Mets fans have waited a long time to be as optimistic about an offseason as they are this winter. After decades in which conservative spending was only part of the self-destructive tactics the Wilpons inflicted upon the franchise, new owner Steve Cohen has stated plainly he bought the team with the purpose of buying up talent and transforming the team into something “iconic.” With no shortage of star players available both in free agency and via trade, Mets fans can let their imaginations run wild imagining what the roster could look like in 2021 and beyond.

Before this week, though, the Mets had yet to make a major move of any kind. That finally changed Tuesday, when they signed former Twins reliever Trevor May to a two-year deal. SNY.tv’s Andy Martino was the first to report a completed deal, while MLB Network’s Jon Heyman was first on the terms.

Mets have signed Trevor May, per source. Deal is pending physical. @AnthonyDiComo first mentioned talks.

— Andy Martino (@martinonyc) December 1, 2020

Trevor May’s 2-year deal with the Mets is for about $15M

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 1, 2020

May ranked 21st on Craig Edwards’ Top 50 Free Agents list at the beginning of the winter, the second reliever listed behind ex-A’s closer Liam Hendriks, and ahead of big names such as Brad Hand, Blake Treinen and Kirby Yates. That might seem like an aggressive ranking considering his age, injury history, and production. At 31, it isn’t as though May is hitting the market as a young man. He has a Tommy John surgery in his past, which cost him the 2017 season and a good portion of ’18. Since his return from that injury, he’s posted a 3.19 ERA, 3.56 FIP and 1.8 WAR in 113 games. Those are perfectly solid numbers, but not what you would call elite.

But as Edwards notes, the ranking isn’t so much a reflection of May’s past as it is the potential teams see in him. That sounds strange to say about an over-30 pitcher with a surgically rebuilt elbow, but it does apply here. When May broke into the majors in 2014, his average fastball velocity sat around 92.6 mph. When he returned from Tommy John surgery in ’18, he was at 94. Then he jumped up to 95.5 in ’19 and 96.3 last season. He’s also increased the spin rate on his fastball in each of the past two years. May’s stuff just keeps getting better despite him being 12 years into his professional career.

May aims high with that fastball to make it even tougher to catch up with. Of the 233 fastballs he threw in 2020, nearly 70% were in the top third of the strike zone or higher:

Opponents swung and missed on 46.9% of the cuts they took at May’s fastball in 2020, a rate usually reserved for a good breaking ball; the league as a whole ran a whiff rate of 22.6% against four-seamers. He also generated whiff rates of 34.4% against his slider — a pitch with hard vertical drop that May says has more in common with his old curveball than the slider he had when he first broke into the majors — and 38.7% against his changeup, which was actually his most difficult-to-hit pitch inside the strike zone last season.

Put all of that together, and May had the eighth-highest whiff rate in all of baseball last year. His strikeout percentage of 39.6% ranked ninth among pitchers with 20 innings thrown. He’s one of the game’s very best strikeout arms, so why aren’t his run prevention numbers proportionately strong? Part of it is some bad luck. He had a HR/FB rate of 21.7% in 2020 — tied for 16th-highest among all qualified relievers — and also allowed a career-high fly-ball rate, leading to an icky HR/9 rate of 1.93. You’d prefer May allow fewer flies, but that’s not likely to trend down much given the way he pitches. Instead, you have to hope that such an outsized number of those fly balls stop leaving the yard. If that were the case in 2020, his 3.62 FIP would have been closer to his 2.74 xFIP, and his case as a top free-agent reliever wouldn’t be the slightest bit controversial.

With a $7.5 million AAV over two years, May’s contract beat both Edwards’ prediction and the crowdsource on this site, as well as the figure over at MLB Trade Rumors. He did it by a relatively small amount, but it is a continuation of a trend that provides reason for cautious optimism: Of the free agents ranked at each site (not counting qualifying offer guys), Edwards was under on two and exactly right with one of the free agents he listed; MLBTR has been under on all five of their signees. It’s still early, the predictions haven’t missed badly, and all of the big money players are still out there. But it’s good to see players signing for more money than analysts and fans alike thought they would receive then for less.

May’s signing is particularly reassuring when it comes to the reliever market. Again, this is one top reliever getting signed by a new owner who wants to be ambitious with his money. But when Hand and his $10 million option were spurned in November by not only penny-pinching Cleveland but also every other team, it cast a shadow over what top-tier relief talent may be worth on the market, as well as the market the dozens of merely good relievers may be subject to. If May can get a multi-year deal and a $7.5 million AAV, that should bode well for Hendriks and Hand at the top of the ladder, as well as players like Shane Greene and Jake McGee lingering a couple of rungs below them.

