:

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday night, Major League Baseball released a statement that, despite the legalese and lengthy section recapitulating earlier letters, set the terms under which baseball will return:

88 days after the league and the Major League Baseball Players Association reached an agreement to pay players a pro-rata share of their salaries (with the commissioner retaining the right to set the length of the season unilaterally), the two sides weren’t able to come to a satisfactory agreement for the resumption of play; they’ll instead abide by the terms of the March deal. Sources told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic that the league plans to announce a 60-game season, equal in length to the owners’ final proposal to the players.

Many of the details of the actual season remain unsettled. The union and the league must still agree on health and safety protocols, though representatives from both sides maintain that a deal there is imminent. The league’s statement mentions this specifically, but even without that particular ask of the players, the March 26 agreement is subject to the two parties agreeing on such regulations.

There has not yet been an official declaration that there will be a season. In addition to being contingent on a final health protocol agreement, there’s the matter of a second spring training. MLB has asked the players to report by July 1. The MLBPA seems very likely to comply with this request, however, which means that a followup announcement with an exact season schedule should follow soon. Read the rest of this entry »

Following a flurry of activity last week between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association as the two sides volleyed to resume the 2020 season, this past weekend was marked by inactivity. After an in-person meeting between Rob Manfred and Tony Clark spurred an owners’ proposal for 60 games on Wednesday and a 70-game counter-offer from the players on Thursday, the owners opted to wait the players out. While they were waiting, the schedule for a potential season got a little bit shorter, and positive coronavirus tests for five players and three staff members in Phillies camp forced some re-evaluation of the viability of Florida as a training site ahead of the upcoming season. With other positive tests popping up around the sport, all of the spring training complexes were temporarily closed for deep cleaning, and to establish new, more stringent safety protocols; in all, 40 players and staff have tested positive for the virus over the last week. Even with that news, the players were expected to formally vote on the owners’ 60-game proposal on Sunday, but a last-minute modification by Rob Manfred pushed the vote back.

In an email obtained by the Associated Press, Rob Manfred indicated to Tony Clark on Sunday that the season would not be able to begin on the July 19 date previously proposed by both sides, pushing the start of the season back to July 26:

“I really believe we are fighting over an impossibility on games,” Manfred said in the email, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “The earliest we will be ready for players to report is a week from Monday, given the need to relocate teams from Florida. That leaves 66 days to play 60 games. Realistically, that is the outside of the envelope now.”

Read the rest of this entry »

When I first wrote about José De León — this in a May 2015 Sunday Notes column — he was a 22-year-old prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization. He was also a shooting star. Piggy-backing on an emergent 2014 season, De León was dominating the hitter-friendly California League to the tune of a 1.69 ERA, and 50 strikeouts in 32 innings. His heater was a crisp and clean 94-96 mph.

Misfortune has followed those halcyon days. De León went on to debut with the Dodgers in September 2016, then was dealt to the Tampa Bay Rays four months later. Shortly thereafter, things began to go haywire. First it was discomfort in his forearm. Then came a lat strain followed by elbow tendinitis. The coup de grâce came in March 2018 when he was diagnosed with a torn UCL and underwent Tommy John surgery. Out of action until last May, De León took baby steps upon his return. He hurled just 60 innings, four of them at the big-league level, over the course of the campaign.

“The last few years have been rough,” admitted De León, whom the Cincinnati Reds acquired from the Rays over the winter in exchange for a PTBNL. “But I’ve grown a lot. I’m way stronger mentally, and I basically have a brand new arm, as well.”

His “new arm” doesn’t feel foreign to him. The Isabela, Puerto Rico native recalls former Tampa Bay teammates Alex Cobb and Nathan Eovaldi saying that theirs did feel different after surgery, but he hasn’t experienced that sensation. What he has experienced is a velocity rejuvenation. When I talked to him a few days before camps were shut down, De León told me that he’d been 95-96 in his most-recent outing, the firmest his heater had been in years. Moreover, he didn’t recall ever throwing that hard, that early. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ll always have his epically improbable 2016 home run, but Bartolo Colon ain’t walking through that door. If the players union and the owners can agree to something along the lines of the latest volley of proposals without immolating themselves in fiery rhetoric — now that they’re at 100% pro rata, it shouldn’t be that difficult, yet here we are — then the days of pitchers hitting are likely at an end. Per the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Tom Haudricort, MLB’s most recent proposal includes a universal designated hitter not only for this year, but for 2021, and ESPN’s Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers report the same is true for the union’s latest proposal. Beyond that, as Haudricourt notes, a universal DH is “almost certainly” going to be included in the Collective Bargaining Agreement that takes effect for the 2022 season. Not that hammering out that CBA will be a simple matter given the bad blood between the owners and the union, but it does appear that whenever they get around to playing again, the National League will finally join every other major circuit except Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League in adopting the DH.

The DH has been around since 1973, though its roots go back to the late 19th century. As the role of the pitcher became more important, necessitating they concentrate on improving that aspect of their game, the feeling was that pitchers should be excused from their offensive duties. While movements to adopt a “tenth man” came and went from time to time prior to World War II, it took until the late 1960s, amid declining offenses, for the Triple-A International League and various other minor leagues to begin experimenting. The AL and NL could not agree on whether to adopt the DH; they voted separately, and you know the results. The original plan was that after three years, both leagues would either adopt or discard the rule, but the AL enjoyed the significant bumps in scoring and attendance in the wake of the rule’s adoption, and the two differing brands of baseball were maintained.

