What type of hitter did the Cleveland Indians get when they acquired Jake Bauers as part of yesterday’s three-team trade with Seattle and Tampa Bay? From a biographical perspective, the answer is a 23-year-old left-handed-hitting first baseman who came into this year ranked fourth in the Tampa Bay system. He made his big-league debut in June and went on to post a .700 OPS, with 11 home runs, in 388 plate appearances. Bauers played his maiden season as a 22-year-old, not turning 23 until the month of October.

From a self-assessment perspective, Bauer is a hitter who knows who he is, and needs to stay true to those elements in order to be successful. The newest member of the Indians organization explained what those elements are when the Rays visited Fenway Park this past August.

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Bauers on his keep-it-natural swing: “My swing has just kind of been natural. Any time I went to a hitting coach growing up, the only thing they’d say is, ‘Don’t change anything.’ Beyond that, there have maybe been little tweaks here and there, but mostly it’s been about doing my work and staying right.

“I have to keep my swing and just let it happen. I have to trust that the natural path of my swing is going to take over — that by doing what comes natural, everything will take care of itself.

“When I’m trying to hit the ball in the air — trying to hit for launch angle — my swing tends to get long and loopy and I end up not getting the result I want. Everything will get out of sync. My hips will go early. My hands will drag behind and then try to catch up. I’ll end up pulling off to where I can’t reach the outside pitch and I’m getting jammed on the inside pitch.” Read the rest of this entry »

The major-league phase of Thursday’s Rule 5 Draft began with its annual roll call of clubs confirming the number of players currently on their 40-man rosters and ended with a total of 14 players being added to new big-league clubs. Dan Szymborski offered ZiPS projections here for the players taken earlier today. Below are brief scouting reports on the players selected, with some notes provided by Kiley McDaniel.

But, first: Our annual refresher on the Rule 5 Draft’s complex rules. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger are eligible for selection after five years of minor-league service if their parent club has not yet added them to the team’s 40-man roster. For players who signed at age 19 or older, the timeline is four years. Teams with the worst win/loss record from the previous season pick first, and those that select a player must not only (a) pay said player’s former club $100,000, but also (b) keep the player on their 25-man active roster throughout the entirety of the following season (with a couple of exceptions, mostly involving the disabled list). If a selected player doesn’t make his new team’s active roster, he is offered back to his former team for half of the initial fee. After the player’s first year on the roster, he can be optioned back to the minor leagues.

These rules typically limit the talent pool to middle-relief prospects or position players with one-dimensional skillsets, though sometimes it involves more talented prospects who aren’t remotely ready for the majors. This creates an environment where selections are made based more on fit and team need than just talent, but teams find solid big-league role players in the Rule 5 every year and occasionally scoop up an eventual star. Let’s dive into the scouting reports on this year’s group.

First Round

1. Baltimore Orioles
Richie Martin, SS (from A’s) – Martin was a 2015 first rounder out of the University of Florida, drafted as an athletic shortstop with some pop who was still raw as a baseball player. Martin had really struggled to hit in pro ball until 2018, when he repeated Double-A and slashed .300/.368/.439.

He has average raw power but hits the ball on the ground too often to get to any of it in games. Houston has been adept at altering their players’ swings, so perhaps the new Orioles regime can coax more in-game pop from Martin, who is a perfectly fine defensive shortstop. He should compete with incumbent Orioles Breyvic Valera and Jonathan Villar, as well as fellow Rule 5 acquisition Drew Jackson, for middle infield playing time. But unless there’s a significant swing change here, Martin really only projects as a middle infield utility man.

2. Kansas City Royals
Sam McWilliams, RHP (from Rays) – McWilliams was an overslot eighth rounder in 2014 and was traded from Philadelphia to Arizona for Jeremy Hellickson in the fall of 2015. He was then sent from Arizona to Tampa Bay as one of the players to be named later in the three-team trade that sent Steven Souza to Arizona. McWilliams is pretty raw for a 23-year-old. He spent two years in the Midwest League and posted a 5.02 ERA at Double-A when the Rays pushed him there after the trade.

He has a big fastball, sitting mostly 93-94 but topping out at 97. He’ll flash an occasional plus slider but it’s a rather inconsistent pitch. The industry thought McWilliams had a chance to grow into a backend rotation arm because his stuff is quite good, but he has a much better chance of sticking as a reliever right now.

