Kyle Freeland isn’t satisfied with last year’s breakout season. That’s bad news for opposing hitters. The 25-year-old Colorado Rockies southpaw is coming off a 2018 campaign where he finished fourth in the NL Cy Young Award voting after going 17-7 with a 2.85 ERA and a 3.67 FIP. His 202.1 innings pitched — a workhorse total by today’s standards — were fifth-most in the senior circuit.

Continuing to get better is every player’s goal, so while Freeland isn’t looking to reinvent himself — that would be senseless— he does have a few new tricks up his sleeve. While his repertoire will remain static, where his talented left arm aims those offerings will have more variance than in the past.

“I’ve been working on new locations for pitches, kind of different ways to attack hitters,” explained Freeland. “I’m working on getting comfortable throwing left-on-left changeups, and on throwing a two-seamer inside to righties — that front hip shot. Throwing those two pitches will expand my arsenal a little more.”

The Denver native spoke primarily of his same-sided approach when describing the planned changes: “If you look at video from last year, you’re going to see a heavy amount of fastballs and sliders down and away to lefties. That’s the book on me. We feel that giving them another look won’t allow them to sit on that so much.” Read the rest of this entry »

With just over three weeks before Opening Day, Craig Kimbrel remains a free agent, and the Red Sox, whom he helped win the World Series last fall, don’t have a bona fide closer. For as sensible as a reunion might seem, it’s unlikely to happen, as the Red Sox appear more willing to experiment with late-inning roles among relatively untested pitchers than to invest heavily in a dominant pitcher who nonetheless showed signs of decline last year, or to increase their considerable tax bill. It’s a set of choices that’s very 2019, to say the least, though the bullpen will need a breakout performance or two for their plan to succeed.

Kimbrel, who turns 31 on May 28, is coming off a season in which he saved 42 games, his highest total since 2014, and made his seventh All-Star team. But he struggled after the All-Star break (4.57 ERA and 3.58 FIP in 21.2 innings), and finished with the highest FIP (3.13) and home run rate (1.01 per nine) of his career and the second-highest ERA (2.74) and walk rate (12.6%). While his knuckle-curve remained unhittable (20.9% swinging strike rate, with batters “hitting” .082/.176/.098 on 68 PA ending with the pitch), the average velocity of his four-seam fastball slipped to 97.5 mph, his lowest mark since 2011, and the pitch was hit comparatively hard (.171/.292/.388) while accounting for all seven of the homers he yielded. In the postseason, he surrendered runs in his first four appearances before discovering that he was tipping his pitches; he corrected the problem by setting up with his glove at his waist, and was scored upon in just one of his final five October outings.

Fixed though he may be, Kimbrel has produced just one season out of the past four (2017, when he posted a 1.43 ERA and 1.42 FIP) that’s in the ballpark of his 2011-14 stretch, when he was the game’s top reliever (1.51 ERA, 1.52 FIP, 11.1 WAR). He entered the winter reportedly seeking a six-year deal worth over $100 million, a price tag that might have been a pipe dream even without his relatively shaky platform season given the frosty turn of the free agent market.

Not helping matters is that three of the majors’ highest-spending teams are already rather spent in the closer market, namely the Yankees (who signed Aroldis Chapman to a five-year, $86 million deal in December 2016), Dodgers (who re-signed Kenley Jansen to a five-year, $80 million deal in January 2017), and Giants (who signed Mark Melancon to a four-year, $62 million deal in December 2016). According to Forbes’ end-of-year figures, those teams are respectively ranked sixth, fourth, and third in payroll, with the two teams ahead of them, the Nationals and Red Sox, the only ones who actually exceeded the $197 million Competitive Balance Tax Threshold. More on both of those teams momentarily.

While a recent rumor that Kimbrel was willing to sit out the season if no team met his price was quickly debunked, he remains unsigned, and interest from teams like the Phillies and Braves has hinged on short-term deals. The latter, the team that drafted and developed Kimbrel, hasn’t done anything substantial to fix a bullpen that was below average last year, beyond hoping that midseason acquisition Darren O’Day, acquired as a poison pill in the Kevin Gausman trade, has recovered from season-ending right hamstring surgery. The unit’s current projection of 2.6 WAR ranks 16th out of 30 teams. The Phillies’ bullpen, which most notably added free agent David Robertson as well as former Mariners Juan Nicasio and James Pazos, are projected for 4.2 WAR.

