Not too long ago, Robinson Canó appeared to have a real shot at becoming the first second baseman to reach the twin milestones of 3,000 hits and 400 home runs, as well as an eventual berth in the Hall of Fame. In May 2018, however, while playing for the Mariners, he drew an 80-game suspension after testing positive for a banned diuretic. Now, as a member of the Mets following a blockbuster trade that has thus far looked like a flop, he’s drawn another suspension for violating the game’s joint drug agreement. As his second offense, this one will cost him the entire 2021 season as well as all of his $24 million salary. That’s a situation that could benefit the Mets, who under new owner Steve Cohen are already primed to be one of the winter’s more aggressive teams.

It’s the latest bum note for Canó in his second tour of New York. Acquired from the Mariners on December 3, 2018 along with Edwin Díaz and cash in exchange for a five-player package headlined by first-round picks Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn, the former Yankees star was limited to 107 games due to hamstring and quad injuries in 2019. Both his 93 wRC+ and 0.8 WAR represented his worst numbers since 2008, and the deal looked even worse due to Díaz’s collapse; the pair’s underperformance probably cost the Mets a Wild Card berth, as they finished with 86 wins, three fewer than the lower Wild Card seed, the Brewers. Adding insult to injury, Eric Longenhagen placed Kelenic 11th on his Top 100 Prospects list in the spring, the same ranking that both Baseball America, and MLB.com gave him.

Canó did fare better in 2020. Though he served a 10-day stint on the Injured List due to a groin strain in early August, he hit .316/.352/.544 while tying for second on the team with 10 homers, and placing fourth via both his 141 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR. It wasn’t nearly enough to help the Mets, who sputtered to a 26-34 record and a fourth-place finish in the NL East. 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 San Diego Padres.

Batters

Not that there was any real chance that his 2019 debut was a fluke, but Fernando Tatis Jr. kept it going in 2020, proving very deserving of his place in the NL MVP voting. Tatis is probably the most likely of the game’s young starts to pull a Mike Trout and make the Padres’ 90-win challenge simply one of building a .500 team around him. And so far, they’ve more than done that! Tatis finally got his middle infield partner, which rather than being Luis Urías, came in the form of Jake Cronenworth, seemingly the umpteenth high minors second baseman with power developed by the Rays in the last decade. Cronenworth’s 2019 minor league breakout looked quite real once he reached the bigs. Read the rest of this entry »

Allow me to present you with assorted statistics from two players. They aren’t exhaustive, of course, and I’m trying to mislead you, but still:

Batter A looks a little bit better. He hit the ball hard more frequently and topped out at a higher exit velocity. Player B had a better xwOBACON — a mouthful of letters that simply means using xwOBA to measure a player’s quality of contact — but I think I’d take the hard hit rate and maximum EV of Player A anyway.

Here’s a further wrinkle: both of these players are, by reputation at least, among the best defenders at their respective positions. Player A is the better defender relative to his peers — he’s won five Gold Gloves to Player B’s zero — but Player B plays a position 20 runs up the defensive spectrum, meaning he has provided more defensive value per plate appearance in his career than Player A. Who would you rather have had on your team in 2020?

From these statistics — and specifically these statistics — it’s not exactly obvious. You might have a leaning one way or the other, but it can’t be more than a 60/40 decision. That’s not to say that you would have a tough choice going forward — Player A just turned 28, while Player B will turn 38 before the start of the 2021 season. Also, you don’t actually get to pick which one to add to your team, because Player A is under contract for next year. You could totally add Player B, though: he’s a free agent after a two-year run with the fifth team of his major league career.

Enough with the blind nonsense: Player A is Mookie Betts. You should have taken him! Player B is Jeff Mathis, frequent butt of incompetent-hitting jokes and widely reputed to be one of the worst hitters of all time. Sounds like we’re going to need to do some further digging. Read the rest of this entry »

When looking at statistics for the 2020 season, everything should be taken with a grain of salt. The players had to prepare and then play in the middle of a pandemic with adjusted routines and preparation, as well as a lack of fans in the stands. Added to the mix is the 60-game season, which is just over a third of a normal year. All of that is going to lead to some weird-bad stat lines — like, for example, the one Gary Sánchez put up.

