FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: May 30, 2026
The most important thing to know about the initial proposals for baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement is that they were designed to be rejected. It’s the end of May, meaning we still have a little more than six months to go before the current CBA expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 1. That’s when the owners are expected to lock out the players and initiate the game’s second work stoppage of the 2020s, but if the last CBA negotiation is any indication of how this one will play out, it’ll take at least another month and a half from then for bargaining to begin in earnest.
The purpose of the initial proposals released this week, by the MLB Players Association on Wednesday and MLB on Thursday, was to set the starting line from where each will slowly, but inevitably, concede ground. We likely won’t see much movement for a while, but once the owners and players start inching toward one another, they’ll point to their proposals from this week as evidence of their efforts to make a deal. Theoretically, in a labor negotiation, you want to set your starting point far from where you want to end up, so that you can abandon some of what you were asking for and still end up with a favorable agreement. So just because, in the words of Ben Clemens, “opposing sides aren’t speaking the same language” right now doesn’t mean we’re any more or less likely to miss games next season. That said, it also doesn’t mean that there’s nothing for us to learn from the proposals. Rather, as Ben explains, “these early offers are revealing of what each side cares about most. The specific numbers quoted are unlikely to survive multiple rounds of bargaining, but the concepts and structures that each side favors at this stage could tell us a lot about what an eventual compromise looks like.” In his piece from Friday, which you can find here, Ben does a great job of laying out everything you need to know about the start of bargaining. You should definitely check that out.
That’s the last we’ll talk about baseball labor in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions on overlooked MVP candidates, how different baseball would be without Tommy John surgery, and which pitchers actually benefit from throwing first-pitch strikes. Before we do, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
I’m not asking for a gotcha or anything, but did Roy Halladay ever have UCL surgery? My brain and cursory internet research says no.
I think the table is for pitchers not in the Hall of Fame who never had Tommy John (plus Smoltz, to show whose careers he overlaps)–Halladay is in the Hall so he’s not on it.
The surprising thing to me is that Smoltz was the first pitcher to be elected to the Hall after having TJ, given how long it had been around. I guess it was rarer and, as Michael says, recovery was not as sure. Looking at the list of TJ surgeries, I think the next pitcher is Billy Wagner and… that’s it for current inductees? If DeGrom is elected then he will be the third future elected HoF pitcher to have had TJ, by date of surgery. Then Shohei (assuming Darvish doesn’t get in). Then Chris Sale, then Verlander. It really has been a sea change.
(Though my guess is that Chapman will get elected.)
Thanks for the great answer to my question Davy!
In defense of the Phillies radio announcers, they brought up Painter in this context because they felt his fastball is hittable if it’s not perfectly located. So they took the view that it was especially important for Painter (or, by extension, anyone with just an ok fastball) to avoid falling behind and having to throw a fastball to get back in the count. That seemed intuitive to me, though they and I both forgot that always throwing the first pitch for a strike can lead to a lot of loud contact.
FWIW (not much), Painter threw a lot of first pitch strikes in that game, and got good results.
It’s fun to learn that the pitchers who gets hurt the most from falling behind aren’t guys with pedestrian fastballs like Andrew Painter, they’re guys with unhittable stuff who try to strike everyone out and would rather walk in a run than allow a ball in play. It’s one of those things that makes sense once you think about it. If a guy with amazing stuff but sketchy command and an aversion to allowing contact gets ahead 0-1, the batter’s much more likely to have to go into swing mode, at which point the batter’s doomed. But conversely, if a guy with amazing stuff but sketchy command and an aversion to allowing contact falls behind 1-0, the batter’s much more likely to be able to sit on a fat pitch, and take a walk if that fat pitch never comes.
Great piece, and it illustrates how MVP voters have become more analytically minded over time, even if at an agonizingly slow pace.
A world where pitchers tear their UCL at the same rates as they do now, but Tommy John doesn’t exist is just completely infeasible because nobody in his right mind would ever want to become a pitcher. And even if the ratio of pitchers to position players stayed the same as it is for amateur players, plenty of guys blow out their UCLs before they ever get the chance to go pro.
In fact, I’d wager college baseball would be more affected than MLB because 90/100 pitchers drafted out of high school would sign even a tiny bonus instead of praying they could last three years in college (where managers, even at great programs, don’t protect their pitchers’ arms nearly as well as they should). The pitching in the SEC would probably be about as good as anywhere else, since nobody who could go pro out of high school would go to college.
Well they could change the rules to protect pitchers. Move the mound in; enormous strike zone. Make HR at least 400’ in all directions and anything in the seats short of that is a single.
So here’s where I blow your mind a little bit: we don’t really know if pitchers did blow up their UCLs at the same rate back in the day. It was “arm soreness” or “elbow strains” or the all-encompassing “dead arm”. We don’t have the bookkeeping to state the rates are any different. My suspicion is that as many or more arms were simply ground down before they ever became “known” by the (then much smaller) baseball industrial complex.
Think about it this way: without a common way to “fix” a blown-out elbow, baseball is fundamentally selecting for survivability. If you were not only good, but had the mechanics/workout regimen/physiology to make it through the meat grinder to the majors, you likely were already on the right tail of “ability to throw the ball repeatedly without your arm falling off”.
In a world where UCL repair is well-understood and other surgeries — shoulder surgeries, in particular — get better and better, you no longer have to select for survivability. Which very logically leads to the max effort era (both players and teams have incentives that align to move things that way).
The idea that everyone has to throw max effort or get shelled is relative. If there were 8 pitchers per team, arm surgeries weren’t invented, and free agency started after 6 years, each one would have throw more innings and conserve themselves. The league ERA might be 6.50 or something but it’s not infeasible.
Finally made it on my 3rd try. Thanks for the answer to my question Michael.
I’m a bit too young for Mike Marshall, but I do seem to recall a piece on him teaching his awkward pitching style to prevent injuries around 20 years ago. I also remember some of the barbaric stories of the 70s Oakland Raiders. Lyle Alzado was a maniac.