If you watch enough baseball, players start to blend together in your brain. You know what I’m talking about — Corey Seager is injury-prone Carlos Correa. Ozzie Albies is caffeinated Jose Altuve (no small feat, since Altuve is a Five Hour Energy spokesperson). Newly minted $100 million man Alex Bregman is Anthony Rendon with good hair. The Bregman/Rendon comparison occurred to me even before I saw Bregman play. A highly-drafted college third baseman with an excellent all-around game? More power than you’d think despite a swing that seems designed to put the ball in play? Probably a little better at baserunning than you’d expect, even if he isn’t a burner? Yeah, that pretty much covers both guys.

Nothing Bregman has done since reaching the majors has changed this early comparison in my mind. Between 2017 (Bregman’s first full year in the bigs) and 2018, he’s recorded a 141 wRC+ to Rendon’s 140. Bregman has walked 11.3% of the time, Rendon 11.6%. Bregman has struck out 13.7% of the time to Rendon’s 13.6%. Bregman has a .219 ISO; Rendon’s is .230. Bregman has 50 home runs; Rendon has 49.

You get the general idea — both players have been incredible, and both have done it in really similar ways. Rendon has been worth 13 WAR over the past two years, second-best among third basemen. Bregman has been worth 11.1 WAR, good for fourth. Here’s another thing they have in common — they were both among the most extreme swing-rate changers from 2017 to 2018. Plot twist, though! It was in opposite directions. Bregman decreased his swing rate by the third-most among qualified hitters, while Rendon increased his by the second-most. Yes, we’ve finally found a place where Anthony Rendon and Alex Bregman are different — extremely different.

For Alex Bregman, 2017 must have been a mix of satisfaction and frustration. His 217 PA in 2016 exhausted his rookie eligibility, and while he held his own in his first big league action (114 wRC+), he looked very much like someone struggling to adjust to big league pitching. He struck out in 24% of his plate appearances, light years higher than his 10% career minor league rate (and 7.5% college rate). His swinging strike rate was 11.8%, meaningfully above league average. In short, he didn’t look like the hitter scouts expected him to be. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Jon Duplantier, Carl Edwards Jr., and Sal Romano — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

——

Jon Duplantier, Arizona Diamondbacks

“I learned my curveball in college. Rice is a big breaking ball school — at least it was when I was there — and depending on where you are, you call it a different thing. It’s a spiked curveball, but I know that at Southern Miss, they call it a Rice slider. Essentially, it’s just a concept where you’re looking for this general break. You spike the curveball, with the idea being that you want something hard, with depth.

“My freshman year, I threw a slurve. The velocity on it was fine — it was 76-78 [mph] — but I would lose feel for it every now and then. When I’d lose feel for it, teams would start sitting on my heater. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the second-half of the bullpen rankings, so there will be no Yankee ‘pens packed from top-to-bottom with scarily elite arms. You will not find a dominating Blake Treinen or a deep Astros corp or a team that made some big offseason signing.

What you will find is despair, hopefully tinged with some kind of hope. As the fan experience goes, nothing seems to feel as bad as a bullpen, because when a bullpen does its job poorly, you see late-game wins evaporate into losses. For those at the game, beer sales are likely over, so even an alcohol-fueled respite is hard to find. Fans of teams with terrible bullpens are always convinced they could add 20 wins with a top closer and while that’s ludicrous, a bad relief corps does cast a pall of doom over a game.

When you have a below-average bullpen, your challenges vary. For a contending team, how do you minimize the damage to the rest of your team? For a rebuilding team, can you find arms that are interesting with upside?