The Nationals, who according to Cot’s Contracts are projected to be $10.5 million below this year’s $206 million CBT threshold, have maintained interest in Kimbrel, and given their recent bullpen debacles and their current reliance on oft-injured Sean Doolittle and Tommy John surgery returnee Trevor Rosenthal, they appear to have need for the fireballer. They would likely need to make a salary-cutting move or two to give themselves some breathing room under the tax threshold, particularly given that as three-time offenders, they will pay a 50% marginal tax rate on the overages.

And then there’s the Red Sox, who according to Cots are already [puts on special payroll-viewing goggles] nearly $31.6 million over the threshold, facing not only a 30% marginal tax rate as second-time offenders but also a 12% surtax for being between $20 million and $40 million over. Re-signing Kimbrel to even a one-year, $9 million deal would not only push them out of that range and into one that, if I’m reading this correctly, boosts their surtax to 42.5%; it would also mean that they would also have their top pick in the upcoming June amateur draft moved back 10 places. All of which seems rather draconian. MLB Trade Rumors, which uses slightly different payroll figures via Roster Resource, estimated that to pay Kimbrel a one-year, $17.5 million salary (thus exceeding Wade Davis‘ $17.33 million to set an AAV record for relievers) would cost an additional $11.564 million in taxes. Woof.

So that’s not happening, and while we wait for some other team to meet Kimbrel’s price — my money is still on Atlanta — Boston’s bullpen is worth a closer look. Last year, with Kimbrel in tow, the unit ranked a modest sixth in the AL in WAR (4.9), but third in FIP- (92), fourth in ERA- (83), and fifth in K-BB% (15.3%). In losing Kimbrel and the often erratic Joe Kelly, who after leading the team with 65.2 relief innings signed a free agent deal with the Dodgers, the team has shed a pair that accounted for 21.8% of their bullpen’s innings and 44.9% of their WAR (1.5 for Kimbrel, 0.7 for Kelly).

Nobody new of any note has come into the fold besides Jenrry Mejia, who signed a minor league deal in January after being reinstated from a PED-related, lifetime ban that cost him the past 3 1/2 seasons. Via our depth charts, the primary pool of relievers appears to consist of lefties Brian Johnson and Bobby Poyner, and righties Matt Barnes, Ryan Brasier, Heath Hembree, Tyler Thornburg, Hector Velazquez, Marcus Walden, and Brandon Workman, with knuckleballer Steven Wright coming along slowly after arthroscopic surgery on his left knee [update: and also suspended for 80 games due to a PED violation] and Carson Smith not available until sometime in midseason as he works his way back from last June’s shoulder surgery.

None of those pitchers besides Mejia, who saved 28 games in 2014 but did not even get a non-roster invitation to Boston’s big league camp, has much major league closing experience. Thornburg owns 13 career saves, all from 2016 with the Brewers, before he was traded (for Travis Shaw) and missed all of 2017 and half of ’18 due to surgery to correct thoracic outlet syndrome. Barnes owns two saves, Waldman and Wright one apiece, and that’s it, though some of the aforementioned pitchers did close in the minors. This apparently does not faze the Red Sox, who may not anoint a single pitcher for ninth-inning duties. From the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier:

As the Red Sox contemplate how they’ll handle ninth-inning responsibilities in a post-Kimbrel world, the team seems increasingly open to the possibility of taking a flexible approach to the later stages of the game rather than making an unwavering commitment to one person for the last three outs.

Manager Alex Cora reiterated on Sunday morning that he has “a pretty good idea of what I want to do” with the ninth inning, but that the topic is one that is currently subject to organizational debate — a conversation driven less by how individual pitchers perform in spring training than by what the organization is willing to do with them. He opened the door to the possibility of using matchups to dictate the back end of the bullpen structure.

