The 2020 season has been an exercise in constant risk calculation. Attempting to play baseball in the middle of a pandemic introduces a daunting list of potential issues, but athletes have come up with plenty of sensible reasons to play anyway. Some wish to avoid losing a year of service time or aren’t in a position financially to stop collecting paychecks. Some don’t want to feel like they’re letting their teammates down. Some would simply rather play baseball than not. The decision whether or not to play, however, isn’t one that athletes made once in July and then forget about. Players face that same decision every day as new variables come into play, the environment around them changes, and the upside in pushing forward shrinks. If you’re a star shortstop on the cusp of hitting the market for the first time, playing for a team barely clinging to life in its postseason chase, the upside in playing is next to nothing, while the risk in doing so is as great as ever.

That’s the situation Andrelton Simmons found himself in this week when the Los Angeles Angels entered Tuesday 4 1/2 games out of the final Wild Card spot with just five games left on the schedule. Simmons, a 31-year-old shortstop and a free agent this winter, decided those five games would take place without him. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday night, I was watching the Cardinals battle the Royals when I heard something that stopped me in my tracks. As Adam Wainwright labored in the sixth inning — two runs in and runners on the corners with two outs — the Cardinals announcers mentioned one of Wainwright’s greatest strengths — in their minds, at least. “That’s something that Adam Wainwright is really good at, is not compounding the inning… going back and getting the next guy.” I’ve been a Cardinals fan my whole life — and to that tidbit, I said, “Huh?”

It was, in truth, something I’d never thought about. Are some pitchers better than others at turning off the tap, amping up their performance when they need it and keeping crooked numbers from getting even crooked-er? My saber sense was tingling — something about this didn’t sound quite right. But of course, these spots are exactly where if a pitcher could bear down more than expected, it would make the most difference. I decided I’d try to find out how real this effect was.

Defining what I was looking for turned out to be a difficult. What, exactly, does “not compounding the inning” mean? The announcers seemed to think it meant that Wainwright pitched better after runs were in, or at least pitched the same while most pitchers in baseball got worse. Either way, the general idea was that his ones and twos turned into threes and fours less often than average.

One possible reaction to that might be “So?” His ERA is his ERA, regardless of whether it comes via a three-run spurt and eight zeros over nine innings, or three one-run frames and six zeros. To that I say: reasonable point. There are still reasons to care, though. For one, if a pitcher were actually prone to clustering, they’d tend to underperform their FIP over time. One of the reasons home runs are so bad is because they always result in runs, whereas other hits can be scattered around in otherwise dry innings without damage. A cluster-prone pitcher wouldn’t have that advantage; when you give up baserunners in bunches, a single and a home run become much closer in value.

In the same way, a pitcher who was prone to lots of singleton runs allowed but then mysteriously got better after letting one in would beat his FIP over a long time horizon. Base/out states tend to be more dangerous after a run has scored, naturally enough. Getting better then, or not getting worse while most pitchers do, would be quite the superpower. Read the rest of this entry »

If I told you at the start of the 2020 season that the Cubs would win the division by a comfortable margin, you probably would rightly make some assumptions about the events that led to this result. Probably the most obvious is that a National League Central victory would involve big years from the three biggest names in the lineup: 2016 MVP Kris Bryant, 2018 MVP runner-up Javier Báez, and three-time All-Star and Gold Glover Anthony Rizzo. But that most obvious of assumptions would be wrong in this case. Through Tuesday’s games, these key contributors to the team’s success over the last five years have combined for just 1.1 WAR in 581 combined plate appearances, about the same WAR as players such as Kevin Pillar and Victor Reyes. In 2016, the year the Cubs won the World Series, this trio combined for 15 WAR, or 4.8 WAR per 581 plate appearances.

