Assuming he doesn’t get traded, Kris Bryant appears to be David Ross‘ choice as leadoff hitter this season. It’s not a secret that the Cubs have struggled to find a leadoff man since they let Dexter Fowler walk in free agency after their 2016 championship season. Last year, the Cubs’ .294 on-base percentage and 77 wRC+ from the leadoff spot were the worst in baseball.

Over the last three seasons, nine players have taken at least 50 plate appearances from the leadoff spot.

Some of these are small samples, and while we know Jason Heyward isn’t a player who would put up a 44 wRC+ with more playing time, we also know he probably isn’t going to be much more than average with the bat. Given the importance of the leadoff spot, average shouldn’t be good enough for a contending team. Ian Happ was a little above average, but his .319 OBP leaves something to be desired. Even the .333 OBP he put up in limited time overall last year isn’t great. Daniel Murphy was only with the club for a few months. Kyle Schwarber’s career .339 OBP screams pretty good but not start-the-game-off great, and being below-average against lefties means he couldn’t do it every day. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s difficult to predict that a team will go from a losing record to reaching the postseason in any given season without sounding like a contrarian or someone who’s trying too hard, but in baseball, it’s a legitimately prudent exercise. Every year since 2006 has produced at least one playoff team that finished with a record under .500 in the previous season. Odds are good that it will happen to somebody this year too, and if you’re guessing who it will be, there are no shortage of options to choose from. The Angels have beefed up their lineup. The White Sox are pushing their chips in. The Reds are something close to favorites in a weak NL Central. The Padres fancy themselves close as well. If you’re looking for a good old-fashioned comeback story to cheer for in 2020, you can take your pick. My personal favorite might be the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Blue Jays are rarely mentioned in the same breath as the teams listed above, but they share something in common with each of them. Like Los Angeles, they overhauled a major portion of the roster. Like Cincinnati, they improved their team in a division that mostly either stood pat or took a step back. And like Chicago and San Diego, they enter this season with a boatload of young players who are excellent candidates to break out. But when you think of teams who might suddenly contend this season, Toronto probably doesn’t come to mind, and for good reason. Our Depth Charts project them to be 21st in team WAR in 2020, and Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections have them at just 76 wins and a 3% chance of making the postseason. Depending upon how you look at things, the Blue Jays are probably somewhere between the ninth and 11th-best team in the American League on paper, either at the bottom of baseball’s middle class or the top of its lower class.

Recent performance backs that up, of course. By WAR, they had just the 20th-most valuable position player group in baseball last year and the 21st-most valuable pitching staff. Their record was 67-95 in their third-straight losing season, their worst since 1995. Playing in a division with three solidly above-average teams and fighting through a crowded Wild Card field won’t be an easy task, so I’m not going to try to convince you that Toronto is a playoff team. What I’d merely like to convince you of is that the 2020 Blue Jays are a completely different team from the 2019 squad, and they ought to be dramatically better as a result.

We’ll start with the pitching staff, since that is where the Blue Jays devoted so many resources this winter. Toronto starters were dreadful in 2019, amassing just 7.2 WAR. Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez accounted for four of those wins, and those two throw baseballs for different teams now. Twenty-one pitchers made starts for the Blue Jays in total in 2019, a reflection of just how little stability the organization had on that front.

This year should be better, to say the least. The team signed Hyun-Jin Ryu and Tanner Roark to multi-year deals while also bringing in Shun Yamaguchi from Japan on a two-year contract. Throw in the acquisition of Chase Anderson from Milwaukee and that’s three new starters who compiled a total of 8 WAR in 2019 plus a 32-year-old who is coming off 181 innings, 194 strikeouts, 64 walks, and a 2.78 ERA for the Yomiuri Giants. As for the No. 5 starter, the most likely option is Matt Shoemaker, who made just five starts for Toronto last season after returning from injury. If things go according to plan, none of the Blue Jays’ top five starters by innings pitched in 2019 will crack this year’s Opening Day rotation.

