The long-awaited Mookie Betts trade came to pass Tuesday evening, with the 2018 American League MVP heading to Chavez Ravine in a three-way trade that folded the Minnesota Twins into the mix. A free agent at the end of the 2020 season, Betts adds even more heft to a Dodgers team that won 106 games in 2019.

Also heading to the Dodgers is David Price, who went 7-5 with a 4.28 ERA and a 3.62 FIP in 22 starts for the Red Sox in 2019, accumulating 2.3 WAR in 107.1 innings. It’s a bit unusual to see a player of Price’s reputation essentially become a salary dump in a larger trade, but his recent injury history made the $96 million owed to him over the next three years a daunting prospect for Boston to pick up. While the Dodgers no doubt expect to see real contributions from Price, they likely see the money owed to him as a significant chunk of what they’re “trading” for Betts.

The Dodgers were determined to not give up any of their elite prospects in a Betts trade and that’s exactly what they managed to do. Alex Verdugo took a giant step forward in 2019 and hit .294/.342/.475, good for 2.2 WAR for Los Angeles. With Betts and Cody Bellinger in the outfield, A.J. Pollock under contract, and the team still retaining Chris Taylor and Kiké Hernandez (Joc Pederson is leaving in a separate trade), a very good argument can be made that Verdugo was simply more expendable than Gavin Lux or Dustin May. Read the rest of this entry »

After the penalties against the Astros were announced for their sign-stealing scandal, there was a very brief time period where the club looked set to ride out the suspension of general manager Jeff Luhnow for a season before he regained control of the club, and the atmosphere that came along with it, that he helped create. Hours later, Astros owner Jim Crane fired both Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch. For the manager role, Crane hired something of a stopgap in the form of 70-year-old Dusty Baker, a veteran option with years of experience and a sterling reputation in the clubhouse. It was a hire designed to help the club move forward with as little friction and ties to the past as possible. It was also a hire made without a general manager, the person typically responsible for such decisions. Baker received just a one-year deal, likely in part due to this uncertainty. The Astros and Crane appear to be less interested in making a similar decision at general manager, opting for 42-year-old James Click from the Rays organization over a more-experienced option like Bobby Evans, formerly of the Giants.

If the Astros had wanted some consistency and someone within the organization to step up for a short time, the list of candidates wasn’t long. The last three assistant general managers for Astros are in charge of the Brewers (David Stearns), the Orioles (Mike Elias), and ineligible to be involved with major league baseball (Brandon Taubman). Several key front office members left with Elias when he moved to Baltimore as well. Internally, Pete Putila graduated from college in 2010, has been with the Astros since 2011, and rose to his current position of assistant general manager, but when Crane fired Luhnow, the Astros owner assumed responsibility for baseball operations. In Click, the club is going with a more experienced version of Putila. Read the rest of this entry »

As rumors of the various permutations of Mookie Betts trades float around the ether, it’s worth taking a closer look at the Dodgers’ rotation, mainly because of the possibility that David Price is included in what would become an even bigger blockbuster than a “simple” trade of one of the majors’ top five players. Despite losing both Hyun-Jin Ryu and Rich Hill in free agency, the Dodgers don’t lack for options to start, many of them good ones. But between inexperience and injury histories, those options also offer a great deal of uncertainty, and it’s not at all clear that the 34-year-old Price, whose performance has declined of late and who comes with his own recent spate of health woes, helps all that much.

Last year, the Dodgers had by far the NL’s best rotation in terms of ERA and FIP, though they finished behind the Nationals — whose starters ranked second in both categories — in WAR, because the Washington workhorses threw significantly more innings:

By itself, the Dodgers’ lower innings total doesn’t matter, but the loss of Ryu, whose 182.2 innings were the most by any Los Angeles starter since 2015, leaves the team with only three pitchers who threw at least 100 innings last year, namely Walker Buehler (30 starts, 182.1 innings), Clayton Kershaw (28 starts, 178.1 innings), and Kenta Maeda (26 starts, 153.2 innings), the last of whom spent all of September in the bullpen and has been mentioned in at least one version of the Betts trade. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday afternoon, the Mariners announced a four-year contract extension for Marco Gonzales with a guarantee of $30 million. This new deal will cover the 2021–2024 seasons, with a club option for a fifth year that could bring the total value of the deal to $45 million. Because he signed an unorthodox contract extension in 2018 — Gonzales signed to avoid an unpleasant service time issue inherited by the Mariners — this new deal will cover all three of his arbitration years and potentially two free agent years.

