UMP: The Untitled McDongenhagen Project, Episode 12

This is the 12th episode of a mostly weekly program co-hosted by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel about player evaluation in all its forms. The show, which is available through the normal FanGraphs Audio feed, has a working name but barely. The show is not all prospect stuff, but there is plenty of that, as the hosts are Prospect Men.

This week we have a one topic show featuring special guest Meg Rowley of this very website. In honor of March Madness, we held a draft of active baseball players on major league 40-man rosters for a round robin basketball tournament. Listen to the episode to hear our logic and then use this poll to vote on who has the best squad. Warning: the poll contains a recap of our rosters, so don’t click on the link before listening if you don’t want those spoiled!

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @kileymcd or @longenhagen on Twitter or at prospects@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 32 min play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their Opening Day experiences, the pleasure of immersing themselves in baseball again, baseball players being better than ever, and MLB’s arbitration championship belt, then (22:25) talk to Joey Mellows, AKA “The Baseball Brit,” about how he became a baseball convert, his worldwide baseball travels and his quest to see 162 games this season, the logistics of his journey, the fan experience in the U.S. compared to South Korea and Japan, watching indy ball vs. watching MLB, baseball’s popularity in the UK, the upcoming MLB games in London, his best and worst ballpark experiences, how he explains baseball to non-fans, how he’s learned about baseball history, and much more.

Audio intro: The Mountain Goats, "First Few Desperate Hours"
Audio interstitial: The Pretty Things, "Joey"
Audio outro: Frank Sinatra, "Day By Day"

Link to Ben’s story about MLB’s improving caliber of play
Link to story about the championship belt
Link to THT piece about Joey Mellows
Link to story about Caps Off
Link to Bat Flips and Nerds
Link to Joey’s map of all the U.S. ballparks
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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Phillies third baseman Maikel Franco has been with the Phillies since signing as an international free agent in 2010, and since he made his major league debut in 2014, the Phillies haven’t had a winning season. Before this season, he had only 59 career plate appearances batting eighth in the order. During the Phillies’ rebuild, Franco was a middle-of-the-order bat, despite never truly evolving into one. Of his career 2,115 plate appearances, over half of them (1,068) came in either the No. 3 or No. 4 hole.

On Thursday, Franco batted eighth, not because of any personal struggles on his part, but because of the Phillies’ depth up and down their lineup. In the sixth inning, in a 3-2 count (and on the seventh pitch of the at-bat), Franco turned on a Shane Carle fastball and drove a three-run home run into the left field seats. With one swing of the bat, the Phillies’ 3-1 lead became 6-1, with this at-bat serving as the icing on the cake in the Phillies’ eventual 10-4 win.

“Our eight-hole guy hit a three-run homer,” Phillies outfielder Andrew McCutchen told MLB.com. “It just shows you how deep the lineup is. Franco, he’s not an eight-hole hitter. Not the typical one. It just shows you what we can do, one through eight. Yeah, we can do it on a daily basis. It’s not going to be one or two guys that’s picking the team up, we’re going to picking each other up because we have that type of lineup to do it.”

Why did this one at-bat in this one Opening Day game pique my interest? It’s because this at-bat might foreshadow one of the key themes of the 2019 Phillies season: depth. Read the rest of this entry »

Yasiel Puig may or may not have been swinging a Birdman in yesterday’s opener. The Cincinnati Reds slugger — according to Birdman Bat founder Gary Malec — is “one of those guys who’ll you see go back and forth” with bat models over the course of a season. Last year, several of the minus-twos and minus-threes Puig wielded were supplied by Malec’s Bay-Area company.

If you’re not a player yourself, “minus-two” and “minus-three” are likely unfamiliar terms. How bats are manufactured, regulated by MLB, and typically purchased are probably also foreign to you. Frankly, there’s a decent chance you haven’t even put any thought into those things. You simply know that players swing bats, and sometimes those bats propel baseballs far distances.