“We know who [the relievers] are. We know the stuff. It’s just about the plan. The plan will be out there on March 28th,” Cora said, referring to the Opening Day date against the Mariners. “It’s just a matter of, see what we’re going to do as an organization, what plan we’re going to do, how comfortable are we with a closer or mixing it up, or getting people out in certain situations? We still have a lot of days to see how we feel about it.”

Those well-versed in Red Sox history may recall the team’s ill-fated 2003 “closer by committee” plan, which fared poorly and ultimately led to the late May acquisition of Byung-Hyun Kim from the Diamondbacks. As Speier points out, current pitching coach Dana LeVangie was that team’s bullpen coach. But those were different times, and the past few years have seen teams show more open-mindedness about late-inning reliever usage, with roles — including who finishes the ninth — less rigidly defined. Ninth-inning-wise, think the 2016-18 Indians, with Andrew Miller (or, when Miller was hurt in 2018, Brad Hand) occasionally taking save chances instead of Cody Allen; or last year’s Cubs, with Pedro Strop, Steve Cishek, and Jesse Chavez all used to cover for the second-half absence of Brandon Morrow; or last year’s Brewers, who had three pitchers (Corey Knebel, Jeremy Jeffress, and Josh Hader) save at least 10 games without manager Craig Counsell relying upon any one of them as his main guy.

There’s no reason why the Red Sox, an organization as analytically inclined as those teams, couldn’t get away with a similar approach, given a manager who’s comfortable with such an arrangement and talented pitchers who can boil the job down to “go in and get outs,” as Hader described his role last year. Cora, who as a rookie manager piloted the Red Sox to a franchise-record 108 wins and a World Series victory over the Dodgers, appears quite qualified and game for the challenge. Barnes and Brasier, the two pitchers most likely to figure into a late-game plan, both sound receptive and upbeat via Speier’s reporting. We’re a far cry from 2015, when Angels closer Huston Street declared that he’d rather retire than be used in high-leverage situations outside of the ninth.

Of course, the success of such a plan isn’t just dependent upon player buy-in but also execution, and it’s there that the Red Sox may have more to worry about. With the personnel on hand, the team’s bullpen projects to rank 23rd in the majors in WAR. Here’s how the key individuals that I mentioned stack up with regards to 2018 performance and 2019 projections:

Much depends upon the continued success of Barnes and Brasier, however they’re deployed. Barnes, a 2011 first-round pick who has spent virtually all of the past four seasons in Boston’s bullpen, more or less ditched his slider in favor of further emphasizing his curve, which generated a career-best 18.0% swing-and-miss rate (up from 12.5% to 13.5% from 2015-17); his 36.2% K rate ranked ninth among the 151 relievers with at least 50 innings last year, while his 2.71 FIP ranked 22nd.

Brasier didn’t join the Red Sox bullpen until July 9 last year, his first major league appearance since September 27, 2013, with the Angels, for whom he made seven appearances that season. In the interim, he lost a year and a half to Tommy John surgery, spent a year and a half in the A’s chain and then a season in Japan, and finally spent half a season closing in Pawtucket, where he pitched his way to the Triple-A All-Star Game on the back of a 1.34 ERA and a 40/8 K/BB ratio in 40.1 innings before getting called up and carrying over a similarly effective performance to the majors. Both pitchers came up big in October, which should lessen fears about whether they can handle the pressure of the ninth inning during the regular season, even if the usage pattern is less regular than your average ninth-inning guy.

It’s the rest of the cast that carries the bigger question marks; most of them project to be more or less replacement level, and they’ll need a few somebodies to step up — perhaps Thornburg rediscovering his pre-surgical form, Hembree avoiding the gopher balls (1.5 per nine over the past two seasons), Smith giving the team a midseason shot in the arm, and so on. Maybe Mejia shakes off the rust and pitches his way to an unlikely comeback. Maybe rookies like Poyner and Travis Lakins (10th on the team’s prospect list) break through. Perhaps president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski can augment this core with an inexpensive signing or a judicious trade, if not in March then by midseason. There’s little doubt that the Sox, even without Kimbrel, have the talent and firepower to repeat as division winners. But particularly if they hope to do so as champions, somewhere within this group, they’re going to have to get a little lucky.