All three are eligible for free agency no later than the end of the 2021 season and their poor performances have changed their outlooks enough to potentially have consequences for both their career trajectories and future contracts. With their performance this year, the Cubs have gotten a taste of what the team’s future might hold if all three depart Chicago. There are mitigating factors all over the place — the shortened, odd 2020, Bryant’s plethora of injuries — but the fact remains is that for stars, the risk is fairly one-sided. What this means is that for the best players in baseball, it’s far more likely that events will reduce their value than increase their value; I can think of a lot of scenarios that would cause Mike Trout to underperform his WAR projection by five wins, but very few in which he’d exceed it by the same margin. Poor baseball is one thing, but uncertainty is also a problem for a superstar. How have the outlooks for these three changed over 2020? Let us count the ways. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though he’s still got one start to go and several other pitchers will also see playing time over the next few days, the American League Cy Young race is all but over. Last year, it was a two-horse race between Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander. This year, Shane Bieber has been so dominant that no other AL pitcher can come close to his accomplishments with less than a week remaining. He leads the league in strikeouts by 25 through Monday’s games, with the distance between first and second the same as the distance between second and 18th. His 41% strikeout rate is the best in baseball, and his 2.13 FIP and 1.74 ERA pace the league as well. There isn’t a credible argument against Bieber winning the award and he should even garner support for MVP. As for second place, there are a ton of candidates.

To try to wade through the potential two-through-five slots on voters’ ballots, let’s take a quick look at pitcher WAR through Tuesday night’s games:

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With a 2-9 stretch from September 8-19, the Rockies plummeted below .500 for the season and faded from the playoff picture. Though they’re still technically alive-ish in the race for the NL’s eighth seed, they’ve squandered their 11-3 start, and their Playoff Odds are down to 1.7%; they need to overtake at least four teams in the season’s five remaining days. Their task will be that much harder without Nolan Arenado, who last played on Saturday and who was placed on the Injured List on Monday with what the Rockies described as left AC joint inflammation and a left shoulder bone bruise. His season is over.

Listening to the broadcast of the Rockies-Giants game on Monday night, one of the announcers — I forget which side it was, as I was in the midst of flipping around MLB.TV — noted that Arenado has been so durable that “the last time he was on the Injured List, it wasn’t even called the Injured List” or words to that effect. In 2014, he missed 37 games after fracturing the middle finger of his left hand while sliding head-first into second base. From 2015-19, he averaged 157 games per year from 2015-19, playing more games (787) than all but three players, namely Eric Hosmer (795), Manny Machado (793), and Paul Goldschmidt (791).

Arenado initially injured his shoulder during the season’s fifth game, on July 29, while making the kind of diving stop of a Stephen Piscotty groundball that has typified the seven-time Gold Glove winner’s career:

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In spite of everything that was supposed to make the hunt for this postseason more thrilling than ever, the American League playoff field has been pretty much set for quite a while now. The last time a team outside contention had even a 20% chance of reaching the postseason was on September 2, when the Detroit Tigers became the last to fade quietly out of the race. The playoff squad of eight with 99% or better playoff odds contains a bunch of the teams we expected it to, such as the Rays, Yankees, Astros, and A’s. It also includes the Toronto Blue Jays, who haven’t made the playoffs since 2016. Just a year after posting their worst record since 2004, the Blue Jays are contenders thanks to a strong lineup and a surprisingly deep bullpen. Neither of those might have been enough, however, if not for the efforts of left-handed ace Hyun Jin Ryu.

Ryu is 11 starts into a four-year, $80-million contract he signed with Toronto last winter, a deal that carried quite a bit of risk on several levels. He is in his age-33 season, a time that would make a four-year commitment dicey for any pitcher considering how the odds of injury and diminished stuff both head in the wrong direction around then. Indeed, Ryu already faced questions about his health and his arsenal.