Two members of the Birdman crew — Lars Anderson and Cody Silveria — were pleased to inform me that Puig’s longest 2018 home run came off the barrel of one of their bats. Ditto the ball Puig hit with the highest exit velocity, and San Francisco Giants outfielder Chris Shaw’s first big-league homer. More importantly — at least in terms of the purpose of this article — they explained how the bat business works.

With continuity and flow in mind, Anderson’s and Silveria’s voices aren’t differentiated within the text of this interview. The conversation itself took place during the Winter Meetings.

———

Anderson and Silveria: “There are currently 35 licensed bat companies — Birdman was licensed in January 2018 — and to get certified you have to go through a process. You pay a fee. You do a blanket insurance policy. You send two test bats to the TECO test lab in Wisconsin. Then you’re sent to a test course — this is one 12-hour day — where they show you how to do the slope-of-grain test, which is the ink dots you see on all major league bats. This is to make sure the safety of the wood is good. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this spring training, everyone cringed a bit when it was reported that Brandon Nimmo became sick after eating under-cooked chicken (his own recipe, naturally). I think most people had the same thought about it: what the heck? It turns out that his illness was a result of a virus instead of food poisoning, so now Nimmo is free to eat as many under-cooked chickens as he wants, but the (subjective) fact remains that it is quite gross.

Anyway, this isn’t about Nimmo’s illness or his ill-advised recipe. This is about baseball. Nimmo had one of the biggest breakouts of 2018. Because the Mets were not great last year, I don’t think a lot of people appreciated how well he performed. Nimmo put up a 4.5 WAR, which was 29th-highest among all positional players, coming in his age-25 season. Among all 25-year-old position-player seasons from 2010 to 2018, Nimmo’s campaign ranks 24th. There are some nice names on the list as well — Christian Yelich, Trea Turner, and Nolan Arenado, for instance.

FanGraphs’ own Eric Longenhagen told me that there’s an untapped potential in Nimmo that could be uncovered as he plays more. “There’s always a chance that he grows and changes into a different player as he ages, and that might be especially true here because his amateur background is so bizarre compared to most pro baseball players.” Nimmo is from Wyoming and did not get to play regular high school baseball. He had to drive anywhere between 45 minutes to 10 hours to play American Legion ball to get exposure. Nimmo has a cool story that could get cooler as he gets more playing time in the majors. This invites the question that applies to every young player: who can Nimmo be? Is there a particular role model?

ZiPS expects him to hit .240/.359/.402 (116 wRC+) with a 2.3 WAR, with his No. 1 comparison being Andy Van Slyke. That feels conservative, but that’s the nature of projection systems — Nimmo doesn’t have a long history of being an excellent major league player, and he did put up 89 and 118 wRC+ marks in the previous two seasons.

I became curious and decided to search for someone whose numbers resembled Nimmo’s walk and power tendencies from the 2018 season. Why those two? For one, Nimmo boasted a high walk rate of 15%, which engineered a .404 OBP. The only players who were ahead of him in on-base percentage last year were Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, and Joey Votto. Nimmo was ahead of known superstars such as Bryce Harper, Alex Bregman, and Yelich, which is significant, especially for a youngster playing in his first full major league season. Nimmo also put up a .219 isolated power mark, which is above average and contributed to his 4.5 WAR. It’s not a top-notch number yet, but because of Nimmo’s youth, one might expect it to rise in coming years. I looked up seasons from 2000 to 2018 to find players whose walk and power numbers profiled similarly to Nimmo’s, and one name in particular stood out.

First off, let’s compare Nimmo and the mystery player’s ages 23 to 25 seasons:

The walk and power numbers aren’t the only similarities. Their batted ball profiles also share a resemblance. We actually don’t have the mystery player’s ages 23-to-25 data for that, so we’ll use his career numbers from 2002 to 2014.

Lastly, here’s an excerpt of one of the mystery player’s scouting reports from 1995:

Physical description: Athletic actions, frame has chance to carry more strength.