Ben Lindbergh and guest co-host Steven Goldman of The Infinite Inning banter about Luis Severino’s injury and the perils of spring training, Sonny Gray’s slider problem and the perils of player development, and Ben’s series at The Ringer about scouting past and present, then preview the 2019 Cubs (34:19) with The Athletic’s Cubs beat writer Sahadev Sharma, and the 2019 Texas Rangers (1:13:15) with The Athletic’s Rangers beat writer, Levi Weaver.

Audio intro: Slothrust, "Baby One More Time"
Audio interstitial 1: The Bangles, "Under a Cloud"
Audio interstitial 2: Hop Along, "Texas Funeral"
Audio outro: Teenage Fanclub, "Live in the Moment"

Link to article on Gray’s sliders
Link to first part of Ben’s scouting series
Link to second part of Ben’s scouting series
Link to Ruffcorn reports
Link to Levi’s story on Clyde and pensions
Link to Infinite Inning podcast
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The title of this post suggests that tanking is a problem in major league baseball, and one that needs addressing. It’s worth noting that “tanking” might be a bit of a misnomer. While definitions may vary slightly, if we consider tanking to be intentionally losing for a period of time in order to save money and horde talent for a later run of success, there aren’t actually a lot of examples. There are several issues with that model, but one of the most significant, both in perception and in reality, is waning competition. There is less parity in baseball as more teams head to the extremes and fewer occupy the middle. It’s so bad in the American League that a good team like the Cleveland Indians can actively try to get worse and still be favored to win their division because of the state of the rest of the AL Central. With the Yankees, Red Sox, and Astros all so good, the rest of the AL looks up and sees few avenues to a playoff spot and one that almost assuredly only buys a team one game. The motivation to get a few wins better is lacking at the top, with so few contending teams, and at the bottom, where a few extra wins likely won’t meaningfully change a team’s playoff odds. These aren’t “tanking” issues, but problems with the current landscape’s competitive level.

These issues are exacerbated by the recent windfall from BAMTech sales, which have netted every team more than $50 million, national television deals that have continued to go up in value, and local cable television deals that provide higher guarantees. Ticket sales are still important to a team’s bottom line, but they are slightly less important to turning a profit, which serves to make winning slightly less important. Revenue sharing might provide an avenue to placing a greater emphasis on winning.

Revenue sharing is a fairly simple process, in which every team takes 48% of their net local revenue (revenue minus stadium operating expenses), then puts it in a big pile and divides it evenly among the league’s 30 teams. Clubs like the Yankees and Red Sox put more in than they get out while teams like the Marlins and Pirates get a lot more back than they put in. The teams on the lower end of the revenue spectrum are supposed to spend the funds they receive on the field. Last year, the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance alleging that the A’s, Marlins, Pirates, and Rays were not doing so. The players aren’t the only group that have been upset about revenue sharing; the Yankees have complained about the system for years. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Seattle Mariners. 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.

Corner Hitters With Fringy Offensive Profiles
Joe Rizzo, 3B
Dan Vogelbach, DH
Joey Curletta, 1B
Eric Filia, 1B/RF
Keegan McGovern, 1B
Ariel Sandoval, RF

We’ve never been huge on Rizzo despite his obvious feel for contact because his frame has been maxed out since high school and we weren’t sure where sufficient power was going to come from, especially if he were to ever move off of third base. He’s still just 20 and had respectable peripherals at Hi-A last year, so we’ll continue to keep tabs on him despite our skepticism. Vogelbach and Curletta might each see big league time this year. Vogelbach’s approach prioritizes contact over the type of selectivity he’d need to have to get to all his power. His bat control makes this approach viable, but it may not generate offense that clears the bar at 1B/DH. He may be a good buy low target for an NL team trying to get ahead of the universal DH implementation. Like a lot of Dodgers and ex-Dodgers, Curletta’s batted ball profile has shifted and become flyball heavy over the course of several years. He did have 23 dingers last year, though he was a 24-year-old in Double-A and struck out quite a bit. Those two are both younger than Filia, who has raked for his entire college and pro career amid several off-field issues and a trade that fell through due to a medical red flag. He may fall into a late-career Lenny Harris type role if a team has enough defensive flexibility elsewhere on its roster. McGovern was a high-priority senior sign who remade his physique and had a tool uptick. He’s 23 and will need to move quickly. Sandoval has big power and runs well, but the 33% strikeout rate is ominous.