3. Chicago White Sox (Traded to Rangers)
Jordan Romano, RHP (from Blue Jays) – Romano is a 25-year-old righty who spent 2018 at Double-A. He’s a strike-throwing righty with a fastball in the 91-93 range and he has an average slider and changeup, both of which reside in the 80-84 range. His command is advanced enough that both of his secondaries play up a little bit. He likely profiles as a fifth starter or rotation depth, but the Rangers current pitching situation is quite precarious and Romano may just end up sticking around to eat innings with the hope that he sticks as a backend starter or swingman when they’re competitive once again.

4. Miami Marlins
Riley Ferrell, RHP (from Astros)- Ferrell was a dominant college closer at TCU and was consistently 93-97 with a plus slider there. He continued to pitch well in pro ball until a shoulder aneurysm derailed his 2016 season. Ferrell needed surgery that transplanted a vein from his groin into his shoulder in order to repair it, and the industry worried at the time that the injury threatened his career. His stuff is back and Ferrell is at least a big league ready middle reliever with a chance to be a set-up man.

5. Detroit Tigers
Reed Garrett, RHP (from Rangers)
Garrett’s velo spiked when he moved to the bullpen in 2017 and he now sits in the mid-90s, touches 99 and has two good breaking balls, including a curveball that has a plus-plus spin rate. He also has an average changeup. He’s a fair bet to carve out a bullpen role on a rebuilding Tigers team.

6. San Diego Padres
No Pick (full 40-man)

7. Cincinnati Reds
Connor Joe, 3B (from Dodgers) – The Reds will be Joe’s fourth team in two years as he has been shuttled around from Pittsburgh (which drafted him) to Atlanta (for Sean Rodriguez) to the Dodgers (for cash) during that time. Now 26, Joe spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. He’s a swing changer who began lifting the ball more once he joined Los Angeles. Joe is limited on defense to first and third base, and he’s not very good at third. He has seen a little bit of time in the outfield corners and realistically projects as a four-corners bench bat who provides patience and newfound in-game pop.

8. Texas Rangers (Traded to Royals)
Chris Ellis, RHP (from Cardinals)- Ellis, 26, spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. One could argue he has simply been lost amid St. Louis’ surfeit of upper-level pitching but his stuff — a low-90s sinker up to 94 and an average slider — did not compel us to include him in our Cardinals farm system write up. The Royals took Brad Keller, who has a similar kind of repertoire but better pure stuff, and got more out of him than I anticipated, so perhaps that will happen with Ellis.

9. San Francisco Giants
Travis Bergen, LHP (from Blue Jays)- Bergen looked like a lefty specialist in college but the Blue Jays have normalized the way he strides toward home, and his delivery has become more platoon-neutral in pro ball. He has a fringy, low-90s fastball but has two good secondaries in his upper-70s curveball and tumbling mid-80s change. So long as he pitches heavily off of those two offerings, he could lock down a bullpen role.

10. Toronto Blue Jays
Elvis Luciano, RHP (from Royals)- Luciano turns 19 in February and was the youngest player selected in the Rule 5 by a pretty wide margin. He was acquired by Kansas City in the trade that sent Jon Jay to Arizona. Though he’ll touch 96, Luciano’s fastball sits in the 90-94 range and he has scattershot command of it, especially late in starts. His frame is less projectable than the typical teenager so there may not be much more velo coming as he ages, but he has arm strength and an above-average breaking ball, so there’s a chance he makes the Jays roster in a relief role. He has no. 4 starter upside if his below-average changeup and command progress. If he makes the opening day roster, he’ll be the first player born in the 2000s to play in the big leagues.

11. New York Mets
Kyle Dowdy, RHP (from Indians)
Dowdy’s nomadic college career took him from Hawaii to Orange Coast College and finally to Houston, where he redshirted for a year due to injury. He was drafted by Detroit and then included as a throw-in in the Leonys Martin trade to Cleveland. He’s a reliever with a four-pitch mix headlined by an above-average curveball that pairs pretty well with a fastball that lives in the top part of the strike zone but doesn’t really spin. He also has a mid-80s slider and changeup that are fringy and exist to give hitters a little different look. He could stick in the Mets bullpen.