Strong points: Outstanding approach to hitting, sweet short compact stroke w/outstanding balance, knowledge of K-zone, good 2-strike hitter, spray ball to all fields. Gap to gap guy, run well especially 1st to 3rd, arm avg to above w/ good carry and rot (rotation?), 4.16 speed to 1B, can play LF-RF fairly well occasionally gets good jumps.

Summation: Young good looking hitter. Mark Grace type and when strength comes he should be able to linedrive some HRs. Defense skills are a little short and experience will help improvement. 3 tool guy now with a high ceiling.

And here’s an excerpt of Brandon Nimmo’s scouting report from Baseball America (subscription required) after the 2015 season:

 On-base ability always has been the bedrock of Nimmo’s game, for he excels at working counts and lining the ball to left field if pitchers work him away. He shows pull-side power in batting practice but prefers to work the entire field in games with a handsy, lefthanded swing geared more for line drives than home runs. Nimmo tracks the ball well in center field and grades as at least an average defender with ordinary running speed. He’s graceful and reliable in the outfield, though his average arm would be stretched in right field, if he has to move. Nimmo hasn’t attempted many stolen bases as a pro, and that probably won’t change.

The scouts’ eyes saw similarities as well. They both point out line-drive power that could develop into more home runs in the future (which it did for the mystery player). The scout from 1995 noted the mystery player’s “outstanding approach to hitting” and “good knowledge of K-zone” while the BA praised Nimmo for his plate discipline.

If you haven’t identified the mystery player yet, the answer is Bobby Abreu. The thing is, there are also quite a lot of differences between these two. As you saw from the first table, Nimmo struck out way more than Abreu did. In 2018, Nimmo’s strikeout rate was 26.2%, which is much higher than Abreu’s career average (18.3%), and his career high in a full season (22.6%). Nimmo could improve there, of course. Young hitters tend to lower their strikeout rate until their peak age. According to research from Jeff Zimmerman, Nimmo is at the age where his strikeout rate might be as low as it will get, but we can give him the benefit of the doubt due to his weird amateur background and relative newness to the majors. When I looked up Nimmo’s walk rate and strikeout rate compared to hitters’ seasons from 2000 to 2018, he profiled closer to Adam Dunn and Jim Thome — two sluggers that had way more power than Nimmo is projected to have. Due to Nimmo’s scouting profile, particularly his walk and power tendencies, I felt Abreu would be a better fit.

It is worth noting that hitters strike out much more now than they did during Abreu’s time. One can assume that Abreu would have struck out more if he were to play today than in the early 2000s. As for Nimmo, there have been instances where players drastically improve their strikeout rate, but it’s not really something to count on. You can expect improvements, but as far as the pure numbers go, Nimmo is likely to stay a bigger strikeout hitter than Abreu was.

I mentioned the batted ball profile before. There’s also a stark difference between those two on that score.

Something that jumps out here is the infield fly ball rate. Also, Nimmo seems to have a more pull-happy approach, which became more apparent in 2018, when he pulled 44.7% of his batted balls. Travis Sawchik examined this back in June, noting that his new pull approach may have helped his overall power numbers. Perhaps it’s not something Nimmo would like to give up for now — it did help his power breakout last year, after all.

Writing this, I was originally thinking along the lines of “how Nimmo can become Abreu,” because becoming a two-time All-Star who enjoyed a fruitful 18-year career is a heck of a thing. But after realizing that a major difference between those two — Nimmo’s pull tendency — actually helped the youngster’s ascendance to being an exciting major league regular, I’m not so sure anymore. Would he change his swing for a different approach? Longenhagen doubts it.

“I think that kind of thing is harder to change. I’d expect him to be pull-heavy for the duration of his career,” he said.

There are numbers that indicate that he could be the newer-age Abreu while not completely being an Abreu. I’m not guaranteeing that Nimmo will end up a player who will get Hall of Fame consideration, but there are stats that indicate similarities with a player who will certainly be on next year’s HOF ballot. Some things are nice to dream on.