Are there still potential issues here? Absolutely. Projections do not like the top four starters, injuries have limited Shoemaker to just 26 starts over the last three seasons combined, and we have no idea how the transition to major league baseball will go for Yamaguchi. But the Blue Jays still have Thornton and Waguespack in the organization, whose peripherals were roughly league average last season, and guys like Wilmer Font and Sean Reid-Foley offer upside as well. Toronto also has Nate Pearson, who Eric Longenhagen ranked as the top right-handed pitching prospect in baseball, just one level away from the majors. There are a number of things that could go wrong for this rotation, but there is no doubt that the depth in place entering 2020 far exceeds what this team could offer a year ago.

And if the Blue Jays wind up turning heads this season, it won’t be because of their pitching staff, anyway. It’ll be because of the offense, which boasts one of the most exciting groups of young players on any team in baseball. According to Eric and Kiley, Toronto entered 2019 with the No. 1 (Vladimir Guerrero Jr.), No. 9 (Bo Bichette), and No. 47 (Danny Jansen) prospects in the majors. Then Cavan Biggio and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. each broke out. This is now the Blue Jays’ core, and it’s a good one.

My logic for singling out these five players is that they are all in their early-to-mid 20s, debuted in the past two seasons, and were all highly regarded as prospects just before their debuts. Toronto would love to get great seasons out of Randal Grichuk or Teoscar Hernández or Rowdy Tellez, but those aren’t the players that the franchise is relying upon to carry it for the next several seasons. These five are, and the early returns from them have been promising.

You might be thinking something along the lines of, so what? These guys all logged hundreds of plate appearances last year, and it still wasn’t enough to move the Blue Jays from finishing in the bottom third of the AL in wRC+. After how much fanfare surrounded the debut of Vlad Jr. and how quickly Biggio and Bichette succeeded, when you look back on the 2019 season, it might seem to you like these guys spent the majority of the season batting in the same lineup — at least, that’s the way I remembered it. But while it’s true that all of these players individually amassed nearly a half or whole seasons worth of playing time, the truth is that only a fraction of Blue Jays games featured all or most of these players making an appearance. I went through each game of Toronto’s 2019 season and counted how many of these five players appeared in each one. This is how that playing time distributed itself:

There were just six games last year in which all five of Vlad Jr., Bichette, Biggio, Gurriel Jr., and Jansen made an appearance and just 51 games in which four of them did. Put another way, the Blue Jays played 105 games in 2019 — almost 65% of the season — without at least two of these very important players. This was surprising to me given how much each of these players played on their own, but for various reasons, playing time never coalesced. Vlad Jr. wasn’t called up until late April, Biggio wasn’t called up until mid-May, and Bichette was in the minors until late July. Gurriel Jr., meanwhile, spent five weeks early in the season ironing things out in Triple-A and then missed more time with an injury in the second half.

This is significant because, barring multiple catastrophes, Toronto is certainly planning to play more than just a third of its season with at least four of these players in the starting lineup in 2020. According to our RosterResource, each of these players is expected to have a starting role with the exception of Jansen, who should get a fairly even split of catching duties alongside Reese McGuire. Like the rotation, there’s a very good chance the lineup that Blue Jays fans see throughout 2020 looks totally different than what they saw for most of last year.

It’s also significant because when these young players did get the chance to play together, the difference in production was enormous. While tracking how many of these players took part in each game, I also logged how many runs Toronto scored, how many runs it allowed, and whether it won or lost. Here’s what I found:

When at least four of Vlad, Bo, Biggio, Gurriel Jr., and Jansen were active, the Blue Jays raised their average run production by nearly one and a half runs and won more games than they lost despite the average pitching performance being close to what it was for the season. And 57 games is not that small of a sample size for something like this — if a team were 31-26 at the end of May and scoring nearly six runs per game, we would at the very least take them seriously. If that team then went out and added four starting pitchers at the start of June, we would almost certainly think of them as contenders.

Is that a perfectly rational way to think of this Blue Jays team? Perhaps not. After all, there are still plenty of holes here. The outfield is in bad shape, as is first base. Vlad Jr.’s defense was as awful as advertised, and a 21-year-old DH is a tough pill to swallow, regardless of how well he hits. The bullpen is probably trouble. And the position player depth is concerning enough that a couple of injuries could spell disaster. There is no shortage of ways in which this can all fall apart.