It is also good news for the Mets, who were in need of another good power arm to pair with Edwin Diaz at the back of the bullpen. Diaz was his old self in 2020, striking out nearly two batters an inning and keeping homers in check en route to a 1.75 ERA and 2.18 FIP. But the arms who were in line to throw ahead of him in next year are less imposing. Dellin Betances didn’t look right last season coming off an Achilles injury, and pitchers like Chasen Shreve and Miguel Castro are interesting but probably shouldn’t be the second-best arms in a contender’s bullpen. When spring arrives, May’s assignment will be to tide Mets fans over until the bigger star arrives. Come to think of it, that might be his job right now.

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cleveland Indians.

Batters

Even after seeing the public relations fiasco that resulted from the Red Sox trading their franchise player last winter, Cleveland is preparing to do the same, making it abundantly clear that Francisco Lindor will most likely start the 2021 season wearing another uniform. Lindor’s short 2020 wasn’t a triumph, but he’s at that level of superstar where it takes a lot more than 60 games moonlighting as a mortal to change expectations by a significant margin. Now, it’s very possible that the players sent in return for Lindor will add more future wins overall than the star shortstop’s 2021 season will, but with the Indians in a three-way divisional dogfight, we know that they’re giving away high-leverage wins in the short-term. Lindor is on a Hall of Fame trajectory and should he reach Cooperstown, it seems likely that he’ll be more closely associated with his next team than his current one. The logo on Joe Morgan’s Hall plaque is that of the Reds, not the Astros, after all.

While there’s not a lot of good news concerning the lineup, José Ramírez further demonstrating that his late 2018/early 2019 struggles aren’t the new normal falls in that category. Ramírez hit .292/.386/.607 in 2020, leading the AL in WAR. If I had been an AL MVP voter, he would have easily had my first-place vote. He’s no longer a clearly above-average third baseman defensively and the days when it made sense to consider him an option at second on the right roster have probably passed, but his bat is good enough that it’s not really a troubling issue. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Bobby Abreu could do just about everything. A five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, and enough power to win a Home Run Derby, he was also one of the game’s most patient, disciplined hitters, able to wear down a pitcher and unafraid to hit with two strikes. While routinely reaching the traditional seasonal plateaus that tend to get noticed — a .300 batting average (six times), 20 homers (nine times), 30 steals (six times), 100 runs scored and batted in (eight times apiece) — he was nonetheless a stathead favorite for his ability to take a walk (100 or more eight years in a row) and his high on-base percentages (.400 or better eight times). And he was durable, playing 151 games or more in 13 straight seasons. “To me, Bobby’s Tony Gwynn with power,” said Phillies hitting coach Hal McRae in 1999.

“Bobby was way ahead of his time [with] regards to working pitchers,” said his former manager Larry Bowa when presenting him for induction into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2019. “In an era when guys were swinging for the fences, Bobby never strayed from his game. Because of his speed, a walk would turn into a double. He was cool under pressure, and always in control of his at-bats. He was the best combination of power, speed, and patience at the plate.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the final 2019 standings, fourth-place teams in their respective divisions finished an average of 30 games behind the first-place team. In 2018, that number was about 22, and in 2017, it was about 25. The distance between your average fourth-place team and their division’s first-place team fluctuates a bit year-to-year depending upon how super that season’s super-teams are, but it’s never close. The worse team will sneak in a few victories against the superior team over the course of 18 or so matchups throughout the season, but the two really aren’t supposed to be on the same level. One of these teams has a good chance of hosting a playoff series, and the other is having trouble selling tickets in September.

Our preseason playoff projections tend to reflect that space. Before the season was postponed and the schedule still ran 162 games, our projected fourth-place finishers in four of the six divisions were given a 1% chance or less at finishing first. The Phillies, the presumed fourth-place finishers in the NL East, were given less than a 5% chance of winning their division. Then there was the NL Central, where the Cardinals were pegged for fourth but given a 17% chance to finish on top, with a projected record that was within four games of the first-place Cubs. That would have been the tightest grouping of the top four teams in any division since the AL East in 1988.

When the new 60-game season was done, just five games wound up separating the top four teams in the NL Central, and from the looks of our Depth Charts projections, the race figures to be incredibly tight again in 2021. While the Pirates lag far behind the pack, the top four teams in the division stand incredibly close in talent level.