After Manny Machado and Bryce Harper signed their gargantuan free agent deals, dominos began to fall left and right across baseball — if you’re of sound body and mind, you probably recently signed a multi-year extension with a major league franchise. When a star signs a new contract of any type, articles analyzing the contract’s value are never far behind, and this recent extension spree has been no exception. I wanted to get in on the action, but the analysis has already been done for the most part. Search for a player who recently signed a contract, and you’ll find FanGraphs analysis of it, likely with some dollars-per-WAR analysis. Chris Sale? Jay Jaffe’s got you. Kiley McDaniel covered Eloy Jimenez’s extension. Justin Verlander? Jaffe again. You get the idea. Craig Edwards even wrote about Harper vs. Machado in an exhaustive level of depth, down to figuring out state taxes.

What’s an author to do? Well, there’s one angle that hasn’t been covered for a while, believe it or not. More accurately, it’s been covered by a combination of shrugs and mathematical hand waves: the value of the opt-out in Machado’s (and Nolan Arenado’s) contract. The reason these haven’t been sufficiently covered is simple — they’re difficult to value. If we want to figure out how many wins a player projects for, a methodology exists for that exercise. Sprinkle in a little of the aging curve and the dollar value of the contract, and there’s one level of analysis. If you want to put everything in present-day dollars, it’s just more arithmetic, but the basic shape remains similar. Introducing opt-outs, however, is a step in a wholly different direction.
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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Detroit Tigers. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. That can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note

Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Bench Outfield Types
Kingston Liniak, CF
Dustin Peterson, LF
Brock Deatherage, CF
Jacob Robson, CF
Danny Woodrow, CF
Troy Montgomery, CF

Most of these guys can run. Liniak is the youngest and has the best chance to grow into some power. Peterson could impact the big league club this year and might hit enough to be a right-handed bench piece for a while. Deatherage was a college draftee who put up huge numbers in rookie ball, but struck out 25% of the time as a 22-year-old and is due for a huge BABIP regression, so we’re skeptical of his hot pro start. Plate discipline (Robson), speed (Woodrow), and sneaky pop (Montgomery) could propel any of the others into a bench outfield role.

Recent July Twos
Alvaro Gonzalez, SS
Jose De La Cruz, RF

Gonzalez signed in 2017 and is a natural shortstop who likely needs to grow into some offensive ability to profile. De La Cruz is a corner outfield projection bat who makes up for limited athleticism with advanced feel to hit.

Starters
Wilkel Hernandez, RHP
Logan Shore, RHP
Tyler Alexander, LHP
Adam Wolf, LHP

Wilkel came over from the Angels in the Ian Kinsler deal. He’s a somewhat projectable 20-year old with a chance for fifth starter stuff. His curveball has good shape but needs more power. Shore is a changeup artist with a 4 fastball. Alexander throws strikes and eats innings and is a good bet to at least be a sixth starter type of depth arm. A similar role likely awaits Wolf, whose best pitch is a cutter.

Relievers
Jason Foley, RHP
Nolan Blackwood, RHP
Eduardo Jimenez, RHP
Zac Houston, RHP
Sandy Baez, RHP
Gerson Moreno, RHP
Wladimir Pinto, RHP
Tarik Skubal, LHP

Foley is coming back from TJ, and would flash upper-90s heat and a good changeup before his injury. He’s still just 23. Blackwood is a sinkerballing submariner. Jimenez, Houston, and Baez are all possible 55 fastball, 55 slider middle relief fits. Moreno, too, but he’s coming off TJ. Pinto throws really hard — in the mid-90s — but that’s about it right now. Skubal was hurt for his junior year at Seattle University and looked good in bullpens before the draft but nobody would meet his ask. He went back to school and was very wild, then dominated in pro ball after signing by throwing about 80% fastballs. He’s a ground-up rebuild who had third round stuff at his best in college.

