Earlier this week, Miguel Castro’s hard changeup caught my eye. It’s a weird, good pitch, and it’s thrown by a pitcher who might otherwise fade into the background. What’s more, he’s still bad against lefties despite a spectacular pitch for attacking them. About the only thing that made sense to me in the whole scenario was that Castro uses his changeup to attack lefties, the way right-handed pitchers are supposed to.

We’ll get to whether that’s true in a moment. First, let me introduce you to a righty pitcher who looks at this conventional wisdom — changeups to lefties, sliders to righties — and says eh, pass. Maybe not introduce you, actually, because he’s a notable pitcher on a marquee team, but at least alert you to his weirdness. Meet Tommy Kahnle, the man who throws his changeup when he shouldn’t.

As a rule, pitchers hate changeups to same-handed batters. Of all the pitches that righties threw to righties in 2019, only 7.1% were changeups or splitters (a splitter behaves almost exactly like a changeup, and pitch classification algorithms sometimes struggle to differentiate between the two, so for the remainder of this article I’ll be lumping both pitches together). On the other hand, they love them against lefties — 17.5% of right-to-left pitches were changeups. It’s pitching 101.

Kahnle surely took pitching 101; he just doesn’t seem to care. His changeup is his best offering, and he absolutely leans on it against lefties. 59.6% of his pitches to lefty batters in 2019 were changeups. It can’t even properly be called a secondary pitch; it’s just a primary pitch! Nothing to see there — a changeup-heavy pitcher throws a lot of changeups to opposite-handed batters. Where it gets interesting is when he faces righties. What does he do there, in the matchup his pitch wasn’t designed for? Why, he throws a changeup 44.2% of the time, of course.

He’s not alone in this weirdness — Héctor Neris and Tyler Clippard, just to name two, do similar things. But Kahnle interests me, because he wasn’t always this way. In 2017, he was spectacular. A 2.59 ERA, a 1.84 FIP, a Gerrit-Cole-facing-minor-leaguers 37.5% strikeout rate and a minuscule 6.6% walk rate — he was nothing short of dominant. That year, he threw a changeup to righties 14.7% of the time. Huh? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley provide a brief update on the health of co-host Sam Miller (who’s on hiatus), then preview the 2020 New York Yankees with The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, and the 2020 Detroit Tigers (46:57) with the Detroit Free Press’s Anthony Fenech.

Audio intro: Bombadil, "Binoculars"
Audio interstitial: The Sadies, "Tiger Tiger"
Audio outro: The Isley Brothers, "Hope You Feel Better Love"

Link to Lindsey on the Yankees’ revamped pitching development
Link to Lindsey’s Q&A with Matt Blake
Link to Lindsey on Happ’s reinvention
Link to article on Yankees’ overhauled training staff
Link to Lindsey’s Q&A with Tanner Swanson
Link to Lindsey on Sánchez’s new catching stance
Link to Lindsey on Sabathia paying homage to the Negro Leagues
Link to Lindsey on Gardner’s evolution
Link to Dan’s 2020 breakdown candidates
Link to photo of Lindsey’s binoculars
Link to Fabian Ardaya’s binoculars photos
Link to Fabian’s photo-taking technique
Link to Anthony on Mize striking out Cabrera
Link to Anthony’s Boras story
Link to Anthony on the Tigers’ analytics investments
Link to more recent story on the Tigers’ analytics upgrades
Link to FanGraphs’ Tigers prospect rankings

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No sooner had the Yankees opened their summer camp — or spring training 2.0, or whatever we’re calling this tense and perhaps tenuous ramp-up to the long-delayed 2020 season — on Saturday than they got their first scare: the sight of pitcher Masahiro Tanaka being drilled in the head by a line drive hot off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton. The 31-year-old righty never lost consciousness but was taken to the hospital for testing and further evaluation, and while he was released, on Sunday he was diagnosed with a concussion. The terrifying sequence was a reminder that the coronavirus isn’t the only thing for players to fear during this abbreviated build-up to the regular season, but all things considered, both he and the Yankees look quite lucky right now.

