Just when you thought every angle of the Astros sign-stealing scandal had been covered, a new wrinkle emerges. Previous attempts to discern the true impact of the banging scheme were always limited by the lack of granular data. Without going through the effort of scanning all of the available audio and video, we had very little idea how often the Astros banged on their trash can. Were they using their scheme in every plate appearance? Only in high-leverage situations? Without answers to these questions, we were using incomplete data that included a ton of noise.

Enter Tony Adams. He scanned through 58 Astros home games with available video and audio and logged every single instance of a bang using a custom application he built. He ended up logging over 8,200 pitches and over 1,100 bangs. Last Wednesday, he made his data public on his site.

With Adams’ data in hand, we have answers to some of the questions that thwarted earlier attempts at analysis. The data still isn’t comprehensive. The 23 home games with missing video are still shrouded in mist, and we can’t assume the banging scheme was in effect during plate appearances where the batter only saw fastballs. We also don’t have insight into other possible methods of communicating stolen signs, like whistling, buzzers, or the like. Still, the new data provides us with a thorough look at those 58 games, helping us draw some more definitive conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about probability, the baseball significance of a Super Bowl comeback, and whether win expectancy stats are more useful for fans during or after a game (featuring a cameo from Meg Rowley, who sort of settles the debate). Then Ben and Sam preview the 2020 Padres with MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell (23:47), and the 2020 White Sox (58:32) with The Athletic’s James Fegan.

Audio intro: Tall Tall Trees, "Expectations"
Audio interstitial 1: The Cranberries, "Chocolate Brown"
Audio interstitial 2: Bombadil, "Goodwill Socks"
Audio outro: Super Furry Animals, "White Socks/Flip Flops"

Link to FiveThirtyEight tweet
Link to ESPN’s Super Bowl win probability graph
Link to Ben Clemens on Tatis’ defense
Link to James on the evolution of White Sox player development
Link to BP roundtable on Madrigal
Link to order The MVP Machine

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By now, you know the drill. Earlier this week, I highlighted contending teams with weak points in the infield and on the mound. We’ve still got eight teams to cover today, so there’s no time to waste. Let’s dive in!

St. Louis Cardinals

The Hole: Two years ago, the Cardinals were so overloaded with outfielders that they traded Tommy Pham to open up playing time for promising youngsters Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill. This offseason, they had enough of an outfield surplus that they traded Randy Arozarena and José Martínez, but the top-end talent the team hoped for still hasn’t materialized.

That’s not to say that the Cardinals don’t have outfielders. O’Neill and Bader are still around. Dexter Fowler is solidly in his decline phase, but will likely take up a season’s worth of plate appearances. Tommy Edman will see some time in the outfield in addition to sharing third base with Matt Carpenter.

But while they have bodies, they’re lacking in upside. Bader looks like a long-shot to ever recapture his 2018 offensive line, O’Neill’s 2019 was gruesome (35.1% strikeout rate), and Fowler is subsisting on walks at this point. They might field an entire outfield of sub-100 wRC+ batters, and only Bader can make up for that with his glove. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees’ path to a second straight AL East title got a bit easier with Red Sox’s trade of Mookie Betts to the Dodgers, but they won’t emerge from this week unscathed. On Wednesday, the team announced that lefty James Paxton, their most effective starter in 2019, will be out of action for three to four months after undergoing surgery to alleviate a herniated lumbar disc. Even with the addition of Gerrit Cole to the fold, this is a loss that will test the Yankees’ depth.

The 31-year-old Paxton, whom the Yankees acquired from the Mariners in a four-player deal in November 2018, had an uneven first season in pinstripes. He surrendered 29 runs and 12 homers in the first innings of his 29 starts, and was cuffed for a 6.38 ERA and 5.84 FIP in June and July, shortly after he returned from a 25-day absence due to left knee inflammation. Even so, he was strong enough on either side of that two-month stretch that he still finished the season with 3.5 WAR, a 3.82 ERA, and 3.86 FIP (the last two both good for an 83 on their respective “minus” scales), all tops among the team’s starters; he was the only one to take a substantial workload (150.2 innings, third on the team) while finishing with either an ERA or a FIP under 4.28. Indeed, in a season where Luis Severino was limited to a grand total of 12 innings due to a bout of rotator cuff inflammation and then a Grade 2 strain of his latissimus dorsi, Paxton was something of a staff savior.

Paxton wobbled a bit through three postseason starts, allowing five runs in 13 innings while striking out 20. The first two were shortened, but he was at his best in Game 5 of the ALCS against the Astros. With the Yankees down three games to one, he worked around four walks and a wild pitch to turn in six innings of one-run ball while striking out nine; the team won 4-1 and sent the series back to Houston. His October work came on the heels of a bout of nerve irritation in his left glute, which forced him from his final regular season start after just one inning and led to a cortisone shot. Per the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, his surgery is connected to that issue. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, the AL Central could feature three above-.500 teams for the first time since 2015. The Twins and Indians should remain at the top of the division, but after an active offseason, the White Sox could very well join them in a tight race. It reminds me a bit of the NL East in recent years: a lot of good teams, but none without a glaring hole somewhere.