With Gonzales’ $5 million 2021 salary on the books, the Mariners have just over $50 million in committed salary next year. That’s the season when the Mariners have been aiming to transition out of their soft rebuild phase. By then, Jarred Kelenic, Logan Gilbert, and possibly even Julio Rodriguez could all have graduated to the majors and the Mariners should have a ton of room to add salary. Signing Gonzales to an affordable contract now locks in his salary figures during his arbitration years, giving Seattle some cost certainty during the seasons where they’ve indicated they plan to spend more.

It’s likely the framework for Gonzales’s extension was built on the flurry of four-year extensions handed out to a number of starting pitchers last offseason. Aaron Nola, Luis Severino, Blake Snell, Kyle Hendricks, and German Márquez all signed four-year pacts with their respective teams prior to the season starting. The table below lists the six pitchers with their age, service time, and cumulative performance prior to signing their extension:

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 Cleveland Indians.

Batters

The bad news is that the Indians have a very run-of-the-mill offense with an outfield that has been, is, and ought to be a significant hole, one that they’ve done little to fill. The good news is that the Indians have a very run-of-the-mill offense with an outfield that has been, is, and ought to be, a significant hole, one that they’ve done little to fill, but an offense that also features Francisco Lindor and José Ramírez.

There’s little doubt at this point that Lindor, the slick-fielding shortstop prospect whose bat profiled a bit like Luis Alicea’s, has evolved into Francisco Lindor, the best shortstop in baseball. After all, Manny Machado‘s a third baseman, Carlos Correa has an injury record to overcome, Corey Seager’s a step behind, and Xander Bogaerts can’t match the glove. Alicea was a perfectly good player for a long time, but this Lindor is on a Hall of Fame trajectory, with ZiPS now projecting him to finish with around 80 wins, a .279/.339/.490 career line, 443 homers, and 2600 hits. He’s become the kind of player Cleveland will have a hard time doing without, which is why fans of the 2020 team should be worried about the trade rumors. Read the rest of this entry »

San Diego Padres right-hander Chris Paddack had a pretty good first major league season. He struck out 153 hitters in 140.2 innings and posted a 0.98 WHIP with a 3.33 ERA and a 3.95 FIP. Amazingly, he did it with basically two pitches: a four-seam fastball and a changeup. Paddack also has a curveball that he has often tinkered with, but its use never eclipsed 15% in any count. It mainly appeared as the first pitch of the at-bat or when he was ahead in the count. Despite being able to keep hitters under control with two options for most of last season, one of the multiple curveball variations Paddack resorted to works best, both statistically and as an ideal fit with his four-seam and changeup.

Here’s a visual summary of Paddack’s three pitches in an isolated overlay example, which accounts for the typical location of each pitch last season:

Paddack has a well-designed, pure backspinning four-seam fastball with a 12:50 spin direction and nearly 100% spin efficiency. In terms of whiffs, the pitch was best when Paddack kept it high in the zone. When it came to contact, the four-seamer didn’t really have an advantageous location, with the exception of keeping the pitch out of the middle of the strike zone. Paddack held hitters to a .276 wOBA and demonstrated good control of the pitch as evidenced by his 0.18 BB/K-rate. 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 Kansas City Royals.

Batters

The Kansas City Royals are in the middle of one of the weirdest rebuilds I can remember. Rather than go the full teardown route or spend money aggressively to maintain a competitive team, they found a Third Way. This Third Way, unfortunately, doesn’t consist of either spending money, winning, getting younger, or developing a good farm system. It’s different, I’ll give them that.