Read the rest of this entry »

Watch any amount of baseball these days, and you’ll see a familiar pattern: a catcher giving a pitcher a high target for his fastball. This is hardly a secret; it’s so obvious, in fact, that I don’t really know how to make a good introduction out of it. Did you know that pitchers throw four-seam fastballs high in the zone? You did! I don’t need to tell you that. But this article is about four-seam fastballs, so the paragraph feels necessary.

Anyway: Four-seamers work better when they’re thrown up in the zone. That’s not some silly contextual thing, or even really up for debate. It’s just how the pitch works. The backspin on the pitch means that hitters generally make contact under the center of the ball. Given that the normal launch angle for a ball up in the zone is already high, hitting under a high pitch means pop-ups and lazy fly balls. It also means whiffs.

Don’t believe me? I mean, first of all, just watch some baseball. The pitch that dots the top of the strike zone makes hitters look foolish with great frequency. You can also take a look at this table, which divides the strike zone into vertical thirds and looks at only four-seam fastballs:

Fastballs in the upper third of the strike zone are the best of both worlds. Batters miss them more frequently than the other two sections, and even when they make contact, they’re not doing so with authority. Fail to find the top of the zone, and things get worse. Fastballs that wind up in the middle third of the plate still miss bats at an acceptable clip, but if the hitter connects, you might be in for a bad time.
Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the New York Mets.

Batters

Robinson Canó’s suspension for the 2021 season may be a blessing in disguise from the point of view of the Mets, at least if we trust the second baseman’s ZiPS projection. Canó was surprisingly good in 2020, but there’s a great deal of gravity surrounding him; he seemed to be nearing the end this time last year and Nelson Cruz notwithstanding, the typical decline for hitters in their late 30s would be illegal for roller coasters. The Mets aren’t losing Canó’s 2020, they’re losing what they could have gotten from him in 2021, which isn’t necessarily the same thing. There’s opportunity here to get creative in the infield. Jeff McNeil becomes the obvious second base candidate with J.D. Davis moving back to third. ZiPS is into the former but not the latter, and it would be fun to see the Mets go after someone like Justin Turner at the hot corner.

Even if the Mets stick with what they have, there’s only one real glaring weakness in the starting lineup: catcher. Wilson Ramos looked like he aged fairly quickly in 2020 and the team no longer has much in the way of quality depth at the position, which used to be a necessity due to Travis d’Arnaud’s injury record. If new owner Steve Cohen wants a highly efficient way to splash some cash around, there may be no more efficient signing out there than landing J.T. Realmuto. At this point last year, I figured that the Phillies were certain to extend Realmuto, but now that they’ve lost $20 million, $2 billion, or whatever fictional figure sneaks past an editor, the Mets have an opportunity to poke a finger in a rival’s eye. And, of course, it’s a winning baseball idea!

So long as the team stays healthy, there aren’t any other huge headaches in the lineup. ZiPS isn’t the least bit worried about Pete Alonso despite a slightly disappointing sophomore season and though the computer isn’t fully on Team Giménez, it still sees the shortstop timeshare as adequate, if not terribly exciting. If the players don’t stay healthy, the Mets aren’t particularly deep, so there’s some work to be done this winter even if it’s not of the headline-making variety. There are a lot of solid role players on this projection list, but a very high percentage of them are free agents. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a pitch learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA.

Lacking the longevity of Mariano Rivera or Trevor Hoffman, Wagner never set any saves records or even led his league once, and his innings total is well below those of every enshrined reliever. Hoffman’s status as the former all-time saves leader helped him get elected in 2018, but Wagner, who created similar value in his career, has major hurdles to surmount. There are, though, fewer hurdles than before: In his fifth year on the ballot, his share of the vote nearly doubled, from 16.7% to 31.7%, the third-largest gain among returning candidates. His advantages over Hoffman — and virtually every other reliever in history when it comes to rate stats — provide a compelling reason to study his career more closely. Given how far he’s come, who wants to bet against Billy Wags?

Read the rest of this entry »

Losses have come to dominate the narrative when it comes to baseball finances over the past year as the world has struggled to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. With just a 60-game schedule and no fans in the stands during the regular season, revenues dropped precipitously. The losses have been called “historic” and “devastating” by commissioner Rob Manfred and “biblical” by Cubs owner Tom Ricketts. Separating hyperbole from reality is difficult when there is little concrete information to contest bald assertions from interested parties, and the refusal of those parties to divulge any of their info invites skepticism. As a result, we need to turn to the Braves, who are traded publicly and issue quarterly reports about their finances, to get a better sense of the picture league-wide.