So, how’d they do? Read the rest of this entry »

In a bonus episode of EW, Ben Lindbergh talks to SABR’s Jacob Pomrenke about the centennial of the notorious 1919 White Sox, SABR’s new “Eight Myths Out” project, the persistent misconceptions about why the Black Sox threw the 1919 World Series, whether the scandal could have stayed secret, the complicated legacy of Eight Men Out, what Jacob wishes he knew about the Black Sox, the future of gambling and baseball, and more. Then (34:57) Ben brings on FanGraphs’ Paul Sporer to discuss Paul’s history with baseball video games, digital baseball versus digital versions of other sports, and why Paul’s face is in MLB The Show 19, and Ben and Paul discuss the evolution of The Show and the latest installment in the franchise (45:56) with Sony community manager and game designer Ramone Russell.

Audio intro: Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez, "Extra"
Audio interstitial: Guided By Voices, "Just to Show You"
Audio outro: The Rolling Stones, "On With the Show"

Link to SABR’s “Eight Myths Out”
Link to Scandal on the South Side
Link to Episode 589 on Super Mega Baseball
Link to Paul and Chris Sale in MLB The Show 19
Link to Paul’s Twitch channel
Link to Ben’s 2018 article on The Show mirroring the majors
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Willians Astudillo making the Twins’ Opening Day roster, whether Astudillo’s uncanny ability to make contact is more mental or physical, and what Oliver Perez and the rest of the remaining LOOGYs can do to preserve their endangered places on major-league rosters when the three-batter minimum goes into effect in 2020, then complete the 30-team preseason series by previewing the 2019 Boston Red Sox (18:40) with Boston Globe reporter Alex Speier, and the 2019 Baltimore Orioles (53:12) with MLB.com Orioles beat writer Joe Trezza.

Audio intro: The Weakerthans, "The Last Last One"
Audio interstitial 1: Guided By Voices, "Alex and the Omegas"
Audio interstitial 2: Chip Taylor, "Nine Soldiers in Baltimore"
Audio outro: Neil Young, "No More"

Link to Rob’s article about endangered LOOGYs
Link to SI article about endangered LOOGYs
Link to Ben on early-season Sale vs. late-season Sale
Link to Ben on champions standing pat and the Boston bullpen
Link to Ben and Baumann on the MLB extension spree
Link to listener’s minor-league free agent tracker
Link to Banished To The Pen’s team preview posts
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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Baseball is a game of failure, forcing players to find, utilize, and ultimately rely on their strengths. It is hard to find someone who exemplifies that more than Rick Ankiel. He pitched for the Cardinals in 2000 and was so good that he finished second in Rookie of the Year voting. Then the NLDS came along and Ankiel could not throw strikes. He gave up four runs on two hits, four walks, and five wild pitches. It could have been a fluke, just the nerves of his first postseason appearance, pitching against Greg Maddux, no less. Totally understandable, except he could not get through the first inning of his next start. It was the second game of the NLCS and Ankiel was pulled after twenty pitches, five of which went to the backstop.

Things never got much better. In 2001, he threw 24 major league innings and walked 25 batters. He was demoted all the way to Rookie League that year, sat out the 2002 season, then had Tommy John surgery in 2003. He returned as a reliever in 2004 and posted a 4.75 FIP in ten innings. Things were bleak until the Cardinals offered to play him at a different position. Rick Ankiel came back in 2007 as an outfielder and he was good! He was known for making unbelievable throws, but also managed to hit 74 home runs during his seven seasons. Not bad for a former pitcher. He retired after the 2013 season, having made a comeback for the ages.

And he wants to do it again.

Rick Ankiel is working to return to the majors as a left-handed reliever at age 39. He played in one game during the Bluegrass World Series last year, where he racked up two hits and four RBI in four plate appearances, not to mention that he threw out a runner at the plate. But then, he did the one thing few people ever thought he would do again: he took the mound. He only faced one batter, but he struck him out on four pitches. It was enough for Ankiel to wonder whether he could get a chance to once again experience the game from at the position that had been so cruel to him.