But it isn’t difficult for me to see a universe in which enough things go right. Vlad Jr. should be better; a full season of star-level production from him or Bichette wouldn’t shatter our understanding of baseball as we know it. Jansen, a bat-first prospect in the minors, shouldn’t be over 30% worse than the average hitter again. Nobody would be shocked to see Biggio or Gurriel Jr. repeat something similar to last year’s production, nor would they be blown away to see a bounce-back season from Grichuk or Travis Shaw, each of whom had been plenty reliable for several consecutive seasons before falling off a cliff in 2019. The rotation is full of workhorse-like arms capable of average-ish production over the course of a season, and Ken Giles is one of the better options a team could hope to have closing games.

It probably won’t be enough. The Yankees are a fire tornado, the Rays are great, and the Red Sox are still pretty good, too. The Angels can hit better than Toronto, the Indians can pitch better than Toronto, and the White Sox are about to roll out a youth showcase for the ages. Conventional wisdom says the Blue Jays shouldn’t be able to keep up with any of these teams. But that’s the thing about surprise contenders: You’re not supposed to see them coming.

The Red Sox have received a fair amount of criticism for trading Mookie Betts. Owner John Henry tried to clear the air a bit, clarify some misconceptions that are out there, and justify trading Mookie Betts. If his explanation felt lacking, it’s probably because the real explanation isn’t pretty. The Red Sox traded Betts to save money at the expense of a potentially winning team in 2020. That they received some talent in return can’t obscure the primary goal of the trade. Financial flexibility might remain a popular catchphrase, but there’s little reason to think the Boston Red Sox couldn’t just keep payrolls at similar levels over the foreseeable future and continue to add talent considering nearly $100 million in salaries comes off the books over the next three offseasons.

A few specific passages in Henry’s statement stuck out to me:

“It is not the system’s fault that the Red Sox ended up in this position. We were faced with a difficult choice.”

Henry called this an “extraordinary challenge,” a “difficult choice,” and characterized “tough decisions” for the organization. To frame trading Betts as a difficult choice, one must first frame the options and the results. It’s not just get prospects versus a draft pick. It’s contending in 2020 versus not. It’s attaching a bad contract to the trade versus getting the best possible future value. It’s decreasing spending by $60 million versus maintaining an already profitable level.

Henry appears to be accepting responsibility for big contracts for David Price, Chris Sale, and J.D. Martinez that put the Red Sox in a bind where keeping Betts wouldn’t be possible, except it is Henry that decides what it is possible and what is not. It is Henry who has decided he wants to cash more checks and write fewer ones. We’ve heard about a rumored $300 million offer, but that was another offseason ago before Betts accumulated $47 million in arbitration awards. An offer of just $250 million in free agent money when Mike Trout was accepting $100 million more (on a bargain deal) with Betts a full year younger and coming off his 2018 MVP season isn’t exactly much of an effort at all. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s according to Ken Rosenthal, anyway, and the last time Ken got one of these signings wrong was never. We don’t have contract information yet, but you guessed two years and $8 million at the beginning of the offseason, and that sounds roughly correct to me. It’s possible that this late signing date is a clue that either the years or the dollars will be somewhat less than our expectation for them, but in the absence of any hard information, I’d bet there was enough interest in Brock Holt’s services that he hit what he was aiming for.

In Milwaukee, Holt will join a host of players competing for the role of Craig Counsell’s Favorite Son in spring training: Ryon Healy (who played first and third in 2019), Jedd Gyorko (first, second, and third), Eric Sogard (second, third, short, left, and right), and Luis Urías (second, third, and short) have already joined the Brew Crew this offseason. Holt, who did everything but pitch, catch, and play center field for the Red Sox last season, has been a more consistent hitter — especially over the last two seasons — than any of those four men, and so he probably has an inside track for a roster spot come April.