Sánchez stepped up to the plate 178 times in 2020 and got just 23 hits for a batting average of .147. Among the 18,273 batters with at least 150 plate appearances since 1969, that figure ranks 18,259th. His rate of hits per plate appearance was 13%, a touch behind Mike Trout’s rate of extra-base hits in his career. Thanks to the walks (18 and a 10.1% rate) and homers (10), Sánchez’s 69 wRC+ is merely awful instead of historically bad, but it’s still a gruesome line.

But as I said, we need to take these numbers with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, the overall picture of Sánchez as a player isn’t a pretty one right now. Over at ESPN, Buster Olney wrote how fixing Sánchez was a top priority this offseason for the Yankees, and what the problems are.

Well, a theory of some rival evaluators is that Sánchez’s confidence is all but shot, with his failures at the plate compounding it. Others note his increasing inability to cope with sliders, a pitch that seems to mystify him and accounts for a lot of his career-high 13.8% swing-and-miss rate in 2020, the worst of his career. At least some evaluators think that Sánchez has a hard time separating his offense from his defense, so that when he makes a mistake behind the plate, that tends to carry over to his hitting, and vice versa. And like many other young players, he seems to struggle to make in-game adjustments.

Some of the mental claims are somewhat dubious. Sánchez was a pretty bad catcher making plenty of mistakes back when he was hitting really well. As for in-game adjustments, he has generally hit the best in the fourth through sixth innings in his career, and since the start of 2019, his numbers in the first three innings match up with the last three innings, while the average player sees a 10-point drop.

The swing-and-miss issues on sliders are pretty indisputable, but they also aren’t new. Sánchez whiffed on 18% of sliders last year, which was right in line with his career averages. The problem for him is that he used to be able to run into a few of them: Last season he posted an .083 ISO on sliders, making him completely ineffective on the pitch. Further compounding things was a more than 50% increase on whiffs against four-seam fastballs: Sánchez went from a 10.7% swing-and-miss rate on four-seamers entering the season to 17% of those fastballs in 2020. That was also the second straight year in which Sánchez saw a big increase in four-seamer whiffs. He’s been swinging through fastballs at roughly the same rate as sliders, and neither number is good.

But wait, it gets worse. I noted Sánchez’s inability to hit the slider for power when he did make contact, and his general inability to get a hit when a ball is put in play ruins his chances of getting on base. Jeff Zimmerman looked at Sánchez’s poor BABIP and found the shift was killing his batting average despite his hard contact. While his high barrel rate makes it seem as though he should hit for a higher average, 10 of his 16 barrels last year were homers; his .281 xwOBA on balls in play is 30 points below league average.

Add that all up, and you get an offensive performance that hit new lows this past season and has been trending downwards for quite some time. Over the last three years, Sánchez has a .200/.296/.453 slash line with a 98 wRC+ in roughly 1,000 plate appearances. Since the middle of June 2019, he’s batting .168/.272/.379 with a 74 wRC+ in close to 400 plate appearances. Some of the blame could go to varying injuries over time, but catching takes a toll on the body, so we can’t exactly wish those away in the future.

While a dip this big in production didn’t seem possible a few years ago, there were always concerns about how Sánchez would profile. In Dave Cameron’s Trade Value Rankings back in 2017, he ranked 12th (which should provide some idea of his star production at the time), but:

That said, there are enough red flags to keep him out of the top tier for now. He’s one of the most extreme pull hitters in baseball, and you’ll note that the guys he’s hanging out with aren’t running BABIPs over .300. Toss in the pop-up problem and a below-average contact rate, and it’s easy to see Sánchez running a .240 batting average one of these years.

As predicted, the extreme pull rate, the popups, and the contact rate combined to make Sánchez a replacement-level player last season.

So what now? If Sánchez could field his position well, the Yankees could justify waiting for the bat to come around. There may be some hope there: He worked on a new catching stance in spring training, and in a very small sample, his framing was pretty close to average, and he still did a solid job with baserunners. If that holds and he is merely a little below-average behind the plate and at least average with the bat, then Sánchez is an average to slightly above-average player. If his catching regresses and the bat is average, then he’s a below-average player and a decent backup. And if he doesn’t get the bat back up to average, he’s the third catcher/26th man on the roster who can pinch-hit and rarely starts.