12. Minnesota Twins
No Pick (full 40-man)

13. Philadelphia Phillies (Traded to Orioles)
Drew Jackson, SS (from Dodgers)- Jackson is a plus runner with a plus-plus arm and average defensive hands and actions at shortstop. He’s not a great hitter but the Dodgers were at least able to cleanse Jackson of the Stanford swing and incorporate more lift into his cut. He had a 55% ground ball rate with Seattle in 2016 but that mark was 40% with Los Angeles last year. He also started seeing reps in center field last season. He projects as a multi-positional utility man.

14. Los Angeles Angels
No Pick (team passed)

15. Arizona Diamondbacks
Nick Green, RHP (from Yankees)- Green has the highest present ranking on The Board as a 45 FV, and we think he’s a near-ready backend starter. Arizona lacks pitching depth, so Green has a pretty solid chance to make the club out of spring training. He induces a lot of ground balls (65% GB% in 2018) with a low-90s sinker and also has a plus curveball.

16. Washington Nationals
No Pick (team passed)

17. Pittsburgh Pirates
No Pick (team passed)

18. St. Louis Cardinals
No Pick (full 40-man)

19. Seattle Mariners
Brandon Brennan, RHP (from Rockies)- Brennan is a 27-year-old reliever with a mid-90s sinker that will touch 97. He has an average slider that relies heavily on it’s velocity more than movement to be effective. The real bat-misser here is the changeup, which has more than 10 mph of separation from Brennan’s fastball and dying fade.

20. Atlanta Braves
No Pick (team passed)

21. Tampa Bay Rays
No Pick (full 40-man)

22. Colorado Rockies
No Pick (team passed)

23. Cleveland Indians
No Pick (team passed)

24. Los Angeles Dodgers
No Pick (full 40-man)

25. Chicago Cubs
No Pick (team passed)

26. Milwaukee Brewers
No Pick (team passed)

27. Oakland Athletics
No Pick (team passed)

28. New York Yankees
No Pick (full 40-man)

29. Houston Astros
No Pick (team passed)

30. Boston Red Sox
No Pick (team passed)

Second Round

San Francisco Giants
Drew Ferguson, OF- Ferguson is a hitterish tweener outfielder with a good combination of bat-to-ball skills and plate discipline. He has a very short, compact stroke that enables him to punch lines drives to his pull side and he’s tough to beat with velocity. Ferguson doesn’t really run well enough to play center field and lacks the power for a corner, so his likely ceiling is that of a bench outfielder.

One of the jokes floating around the winter meetings this week in Las Vegas has been that activity has been low because Jerry Dipoto has been sick. As it turns out, the Mariners went so far as to take Dipoto to a local hospital for observation. That means the Mariners have understandably been operating at less than 100%. But that still didn’t preclude a meetings-closing three-way swap, which Dipoto at least partially engineered from his hospital bed. It is only ever so barely a three-way trade, as opposed to being two separate trades, but allow me to put this together for you.

Mariners

• GET:
  • Edwin Encarnacion
  • Indians draft pick (No. 77)
  • $5 million
• LOSE:
  • Carlos Santana
  • $6 million

Indians

• GET:
  • Carlos Santana
  • Jake Bauers
  • $6 million
• LOSE:
  • Edwin Encarnacion
  • Yandy Diaz
  • Cole Sulser
  • No. 77 draft pick

Rays

• GET:
  • Yandy Diaz
  • Cole Sulser
• LOSE:
  • Jake Bauers
  • $5 million

As noted, this is almost just two independent trades, both involving the Indians. The only thing that really links them together is the $5 million the Rays are paying, which is ending up with the Mariners. This is half a bad-contract swap, and half an interesting-young-player swap. But since it’s all pushed together as one, we can look at this on a team-by-team basis. Might as well start with the Mariners.

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Last year, the Rays began with an opening-day payroll of around $76 million, which was among the lowest in baseball. That’s hardly unusual for the organization, but then the Rays went and won 90 games, which was the tenth-highest total. They finished with the 11th-best Pythagorean record, and they finished with the fifth-best BaseRuns record. The A’s won more games, and they had the lower initial payroll, but the Rays were a massive overachiever. And this is just the half of it.

After the season, the Rays lost Carlos Gomez and Sergio Romo to free agency. They designated C.J. Cron for assignment, and they swapped Mallex Smith (and more) for Mike Zunino (and more). Waking up this morning, the Rays had everyone they needed to field a young and competitive ballclub, and according to Cot’s, they had a projected opening-day payroll of…around $36 million. That’s lower than the Expos’ opening-day payroll in 2004. A team not spending isn’t a good thing, by any means, but it’s incredible the Rays have gotten to this point, considering what other teams do with more money. You could’ve fit the Giants’ entire payroll between the Rays’ projected payroll and the competitive-balance-tax threshold.