The Royals have several players of value in the starting lineup, though it’s mostly of the short-term variety. Whit Merrifield’s as solid a player as there is on the team, but moving him to center field to solve a positional crunch that just doesn’t exist — Nicky Lopez can just as easily play third, and Maikel Franco isn’t particularly interesting at this point — strikes me as too cute by half. The Royals using left field as the Official Alex Gordon Left Field Emeritus Position is less concerning; while it prevents the Royals from getting a full look at Brett Phillips or Bubba Starling, and Gordon is unlikely to be a contributor, I see little reason to hope Phillips or Starling will ever be either. Read the rest of this entry »

At the very start of Curtis Granderson’s career, he was expected to make a plane with fellow Tigers prospects Ryan Raburn and Roberto Novoa. According to the Detroit Free Press, only Raburn made the flight in time; Granderson and Novoa got hosed by security and had to truck it four hours to Detroit all the way from Erie, driving around the big lake they have there, and finally arriving at Comerica Park. Granderson would have driven across Lake Erie if he could have, but as it were, he started his big league career a day late, and yet still found a way to get there in time. The perfect start to a major league run of making adjustments.

Through a 16-year career, which Granderson announced was over last Friday, expectations are going to shift. Granderson was expected to never commit an error, because he didn’t for the first 151 games he played. In the late 2000s, he was expected to be among the league leader in triples. By the mid-2010s, with age chewing up his knees, those expectations faded.

With his uniform, his output, and the sport itself changing over a decade and a half, Granderson always found a way to make an impact, even when he was 33 and in the first year of his four-year deal with the Mets: He was only good for a 98 wRC+ in 245 PA, but did see more pitches per plate appearance than anyone else on the roster. Did it help? Maybe not directly, but he probably tired a pitcher or two out and forced him to make a mistake with the next guy. Why not?

…

Autumn in Milwaukee is a lot like autumn anywhere else in the universe. The leaves change color. The air grows cooler. The sky flashes a rainbow of ripened hues as the sun rises and sets. Occasionally, there is playoff baseball to speak of. And Granderson was able to get there without missing a flight.

By early fall of 2018, Granderson was part of a purge of veteran talent from the Blue Jays locker room as the team exploded its roster in an attempt to bring in new, young talent. He had three All-Star appearances, a couple of MVP nods, a Silver Slugger, and a career of offensive accolades behind him, but he arrived in Milwaukee for the last month of the regular season with a job to do. At this point in his career, that job was to take pitches, be available, and show these other guys how a playoff run is done. He may not have led the league in triples anymore (he hit a combined 36 from 2007-08 and a combined five from 2017-18), and he had committed 31 errors up to this point (though he wouldn’t commit anymore for the rest of his major league career), but Granderson still knew how to take a pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

In the first installment of the eighth annual Effectively Wild season preview series, Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller preview the 2020 Reds with The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans, and the 2020 Brewers (40:26) with The Athletic’s Derek VanRiper.

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Jake Rogers is regarded as a strong defender who has issues with the stick. Ten months ago, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel wrote that the Detroit Tigers prospect, has “a shot to approach the low offensive bar at the catcher position, [but] his glove alone makes him a high-probability big leaguer.” Not much has changed. Rogers proceeded to log a .779 OPS in Triple-A, then slash .125/.222/.259 after receiving his first-ever call-up in late July. Most alarmingly, he fanned 130 times in 431 plate appearances between three levels.

Rogers’s efforts to improve his offensive game were what I had in mind when I approached him in the Tigers clubhouse last August. And while we did we did address that, a few tangential topics turned out to be more captivating. We’ll get to those after touching on postural adjustments.

“A big thing has been that my hips are a little up, and I want to get them back to level,” Rogers told me. “That way I can get my swing more on plane and cover more pitches. Right now, when I get to toe-touch my head is back, which causes my hips to be at an upward angle. I need to get more balanced, with my hips and shoulders both level.”

The former Tulane Green Wave standout had also lowered his hands a few inches, and worked to keep to his head still. What goes on between the ears is likewise important. With that in mind, I asked the 24-year-old if he ever finds himself thinking like a catcher in the batter’s box. Read the rest of this entry »