Yesterday, a few days after the transaction freeze was lifted, we had our first mid-pandemic trade when the Padres acquired Jorge Mateo from Oakland for a Player to be Named Later. Let’s dig into this deal, which is more important mechanically than it is from a baseball standpoint.

The Padres sending a PTBNL to Oakland circumvents the stated 2020 restriction that only players who are part of the 60-man player pool may be traded. Even if the A’s and Padres already know who the player will be, announcing the deal with a PTBNL distinction enables Oakland to avoid using a player pool spot on the new prospect. It’s an indication that, whoever the player is or will be, they’re not currently in San Diego’s 60-man pool, otherwise they’d just have been announced as the trade piece. Since there will be no minor league season, we won’t have an awkward, Trea Turner or Drew Pomeranz situation where a team is rostering and developing a minor leaguer who they and the industry knows they’ll soon trade. Even if the PTBNL needs to be put on the 60 later this summer in order to complete the transaction, doing it at the last possible moment enables the teams to have that roster spot free for as long as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

With talks taking a contentious turn over the last week, as players asked owners to tell them “when and where” to play and Rob Manfred made public statements backing away from his earlier 100% guarantee of baseball in 2020, this season seemed very much in doubt. According to Jon Heyman, the players and owners have an agreement in principle that will give players pro-rated pay while providing expanded playoffs and a waiver of a potential player grievance for failing to live up to the March 26 agreement. Heyman was also the first to report that Rob Manfred and Tony Clark had an in-person meeting yesterday, as Manfred flew to Arizona in an attempt to restart talks.

As Heyman was reporting the deal, multiple reporters confirmed that MLB had made an offer, but indicated a deal had not yet been made. The MLBPA added this:

Reports of an agreement are false.

— MLBPA Communications (@MLBPA_News) June 17, 2020

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It’s not the year of a round-numbered anniversary, but as it’s a time without major league baseball, it will do. On Sunday at 9 pm ET, ESPN will air its premiere of Long Gone Summer, a 30 for 30 documentary on the 1998 home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa as they vied to break Roger Maris‘ single-season mark of 61 homers, which had stood since 1961. While subsequent allegations concerning performance-enhancing drugs have dulled the luster of the two sluggers’ astronomical totals — 70 for McGwire, 66 for Sosa — director AJ Schnack is far less interested in singling out the pair for scolding than in reliving the excitement of the race, and the camaraderie of the two rivals, which isn’t to say that the topic of PEDs goes unaddressed.

Indeed, Schnack, an award-winning filmmaker whose previous credits include documentaries about They Might be Giants and Kurt Cobain, has gone against the industry grain at least somewhat in making the movie. As he told Uproxx’s Mike Adams this week:

I grew up outside St. Louis, also went to Mizzou. I was a Cardinal fan. That summer really reconnected me with my childhood experience of enjoying sports and enjoying baseball, driving around with my dad, listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon on the radio. And when that summer happened, I’d moved to L.A. I was starting to work in film, and it just reconnected me with all of those feelings and the emotions and the excitement that I felt about baseball. So I felt like, yes, we now know that that summer took place in baseball’s steroid era. But, first, >especially for people younger than us, I want to just say this is what that felt like, to be in the middle of that summer.

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Over the past two months, with no Major League Baseball to watch due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve absorbed myself in the progress and eventual return to play of the Korea Baseball Organization. It’s a league to which I had previously paid little mind beyond the arrival of Hyun-Jin Ryu 류현진, the return of Eric Thames 테임즈, and the departures of several less familiar players, such as knuckleballing lefty Ryan Feierabend 피어밴드, but it’s one to which I suddenly felt more drawn via my connections to FanGraphs alumni Sung Min Kim 김민 and Josh Herzenberg. Both are now living in Busan and working for the Lotte Giants, the former in the R&D department, the latter as the team’s pitching coordinator and quality control coach. Recent discussions with them, with MyKBO proprietor Dan Kurtz, and with KBO alums Josh Lindblom 린드블럼 and Eric Hacker 해커 have taught me a great deal about the league and helped bring me up to speed in offering some analysis. Read the rest of this entry »

Building off the recent addition of KBO player pages, we’ve created a leaderboard that compiles player stat lines. The details of our current KBO data offerings can be found in the KBO player page introduction post.