The White Sox are hardly immune. Their rotation doesn’t project to be great, and there are still a few question marks in the lineup, like whether Yoán Moncada will regress, or Nomar Mazara will progress, and how Luis Robert will hit.

But even with those options, I would argue that Chicago’s most prominent weakness is their bullpen. By projected WAR, the White Sox relief unit ranks 26th in the majors, their worst individual ranking among any of the 12 positions we currently have listed on our Depth Chart pages. Most of their expected value comes in the form of Aaron Bummer, who flew far under the radar last season despite being among the best at one extremely important skill: inducing groundballs. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals have made some significant changes in player development since the end of last season. Most-impactful might be the hiring of Drew Saylor as their new hitting coordinator. The 36-year-old Ohio native brings a progressive, technology-meets-behavior-theory mindset to the organization via the Pirates and Dodgers systems. He spent last season as Pittsburgh’s assistant minor-league hitting coordinator, a stint that followed three years of hands-on experience tutoring Los Angeles farmhands. Saylor was named Baseball America’s 2018 Minor League Manager of the Year.

In this year’s first “Talks Hitting” interview, Saylor discussed the philosophies he’s bringing to the Royals, and the developmental goals of talented-but-enigmatic outfield prospect Seuly Matias.

———

David Laurila: What is your approach when working with young hitters?

Drew Saylor: “One thing I talk a lot about is being curious. The more we can get our players and staff to be curious about what is going on… for instance, what makes the player successful? What are some of his gap margins? From there we can go to, ‘OK, let’s look at this from a batted-ball data perspective. Let’s work this back to swing decisions, to movement assessment, to his training methodology.’ All of this to see how he’s able to transfer the skill to where it shows up in the game.

“That’s a big piece I like to see put into play: Working it back from the objective to the subjective, then working in tandem with the player. And not just the player. Also the other coaches, coordinators, and consultants. Maybe he has an off-season hitting guru? So, everyone who has touches with this player. Ideally the process is understood by everybody, and at the same time we’re able to go, ‘Hey, this process is leading to this product.’ If we want the product to change, we have to be able to work our way backwards from the product to the process. Then we can make more concrete, solid lines between those two areas.”

Laurila: It is often said that you can’t clone hitters.

Saylor: “Absolutely. Some of the smart people I’ve worked with talk about the individualization, the understanding of human capital — what they’re able to do, what the vision is from a physical-mental-social-emotional-spiritual perspective. Looking at your players with a more wholistic viewpoint. 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 eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

It’s hard to feel much excitement about the Cubs. They won the World Series when they were one of the best teams in baseball, so to see them in stasis as they pass through the core’s long twilight just doesn’t feel quite right.

I think of the Cubs like one of those expensive, powerful German luxury cars. It was dominating, with an engine that snarled, and looked like it would roll over the mid-size crossovers that were the rest of the NL Central. But it turned out the insurance for the car was expensive, the upkeep and maintenance fell behind, and now it isn’t any more desirable than a late-model, non-luxury brand. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most exciting and maddening things about baseball is its unpredictability. A guy who fell to the 25th pick of his draft turns out to be the greatest player of his generation? Sure. A 36-year-old returns from a major achilles injury to have his best offensive season ever and hits the decisive home run of the World Series? Of course. One of baseball’s richest teams goes from winning the World Series to claiming it’s out of money, firing the guy who put the championship roster together, and trading away its superstar player to cut costs in the span of 18 months? That… well, we probably should have seen that coming.

Baseball is a game without sure things, which means the few precious certainties we get tend to stand out. One of those certainties, for the past five years, has been that if Zack Britton is pitching to you, he’s going to throw you a sinker. No need for guesswork, or a chess match, or an ear trained toward a nearby trash can. Since he switched from starting to relieving in 2014, 88% of the pitches Britton has thrown have been sinkers. Not a lot of pitchers can get by on just one pitch — so few, you can probably name them off the top of your head right now — but Britton’s been so successful, no one’s called it into question. That’s because the pitch every hitter knows is coming is still a 94 mph bowling ball thrown at their knees, and virtually no one can get a barrel to it. Because of that, Britton’s made 349 relief appearances, and owns a 1.81 ERA and 2.94 FIP over that span, with two All-Star selections and some MVP and Cy Young votes for his trouble. He’s one of the great relievers of his time, and it’s all because of one pitch.