The Rays haven’t been content to stay as they were. Rather, this put them in the unusual position of being able to make a splash or two in the market. They were reportedly in the mix for Paul Goldschmidt. They seemed like a fit for Josh Donaldson. They’ve been connected to Nelson Cruz. And on Wednesday, they’ve signed Charlie Morton. They’ve given Charlie Morton two years, and $30 million. The Rays don’t often get to do this, but they found themselves surprisingly flexible, as they try to mount a push for the playoffs.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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.

Despite being an outstanding hitter, Fred McGriff had a hard time standing out. Though he arrived in the major leagues in the same year as Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro and was the first player to lead each league in home runs since the dead-ball era, he couldn’t match the career accomplishments of either of those two men, finishing short of round-numbered milestones with “only” 493 home runs and 2,490 hits. The obvious explanation — that he didn’t have the pharmaceutical help that others did — may be true, but it was just one of many ways in which McGriff’s strong performance didn’t garner as much attention as it merited.

That isn’t to say that McGriff went totally unnoticed during his heyday, but some of the things for which he received attention were decidedly… square. Early in his major league career, McGriff acquired the nickname “the Crime Dog” in reference to McGruff, an animated talking bloodhound from a public service announcement who urged kids to “take a bite out of crime” by staying in school and away from drugs. He also appeared in the longest-running sports infomercial of all time, endorsing Tom Emanski’s Baseball Defensive Drills video, a staple of insomniac viewing amid SportsCenter segments on ESPN since 1991.

That those distinctions carry some amount of ironic cachet today is evidence that McGriff might have been just too gosh-darn wholesome a star for an increasingly cynical age. On the other hand, it’s far better to be remembered for pointing a finger in the service of a timeless baseball fundamentals video than providing sworn testimony in front of Congress. But it hasn’t translated to support from Hall of Fame voters. McGriff debuted at 21.5% on the 2010 ballot, peaked at 23.9% two years later, and is now in his final year of eligibility, with little hope of escaping the ballot’s lower reaches. Unfortunately for him, advanced statistics haven’t helped his cause, but with the elections of four living ex-players in the last two years by the Era Committees, he may well face a more sympathetic voting body in the near future.

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In 2017, Corey Dickerson was 28 years old, playing for the Rays. He spent a lot of his time at DH, but still, he was a solidly above-average hitter, and he finished as a 2+ win player. He had another two years of team control, and he was due for a raise in his second year of arbitration. During the offseason, though, the Rays designated Dickerson for assignment. Shortly thereafter, he was sent to the Pirates for a modest return. Part of the Rays’ thinking at the time was that they could easily replace Dickerson with C.J. Cron.

In 2018, Cron was 28 years old, playing for the Rays. He spent a lot of his time at DH, but still, he was a solidly above-average hitter, and he finished as a 2+ win player. He has another two years of team control, and he’s due for a raise in his second year of arbitration. On Tuesday, though, the Rays designated Cron for assignment. He might be traded or claimed any day. If the Rays receive anything, it will be a modest return.

It doesn’t look good when one of baseball’s cheapest franchises cuts ties with a player who’s due for a raise. It doesn’t look good when anyone cuts ties with a player coming off a legitimately productive full season. Cron’s projected salary for next year is only a little north of $5 million. By the numbers, he was worth more than that last season. Yet, as is usually the case, it’s not hard to figure out what’s happening, when you take a closer look. A variety of factors have come together to make Cron almost freely available.

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The Cleveland Indians have once again traded away a malleable, athletic member of their talented group of AZL players in exchange for a player who can help them in 2019.

Cleveland gets:

RHP Chih-Wei Hu

Tampa Bay gets:

INF Gionti Turner

Turner was a 27th rounder in the 2018 draft and has already been flipped for a big leaguer. He wasn’t a Division-I commit, and was instead headed from Watson Chapel High School in Pine Bluff, Arkansas to Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff, Missouri (different tree, still lyin’). But Cleveland signed him and he came to Arizona instead, where he managed to stand out amid many talented Cleveland teenagers. He hit .296/.348/.396 as a 17-year-old in the AZL while playing second base, shortstop, and center field.