All of this is bananas. The astonishingly quick rise and then fall from pitching stardom. Reinventing himself as an outfielder. Succeeding in the major leagues for seven seasons after contemplating retirement. As if that was not challenging enough, last October Rick Ankiel had an ulnar collateral ligament repair with internal brace construction. A UCL tear generally results in Tommy John surgery, which has a 12 to 18 month recovery time. If Ankiel had required another Tommy John, any potential comeback would have been pushed into his age-40 season and, as he mentioned on a recent Cardinals spring training broadcast, likely would not have happened at all. “If it had been a total reconstruction, he said, “I probably would’ve passed and just moved on. I would’ve missed all this year and then we’re all the way to next spring training and that’s just a long time.” When I heard Ankiel’s interview, I wondered whether primary repair surgery would help or hinder his comeback effort, and went searching for an answer.

Primary repair surgery is still fairly new. The first major league pitcher to have it was Seth Maness during the 2016 season. There is very little data about how it compares to Tommy John and not all UCL tears are eligible for primary repair. If a ligament is torn in the middle, a player will require Tommy John which involves creating a new ligament out of tissue taken from another part of the body. If it is torn near the bone, however, primary repair comes into play. It involves minor repairs and providing a sort of abutment around where the ligament is anchored to the bone. The recovery timeline ranges from seven to nine months, or nearly half of what it takes to rehab from the Tommy John procedure.

Seth Maness is the only case study I could find at the major league level. He is not a one-to-one comparison, since his arm had gone through about four major league seasons while Ankiel’s played somewhere around nine. Given Ankiel’s 2003 Tommy John, his surgeon actually repaired a reconstructed ligament. There are a lot of questions and variables to consider.

First, let’s take a look at Maness’s numbers before and after his surgery. He hit the “dead arm” phase in 2016, so the data below includes the 2014 and 2015 seasons, plus the 2017 season following his surgery, which would parallel Ankiel’s planned return. The sample size from the major leagues in 2017 is small, so our conclusions will rely heavily on Maness’s time with the Royals’ Triple-A affiliate.

The first thing that pops out are the consistencies. Maness’s strikeout rate in the minor leagues was consistent with what it had been during the 2014 and 2015 seasons. Hitters continued to pull the ball at the same rate, and the number of walks he issued was fairly similar as well. These are good signs.

However, Maness relied heavily on groundballs for his success. It felt like every time he was on the mound, he would induce a double-play. His groundball percentage dropped significantly, 4% in the majors and 9% in the minors. Naturally, his flyball rate jumped, rising to 9% in the minor leagues. His FIP jumped an entire point from 2015 to 2017, as he relied increasingly on the defense behind him. He also lost about two miles per hour on his sinker, slider, and fastball during the 2016 season. He never regained that velocity. If Ankiel wants to be major-league ready, he will need one of these secondary pitches. Can he avoid the slowdown that plagued Seth Maness? Only time will tell.

Maness was released by the Royals in 2018 and currently plays in the Atlantic League. He never quite regained the effectiveness he had prior to the injury. That said, it does not spell disaster for Rick Ankiel.

First, Ankiel relied more on strikeouts than groundballs, which may surprise some given his difficulty throwing strikes. While the outcome Maness relied on took a hit, his strikeout rate held fairly steady. His ability to put the ball in the zone was not impacted, which is obviously great news for Rick Ankiel. Second, Maness relied most heavily on his sinker, then fell back on his changeup or fastball when needed. Ankiel has said he would rely on a curveball and high fastball. Maness did not have a curveball so there is no available data to compare. As for the fastball, there was a dip in velocity which is cause for concern.

Things are looking up since Ankiel hit 89 mph in the Bluegrass World Series last year when he was not even “in pitching shape.” That outing, such as it was, also occurred before the primary repair surgery, so the ligament was weakened. That velocity tops Maness’ fastball average at 88 MPH in 2017. However, because Ankiel has historically been more reliant on this pitch, he will need to achieve a significant uptick in velocity (or undergo a significant change to his repertoire) in order to compete, especially because he wants to compete not only in the minor leagues as Maness did, but in the majors.