System Overview

The Tigers have shifted in recent years from a win-now, trade prospects and spend money approach, to an asset collection, hold prospects, and save money approach. The shift from trading many of their top homegrown talents to keeping them could change the fortunes of the farm eventually, but it hasn’t quite done that yet. Casey Mize will likely get to the big leagues soon, so he’s likely be on this list one more time at most. Matt Manning hasn’t had his breakthrough yet, most industry opinions have Daz Cameron as a low-end regular, and there are still plenty of questions about the ultimate upside of Isaac Paredes and the health of Franklin Perez. For the top of the system of a rebuilding club, that isn’t a particularly strong top of the list. The depth is fine, but depth doesn’t really matter when the first priority is creating the core of your future playoff team.

The fifth and 47th picks in this year’s draft will be nice assets to add, but the big league club isn’t overflowing with core talent, either. Michael Fulmer looked like he could be one, but he’s down for the year with elbow surgery. Nick Castellanos is likely to be traded if and when he performs well. There are some solid complementary pieces in Jeimer Candelario, Matt Boyd, Joe Jimenez and Shane Greene, but the focus here needs to be both adding to the talent base and developing the existing talent better. Clubs like the Dodgers, Brewers, and Yankees seem to be creating contributors out of thin air and those are increasingly the table stakes in player development, with many other teams spending resources to join those leaders. The Tigers appear to be more on the traditional end of things in most departments — not wrong, just more traditional — and the rebuild will need player procurement and development to both take a step forward.

The 2019 baseball season is already officially underway, though what transpired at the Tokyo Dome last week between the A’s and Mariners barely registered to these bleary eyes beyond Ichiro Suzuki’s stirring farewell, what with the time difference. As the stateside version of Opening Day has approached, I’ve been asked, again and again while doing radio spots, variants of the question, “What are you most looking forward to about this season?” Some of my answers have already vanished into the ether, but I figured it would be worthwhile to take a break from squinting at depth charts and contract extensions long enough to jot down a set for posterity.

Bryce Harper and Manny Machado changing the conversation

As this pair of generational talents explored free agency in pursuit of record-setting paydays, we heard endless speculation about each player’s destination, endless excuses about why certain teams were not interested, and far more about the pair’s flaws than their virtues. The critiques came from all directions. Some of them were diatribes of the get-off-my-lawn variety, or declarations about how they wouldn’t fit with this team or that because reasons. Some of them were the usual, often misinformed, talk radio-fueled blather about how higher salaries will drive up ticket prices (nope), how these two can’t possibly be worth $300 million, and how their occasional failures to hustle portend the downfall of America. That said, some of the critiques were legitimate, pointing out Harper’s difficulties with the shift, his struggles to stay healthy, and his curiously bad defensive metrics, or Machado’s suspect work in his return to shortstop and his longstanding penchant for finding mischief on the field in the form of questionable plays.

Enough already. As Reggie Jackson once said, “When you have the bat in your hand, you can always change the story.” At long last, Harper and Machado can take the field for their new teams, and let their bats, and the rest of their play, do the talking.

Mike Trout climbing the JAWS rankings

Like any baseball fan with a pulse, I always want to see what Trout does, as he’s a perennial MVP candidate who’s capable of towering homers, dazzling speed on the bases, and spectacular catches in the outfield. And while I don’t intend to bury my nose in a spreadsheet every time he comes to bat, with an eye towards history, I’m especially enjoying Trout’s progress when it comes to my JAWS metric.

