Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley lament the newly codified permanence of the zombie runner, rededicate themselves to “ghost runner” reeducation, and banter about a new position-player-pitching limitation, Andrew Chafin’s surprisingly modest contract, Derek Jeter joining Fox Sports, baseball’s leading newsbreakers vs. the leading newsbreakers in other sports, baseball officiating vs. football officiating, the schedule for Triple-A robo umps, and a 1937 proposal for baseball photo finishes. Then they continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Cleveland Guardians (35:09) with MLB.com’s Mandy Bell and the Texas Rangers (1:12:18) with The Athletic’s Levi Weaver, plus Past Blasts (1:55:08) from 1873 and 1968 and a few follow-ups.

Audio intro: Dawes, “Everything is Permanent”
Audio interstitial 1: 10cc, “I’m Mandy Fly Me”
Audio interstitial 2: Levi Weaver, “Dark Clay”
Audio outro: Dr. Dog, “Ebenezer Scrooge”

Link to rules announcements
Link to extra-innings pace study
Link to Ben on TLOU
Link to Eric Stephen thread
Link to Eno on pos. player pitchers
Link to WaPo on PPP
Link to Royals Review on PPP
Link to MLBTR on Chafin’s option
Link to MLBTR on Chafin’s signing
Link to Stathead on leading LHRP
Link to Leo Morgenstern on Chafin
Link to Jake Mailhot on LHRP
Link to Sheehan on NFL/MLB calls
Link to Super Bowl holding play
Link to MLB.com on Jeter
Link to Katie Baker on Fox pregames
Link to robo ump schedule
Link to Max Bishop SABR bio
Link to Craig Wright on Bishop
Link to 1937 photo finish source
Link to article on photo-finish camera
Link to film development source
Link to other film development source
Link to FG team projections
Link to payroll rankings
Link to Guardians offseason tracker
Link to Guardians depth chart
Link to Rangers offseason tracker
Link to Rangers depth chart
Link to Levi’s wins prediction
Link to Levi’s author archive
Link to FG’s SP projections
Link to FG’s LF projections
Link to 2022 LF WAR by team
Link to Bochy’s W-L record
Link to 1873 article source
Link to Rob Arthur on OF shifts
Link to Rob on OF depth
Link to 1968 article source
Link to second ’68 article source
Link to third ’68 article source
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to CBA AAV rule
Link to NHL contract rules
Link to old CPBL logo
Link to Brännboll wiki
Link to Brännboll video
Link to 1796 proto-baseball text
Link to baseball exceptionalism wiki
Link to A Christmas Carol ending

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Colt Keith started to tap into his power last year. After going deep just twice in 2021 — his first professional season — the 21-year-old third baseman homered nine times in 48 games with High-A West Michigan before landing on the injured list with a dislocated shoulder in early June. Returning to action in October, Keith proceeded to hit three bombs in 19 Arizona Fall League games.

The increased power production by one of the top position-player prospects in the Detroit Tigers organization was by design.

“I changed my approach a little bit,” Keith told me during his stint in the AFL. “I started trying to hit balls out in front, and backspin them to all fields, looking for a little bit more power. A lot of people had told me I just needed to keep doing what I was doing, but looking at guys in the big leagues that I want to play like, they’re hitting 25-30 homers a year. I felt like I needed to move in that direction. At the same time, I want to keep my hit tool. Batting .300 with some home runs is what I’d like to do.”

That is what he did this past season. The 6-foot-3, 238-pound infielder — Keith has added meaningful size and strength since entering pro ball — augmented his regular-season round-trippers with a .301/.370/.544 slash line. In 2021, he’d slashed .320/.437/.422 with Low-A Lakeland before scuffling over the final month as a 19-year-old in the Midwest League. Read the rest of this entry »

Carter Hawkins knows the Guardians organization well. Prior to becoming the General Manager of the Chicago Cubs in October 2021, the 38-year-old Vanderbilt University alum spent 14 seasons in Cleveland, serving as a scout, Director of Player Development, and Assistant General Manager. With the Guardians’ well-earned reputation of being a progressive organization with an outstanding pitching-development program, I asked Hawkins a question during November’s GM Meetings:

How similar are the two organizations, and in which ways do they differ?