Finally, though it is difficult to isolate the surgery’s effect, it did not appear to increase the rate at which Maness walked hitters. He was not suddenly wild, nor did his control evaporate. After the onset of the yips, Ankiel could rarely throw strikes. If he has overcome the anxiety, which he says he has, then it all comes down to his ability to control the location of his pitches. Can he do that as effectively as he did in 2000? The answer is yet to be determined, but using Seth Maness as a case study indicates that the primary repair surgery may not necessarily be what undermines Ankiel’s pitch control.

The only narrative in sports that is better than a comeback story is a second comeback. It’s something fans tend to root for. The first time he was challenged in this sport, Ankiel’s solution was to climb a different mountain, and conquer the outfield instead of the pitching mound. This time, things will likely be harder. There are many questions yet to be answered, questions that we would have even without the additional red flag of a surgery. The chances here are remote. Could this be the year he overcomes the very problem that hindered him in the first place? That remains to be seen, but Seth Maness provides a hopeful if narrow blueprint for Rick Ankiel’s return to the major leagues, or at least, he offers a limited answer on one important part of Ankiel’s journey that could hold him back. I sure hope he makes it.

Last week, we covered most of the position players as part of our positional power rankings. Earlier today, Meg Rowley covered right fielders, before Kiley McDaniel took you through the 16th-through-30th ranked rotations. Now, we get to the good stuff.

The American League comes out firing on the top 15 list with the first three entrants made up of the reigning kings of the West and Central, as well as this year’s projected East champion. The Senior Circuit takes over from there, with seven of the next nine rotations, including two from the East and three from the Central divisions. Those staffs have been the talk of the offseason, as the top four in the NL East are all contenders to win the division while all five NL Central clubs could carve out a realistic scenario that finds them atop the group and headed to the playoffs.

The ever-dwindling workloads of starters are made clear as just six pitchers are projected for 200-plus innings; meanwhile, six clubs have just one (or fewer) arms tabbed for even 180 frames. The No. 2 ranked team doesn’t get anyone to 175, yet their depth is on display with six guys who could capably put up 100-plus innings. On the other end, some teams made this list purely on the strength of their top five, so any injuries could be catastrophic to their season outlook.

It’s probably a safe bet that at least one of the arms on here with a sub-70 inning projection ends up delivering 130-plus in a breakout campaign, but without a crystal ball to identify which injuries will create such a path, it’s hard to know exactly who that will be right now. My guesses would include Domingo German, Seth Lugo, Jordan Lyles, and Jerad Eickhoff. Last year’s were Walker Buehler, Jack Flaherty, and Zach Eflin, which perhaps means that I should include prospects Forrest Whitley and Alex Reyes, but they almost feel too easy.

Who is your favorite breakout pitcher on these 15 teams, and which is your favorite team in the 11-15 range to break the top 5?

By now, you already know – thanks to Dan Szymborski’s breakdown – that Major League Baseball and the MLB Players’ Association agreed to rule changes for the 2019 and 2020 seasons. Dan provided an analysis of the on-field repercussions of these new rules, but there are other consequences as well – for the first time, it appears the MLBPA might be making inroads in its cold war with the league.

Let’s start with the most momentous development – one that actually had nothing to do with the rule changes. Per Jeff Passan at ESPN:

Perhaps the most important part of the deal isn’t the elimination of August trades, the tweaking of All-Star Game starter selections, the incentives for stars to participate in the derby, the elimination of one-out relievers or the addition of a 26th player next year. It’s the provision that the sides will begin discussing labor issues imminently, far earlier than they typically would with a CBA that doesn’t expire until December 2021.

Those discussions, sources told ESPN, will center on the game’s most fundamental economic tenets — not only free agency but other macro issues with deep consequences. The bargaining over distribution of revenue could be the most difficult gap to bridge, with teams clearly paring back spending on aging players while players chafe at the notion that those 30 and older are no longer worthy of the deals they received in the past. While a compromise could be reached in distributing more money to the younger players whom the current system underpays, the complications of doing so warrant a long runway for discussions.