He threw a total of just 213.2 innings over four seasons with the Dodgers from 2015-18, dealing with problems in his shoulder, elbow, hip, foot and groin — name a body part, and Ryu has probably missed a couple of starts by pulling it at one time or another. Then there is his fastball velocity, which has for years only rested at about 90 mph. And while he won the ERA title last year, regression already seemed to be setting in over the final couple months of the season. There were enough warning signs present that erstwhile FanGraphs author Kiley McDaniel projected Ryu to land just $32 million on the open market — less than half of what Toronto ultimately signed him for. Read the rest of this entry »

When you pull up the MLB position player leaderboards for September, you’ll find some familiar names. Freddie Freeman has launched himself into the middle of the National League MVP race with his incredible form this month. José Ramírez is challenging Mike Trout and José Abreu in the battle for the American League MVP. But nestled among these stars is one surprising name: Jared Walsh. He’s put up a 222 wRC+ in September, notching hits in all but one game this month. Eight of his 24 knocks have left the park — including a mammoth grand slam yesterday afternoon — giving him an impressive .390 ISO this year. He has truly been one of the few bright spots for the floundering Angels.

Best known for being developed as a two-way player, Walsh has finally tapped into the power that he’s displayed throughout his minor league career. A 39th-round pick back in 2015, Walsh quickly moved through the Angels organization, powering his way through each minor league stop. He posted a .237 ISO during his minor league career, though all that power came with plenty of strikeouts. He made his major league debut last September, struggling through 87 plate appearances and five appearances out of the bullpen. A strikeout rate over 40% really hampered all of his efforts at the plate, and those relief appearances all came in mop-up duty where his 26.1% walk rate could do little harm.

With such a disappointing audition in 2019 and the Angels seemingly focused on a playoff run, Walsh was likely relegated to a mere depth piece on their depth chart entering this season. But nothing in 2020 has gone according to plan, and the Angels quickly found themselves looking up from the bottom of the standings. When they traded away a couple of players at the trade deadline, it opened up an opportunity for Walsh, and he has run with it. Read the rest of this entry »

With less than a week to go in the regular season, writers will soon vote on end-of-season awards, and the shortened season makes for some very tight races. That’s certainly true for American League MVP. Through play on Sunday, here’s the WAR Leaderboard for American League position players:

That’s a fine list of players, to be sure, but it doesn’t include one of the top players by AL WAR at the moment. Shane Bieber has made 11 starts and pitched 72.1 innings good for a 2.13 FIP, 1.74 FIP, and 2.9 WAR. He’s struck out 41% of batters, given up three runs in three starts, two runs in two starts, one run in one start, and no runs in five starts. He pitched at least six innings in every start but one, when he threw five frames against the Brewers on September 6, striking out 10 against one walk, giving up a single run. Given Bieber’s runs’ allowed, there is no real difference between his FanGraphs’ WAR and his mark at Baseball-Reference. He also leads the league in xwOBA over at Baseball Savant. Read the rest of this entry »

Ask 10 professional hitters what they’re trying to do at the plate, and you might get 10 answers. They might be trying to hit a line drive to center every time, or put the ball in the air, or stay back on offspeed pitches, or take what the pitcher gives them. Ask what they want to do, however, and if they’re honest, they’ll tell you they want to hit a home run.

How could you not want to hit a home run? The feeling of absolutely obliterating the ball must be magical. Want to take your time around the bases? It’s all up to you! Your teammates will all congratulate you. There are no fielders to interfere with it. It’s the perfect combination — the best contact you’ll ever make, and plenty of time to enjoy it.

Of course, most trips to the plate don’t end in a home run. For Rafael Marchan, in fact, none of his trips to the plate in a professional game had ever ended with that feeling of elation before 2020. That didn’t stop him from standing out as a prospect, because he checked a lot of other boxes: he’s a catcher with a plus throwing arm, and he has excellent contact skills. It’s a Wilson Ramos starter kit, essentially, and that was enough to make Marchan the Phillies’ 10th-best prospect heading into 2020.

Marchan didn’t look likely to break his string of homer-less professional plate appearances in 2020. He played in A- and Hi-A ball in 2019 and acquitted himself well enough even without the homers; his .271/.347/.339 batting line for the Lakewood BlueClaws was good enough for an unconventional 105 wRC+. That isn’t the kind of line that clamors for a big league call-up, and with no minor league season, it was shaping up to be a year of sitting quietly on the sidelines, not getting any better at hitting or any closer to the big leagues.