Unfortunately, the upside is more limited than it has been, too. If Sánchez’s bat really comes back, it might be best to let him make only occasional starts at catcher and take most of his turns at designated hitter —something that isn’t possible if he is just an average hitter. It’s hard to see a reasonable path back to more than anything than a three-win player, and the projections put Sánchez in the one- to two-win range that shouldn’t make him a starter on a contending club.

That leaves the Yankees with a difficult choice. They can hold on to Sánchez and see if he regain the ability to be a star hitter, but that likely entails bringing in another catcher to be the regular starter, as neither he nor Kyle Higashioka can be counted on for full-time (or really half-time) duty. The Yankees are supposedly “open” to trading him, but who is going to give up decent players and pay Sánchez his $5 million salary when he isn’t really projected as a starter-level player? There are a bunch of teams who would likely be willing to take a chance on him — the Rockies, Rangers, Marlins, and Tigers come to mind immediately — but they’re probably unwilling to give up any promising or useful players in exchange. The Yankees could just non-tender Sánchez and move on, but that’s a move that could backfire if he hits well, though signing J.T. Realmuto would likely make any regrets moot.

The Yankees and Sánchez, then, are likely stuck with each other for another season. He’ll get some opportunity to recapture his form, and the Yankees will pay him his relatively modest salary. They can’t trade him for nothing, and they shouldn’t let him go for free. But they also shouldn’t head into 2021 with Sánchez and Higashioka as the starting tandem at catcher. It makes Sánchez something of a potential bonus for the Yankees, and given their history together, it might actually benefit them both to give them one more season to get him back on track.

On Friday, when the Marlins announced they had hired Kim Ng as their new general manager, they set off a tidal wave of celebratory reactions from people both inside and outside baseball. That’s to be expected when a glass ceiling is broken. Her success was a triumph for women who have always had to fight for their place in the sport.

As soon as the news of Ng’s hiring went public, a question quickly gained prominence: How do you pronounce Ng? Media outlets reporting her hiring revealed a checkered understanding of the answer. The worst offender went with the extremely phonetic interpretation of “N-G.” Most got close, and those familiar with her work in baseball got it right. (To be clear, she pronounces it “ang,” which differs from the pronunciation of some Chinese Americans, who might pronounce it “ing.”

The widespread confusion about something as basic as Ng’s name is an extension of a few all too common questions most Asian Americans are familiar with: What are you? Where are you from? These reductive questions flow from the perpetual perception of foreignness that colors the experience of many Asian people in America. And it shows why Ng’s ascent to the top position in the Marlins organization is so important for Asian Americans, too.

Ng is the second Asian person to hold the position of general manager in major league baseball, and the first Asian American as well as the first Chinese American to rise to the top. Farhan Zaidi, who is of Pakistani descent, is Canadian-born and became the first Asian person to hold the title of general manager when he reached that position with the Dodgers in 2014. Ng also became just the second Asian American to become the GM in any of the major men’s North American professional sports — Rich Cho was the first when he was named GM of the Portland Trail Blazers in 2010. This dearth of Asian people in leadership positions extends to the field as well. There have been just two field managers of Asian descent in baseball, and there are just a handful of others across the other major men’s sports. 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 2018 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.
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In the eyes of many, Omar Vizquel was the successor to Ozzie Smith when it came to dazzling defense. Thanks to the increased prevalence of highlight footage on the internet and on cable shows such as ESPN’s SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight, the diminutive Venezuelan shortstop’s barehanded grabs, diving stops, and daily acrobatics were seen by far more viewers than Smith’s ever were. Vizquel made up for having a less-than-prototypically-strong arm with incredibly soft hands and a knack for advantageous positioning. Such was the perception of his prowess at the position that he took home 11 Gold Gloves, more than any shortstop this side of Smith, who won 13.