“I would say the best thing in terms of similarities is that there are a lot of team-first people in both places, as opposed to me-first people,” replied Hawkins. “The obvious market-size difference stands out. There are more opportunities in Chicago to utilize resources — you can have a higher risk tolerance — whereas in Cleveland there is the challenge of having to be very process-oriented to make a decision. If you have a lot of resources, you don’t necessarily have that pressure on you. At the same time, there is no reason that you can’t be just as process-oriented in a larger market.”

The disparity in payrolls is notable. Roster Resource projects the Cubs’ 2023 payroll at $184M, and Cleveland’s at just $91M. Last year those numbers were $147M and $69M. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rangers are a bit of an odd team. Every offseason, someone does a thought experiment to build the best team solely out of free agents; in fact, some months ago I posed a similar question about the Orioles. But even my hypothetical 2023 O’s had three top-10 prospects to throw into the mix. What does a team look like if it’s starting entirely from scratch?

A little awkward, as the Rangers can attest. When they traded Joey Gallo to New York in 2021, the cupboard was basically empty. Since then, they’ve done an admirable job acquiring talent in trades and on the free-agent market, but they haven’t made much progress on the road back to playoff contention. A 94-loss campaign in 2022 got manager Chris Woodward and longtime baseball ops head Jon Daniels fired, and new manager Bruce Bochy surely would not have come out of retirement so he could compete for third place in the AL West.

The Rangers have plenty of star power, particularly after adding Jacob deGrom in free agency, but plenty of questions remain about their ability to fill out a competitive lineup. And Adolis García might be the player upon whom their success hinges. Read the rest of this entry »

Brock Burke broke out in 2022. Working out of the Texas Rangers bullpen, the 26-year-old southpaw logged a 1.97 ERA over 52 appearances, with 90 strikeouts and just 63 hits allowed in 82-and-a-third innings. Equally effective against lefties and righties, he held the former to a .192 BA and a .635 OPS, the latter to a .218 BA and a .629 OPS. Used most often in the sixth and seventh innings, Burke was credited with wins in seven of his 12 decisions.

Burke went into last season having made just six big league appearances, all in 2019 as a starter, with a balky shoulder the culprit. That he came back strong after returning to full health is an understatement. Along with the aforementioned numbers, Burke logged a stand-up-and-take-notice 27.4% strikeout rate.

First interviewed here at FanGraphs in 2017 when he was a 20-year-old Tampa Bay Rays prospect pitching in the Midwest League, Burke will head into the 2023 with a role that has yet to be determined. The Rangers are reportedly considering using him as a starter, while some have speculated that he could be the club’s closer. Regardless of how he is utilized, one thing is certain: When healthy, Burke has proven to be a very good pitcher. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday’s trade that saw Pablo López and a pair of prospects go from Miami to Minnesota in exchange for Luis Arraez made sense for both teams. The Twins, who my colleague Ben Clemens wrote got the better of the deal, received a quality pitcher who will slot into their starting rotation, plus the promising-but-raw minor-leaguers. The Marlins got a 25-year-old infielder who just won a batting title and is a .314/.374/.410 hitter over 1,569 big-league plate appearances.

Miami’s top prospect is a big reason why parting with a pitcher of López’s quality is perfectly defensible. While recently-signed Johnny Cueto will take Lopez’s rotation spot in the near term, it is Eury Pérez who promises to make an already-good rotation even better. Arguably the best right-handed pitching prospect in the game — Baltimore’s Grayson Rodriguez and Philadelphia’s Andrew Painter are also on the short-list — Pérez has a Sandy Alcántara-ish ceiling. The 6-foot-8 native of Santiago, Dominican Republic excelled in Double-A this past year as a teenager, and there is a real chance that he’ll reach the big leagues at age 20.

“This kid just has an incredible presence about him,” said Miami GM Kim Ng. “His fastball is 96-99 [mph] with ride, and he’s got a really good breaking ball. And again, the presence, as well as the poise, is unbelievable. He’s not talented beyond imagination, but it’s close.”