This is not the first time we’ve taken a look at Atlanta’ finances, though 2020 represents a radically different year, with operating income (Adjusted OIBDA) totaling around $150 million in 2018 and ’19 combined. Before taking a broader look, let’s run through the third quarter, which includes July, August and September, aka the regular season. During this time, the team played 60 games, including 30 at home. Baseball revenue stood at $102 million, half that of what came in during the third quarter in 2019. Due to paying players pro-rated salaries and not having fans at games, expenses (which include the Battery development outside the park) also dropped, from $167 million to $104 million. If we assume that The Battery, with $8 million in third quarter revenue, is a breakeven proposition at the moment, that means that on an operating basis, the Braves’ turned a $6 million profit during the season despite having no fans in the seats. While MLB might claim teams lost money for every game played this season, the Braves are the only club with any amount of transparency regarding their finances, and they didn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the introductory paragraph of a free agency signing piece. Normally, this is a space to let loose and spend a while thinking up a pun about the team and the player linking up. I must sadly tell you, however, that I can’t bring myself to do it. The degree of difficulty is the fun, and Mike Minor’s name is too easy, so you’ll just have to settle for the facts: the Kansas City Royals signed Minor to a two-year deal over the weekend, as Ken Rosenthal first reported.

When Minor left the Royals after a dominant 2017 season of relief work, he looked like a classic conversion arm. He’d been workmanlike over parts of five seasons with the Braves, never overwhelming but also never disastrous. After a brutal series of injuries ending in shoulder surgery, however, Atlanta cut him loose, and he landed with the Royals on a two-year deal. Kansas City turned him into a reliever, and he promptly annihilated the AL Central — his 2.55 ERA and 2.62 FIP represented a new level of performance, and he looked like a relief ace created out of whole cloth.

As he returns to Kansas City three years later, the situation feels both familiar and strange. Familiar, in that he’s spent the last three years putting in a performance that was, in aggregate, a little bit better than average. His run prevention numbers look slightly worse for having played two years in an extreme hitter’s park, but even then, a 4.07 ERA and 4.37 FIP will play, and that works out to an 85 ERA- and 95 FIP- after park adjustments. Even including a rough 2020, Minor looks like a workmanlike pitcher again.

Is he heading back to Kansas City to relieve? Almost certainly not. You see, Minor’s 2019 raises hope that there’s a little bit more there than meets the eye. He started the season strong, with a 2.54 ERA and 3.78 FIP, which led to his first All-Star nod. He faded down the stretch, though he still finished with 4.1 WAR and did even better (6.4 WAR) if you focus on runs allowed rather than FIP.

Even if you want to disregard the half-by-half split and focus on the aggregate, something stood out: Minor threw 208.1 innings, a career high. He followed that up with another 11 starts in 2020, essentially a full season of work. A starter who can put up decent rate statistics over a full workload is a valuable commodity in today’s game, particularly given the fact that essentially every pitcher in baseball will throw many more innings next year than they did this year, which likely increases the chance of injury. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

Season Two of Operation: Win Now almost ended like the first one did — outside the playoffs looking in — until the Reds snuck into the postseason by winning 11 of their last 15 games, with all but a Pirates series coming against playoff teams. Cincinnati’s quick playoff exit served to highlight one of the fundamental reasons the team’s reach the last two years has exceeded its grasp. No, the offense isn’t going to be shut out for 22 consecutive innings all that often, as the Braves did in the teams’ Wild Card Series, but the lineup is actively hindering the team. This recent development is the opposite of the traditional 21st century Reds dilemma, but it’s a real issue; Cincinnati has finished 13th and 12th in the NL in runs the last two seasons while playing in a moderate hitters’ park.

In a lot of ways, Cincinnati’s problem is the mirror image of Colorado’s most pressing issue. The Rockies have two MVP candidates at the top of the lineup, but an appalling lack of depth. The Reds, on the other hand, have very few true holes and admirable depth all over the diamond, but a real lack of superstar upside. And without a lot of positions open for the taking without the team being extremely aggressive and giving up on decent players with guaranteed deals, it’s hard to see the Reds flipping that script.

The one exception here is the shortstop position, where Jose Garcia would likely be the starter if the season began today, but likely won’t be when the 2021 season actually gets under way. There’s an unusual amount of shortstop talent out there for the taking — Marcus Semien, Andrelton Simmons, Didi Gregorius, and Ha-seong Kim — that could drastically improve a position that doesn’t have an apparent long-term solution otherwise. In an offseason where other NL competitors like the Cubs and Phillies crying poor, this is a golden opportunity for the team to swim against the current and take a real financial risk to get into the second tier of NL contenders. Read the rest of this entry »