There was one thing working in Marchan’s favor: his age. A 2015 signee, Marchan was eligible for the Rule 5 draft after last season, and he would be again this year. The Phillies probably didn’t want to take the chance that someone would snap him up, and they at least wanted to get a look at him in camp before having to make a decision one way or the other. It was a no-brainer to add him to the 60-man player pool, even if we still thought his ETA was 2022.

While Marchan was in camp, impressing coaches with his defense and continuing to make contact against advanced pitching, the Phillies got funky at the major league level. On the August 31 trade deadline, they added David Phelps while activating Ranger Suárez and Jay Bruce from the Injured List. That meant they needed both 40-man roster space and active roster space, and Deivy Grullón got caught in the crosshairs.

Grullón was on the Phillies roster for Rule 5 considerations himself, but was stuck in between roles; he’d come up as a glove-first backstop, but the glove didn’t hold up at higher levels, and while his bat improved, it wasn’t enough to carry him. He looked like a fringy backup or a solid third catcher, which is exactly how the Phillies were using him, but they needed 40-man spots. They were going to lose him in the offseason, anyway: if they protected Marchan in the Rule 5 draft, that would in all likelihood mean releasing Grullón to make the roster work.

It probably wouldn’t matter much for Marchan, but that made him the third catcher on the Phillies’ depth chart this year. With only a month remaining in the season, he wouldn’t likely be needed in the bigs, and in most years, teams can always find a spare third catcher lying around rather than use a 21-year-old who has never played above A-ball if they need a spot start.

Of course, it’s not most years. When J.T. Realmuto injured his hip on September 12, the team added Marchan to the active roster. It was no big deal, from a 40-man perspective; they were going to add him this offseason anyway, so why not do it now? He’d serve as Andrew Knapp’s backup while Realmuto rested — it might only be a matter of days, but Marchan would probably need to catch at least one game, due to a double-header scheduled for September 14.

He went a solid 1-3 in one game of that double-header, and Realmuto didn’t recover quickly, which meant another start, on September 18 against the Blue Jays. And in that game, Marchan did the unthinkable: he hit his first professional home run. It was no cheapie, either; a 364-foot, 99.6 mph blast to right off of an A.J. Cole cutter.

Home runs don’t impress us as baseball fans the way they used to. They’re everywhere in the major leagues, so commonplace as to be boring. Eric Sogard, who looks like a substitute teacher, has a double-digit home run season. Jorge Polanco cranked out 22 last year. Home runs aren’t special anymore.

But c’mon — this is something else. FanGraphs carries minor league data back to 2006. Here’s a list of the players with the most minor league at-bats in that timeframe without a home run:

This list is a bit misleading. For one thing, two of the top four players had extensive pre-2006 minor league careers. In fact, both Gathright and Hopper hit homers before 2006 (Theriot, Ozuna, and Barrett did too, but they’re below Marchan on the list so we’ll leave them out of it). Gathright hit exactly one home run in his minor league career, and exactly one in his major league career. Close to what we’re looking for! But no cigar.

Hopper displayed a jaw-dropping lack of power; in a whopping 4,761 minor league plate appearances, he managed exactly three home runs. He also hit only a single major league home run, but it too was after he’d already gone yard in the minors.

If we’re looking for someone to top Marchan’s feat, then, Kyle Hudson is our best shot. Hudson, like Hopper, combined minor league longevity with absolutely no thump. He was drafted in 2008, then spent four years in the Orioles’ system before getting a shot in the big leagues in 2011. Like Gathright and Hopper, he was a speedy outfielder with questionable pop; he hit one home run in his last season at the University of Illinois, where he was a two-sport star who totaled 999 receiving yards over three seasons of football.

In his brief shot in the major leagues, however, Hudson didn’t exactly power up. He hit a desultory .143/.143/.143 in 29 September plate appearances, then left the Orioles organization in the offseason. He bounced around through five organizations before hanging up his spikes for good in 2015, with no professional home runs to his name.