That was easy to do so long as there was no interleague play, but the World Series presented an awkward clash. From 1973-75, no DH was used, while from 1976-85, an “Even-Odd” scheme was used, with the DH in the even-numbered years, and since then, the “When in Rome” scheme has been used, with the DH present in AL parks but not NL ones. That scheme was extended to the regular season when interleague play began in 1997. Thus the two brands of baseball have generally coexisted in peace for nearly half a century, albeit not without endless debates contrasting the purity of the game with its need to adapt, as well as the occasional push within the game to move one way or the other. Because the position’s duties tend to be filled by higher-salaried veterans, the Players Association sought the universal DH in negotiations for the 2011 and ’16 CBAs. They didn’t get it either time, but now it’s a useful bargaining chip for the owners to throw into the pot, and notable that the players have maintained it in their counteroffers. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, Rob Manfred and Tony Clark met in Arizona. On Wednesday, MLB made an offer to the MLBPA that would give players pro-rated salaries for 60 games and a $25 million postseason pool. It also included $33 million in salary relief from the $170 million in advances players received, and a universal designated hitter. In exchange, the owners would get expanded playoffs for the next two years, and the players would agree to waive any grievance the MLBPA might otherwise have brought against MLB for failing to make its best effort to schedule as many games as possible, as is required by the March agreement. The players have countered that proposal; the two sides, it would seem, are very close.

As first reported by Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers, the player proposal is for 70 games at pro-rated pay, with the same or similar salary advance forgiveness as the owners proposed, $50 million in playoff money, and a 50/50 split of new postseason TV revenues in 2021. The deal would include grievance waivers from both parties over the March 26 agreement, as well as the universal designated hitter.

The major differences the players propose are as follows:

• The regular season would end on September 30 instead of September 27.
• Ten extra regular season games, which would provide players with $252 million in additional pay, and, even using only local revenue, provide around $155 million in revenue to the owners.
• $25 million more in postseason pool money.
• Fifty percent of 2021 expanded playoff money, which could amount to $100 million or more for the players, though it would also mean corresponding increases for owners in 2020 and 2021, given that they stand to receive roughly 75% of those rights.

Read the rest of this entry »

After a week of waffling that would make Belgium jealous, Rob Manfred threw a curveball yesterday:

Manfred statement… pic.twitter.com/Z2NgD95F9T

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) June 17, 2020

Of course, it couldn’t be that easy, and I don’t just mean avoiding mixed metaphors. The MLBPA agreed that new substantive discussions had occurred, but disagreed that an agreement was in place or that a final deal was imminent. We’ll have to wait for another offer from the players, and likely a final counter from the owners, though the fact that their latest proposal includes full prorated salaries — and please, let’s never use the phrase “full prorated” again, like ever — suggests that the two sides will reach a deal.

Lost in the tick-tock of the negotiation and Manfred’s wild swings towards dealmaking and obstructionism, however, baseball is changing shape. When (and if) the game returns this year, it will look different than it ever has before. I don’t mean the season length, though that will certainly be novel. There are two major changes to the game in the owners’ most recent proposal: a universal DH, which Jay Jaffe will cover in greater detail tomorrow, and an expanded 16-game playoff field in 2020 and 2021.

The length of the season, while not yet final, looks likely to fall between 60 and 70 games. There’s not much difference between those in terms of how “real” the season will feel — it’s going to feel short, and that’s fine. Nothing in 2020 has felt normal so far, and baseball is merely following the trend.

That’s not to say there’s no difference between 60 and 70 games. Each additional game nets players roughly $25 million in extra salary, which explains their steadfast desire for more baseball. Owners may or may not also profit from extra games, but do make the majority of their profit from the playoffs. To them, extra games are simply a lever to pull in negotiations with the players. For our viewing purposes, however, it will feel short and random. Dan Szymborski is sitting in the ZiPS situation room as we speak, projections at the ready, to fire off win total predictions and playoff odds as soon as the exact season structure is announced, but suffice it to say that 60 and 70 game seasons don’t produce significantly different outlooks. Read the rest of this entry »

With 2020’s amateur draft consisting of just five rounds, much of the strategy teams typically use related to shifting bonus pool money around was rendered moot. There were no high schoolers to woo with big bonuses after the 10th round, no saving money on a seventh rounder to sign a better first rounder. This served to decrease the incoming talent pool by quite a bit, with many good players going undrafted or unsigned, but it also makes an immediate analysis of the exercise a little bit easier.

With just 160 picks, we can evaluate a team’s decision to take a lesser player early in the draft in order to use the money saved on picks later and vice versa. With less scouting time and fewer looks, there might have been a bit more variation in terms of the quality of the players taken on draft day. Likewise, determining who might improve and surprise is trickier. As such, we shouldn’t consider this analysis ironclad. However, using Eric Longenhagen’s rankings and the selected players’ actual draft positions, we can compare how well each team did with their picks based on those rankings. To determine the value of each player and each pick, I’ll be using my draft pick valuation research from last year, which examined expected production from every draft slot. Read the rest of this entry »