Indeed, a multi-positional utility role is the most likely positive outcome for Turner. Lean and long-limbed, he struggles to swing the bat with any authority right now and may never have an offensive profile that fits in a lineup every day. Like many Cleveland high school draftees, Turner is extremely young for his graduating class; he didn’t turn 18 until mid-August. It’s possible that he’ll grow into relevant strength, but he’s already quite behind in that regard.

But Turner has plus speed, and a gritty, max-effort style of play, and he’s a plus-plus athlete. A lack of arm strength may limit him to the outfield and second base, but this is exactly the kind of athlete who can become an above-average defender all over the field.

25-year-old Taiwanese righty Chih-Wei Hu was a 2016 Futures Game participant and his stuff that day was as nasty as any pitcher at the event, as he sat 94-97 with a plus-plus, mid-80s changeup that seemed to disappear entirely as it approached the plate.

Hu’s five-pitch repertoire hasn’t truly been on display in his limited big league appearances, all of which have come out of the bullpen. His stuff has ticked down a bit; his fastball now sits in the 91-94 range and will touch 95, and his goofy, upper-80s palmball changeup has screwball action and is his best shot at missing big league bats. Hu also has an upper-80s slider/cutter and a low-80s knuckle curve, both of which he needs to locate in order to be effective because they’re very hittable if left in the strike zone.

Essentially, Hu has backend starter stuff but it’s possible a full-time move to the bullpen will enable his fastball to play up. If armed with a plus fastball and that weirdo changeup, Hu could be a high-leverage reliever. He still has an option year left and will likely open 2019 as a starter at Triple-A.

I submitted my American League Cy Young Award ballot at the very beginning of October. The results were just released yesterday, almost smack in the middle of November. A funny thing happens between the beginning of October and the middle of November: A lot of time passes, time that includes the entirety of the MLB playoffs. As I focused on other events, I mostly forgot about my selections. I was reminded yesterday that my own ballot read:

1. Justin Verlander
2. Blake Snell
3. Gerrit Cole
4. Blake Treinen
5. Corey Kluber

I was one of 13 voters to put Verlander in first. The other 17 voters, though, put Snell in first, and as such, Snell won, and Verlander was, once again, the runner-up. Clearly, it was a close race, and I think it should have been a close race. I don’t think that Verlander got robbed, and I don’t think that Snell is an undeserving winner or anything. But one of the perks of being an award voter is that voting grants you automatic editorial content. So on the off chance you care about my own thought process, allow me to quickly explain why Verlander was my first-place pick.

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The team that made openers baseball’s hot new thing made a run at the playoffs with a blazing final act, but fell short of the playoffs thanks to the daunting win total non-AL Central teams needed to stretch the season into October.

The Setup

The Tampa Bay Rays, newly shorn of the Devil in their name, were rightly one of baseball’s darlings from 2008 to 2013, winning 90 games in all but one season and making four playoff appearances, including one World Series. That’s no easy feat in a division with the Red Sox and Yankees, the baseball versions of Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly come to life. If Tampa has an avatar, it’s more akin to Chris Farley’s plaid-jacketed motivational speaker who lives in a van down by the river.

The initial run of the Rays eventually lost steam, the team dragged down by some difficult realities they had to face. One of the biggest problems for the Rays was that the common notion that building a consistent winner will lead to increased attendance (which would in turn lead to larger revenues that could keep the team together), didn’t actually work in their case. Whether it’s the fault of the park or not, by the time of their final 90-win season, the team was welcoming barely 100,000 fans more to the Trop than they were in 2007, a 66-win slog and the team’s tenth consecutive losing season.

For a team payroll that has never even come close to nine digits to compete in the AL East, the Rays absolutely have to have an assembly line of prospects, a continual cycle of replacement of talent. The team has always shown a knack for trading or letting players depart before their collapses rather than after, but that isn’t enough by itself.

What failed the team was largely the amateur drafts, starting around 2008, not providing enough quality to replace the departures. Entering 2018, only a single player drafted by the Rays over the previous decade had established himself as an impact player in the majors, Kevin Kiermaier. Let’s put in this way: The Rays made 14 first-round picks from 2008 to 2017 and the second most-accomplished player after Tim Beckham of that group is likely Ryne Stanek or Mikie Mahtook. (I’m talking players taken in the first round proper; the Rays got Blake Snell as a supplementary pick.)