Asked who the youngster comps to, Ng initially demurred. As she pointed out, not many pitching prospects are Pérez’s size. When she did ultimately offer a name, it was a notable one. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 1008

In this episode, we get insight from a professional run-creator before turning the tables on our favorite interviewer.

• In the first half, David Laurila welcomes Donnie Ecker, bench coach and offensive coordinator for the Texas Rangers, to the program. Ecker, who David also interviewed last year, shares what it’s like to work with manager Bruce Bochy, associate manager Will Venable, and director of hitting Cody Atkinson as they help the team’s hitters be at their best. We also learn about how important it can be to adapt strategies from other sports and industries, and how studying pitching can help with understanding hitting. Finally, Ecker tells us about working with players like Marcus Semien, Josh Smith, Evan Carter, Josh Jung, Ezequiel Duran, and Nathaniel Lowe. [3:22]
• After that, Ben Clemens makes David the subject of the interview for FanGraphs Backstories. We hear about David’s pre-baseball life, from his time at the Detroit Institute of Arts to working in the ticket office at the Boston Ballet to moderating a Red Sox message board, and how interviewing baseball players led to a career change that took him to Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus before arriving at FanGraphs. David also talks about the art of the interview and some of his most notable conversations before sharing his favorite baseball memories, including his first major league game and the no-hitter he saw with his daughter. [39:40]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour 6 minute play time.)

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. 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.

As images of baseball players engaged in off-field celebrations go, it’s tough to top that of Mike Napoli following the Red Sox’s 2013 World Series victory parade. Over the course of several hours, the burly, bearded 31-year-old slugger went on an epic pub crawl that included stops to tend bar at McGreevy’s of Boston and Daisy Buchanan’s. As widely chronicled via social media, Napoli did shots with fans while soaking in the adulation, and along the way shed his shirt for what quickly became an iconic image.

Mike Napoli is walking around Boston drunk and shirtless #DayMade ? pic.twitter.com/fO7yirlego

— Frank ?? (@SenpaiKoala) November 2, 2013

By that point, Napoli had been through a lot. He’d spent the first half-decade of his major league career (2006-10) locked in an existential position battle that resonated throughout the baseball world. Under the harsh glare of Angels manager Mike Scioscia — a two-time All-Star and two-time champion who caught nearly 1,400 games in the majors before winning the 2002 World Series as manager — the heavy-hitting Napoli battled for the starting catcher job with light-hitting but more highly-touted Jeff Mathis, whose superiority behind the plate appealed to the defense-minded skipper and highlighted the reasons why Napoli couldn’t win the job outright. Even as his own injuries and those of teammates allowed Napoli to expand his positional repertoire, he faced public criticism from his manager. “I think he’s a catcher. He thinks he’s a catcher. He needs to go out and catch like a catcher,” Scioscia said in December 2010. “That is the frustrating part with Mike. We’ve seen it when he first came up.” Read the rest of this entry »

Just under a year ago, Jake Mailhot identified Texas first baseman Nathaniel Lowe as a player with breakout potential. In fact, he wrote a whole article called, “Nathaniel Lowe Has Breakout Potential.” Then the 2022 season happened, and — you guessed it — Nathaniel Lowe officially broke out. He hit 27 home runs and raised his wRC+ from 114 to 143. Good for Nathaniel Lowe! He’s a slugger. Good for Jake Mailhot! He’s a clairvoyant.

The thing is, Lowe didn’t exactly follow the script laid out for him. Jake noted that for the last month and a half of the 2021 season, Lowe added some “responsible aggression,” lowering his strikeout rate despite swinging more often. He did that by making a ton of contact in the zone. Jake broke Lowe’s 2021 plate discipline stats down in a table, using August 16 as the dividing line. I’ve gone ahead and added 2022 to that table:

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. 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.

For so many who have practiced it, the knuckleball has been a pitch of last resort, an offering turned to only when a pitcher is hanging onto his career literally by his fingertips, as Jim Bouton described his situation in the introduction to Ball Four. Some have thrived with the pitch, with Phil Niekro and Hoyt Wilhelm riding it all the way to Cooperstown, but until R.A. Dickey mastered his so-called “angry knuckleball,” no such pitcher ever won the Cy Young Award. Read the rest of this entry »