At Yankee Stadium, in a simulated game that marked their first formal workout of the restart, Tanaka had faced Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres before Stanton stepped in. The slugger smoked a line-drive comebacker that struck the pitcher on the right side of the head and ricocheted high in the air (I’ll leave it to you to find the video). Keep in mind that since the advent of Statcast in 2015, only Judge and Nelson Cruz have higher average exit velocities than Stanton’s 93.4 mph — he is emphatically not the guy you want pounding a ball off your noggin. According to James Paxton, the ball came off the bat at a sizzling 112 mph. Tanaka fell to the ground, writhing in pain, and stayed down for about five minutes before sitting up and eventually being helped off the field with the assistance of two trainers. Read the rest of this entry »

In the Before Times, when the 2020 season was planned at 162 games — on February 12, to be exact — Major League Baseball officially announced a handful of rule changes that had been in the works for awhile, many of which concern teams’ active rosters. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, the season has been drastically shortened, and between a hasty reboot of spring training, a suspended minor league season, and voluminous health- and safety-related protocols, the league has been forced to put some of those changes on hold and adopt a very different set of roster rules than was initially planned.

What follows here is my attempt to sort through those rules and explain some of the new entries in the transaction lexicon. Additionally, I’ll use a couple of teams as examples in order to illustrate some of the roster considerations that may be in play. We’ll start with the easy stuff…

Active rosters

Instead of simply expanding from the tried-and-true 25-man active rosters — a limit that was introduced with the first Collective Bargaining Agreement in 1968 — to 26-man ones as planned, teams will begin the season on July 23 or 24 with rosters of up to 30 players, though they’re allowed to carry as few as 25 (a minimum that will remain in place all season). According to the 2020 Operations Manual, on the 15th day of the season (August 6 or 7) the upper limit drops to 28 players, and two weeks after that date, it drops again to 26. For any doubleheaders after that point, teams will be permitted to add a 27th player.

Additionally, the nit picky rules governing the makeup of those rosters, which were laid out in February (and panned here by yours truly), are on the shelf. Teams won’t be limited to carrying 13 pitchers, after all, and position players won’t be limited to pitching only in extra innings, or in games in which teams are ahead or behind by at least seven runs. In other words, all of this is as it was last year, and somebody damn well better sign catcher/blowout closer Russell Martin tout suite. Read the rest of this entry »

Many species of shark, most commonly lemon sharks, give birth in shallow, nutrient-rich mangroves teeming with small sea life that can easily sustain their offspring while also insulating them from the predators typically found in deeper, open waters. Most young sharks spend years feasting in these hazy, sandy green mangroves until they’ve grown, then head out to sea. Some leave the safety of the roots and reeds early and enter the blue black depths at greater risk of a grisly fate. Many of them won’t make it. The ones that do will likely become the strongest of all the adult sharks.

Now that teams have announced their 60-player pools for the upcoming season, we can see how they’ve balanced rostering players who can help them compete this season with prospects for whom they’d like to ensure playing time, while avoiding prospects whose service time clocks they don’t want to risk winding. Below, I have analysis of the prospects in the player pools for the AL East clubs. I’ll be covering every division in the coming days, with some divisions requiring their own piece and others combined where appropriate.

Two of our site tools go hand-in-hand with this piece. The first is The Board, which is where you’ll want to go for scouting reports on all of these players (click the little clipboard), as this piece focuses on pathways to playing time and potential roles and strategic deployment rather than on scouting. Perhaps the more relevant visual aid are Jason Martinez’s RosterResource pages, which outline the player pools that have been dictated by all 30 teams in a depth chart format, and also include columns that indicate where the prospects in the pools rank within each club’s farm system.

A couple roster mechanics to keep in mind as you read: Teams are allowed a 60-player pool. They don’t have to roster 60 guys from the start; not doing so allows them to scoop up released or DFA’d players without cutting someone. Within those 60 players still exists the usual 40-man roster rules from which teams will field an active roster of 30 players, a number that will shrink to the usual 26 as the season moves along. Big league clubs are allowed a three-man taxi squad that can travel with the team but isn’t part of the active roster; that squad must include a catcher (this is clearly to mitigate the risk of some injury/COVID/travel-related catastrophe). Players not invited to big league camp, or who aren’t on the active roster (40-man players and beyond) when the season begins, will train at an alternate location, typically a nearby minor league affiliate. Lastly, only players in the 60-man pool (including prospects) may be traded during the season. Read the rest of this entry »

To call Foley’s NY Pub and Restaurant a sports bar would be like summarizing Citizen Kane as a movie about a sled. Sure, the bar at 18 West 33rd Street in Manhattan stood out as a place where one could enjoy a beer while watching whatever games were in season — and on some nights, you might find three sports vying for attention on its numerous screens. But for nearly two decades, Foley’s has served as a pillar of the baseball community, a beacon not only for local denizens but for out-of-towners — players, umpires, scouts, celebrities, and writers. “Foley’s was a baseball writer’s Cheers,” wrote MLB.com’s Alyson Footer via Twitter.