The virtuous cycle of rebuild-invest-push-repeat failed to work for the organization for whatever reason and without a steady flow of prospects, the fact that the Rays have only had one season in which they fell below 70 wins is a testament to the front office’s scrounging abilities. Running the Rays is a bit like being asked to turn straw into gold and oh yeah, you don’t actually have the budget to buy straw.

Trading Evan Longoria, Brad Boxberger, Steven Souza, Corey Dickerson, and Jake Odorizzi before the season didn’t do wonders for the team’s reputation among fans, either. It could rightly be argued that most of these moves made sense from a baseball perspective — almost all of these players were at the height of their value, with the obvious exception of Longoria — but the problem with always making the cheap move is that your fanbase will come to believe that even the good, cheap move was done purely for reasons of thrift.

Not helping the Rays coming into 2018 season was the revelation that every pitcher the Rays had, ever had, or ever will acquire, required Tommy John surgery before the season started. OK, that’s what they call a “lie,” but it felt a bit like the truth when Brent Honeywell and Jose De Leon, both pitchers who the Rays hoped to count on, needed elbow surgery within just a couple weeks of each other.

The Projection

While the projections didn’t adopt quite the same panicked tone many writers displayed regarding the team over the winter, I can hardly claim ZiPS was predicting greatness with a 76-86 projection and a 6% chance at making the playoffs. The computer felt that pretty much every player Tampa Bay traded would have a worse season than with the Rays, but also predicted that with the loss of Honeywell and De Leon, the pitching was stretched too thin, and it was hard to see the Rays improvising enough of a lineup to make up for these losses.

The Results

THE TAMPA BAY RAYS BROKE WINS ABOVE REPLACEMENT!

Sometimes things just need capital letters. If you made a movie about the 2018 Rays, it would be impossible to craft a trailer that didn’t heavily mention the “openers,” possibly with some hoary An Experiment So Crazy That It Just May Work cliché booming over Ryan Yarbrough striking out batters to an 80s rock anthem.

For those curiously still unaware of this concept, beginning with Sergio Romo’s one-inning, three-strikeout “start” on May 19th, the Rays started using relievers to open games; they would quickly give way to a long “reliever,” who would pitch several innings. The general idea was that with a thin pitching staff — the Rays didn’t engage in any such shenanigans with the Blake Snell or Chris Archer starts — there was a benefit to being able to play matchups early in the game and get guaranteed innings from relievers, who are easier to find than a starter with an identical ERA.

As for breaking WAR, starters and relievers are pegged to different replacement levels, reflecting the better quality of free or cheap talent among relievers than starters. But what happens to WAR when relievers are being used as starters and vice-versa? A pitcher like Yarbrough ends up getting pegged relative to the higher replacement level of relievers even though he’s been given the workload of a starter. If these changes become pervasive, it will likely require a reimagining of how we categorize starters and relievers for these purposes.

In the end, the Rays had “relievers” who went five innings 31 times in 2018, the fourth-most going back to 1908 (the limit of Baseball-Reference’s Play Index). The entirety of baseball in 2016 and 2017 only had 37 such games combined. The last team with even ten five-inning relief stints was the 1991 Orioles and that wasn’t so much by design as due to the fact that the team’s rotation was a terrifying Lovecraftian amalgamation.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, however, and none of this would have persisted if the Rays didn’t get results. In the five-inning “relief” stints, the team (Yarbrough was the most notable, but the team also used Austin Pruitt, Yonny Chirinos, and Jalen Beeks prominently in this pseudo-starter role) combined to throw 170 2/3 innings with a 3.48 ERA, sort of like a weird J.A. Happ chimera to join the A-Rod centaur among baseball’s mythical menagerie.

After starting this opening strategy, the Rays went 69-50, a 94-win seasonal pace, and after receiving quick boosts from midseason trades for Tommy Pham and Ji-Man Choi, the team went 36-19 in their closing kick.

Unfortunately, this was the wrong year for that kind of thing. The AL and NL have reversed roles the last couple of years, with the NL becoming wide-open and the AL the league bifurcated into essentially two leagues, one with super-teams, the other with rebuilders.

What’s depressing from the point of view of the Rays is that the team still would have missed the playoffs by two and a half games if the standings reset on the morning of May 19th.