Vizquel’s offense was at least superficially akin to Smith’s: He was a singles-slapping switch-hitter in lineups full of bigger bats and, at his best, a capable table-setter who got on base often enough to score 80, 90, or even 100 runs in some seasons. His ability to move the runner over with a sacrifice bunt or a productive out delighted purists, and he could steal a base, too. While he lacked power, he dealt in volume, piling up more hits (2,877) than all but four players who spent the majority of their careers at shortstop and are now in the Hall of Fame: Derek Jeter (3,465), Honus Wagner (3,420), Cal Ripken (3,184), and Robin Yount (3,142). Vizquel is second only to Jeter using the strict as-shortstop splits, which we don’t have for Wagner (though we do know the Flying Dutchman spent 31% of his defensive innings at other positions). During his 11-year run in Cleveland (1994–2004), Vizquel helped the Indians to six playoff appearances and two pennants.

To some, that makes Vizquel an easy call for the Hall of Fame, and as his candidacy heads into its fourth year, he looks as though he’s on his way. In his 2018 ballot debut, he received 37.0% of the vote, a level of support that doesn’t indicate a fast track to Cooperstown but more often than not suggests eventual enshrinement. In the two cycles since, he’s climbed to 42.8% and then 52.6%, the last of those particularly significant; current candidates aside, every player who’s reached 50% except for Gil Hodges has eventually been elected, either by the writers or by a small committee.

These eyes aren’t so sure Vizquel’s election is merited. By WAR and JAWS, Vizquel’s case isn’t nearly as strong as it is on the traditional merits. His candidacy quickly became a point of friction between old-school and new-school thinkers and only promises to be more of the same, as though he were this generation’s Jack Morris. [Update: As if his case needed another polarizing factor, shortly after this article was published, it came to light that in October, Vizquel’s second wife, Blanca García, accused him of domestic violence via an Instagram live post. Further updates below.]

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 Toronto Blue Jays.

Batters

The Jays offense did what it needed to in 2020, with the team doing an excellent job filling some of the holes in the lineup, especially in the outfield. I was admittedly skeptical of the motley crew of players who aren’t related to former big leaguers, but most of the personnel decisions worked out solidly for the organization. Teoscar Hernández finished in the top 10 in exit velocity; ZiPS now has him projected for a slugging percentage over .500 in 2021, enough to make him a legitimate starter rather than an interesting, one-dimensional bat. This is also the least skeptical ZiPS has been of Lourdes Gurriel Jr..

But while the outfield now looks like a decent group, the trickiest thing is still Randal Grichuk in center. I appreciate the Jays’ willingness to get creative and use a player who doesn’t look like a traditional fit at the position, but Grichuk still isn’t particularly good and his short-season 2020 stats were more good than great. After Grichuk, the team’s center field options aren’t all that appealing and I’d be inclined to improve the big league club’s depth at the position.

There’s a bit of disagreement between ZiPS and Steamer about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ZiPS is more worried about Vladito than Steamer is (conversely, ZiPS likes Bo Bichette better than Steamer does). I’m not actually sure which projection system I’m closer to personally. Guerrero’s raw stats in the majors haven’t been mind-blowing by any stretch of the imagination, but he also doesn’t turn 22 until just before the start of the season. If you translated his actual major league performances to Double-A in 2019 and Triple-A in 2020, perfectly reasonable levels for his age, I doubt anyone would be disappointed. Still, his ceiling has to be slightly lower now, his conditioning is meh, and he has quickly moved the wrong way on the defensive spectrum. Read the rest of this entry »

After nine seasons, three division titles, a pennant and an historic World Series championship, Theo Epstein is saying goodbye to the Cubs. That surprising news came Tuesday afternoon, announced jointly by the team and its outgoing president of baseball operations. “I believe this is the right decision for me even if it’s a difficult one,” Epstein wrote in a statement released to the press. “And now is the right time.” Chicago will now be under the control of Jed Hoyer, the team’s general manager and Epstein’s long-time second in command, but the fate of both the franchise and its departing boss is less clear.