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FanGraphs merchandise is still available for pre-order, but time is running out for this round! Pre-orders for all sizes of select merch conclude tonight at midnight PDT, with merchandise expected to ship in early June.

Items available for pre-order include:

• FanGraphs Hoodies
• Effectively Wild T-Shirts
• Men’s Gray FanGraphs T-Shirts

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We have a deal! By we, I mean that baseball-starved fans who live in the United States will be able to watch English-language broadcasts of regular season baseball thanks to an agreement between ESPN and the Korea Baseball Organization, whose Opening Day is Tuesday, May 5. Here’s the first-week schedule:

Yes, those hours are ungodly if you live on the East Coast, but if you have a TiVO or other DVR and can manage to avoid spoilers, it’s probably worth your trouble, assuming you’re already an ESPN subscriber. The deal covers the entire season, including the postseason and the best-of-seven Korea Series.The Worldwide Leader’s broadcasters will be coming at you remotely; they’re not in South Korea. It’s hardly a perfect set-up, but then what about this current situation in the pandemic is? Particularly with MLB’s opening a long ways off, I’ll take what I can get. Read the rest of this entry »

During the pandemic-induced outage, I haven’t had the chance to avail myself of many of the multitude of rebroadcasted classics, but on Monday night, when my wife and I were trying to figure out what to fit into the Better Call Saul-shaped hole in our TV viewing schedule, she discovered that we had TiVo’d the MLB Network re-airing of Clayton Kershaw’s major league debut on May 25, 2008. The Dodgers were at home that day, facing the Cardinals, and so on the microphone was none other than Vin Scully. I answered the question of whether we should watch it by breaking out the birthday package of imported jamón iberico. This one called for the top-shelf stuff.

Less than three minutes into the broadcast, while Kershaw was still facing leadoff hitter Skip Schumaker, Scully cut to a clip from a March 9 spring training game, likely the first time the legendary Dodger announcer saw the team’s 2006 first-round pick in action. “The pitch that we will forever remember,” began the 81-year-old announcer, witness of literally millions of pitches over the course of the first 58 years of his stint with Dodgers — including thousands from Hall of Famers like Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, and Juan Marichal — but at this point probably fewer than 100 from the 20-year-old southpaw, “was made by Clayton Kershaw against the Boston Red Sox. He retired the side in Vero Beach, but he threw a curveball that buckled the knees of Sean Casey….” Read the rest of this entry »

FanGraphs merchandise is still available for pre-order! Pre-orders for all sizes will be available from now until May 10, with merchandise expected to ship in early June.

Items available for pre-order include:

• FanGraphs Hoodies
• Effectively Wild T-Shirts
• Men’s Gray FanGraphs T-Shirts

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at our online store, supplies have been running low, and many have asked us when we’ll be restocking their favorites. But don’t fret: FanGraphs merchandise is now available for pre-order! Pre-orders for all sizes will be available from now until May 10, with merchandise expected to ship in early June.

Items available for pre-order include:

• FanGraphs Hoodies
• Effectively Wild T-Shirts
• Men’s Gray FanGraphs T-Shirts

Also available for pre-order, and back by popular demand, our “Do you go to FanGraphs at all?” T-shirts, as well as FanGraphs hats:

Our other merch is still available to order.

Many of our readers have also expressed an interest in FanGraphs mugs. Unfortunately, the site we’ve used in the past isn’t offering them anymore, but we’re on the hunt for a new supplier, and hope to have an update on when mugs will be back in stock soon.

Thanks to everyone who has bought merchandise in the last few weeks. Every FanGraphs Membership, donation, or t-shirt purchased goes directly to paying employees and contributors, and to covering the stats and server costs that keep the lights on. We appreciate your support and hope to see you and your snazzy new FanGraphs hoodie or hat at a ballpark soon!