Now, if you’re a cynic, you might think that merely getting the league to the table doesn’t constitute much of an accomplishment, as the league doesn’t actually have to agree to anything. After all, the Collective Bargaining Agreement gives MLB the right to unilaterally change virtually any on-field rule it wants to without the permission or agreement of the union.

That said, the league doesn’t really have anything to gain financially from beginning negotiations now; record profits and the current CBA term mean it doesn’t have to negotiate anything. If the league had no intention of making at least a few concessions, it might not come to the table at all. And beginning negotiations simply for public relations might not be a good legal strategy because bad faith talks – where one side basically tells the other why they’re wrong – are a waste of money and tend to inflame tensions, not tamp them down. An MLBPA spokesman provided me with a statement from Executive Director Tony Clark, who considered the deal “an important initial step towards a broader dialogue about meeting the more substantive challenges our industry faces in the near and long-term.” (As an aside, I wonder if the reference to “the industry” instead of the “league” might suggest a focus beyond just the major leagues; it will be fascinating to see if minor league salaries become a focus of the new talks, especially given the Blue Jays’ decision to raise minor league wages and recent reports that the issue may finally be of interest to MLB.)

Further, guaranteeing a 26th roster spot all season is a big win for the union, as it essentially creates at least thirty more full-time jobs. These are jobs the league didn’t have to agree to create – remember, Rob Manfred could have just imposed the remaining rules himself, without the union’s agreement – but it did so, without a corresponding concession. The winner of the All-Star game gets a guaranteed million dollars, which is a lot of money considering that this award is nearly twice the major league minimum, and more than the salary of most of 2018’s participants.

So why make these concessions? It’s obviously early, and I’m not privy to the actual dialogue within the league office. But it at least appears that the league is finally considering a work stoppage, and the legal battles that would come along with it, as both a possible and unacceptable outcome. Part of that undoubtedly has to do with the union’s new chief negotiator, Bruce Meyer. Meyer is in no small part responsible for the percentage of revenue guarantees for players in the NFL, NHL, and NBA collective bargaining agreements. Major League Baseball is the only one of the four major North American mens’ sports leagues without such a guarantee, and the league is probably concerned that Meyer would make such a guarantee a sticking point in 2021 talks. Extending an olive branch now allows for the league to take a harder line on this issue later, particularly from a public relations perspective, particularly given Meyer’s history with MLB’s attorneys.

Major League Baseball is chiefly represented by (among other attorneys and law firms) a firm called Proskauer Rose.

There are a handful of law firms that strike fear in the sports world. None, though, is quite like Proskauer Rose. The New York-based firm has represented all of the major sports leagues — NBA, WNBA, NFL, NHL, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer — produced two commissioners (David Stern and Gary Bettman) and trained a legion of attorneys to outmaneuver players’ advocates. Many Proskauer attorneys eventually work for leagues, teams or key companies in sports. To the extent professional sports connects to one law firm, it’s Proskauer.

Proskauer represented the Marlins when Jeffrey Loria sold the team to the group led by Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter. They’ve represented the league when it’s been sued, including in the minor league minimum wage cases. When the league gets in trouble, it hires Proskauer.

And Bruce Meyer has had success against Proskauer before. In 2016, for example, when Meyer worked for the National Hockey League, player Dennis Wideman was suspended 20 games by commissioner Gary Bettman. Wideman appealed and the suspension was cut in half by a neutral arbitrator, pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement Meyer helped to negotiate. (The arbitrator in question, James Oldham, also handles baseball arbitrations.) Proskauer, on behalf of the NHL, fired the arbitrator and sued the union, arguing that Bettman’s initial suspension should stand. Meyer, representing the union, won handily.