If the Rays had won 94 games instead of their actual 90, it would have been enough to take the AL East in 2017, 2016, and 2015, while earning a wild card appearance in 2014, 2013, and 2012. The last time 94 wins didn’t get October baseball for an AL team was 2010, when there was only one wild card spot; the Yankees went 95-67 that year. Whether 94 or 90 wins, it was only enough in 2018 to make the Rays the last team eliminated from the playoffs in the American League.

What Comes Next?

The Rays will remain misers for the foreseeable future if they don’t finagle their way into a new stadium. Even with the recent success, the team will have to continue to find values on a shoestring budget, something that is harder to do than it used to be with the general inflation of smartness in front offices over the last 15 years.

From a general baseball standpoint, it also remains to be seen how the opener strategy will affect pitcher salaries if more teams adopt this for their lesser pitchers. I don’t believe that in the end it’ll make a big difference; teams are far less likely to care about a starter’s win totals or a reliever’s saves than even ten years ago. But I’m naturally cynical, so I expect to still be watching this closely.

The really good news for the Rays is that they’ll return almost the entire core of the roster in 2019, with only Vidal Nuño, Carlos Gomez, and Sergio Romo hitting free agency. The 2017-2018 bloodletting has resulted in a roster that, even with everybody tendered, has only a single player making $5 million (Kiermaier) and a payroll that can stay short of $50 million.

I suspect we won’t see the Rays shedding much in the way of 2019 talent this winter; if they were close to doing that, I don’t see them adding Mike Zunino, now the team’s veteran in terms of service time. A Kevin Kiermaier trade strikes me as very unlikely, both because he’s coming off a down year full of injuries and because they just traded Mallex Smith. Nor would Austin Meadows be a candidate to make such a trade practical as he’s the probable right fielder.

The very early projections, based solely on what the Rays have on the roster right now, see a team in the mid-80s for wins, with diminished expectations on the De Leon/Honeywell returns. The Rays are a clever organization, however, and with the farm system recovering over the last few years from the doldrums of the early-mid ’10s to once again be in the top tier, I suspect this team can continue to punch above its weight class, even if in miserly fashion.

Preliminary ZiPS Projection, Blake Snell

I think that Snell is likely to be the AL Cy Young winner when the award is announced this afternoon, and with his performance being a key factor in the team’s revival, avoiding serious regression is crucial for Tampa. ZiPS saw an improvement for Snell in 2018, projecting a 3.70 ERA and 186 strikeouts in 175 1/3 innings, enough to just about the hit the three-WAR mark (with a four-to-five win peak), but it didn’t see the Cy Young breakout.

No 219 ERA+ repeats there, but those are legitimate ace numbers, and ZiPS is being surprisingly un-grumpy about downside risk outside of innings in future seasons. ZiPS sees enough talent in Snell to compensate for the inherent fragility of pitchers and the skewed risk you see in all great players (there are simply larger downsides than upsides). It’ll be interesting to see if the Rays can sign Snell to a similar contract to the recently departed Archer.

Does Shohei Ohtani’s success portend more two-way players in MLB? Opinions vary, albeit with the bears clearly outnumbering the bulls — at least in terms of expected production. While a certain amount of copy-catting seems inevitable, the presumptive American League rookie of the year paired a .925 OPS with a 3.31 ERA and a 10.95 strikeout rate. He was dominant on both sides of the ball in a way that’s unlikely to be replicated by anyone other than himself.

A pair of former two-way players I spoke to this season are among the skeptics. Which isn’t to say they hate the idea. Nor do they feel the Brendan McKays of the world don’t deserve every opportunity to show they can follow in Ohtani’s footsteps (hopefully without elbow surgery being part of the equation).

Steven Brault created a bit of a buzz by going his first 33 big-league plate appearances without striking out. On the heels of that eye-opening accomplishment, I asked the Pittsburgh Pirates left-hander for his opinion on why a player should, and shouldn’t, be able to play both ways at the highest level.

“The reason you should is that you’re good enough,” responded Brault, who’d excelled as a two-way player at Division II Regis University. “If you’re a good enough hitter, and a good enough pitcher, it stands to reason that your team would want you to do both. The reason you shouldn’t is that you can’t play every day. That’s been the case with Ohtani. On the days he pitched he didn’t hit, and on the day before he didn’t hit. Same for the day after. They had to make sure his body was ready to pitch. Read the rest of this entry »