That’s the Britton I know, you know, that everybody knows. Trouble is, that description might no longer be accurate. From 2014-18, Britton didn’t throw a non-sinker offering even 10% of the time over a given season. In 2019, however, he threw his breaking ball 13.6% of the time. That might sound like only a slight bump year-to-year, but this was no gradual change. This was Britton using the second half of 2019 to try something he’d never done before:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels quietly made a transaction of their own on Mookiesmas, picking up Joc Pederson, Ross Stripling, and Andy Pages from the Los Angeles Dodgers in return for Luis Rengifo and possibly a second prospect. The exact final names, most prominently if there’s anyone else heading to the Dodgers, are still up in the air at publication time.

If the Mookie trade was a Tuesday night earthquake, the Pederson move is one of its aftershocks. The Dodgers are splashing a lot of dollars onto their 2020 payroll, and whether or not baseball ought to have a luxury tax with steep penalties, that’s the world we live in and teams take it very seriously. Pederson’s exact 2020 salary is still unknown as he’s headed to arbitration, with the Dodgers filing at $7.75 million and Pederson’s camp at $9 million. The MLB Trade Rumors prediction of $8.5 million is the one we’ll go with there.

Sending Stripling to the Angels also removes $2.1 million from the Dodger payroll, putting the total luxury tax number at around $220 million. It does not appear the Dodgers got enough salary thrown in by the Red Sox to get under the first luxury tax threshold, but they do appear to be safely under the second threshold of $228 million. This is important because it leaves the Dodgers some flexibility to make other, small additions, while avoiding the second threshold’s steeper penalties, which could matter if the team’s in a position where they feel they need to pull the trigger on a big trade in July.

[Correction: Our payroll page for the Dodgers previously included Homer Bailey’s buyout and dollar figures for Yasiel Sierra and Hector Olivera in the team’s luxury tax figure. This has since been updated. The Dodgers now appear to have a chance to actually get under the $208 million threshold, not just the $228 million one. The exact amount the Red Sox are sending to the Dodgers to cover David Price’s contract is not yet public, so the situation remains fluid. If the Dodgers get under the $208 million threshold, it seems less likely that they would then spend over that threshold at the deadline. My apologies for any confusion! -DS]

Like Kenta Maeda, Stripling’s a nice player to have around, but with the Alex Wood signing, he’d probably be seventh or eighth in the rotation pecking order, even with Maeda gone to the Twins. Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin, and if healthy, Jimmy Nelson, all have higher upside than Stripling, who sheds a good deal of his utility if he isn’t in a starting role. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I looked into contending teams with weaknesses in the infield. Today, let’s continue by looking at teams who could upgrade their pitching, plus teams involved in blockbuster trades sending MVP’s to the West Coast.

Los Angeles Angels

The Hole: The Angels had only a single pitcher throw more than 100 innings last year. That’s bad. What’s worse is that it was Trevor Cahill, who had a 5.98 ERA and still beat his FIP (6.13), good for a -0.8 WAR effort over 102.1 innings. He’s a free agent at the moment, and that was the pitcher the Angels used most.

It’s hard to disentangle this from Tyler Skaggs’ tragic death, and I don’t intend this to be an indictment of team building, or a dig at the franchise’s response. The team’s 2019 season was tragic, and those woes need not carry into 2020.

Despite a lot of churn, however, they aren’t exactly running out an inspiring rotation. Shohei Ohtani is back, and projects to be their best pitcher on a rate basis, but he’ll be on a strict innings limit. Dylan Bundy is somehow only 27, but it’s hard to see anything but an average pitcher with injury risk to the downside given his uneven career.

Julio Teheran is probably a FIP beater, but with Steamer projecting him for a 5.47 FIP, that isn’t enough. Andrew Heaney is basically Dylan Bundy, only a year older (somehow) — a guy you’d like as an innings-eater but with a checkered injury history.

If there’s upside in this rotation (aside from Ohtani), it’s Griffin Canning, whose fastball/slider combination has looked good in his short career. He’s also coming off of a season shortened by elbow inflammation, and he had a 4.58 ERA and 4.75 xFIP in 2019 — we’re not talking about an ace with a hurt elbow here. Overall, the team has a bunch of league average starters with downside risk.

The Fix: The team attempted defense in depth by acquiring Bundy and Teheran, but I’d prefer to see them try to go tall rather than wide. Paul Sporer suggested a trade for Mike Clevinger, and if the Indians would take Brandon Marsh plus a couple other notable names for Clevinger, the Angels could improve themselves by a lot quickly.

If you think the Indians plan on contending, however, there isn’t much to do when it comes to ace-upside pitchers. Noah Syndergaard rumors have died on the vine, and the teams at the bottom of the standings don’t have much to offer on the star pitching front. They could try to acquire Matthew Boyd to add to their quintet of average pitchers, but why? No, they’re mostly stuck with what they have — which might work out okay, but certainly feels risky for a team with Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon at the peak of their powers. Read the rest of this entry »