Trout began last season ranked 10th among center fielders, with his career WAR, seven-year peak WAR, and JAWS all at 55.2 (using Baseball-Reference’s numbers). Despite some minor adjustments to his body of work that erased about one win across the board, by May 22 of his seventh full major league season, he surpassed the JAWS standard at the position, the average of each Hall of Fame center fielder’s career and peak bWARs. By season’s end, Trout leapfrogged Kenny Lofton, Carlos Beltran, and Duke Snider to climb to seventh in JAWS (64.0) and fourth in peak (63.8). He should be able to climb two spots in JAWS this year. Joe DiMaggio (78.1/51.0/64.5) is just half a point ahead of Trout; around the time he gets to 1.0 WAR, he’ll move into sixth. With an 8.2 bWAR season — which would be his sixth-best — he would tie fifth-ranked Ken Griffey in JAWS (68.9) and overtake Mickey Mantle (64.8) for third in peak, behind only Willie Mays (73.7) and Ty Cobb (69.2). All this can be done before Trout completes his ninth major league season, one short of officially qualifying for the Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, I can’t believe it’s taken me nearly a decade to figure this out, but Trout will be fully qualified for the Hall, reaching 10 seasons in the majors, in 2020, which will mark my 10th year as a BBWAA member and thus my eligibility to vote in that winter’s Hall of Fame election (the 2021 ballot).

A potential four-team race in the NL East

With four teams forecast for at least 84 wins, this division is the deepest as far as contenders go, and it offers so many story lines as well as the potential for plenty of #TeamEntropy fun. The Phillies added Harper, Andrew McCutchen, J.T. Realmuto, David Robertson, and Jean Segura to a team that spent five months of the 2018 season contending and one month stinking on ice. The Nationals lost Harper but added Patrick Corbin, Brian Dozier, Yan Gomes, Trevor Rosenthal, and Anibal Sanchez, plus they can look forward to full seasons of Juan Soto and Victor Robles, and hopefully better health for Stephen Strasburg and Sean Doolittle as well. The Mets brought in a new, unorthodox general manager in former agent Brodie Van Wagenin and added Robinson Cano, Edwin Diaz, Jed Lowrie, and Wilson Ramos, plus they finally nailed down that much-needed Jacob deGrom extension. The Braves, who broke a streak of four straight losing seasons to win the division last year, had a relatively quiet and perhaps counterproductive winter, with Josh Donaldson practically their only addition of note besides prodigal son Brian McCann, but they’ll get a full season of Ronald Acuna Jr. I can’t wait to see how this all plays out.

The Opening Day arrivals of Peter Alonso, Eloy Jimenez, and Fernando Tatis Jr.

In an industry where service time manipulation has become all too common, it’s refreshing to see the Mets, White Sox, and Padres break camp with their highly touted rookies —respectively 48th, eighth, and third on our most recent Top 100 Prospects list — instead of fumfering about defense, early-season playing time, checklists, conditioning, and long-term plans. Granted, both Alonso and Jimenez should have debuted last season, but we can chalk up at least some of the responsibility for the former’s non-promotion to the mess of the Mets front office during Sandy Alderson’s health-related leave of absence. And yes, it took the latter agreeing to an extension that may limit his earning power in the long run to make this happen. But at a time when too few teams are doing their best to win in 2019, it’s good to see these players’ respective teams declaring that these kids are among their best 25 players, and their time is now — even if, as is the case for the White Sox and Padres, this may not be a year in which they contend for a playoff spot.

Yes, the kids might take their lumps at the big league level initially, as just about every rookie does. There are legitimate questions about defense for both Alonso and Jimenez, and about the strikeout rate of Tatis, who’s making the jump after a total of 102 games at Double-A and none at Triple-A; his 2018 campaign ended in late July, when he fractured his left thumb and needed season-ending surgery. At some point, however, the learning at the big league level has to begin. These youngsters have very little to gain by riding more buses and beating more bushes, and likewise for their teams when it comes to answering the questions about “When is ____ coming?”

The eventual arrival of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Like Alonso and Jimenez, the number one prospect on our list should have debuted last year, given that he hit a combined .381/.437/.636 with 20 homers in 408 PA at four minor league stops last year (mostly at Double-A and Triple-A). The Blue Jays lead the league in shoveling horse manure concerning why he hasn’t arrived, and they’ve very clearly done their best to game his service clock, though last year’s left knee injury and this spring’s oblique strain have given them some cover. The situation stinks, and it will continue to stink even after Guerrero arrives, presumably sometime in April, because he’s being taken advantage of — within the rules, perhaps, but that’s not to excuse the practice — and he’ll feel the financial hit down the road.