Given Milwaukee’s revamped outfield configuration — Christian Yelich in left (where he spent most of his time in Miami), some combination of Lorenzo Cain and Avisaíl Garcia in center, and Garcia and Ryan Braun in right — Holt will likely pick up much of his playing time in the infield, I’m guessing primarily on the left side. Sogard (third base) and Urías (shortstop) are both stronger starters if their bats hold up, but the odds of that happening for both men seem reasonably low. I wouldn’t be shocked if the 350 or so plate appearances we’re projecting for Holt this year end up being low. I also wouldn’t be shocked if Holt gets most of his defensive chances at second base, depending on how Keston Hiura’s sophomore campaign proceeds. Read the rest of this entry »

Even if the team isn’t quite a contender, there are plenty of reasons to follow the 2020 Pittsburgh Pirates. Bryan Reynolds and Josh Bell are interesting hitters, though there’s a decent chance that neither ever replicates their 2019 success. Chris Archer is a fun puzzle; can he regain the scintillating form he flashed at times on the Rays, or will he be more 2019 Chris Archer, all homers and walks? Mitch Keller is awesome, except when he’s terrible. Those are all storylines you can follow as a Pirates fan. Me? I’m going to be watching Joe Musgrove.

Musgrove put together a nice season in 2019, his second straight year of more than 100 innings and more than 2 WAR. That sounds great, but it’s a little less impressive under the hood. His RA9-WAR has been significantly lower, and if you’re more of an underlying skill person than a runs allowed type, his above-average FIP’s have been misleading; they’re largely down to his suppression of home runs, and if that skill fades, his results might start to look more like his xFIP:

I’ll admit I’m not doing a good job of explaining my fascination with Musgrove so far. Even if you dig into the component parts of his game, nothing jumps off the page. He strikes out fewer batters than average but makes up for it by walking even fewer. He allows a roughly average number of grounders, gives up hard contact at a roughly average rate, and overall blends into the background. Read the rest of this entry »

Miami Marlins right-hander Sandy Alcantara showed a lot of promise when he was given a spot in the starting rotation last year. His 2.3 WAR and 3.88 ERA were impressive, but there’s much more going on that meets the eye. Alcantara has a very cohesive pitch ecosystem; the design of each offering makes for a lot of interchangeable parts. Being able to adapt to situations with flexible pitch options gives Alcantara an edge that a lot of pitchers don’t have with their arsenal.

Most pitchers have one, maybe two, pitch combinations that pair well together. Alcantara actually has four, which can allow him to easily flex and keep hitters on their toes.

Alcantara operates with five pitches: two fastballs (four-seam and sinker), a slider, a tight, classic curveball, and a heavy, fading changeup.

Below is the 2019 data on all five pitches: Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, the Cleveland Indians found themselves in the middle of a classic good news, bad news situation. It was encapsulated by this tweet from their official Twitter account:

We would like to officially welcome Domingo Santana to The Land!

Additionally, Mike Clevinger will undergo surgery on his left knee today and his timetable is TBD. pic.twitter.com/3PSW9gPjeO

— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) February 14, 2020

First, the bad news. While participating in preseason drills earlier in the week, Mike Clevinger partially tore the meniscus in his left knee. After his surgery on Friday, the club announced a recovery timeline of six-to-eight weeks. The short end of his rehab timeline would put him on track to rejoin the team just after Opening Day. But since he’ll have missed all of spring training, it wouldn’t be surprising if he was brought along conservatively. Depending on how much time he needs to ramp up for the season, it’s possible he’d miss as much as the first month. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, Kris Bryant lost his grievance against the Cubs for manipulating his service time. The arbitrator, Mark Irvings, ruled that Bryant hadn’t proved that the Cubs held him down for nefarious reasons, essentially requiring a smoking gun, even though Irvings didn’t rule on whether teams have the right to manipulate service time if they so choose. As I wrote at the time, the decision essentially pushes any action on the question to the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, which expires at the end of the 2021 season. The result is that Bryant won’t become a free agent until after the 2021 season. The Cubs have yet to make any significant roster moves this offseason, and there are rumors, as there have been all winter, that Bryant could be dealt.