Now, Meyer, as good as he is, isn’t a panacea for labor unions, as he himself admits. He’s lost to Proskauer more than once, and he is the first to concede that protracted legal battles between leagues and unions have a lot of collateral damage for players.

Adversaries criticize Proskauer for what one described as its “lock out first, ask questions later” approach. But they concede that such tactics have produced results. “It’s been an effective strategy,” said Bruce Meyer, a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, who has represented players’ unions. Although, he adds, “I don’t think it’s a magic pill.”

The current absence of major clashes is probably short-lived, said Mr. Meyer. “There’s a lot of money at stake for both sides. When there’s a lot of money at stake, you see these big battles.”

But part of that is also due to the structural mismatch inherent in labor disputes: the league will always have more money and more resources, while the players have to miss paychecks and potentially decide whether to dissolve their union in order to seek recourse in court. As a result, Meyer’s talents notwithstanding, the league will always have a significant advantage in labor disputes. In the event of a lockout or work stoppage, ownership is far better equipped to deal with a long-lasting impasse than the players are – particularly young, pre-arb players, who would face legitimate financial pressure should their $550,000 annual salaries disappear for more than a few weeks. Recent call-ups from the minors would be in even worse shape. So this agreement shouldn’t be taken as a sign that MLB is quaking in its proverbial boots at the thought of a confrontation with Meyer and the MLBPA. This could be a bit of strategy on MLB’s part, offering small concessions now while preparing for larger fights ahead. It may be a sign of nothing more than the league taking the union more seriously as an adversary. After all, not everything went the MLBPA’s way. The three-batter rule certainly isn’t good for players, the union notably didn’t agree to it, and Manfred imposed it unilaterally.

But that’s still progress. In a very real sense, that MLB was willing to come to the table at all could demonstrates a real breakthrough in the cold war between the league and union, even if merely agreeing to negotiate isn’t a guarantee that the labor disputes of the past couple of years are behind us. For fans dreading the very real prospect of a work stoppage, it’s hard to not be at least cautiously optimistic in the wake of these developments.

We closed out the position players with right field this morning. Now we move to the pitching side, starting with bottom half (16-30) of the starting rotation rankings.

There are some easy similarities to be found between the clubs on this list. There are several that have one or two generic, No. 4 quality veteran arms without much raw stuff. The better clubs have a couple more No. 4 types beyond that, with either durability or track record as the concern, while the lower-ranked clubs have a bunch of lesser, unproven prospects and guys who should top out as sixth starters or long relievers.

One of the more interesting clubs is Toronto, which has two young starters who have shown No. 2 or 3 upside (Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez), three veterans with consistency or durability issues on one-year deals (Matt Shoemaker, Clayton Richard, Clay Buchholz), a couple of intriguing prospects who can contribute in some way this year (Ryan Borucki, Sean Reid-Foley, Trent Thornton), and a few depth guys. Cincinnati falls along the same lines, with Luis Castillo as the anchor and Anthony DeSclafani as the injured but talented second piece, then three veterans in walk years (Sonny Gray, Alex Wood, Tanner Roark), and some post-hype prospects (Tyler Mahle, Cody Reed, Michael Lorenzen, Lucas Sims, Sal Romaro).

On the younger side, both the Padres and the Braves could have a full rotation of recently-graduated prospects, though the Braves probably won’t with Julio Teheran, Kevin Gausman, and Mike Foltynewicz likely taking up a couple of spots in the rotation while the kids fight it out for what is left. San Diego’s top five in projected innings were all prospects at this time last year except for Matt Strahm, who’d only lost his eligibility by a few innings. Behind them, the Pads have even more young arms coming, with Mackenzie Gore, Luis Patino, Adrian Morejon, Michel Baez, Anderson Espinoza, and Ryan Weathers all within a few years of possibly reaching their mid-rotation or higher potential.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Boomshakalakagravyfries

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Bowie Baysox?

12:04

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think so.

Read the rest of this entry »