Sadly, the occasion for Footer and hundreds of others to share their thoughts about the venerable watering hole on social media was a somber one. On Friday, owner Shaun Clancy posted a video announcing that the bar, which shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 16, will not reopen. “There’s just no way that I can see that we can do it,” he said in the two-minute video, “and I don’t really know what to say except thank you all… This is the end of the inning but not the end of the game.”

A message from @ShaunFromFoleys. Sad news regarding Foley’s. #WeHadBeer pic.twitter.com/i1uimhZQL2

— Foley's NY (@FoleysNY) May 29, 2020

Read the rest of this entry »

Though he played regularly for only 10 of the 19 seasons he spent in the majors, Bob Watson left his mark on the field as a two-time All-Star and an exceptional hitter whose numbers were suppressed by the pitcher-friendly Astrodome, not unlike former teammate Jimmy Wynn, who died on March 26. Off the field, Watson left an even bigger imprint. When he was hired to serve as the general manager of the Astros, he was just the second African American in the game’s history to fulfill that role. He lasted two seasons at that post before accepting that same title with the Yankees, though the job turned out to be much different in the orbit of owner George Steinbrenner and a dysfunctional front office. Nonetheless, when the Yankees won the World Series in 1996, Watson became the first African American GM to oversee a championship team. He later had a role in assembling the rosters of two Olympic medal-winning USA teams and spent nine years as a vice president for Major League Baseball.

Watson, who battled health issues on and off since being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1994, died on Thursday at the age of 74 following a long battle with kidney disease.

Though known as “Bull” for his sturdy physique (often cited as 6-foot-2 in the 205-217 pound range during his playing days but listed at a more modest six feet and 201 pounds via Baseball-Reference) and his strength, Watson was “a gentle giant… an incredibly kind person, and a mentor” according to Brian Cashman, who served as the Yankees’ assistant general manager under Watson and then succeeded him upon Watson’s resignation in February, 1998.

Born on April 10, 1946 in Los Angeles to parents who separated before his birth, Watson was raised by his grandparents, Henry and Olsie Stewart, in the city’s South Central neighborhood. He starred as a catcher at John C. Fremont High School, playing on a team that won the 1963 Los Angeles city championship alongside future major league outfielders Willie Crawford and Bobby Tolan. After graduating, he attended Los Angeles Harbor College, and signed with the Astros on January 31, 1965, just over four months ahead of the first amateur draft. He received a $3,200 signing bonus. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, conflicting reports regarding the state of Major League Baseball’s ongoing effort to contract and realign the minor leagues surfaced. While Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper and the Associated Press both reported that MLB is nearing an agreement with Minor League Baseball that would result in the loss of 42 affiliated teams, MiLB countered with a statement disputing the accuracy of the reports. Regardless of exactly where things stand in the negotiations, particularly with the COVID-19 pandemic endangering the entirety of the 2020 minor league season, some thinning of the herd appears likely.

While I’ve lived in New York City for 25 years and attended hundreds of Yankees games and dozens of Mets games in both recreational and professional capacities, I grew up on minor league baseball, primarily in Salt Lake City, where I lived from 1973-88 (and where my parents still reside), and Walla Walla, Washington, where my paternal grandparents lived and where I visited for several summers in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Thus I’m all too familiar with the pain that comes from a city losing its minor league affiliate — and two of the 42 teams reportedly on the chopping block hit close to home, both my current one and the one of my youth.

When I began attending games circa 1977-78, the Salt Lake Gulls were the Triple-A affiliate of the California Angels, and part of the storied, high-scoring Pacific Coast League. They featured future big leaguers like Willie Aikens, Rance Mulliniks, and Dickie Thon, all of whom Angels general manager Buzzie Bavasi made sure to trade away for aging veterans (not without some success), a pattern that continued through the remainder of the two teams’ relationship. While I had no affinity for the big club, I enjoyed following the careers of the aforementioned players and their successors, like Tom Brunansky and Brian Harper, as they fanned out across the majors.