But oh, will the 20-year-old son of a Hall of Famer be a treat to watch given his 80-grade raw power, his 70-grade hit tool, and a youthful exuberance that radiates through the highlight clips. This kid is going to be a whole lot of fun.

The return of Corey Seager

Seager sometimes gets overlooked in cataloging the game’s brightest young stars, but thanks to his prowess on both sides of the ball — his power, his penchant for getting on base, his glovework — he led all shortstops in WAR in both 2016 (7.0) and ’17 (5.9), his age-22 and -23 seasons. After being bothered by a right elbow problem in late 2017, he played just 26 games last year before a torn UCL necessitated Tommy John surgery, and in August, he needed surgery to repair a torn left hip labrum. The Dodgers managed to make it back to the World Series without him, a testament to their depth, and major league shortstops turned in their best offensive showing on record (97 wRC+), a testament to the wealth of talent at the position. Yet everybody will be better off with the soon-to-be-25-year-old back where he belongs.

The last stand of CC Sabathia

After mulling retirement for most of last year, the big man decided to give it one more go, though he’s starting the year on the disabled list as he recovers from an offseason heart procedure and yet another knee surgery. At 38 years old, the former Cy Young winner is no longer the dominant power pitcher that he once was, but between swapping out his four-seam fastball for a cutter, and his use of a brace to support a right knee hobbled by bone-on-bone arthritis, he’s undergone a fascinating reinvention. What he’s lost in velocity, he’s gained in wiliness, and in fact, he’s become an expert at generating soft contact; his average exit velo of 84.4 mph placed him in the 98th percentile last year, and he’s been in the 96th percentile or better in his past three seasons.

What’s more, Sabathia’s confrontation with his alcoholism has further humanized his transformation while underscoring his status as a pillar of the Yankees’ clubhouse, a mentor to so many young players, and an all-around mensch. I’ve had a soft spot for the pitcher and the man since forever, particularly while watching him carry the 2008 Brewers and 2009 Yankees on his back, and I look forward to watching him celebrate both his 250th win (he’s at 246) and 3,000th strikeout (he’s at 2,986). It’s a statistical quirk that only two other southpaws (Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson) have gotten to that milestone, but it’s fine company nonetheless, and it certainly won’t hurt in his quest to reach Cooperstown.

Michael Lorenzen’s two-way experiment

Tommy John surgery has robbed us of Shohei Ohtani’s presence on the mound in 2019, but the majors won’t be entirely devoid of two-way players thanks chiefly to Lorenzen, the only member of the quartet I highlighted last month (Kaleb Cowart, Matt Davidson, and Jared Walsh were the others) to make an Opening Day roster. A solid righty reliever for the Reds, Lorenzen has more than a little pop in his bat; last year, he clubbed four homers in 34 PA while batting .290/.333/.710, and he’s belted six homers and maintained a 101 wRC+ through 92 PA during his four-year career. The Reds have given him reps in center field (his natural position at Cal State Fullerton) this spring, and intend to do so during the regular season, setting up a compelling experiment.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out, in part because it may require tweaking one of the rule changes that MLB announced for the 2020 season, namely an official designation for two-way players based upon pitching at least 20 innings and starting at least 20 games as a position player or designated hitter, with at least three plate appearances in each of those games. Barring injury, Lorenzen should easily meet the former requirement, but the latter is probably a stretch even with Nick Senzel starting the year on the injured list. What’s more, the new rule would also affect Ohtani, who won’t pitch at all this year. More flexibility is needed with the definition in order to prevent the stifling of innovation. Speaking of rules…