So there you have it: as far back as I can scrape data, Rafael Marchan is the champion of hitting his first professional homer after a long, fruitless minor league stint. But that’s unsatisfying, even if he’s leaps and bounds beyond any other active minor leaguer when it comes to homer-less plate appearances. That’s because of a simple fact: having the longest streak of never doing something ends as soon as you do that thing.

Take John Gant. One of my favorite weird baseball statistics was that Gant was, briefly, the major leaguer who had the most plate appearances without reaching base. Then he reached base (on a home run, naturally). Now he doesn’t hold that record anymore. If your record involves never doing something, it’s hard to make it stick. Eventually, you’ll do it.

In that vein, I decided to dig a little deeper and look for players who had little power but not actually no power. Here’s a list of players with no more than three homers at the minor league level since 2006:

This is hardly a list of household names, unless you count Gore and Frazier. Ruíz and Weems both converted to pitching, so bereft of pop were they. The players in front of Machan on this list have combined for 35 major league homers, and Frazier has hit 33 of them. He has the vast majority of the major league plate appearances this group has accrued as well; this skillset simply doesn’t seem to get much of a chance in the majors.

That, of course, is mostly meaningless. Marchan is in the major leagues. He’s Philadelphia’s best catching prospect, and if Realmuto leaves this offseason, he might just be their best catcher, period. He’ll get more chances at the major league level, and the batted ball data, scarce as it is, already looks good.

He has a barrel! His hard-hit rate is 50%. The sample size is “go away, this isn’t a real sample,” but we’re not talking about Billy Hamilton here; Marchan’s maximum exit velocity, in six chances, is 99.6 mph, nearly equal to Hamilton’s maximum in 257 batted balls the past two years.

Rafael Marchan is a historical oddity; a near-powerless minor leaguer who still looks like he has a bright future in the major leagues. He’s also, though, a creation of this strange year. Players like Marchan develop slowly. He’s both a catcher and a switch hitter. If there were a minor league season, he might have shown up and shown the pop he’s now showing, hit a handful of home runs and found his way off of this strange list.

That might still happen. If Realmuto returns, Marchan will be back in the minors next year. He might be back in the minors even if Realmuto leaves; he’s a 21-year-old who has never played above A-ball before this year. He’s only here because of a string of unlikely circumstances. The team could drop him in Double-A and sign a veteran to hold down the position to give Marchan another year of seasoning.

I’m rooting for the exact opposite, though. I want him to stick in the majors and hit well enough that his minor league career becomes absurd. I want him to be Hamilton in the minors — although, not actually Billy Hamilton, because he somehow hit 13 homers in 2,272 plate appearances — and a normal hitter in the majors. Marchan isn’t a footnote of history just yet, but he could be, and that’s one piece of 2020 history I’d be happy to remember.

The Baltimore Orioles have guaranteed that they will finish below the .500 mark after dropping four of five games to the Tampa Bay Rays. After playing relevant baseball for a good chunk of this shortened season and hovering in wild card contention into early September, fighting with the Red Sox to stay out of the AL East basement might be a disappointing result to some. As a suburban Baltimore native — like Elaine Benes, I’m from Towson — I can’t deny that the Orioles making the playoffs would’ve been cool, even with the COVID-19 restrictions preventing me from sneaking out of the press box for some pit beef. The 2020 season is unsuccessful from the point-of-view of the standings, but in terms of building a future contender, the O’s made real progress.

When it comes to roster construction, my personal credo is that if you can’t add good players, add interesting ones. I feel that even in a season that’s lost from a qualifying-for-the-playoffs perspective, there are no lost at-bats or innings pitched. Rebuilding isn’t just adding a bunch of players in the draft and seeing what happens; it’s a process of finding out every bit of information about your talent that you can. Even in just 60 games, the Orioles know a lot more about their roster than they did at the start of the year. The team has some veterans, but in most cases, they made sure to find playing time for a large percentage of the players with a plausible future in Baltimore.

We learned a lot about the players in the end, and for many of them, I feel better about a larger role in 2021 and beyond than I did before this season. And because it’s me, let’s just throw in some (preliminary) 2021-25 ZiPS projections. Read the rest of this entry »