Taking over the Cubs in October 2011 after leaving the Red Sox under a cloud (and disguised as a gorilla), Epstein helped transform Chicago from National League also-ran and frequent cellar dweller into a juggernaut, culminating in the 2016 World Series win that ended a century-long title drought. He and his lieutenants drafted, developed or acquired virtually every important piece of that ‘16 roster, from Kris Bryant to Anthony Rizzo to Kyle Schwarber to Jon Lester to Jake Arrieta, and set the stage for what looked to be a dynasty. But diminishing returns and short postseason stays have left the Cubs in the championship cold over the last four seasons, and now their architect is moving on.

Those recent struggles may be part of Epstein’s decision to leave, though in a letter he sent to team employees and acquired by The Athletic, he claims that a decade at the helm was all he had in mind from the start. “Bill Walsh’s theory that in the sports industry a change in leadership after about a decade can be beneficial for both the organization and the individual has always resonated with me,” Epstein writes. Those of you blessed with the gift of being able to do basic math will note that 2020 minus 2011 equals nine, not 10. But per Epstein’s letter, a number of factors came into cutting his reign short by a year, including the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the team’s finances; the presence of Hoyer, who joined the club as GM when Epstein arrived; and, as Epstein put it, “decisions this winter that carry long-term consequences … best made by someone who will be here for a long period.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres made an announcement yesterday that Schrödinger would be proud of, releasing news that they had signed Mike Clevinger to a two-year deal covering his arbitration-eligible seasons and also that he would be lost for the 2021 season due to Tommy John surgery. In the short-term, they lose a talented starting pitcher they just traded for a few months ago. Taking a longer look, they’re betting on a solid recovery in 2022 and will be paying just $11.5 million in guaranteed money for that season’s work. (The details of the deal, per MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell: Clevinger gets $2 million in ’21, $6.5 million in ’22, and a $3 million deferred signing bonus.)

The recent trade, the elbow surgery, and Clevinger’s arbitration eligibility make this transaction a little more complicated than it might look at first glance. First, the trade is essentially irrelevant at this point. While the Padres gave up a lot in quantity to acquire Clevinger, any cost is now sunk. San Diego certainly hoped for more than four good regular-season starts and a single postseason inning, but injuries prevented Clevinger from doing more, and the same arm trouble will now prevent him from pitching at all in 2021.

With the trade behind them, the Padres were faced with three options.

Option 1: Tender Clevinger a Contract

Clevinger earned a pro-rated portion of his $4.1 million salary last season, his first year of arbitration eligibility. While arbitration salaries are a bit murky this season, he likely would have been in line for $5 million or so in arbitration for next season and maybe another $6 million or more in 2022 after sitting out the ’21 campaign. That ’22 salary wouldn’t be guaranteed at all until the Padres tendered him a contract next December, and even then, only a small portion would be guaranteed at that time.

Assuming salary arbitration works the same under a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2022, if the Padres didn’t like Clevinger’s progress, they could cut him all the way up to Opening Day and still only owe 45 days of termination pay (30 days if on or before the 16th day of Spring Training). This option has San Diego paying money now to retain greater flexibility for the 2022 season. 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 Chicago White Sox.

Batters

The White Sox entered 2020 projected slightly behind the Indians and Twins, needing some breakouts to take the next step. And that’s largely what they did. A miserable stretch to end the season that likely cost him the AL Rookie of the Year award aside, Luis Robert met reasonable expectations with his bat and more than exceeded them defensively. B.J. Upton may not blow anyone away for his top comp, but the next one on the list is Bernie Williams, who didn’t divebomb in his late 20s. And while I’m still not wild about his desire to play the field, Eloy Jiménez hit like he needed to this season and he’s just a skosh of offense plus a change of position away from being star-level. He could very easily get there anyway; his 80th percentile projection is 3.8 WAR and a 151 OPS+.

Tim Anderson is a tricky player for a projection system to deal with. The fundamentals say that he should be one of the top BABIP hitters in baseball, but there’s a difference between that threshold and the .395 he put up across 2019 and ’20. That’s a real high-wire act and ZiPS isn’t ready to go 20 points further than Ty Cobb’s all-time mark, the best in baseball since 1901. (Amusingly, if you set the threshold since 1901 at just 1000 PA, Jorge Alfaro is the all-time leader.) Anderson has crept up to a .347 BABIP projection, but he’ll have to keep defying the baseball gods to push any further in ZiPS. Read the rest of this entry »