Over the weekend, Bryant emphasized to reporters that he bears no hard feelings against the Cubs:

I’ve always had the stance I want to play here, I love the city,” Bryant said.

The only thing that matters is what comes from my mouth, and never once have I said I never wanted to play here. … I’m always open to it, I’m always here to talk, it’s fun to talk about stuff like that. It’s a city that I love so much, people I love so much, fans, teammates, everybody here that I’m so comfortable with. Of course you want to be here. I don’t hold those cards.”

It’s the Cubs that hold those cards. Bryant’s statement comes on the heels of David Kaplan reporting that the Cubs were “absolutely motivated” to trade for Nolan Arenado. On the surface, trading Bryant makes little sense. He’s the Cubs’ best player, Chicago is expected to contend in 2020, and Bryant’s salary isn’t exorbitant at $18.6 million, roughly half the AAV Anthony Rendon just received in free agency. On the other hand, of the six Cubs making more than $15 million, Bryant is the only one with good trade value at the moment. If the Cubs are looking to make a change — and a change seems to be desired after a disappointing 84-win season that resulted in a new manager — trading Bryant is the most realistic option to move salary and get good, young talent in return. And based on the Rockies’ reports, Bryant might also provide an opportunity to actually upgrade at third base with a long term commitment. But first, a note about the competitive balance tax. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest developments in the escalating player war of words over the Astros sign-stealing scandal, José Altuve‘s alleged unfinished tattoo, Rob Manfred’s roundly criticized comments, Shohei Ohtani’s new driver’s license, and a modest pay hike for minor leaguers. Then they preview the 2020 Braves (34:29) with From the Diamond host Grant McAuley, and the 2020 Phillies (1:13:37) with The Athletic’s Meghan Montemurro.

Audio intro: The Who, "Tattoo"
Audio interstitial 1: The Replacements, "Someone Take the Wheel"
Audio interstitial 2: Cayetana, "South Philly"
Audio outro: Bud Light, "Mr. Fake Tattoo Inventor"

Link to story about Correa, Altuve, and Bellinger
Link to story about minor league pay hike
Link to possible Altuve tattoo sighting
Link to Darvish tweet
Link to Ben on the Braves rebuild
Link to post about Ozuna
Link to Grant’s Braves positional previews
Link to story on the Phillies’ spending
Link to story on the Phillies’ bullpen usage
Link to story on the Phillies’ sports science department
Link to Ben on the Phillies’ framing turnarounds
Link to Roger Angell interview
Link to order The MVP Machine

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The swing is noisy and needs refining, but Lewis has the physical ability for superstardom.

That line, written by Eric Longenhagen, led Royce Lewis’s writeup in our 2020 Top 100 Prospects rankings, which were published earlier this week. Both halves of the sentence are intriguing. While the first is potentially a red flag, the second is indicative of a blue-chip up-and-comer with a sky-high ceiling. Selected first overall by the Minnesota Twins in the 2017 draft out of a San Juan Capistrano high school, Lewis holds down the No. 13 slot on Longenhagen’s list.

Alex Hassan isn’t all that concerned with the 20-year-old shortstop’s swing. According to the Minnesota farm director, the underlying characteristics are what really matter. Lewis possesses plus bat speed, a good bat path, and “when he makes contact, he does a lot of damage.”

While nothing is actually broken, Lewis isn’t exactly quiet in the box.

“There are some characteristics that are unique to Royce,” said Hassan. “What’s interesting is that leg-kick piece. Last year, I went back and looked at some of his GCL video from right after he signed, and there are plenty of pitches where his leg kick goes right up to his belt, and he executes his swing from there. It’s something he’s tinkered with. It can be a big leg kick, somewhat of a medium leg kick, and at times he’ll try to get his foot down a little earlier. But the kick has been there since he came into the system. It’s simply a feature of Royce, as opposed to some kind of bug that’s popped up.”

Hassen espouses an if-it-ain’t-broke-fix-it approach, but at the same time he recognizes that excessive movement can be deleterious to a hitter’s ability to consistently square up baseballs. He’s seen Lewis make strides toward. Moreover, he’s seen them made cautiously, and without undue urging. Read the rest of this entry »