The Atlantic League’s experiments

Thanks to an unprecedented working agreement between MLB and the independent Atlantic League, the latter has introduced some rule changes for 2019 that may carry ramifications for future changes in MLB. The most radical, a midseason change of the pitching distance from 60-foot-6 to 62-foot-6, seems destined for disaster or near-immediate reconsideration, and I can’t blame Atlantic League pitchers for resenting the possibility of becoming guinea pigs. The rule changes also include the use of TrackMan radar to assist the home plate umpire in calling balls and strikes — yes, we’re getting Robot Umps Now, and we’ll see how the limitations of the technology play out — larger bases, the three-batter minimum for pitchers (something MLB plans for 2020), a prohibition of infield shifts (blech) and mound visits except for the case of injury (hmmm), reduced time between innings (to 1:45, 15 seconds shorter than MLB’s changes for this year).

The stated goal is to “create more balls in play, defensive action, baserunning, and improve player safety,” which seems worthwhile. Aside from the mound distance change, I’m eager to see how it all plays out, not because I believe all of these changes should be enacted but because the rule book is not sacrosanct. It’s beneficial for baseball to have a means of experimenting its way out of this current action-suppressed cul de sac rather than remaining static.

A new fan in the family

With a FanGraphs senior writer and an Athletic managing editor for parents, our daughter Robin has received plenty of exposure to baseball in her first 2 1/2 years, and she’s largely enjoyed it, particularly when she got to watch a Cape Cod League game from behind the backstop last summer and coined the phrase “baseball run away!” for a home run. That was a heartwarming moment, but nothing melted us more than when she pulled up on the couch one evening last week and asked, “Can we watch some baseball?” Hell yeah, we obliged.

Robin has already visited Yankee Stadium (2017) and MCU Park (home of the Brooklyn Cyclones) last summer. This year, with an afternoon nap no longer an obstacle, we’re planning to take her to Citi Field (a better ballpark experience than Yankee Stadium, regardless of age) and to Richmond County Bank Ballpark (home of the Staten Island Yankees) to complete her collection of New York City ballparks, as well as more Cape Cod League games. She doesn’t understand the rules yet, but she loves watching players run around and balls soar. While the odds are that someday she’ll rebel against whatever mom and dad hold dear, we’re determined to savor this time.

12:41

Jay Jaffe: Happy Opening Day 2019 v2.0, and welcome to our Very Long Chat. Craig Edwards, Paul Sporer and I are warming up at our respective keyboards, practicing our quips and disses, and crunching all kinds of numbers in order to scientifically predict every aspect of the baseb — wait, scrap that last one, it still can’t be one in 2019. In any event, we’ll get things started here around 1 pm, give or take, but feel free to fill the queue with your questions in the meantime.

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The offseason is over and real baseball has started. The main course has finally arrived after the hors d’oeuvres of the Mariners/Athletics opening series in Japan. The teams are set — pace, Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel — and my last bit of ZiPS business is to put on record the final projected standings for the 2019 season. These are computer-generated projections, remember, and as a result, they certainly do not reflect which teams I hate and which teams I like. If they did, I clearly would not be considered very effective at applying my personal biases, having grown up in Baltimore, booing the Yankees.

Also note that there’s a new little chart I’m including this year that I’m dubbing the “division matrix.” Essentially, one of the least understood things about the projected mean standings is that they are mean projections and not necessarily the win totals that will actually win the division. Take for example, the NL East. The Cubs have the best projected record at 87-75, but that doesn’t mean that on-average they’ll win the division by winning 87 games, because not all teams simply perform to their mean projections (nor does ZiPS expect them to). So on the division matrix, the 90th percentile means that 10% of the time, the divisional or Wild Card winner will have at least the number of wins listed.

The standings also do not reflect the two wins for the Mariners and two wins for the A’s. I felt it was kind of cheating to include them in preseason projected standings. But I also didn’t want to make the final projected standings before those games took place, as teams have made about 10,000 small moves since then, keeping me awake and in our depth charts 24/7 for the last week.

And I really shouldn’t have to mention it in the current year, but 0.0% is not literally 0.0%. It’s rounded. So Marlins fan, I’m saying there’s a chance.