My father would take my brother and me to a few Gulls games each year — often against the Albuquerque Dukes, the Dodgers’ Triple-A team and therefore of considerable interest in our household — and highlights from those games still stick out, particularly from 1979, the year they won the PCL championship. In one game we attended, Ike Hampton, a catcher-turned-designated hitter who clubbed 30 home runs for the Gulls that year, bookended a 17-inning epic with a pair of homers, though I was safely tucked in bed by the time the latter landed. In another game, Floyd Rayford, a third baseman whom Earl Weaver later used as a backup catcher, mashed a dramatic eighth-inning three-run homer that turned a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 lead, creating pandemonium; we could have turned cartwheels all the way home. Once my fascination with baseball statistics had begun, I’d pore over the Gulls’ daily box scores and update a hand-kept stat sheet, annexing my mother’s pocket calculator to figure out batting averages and ERAs. A few years later, I’d even apply rudimentary Bill James formulas to calculate runs created, though this involved some guesstimation when it came to counting walks via a standard four-numbered box score (AB R H BI). Read the rest of this entry »

Last month, in more normal times, we tested the Yankees to see how injury-resistant the 2020 roster actually was in light of the then-recent news that Luis Severino would miss 2020 with Tommy John surgery. While this year’s Yankees roster wasn’t quite as deep as 2019’s, it took a lot of key injuries to seriously affect the team’s 2020 chances. But even as they remained the favorites to win the East, losing James Paxton until at least May, Aaron Judge‘s broken rib, and Giancarlo Stanton’s sore calf muscle increased the team’s downside risk.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported late Monday night that MLB and the MLBPA were discussing the particulars of a plan that would see workouts resume in May with the season beginning soon after. Passan is as dependable as they come, and I have little doubt about the story, but the chances of the season starting that quickly strike me as fairly small. As Ben Clemens wrote for FanGraphs earlier today, the logistical lift involved with such a plan is enormous. From what I’ve heard doing the rounds — and I’ve yet to have a colleague form a drastically different impression — MLB’s more realistic targets involve June workouts and a start sometime in early-to-mid July.

Obviously, teams would rather be playing right now, regardless of their roster’s injury status. Reality is terrible! But with reality’s timeline in mind, instead of injuring all of the Yankees, what if we healed them? It’s not quite as preposterous as it sounds thanks to the delayed start to the season. Severino wouldn’t return no matter how late Opening Day ends up being, so my headline is a bit of a cruel lie. But a midseason start to the 2020 season leaves a very real chance that the Yankees kick things off with Paxton, Judge, and Stanton all on the active roster; Stanton was likely to return in April, but the outlook for Paxton and Judge was a bit foggier. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first installment of what we plan to make a daily series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

With thousands of players in major and minor league camps this spring amid what has grown into a pandemic with nearly 170,000 confirmed cases worldwide, it was only a matter of time before professional baseball had its first player test positive for the novel coronavirus. That came to pass this weekend; on Sunday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that a Yankees minor leaguer has done so. The player in question, who did not spend any time this spring at the team’s major league camp a mile away in Tampa, Florida, has not been publicly identified, in accordance with HIPAA Privacy Rules.

Thus far among professional athletes, three NBA players — the Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, and the Pistons’ Christian Wood, the last of whom played against Gobert last Saturday and was diagnosed over the weekend — have tested positive. Gobert’s positive test led the NBA to suspend its season and set off a domino effect that led to other leagues and organizations suspending play as well, as governmental authorities moved to limit the size of gatherings well below thresholds that would allow sporting events to take place.

Per The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, the minor leaguer in question was symptom-free as of Thursday, but woke up Friday feeling feverish and fatigued. After tests for influenza and strep throat came back negative, the player in question was quarantined. The team learned that his COVID-19 test was positive late Saturday night. Meanwhile, the minor league camp, which has been used by more than a hundred players on a daily basis this spring, was closed on Friday morning and underwent a “deep cleaning” on Sunday — not its first of the spring, according to general manager Brian Cashman. The major league facility will receive another such cleaning as well. Read the rest of this entry »