Sleeper Arms
Sam Delaplane, RHP
Deivy Florido, RHP
David McKay, RHP
Brayan Perez, LHP

Delaplane has a 2700 rpm curveball and low-90s sinker, and he hides the ball pretty well and K’d 100 hitters in 60 innings at Low-A last year. Because he’s a cold-weather college arm, it’s a little more acceptable that he performed that way at 23, and we think he’s an interesting sleeper who might get pushed quickly this year. Florido will be 18 all year. He sits 87-89, has modest physical projection, advanced fastball control, and feel for spin. McKay was part of a group of minor league players the Mariners acquired from the Royals for cash early in 2018, presumably for minor league depth reasons. Seattle ‘penned him, and it turns out McKay is actually a decent fastball/slider middle relief prospect. Perez is an 18-year-old pitchability lefty who threw well in the DSL; his stuff is currently a bunch of 45s and 50s and his arm action is good, but the frame limits projection.

Older Relievers
Nick Rumbelow, RHP
Art Warren, RHP
Brandon Brennan, RHP

These are all relief or depth types in the age 25-27 range. Seattle gave up Juan Then to acquire Rumbelow from the Yankees and he barely pitched last year due to a nerve issue in his neck. When healthy, he’s 92-95, and touches 97, with an above-average changeup and slider. Warren pared his repertoire down and is now a fastball/slider middle relief prospect of somewhat advanced age. Brennan was the team’s Rule 5 pickup; his report is available here.

System Overview

This list, of course, looks much different than last year’s iteration, which was arguably the saddest list we’ve ever done, the Charlie Brown Christmas tree of prospect lists. Of course, stocking this system with several of the high-profile names now present cost Seattle 2018’s best reliever, a shortstop with a 70 bat, a Dominican icon, an emerging if perhaps unassuming face of the franchise, and Mike Zunino.

Most of the prospects Seattle acquired in return are relatively close to the majors, supporting the front office’s public assertions that this will be a short-term rebuild. Additionally, the two teenagers in the system most likely to be stars (Rodriguez and Kelenic) are quite advanced for their age, and could be on an accelerated developmental path that enables them to overlap for a while in the big leagues with the other 50 FV prospects in the system, even though they are about four or five years older than Kelenic and Rodriguez on average.

There will be prospect entropy — J.P. Crawford, who doesn’t look so great thus far in the spring, is a great example of this. Not all of these guys will end up as good as we and the Mariners currently project them to be, and this system is still pretty thin beyond the names who were brought on this offseason. The structure of the rebuild indicates intelligent design, but chaos and entropy will play their role. Mitch Haniger (who looks like a star), Domingo Santana (who has the talent to be one), and the charismatic Mallex Smith (who may sneakily already be one) will be fun to watch while the kids grow up.

We still don’t know a lot about this org’s player development. The swollen physiques of the Jack Zduriencik era seem to be a thing of the past as the strength and conditioning program has improved, but this group really hasn’t had much talent to mold, let alone enough to draw results-based conclusions about the player dev approach, and the cement is pretty dry on the 50 FV prospects listed above.

How much better is this system now than at the end of the year? It was last by a good bit in Craig’s end-of-season analysis and, while we consider re-working our math, it has currently moved up into the 14-19 range in all of baseball.

Late Friday, news broke that San Francisco Giants Chief Executive Officer Larry Baer had engaged in a physical altercation with his wife, Pam, during a public argument, which was caught on video.

Giants CEO Larry Baer pulled his wife out of a chair and caused her to fall to the ground in a San Francisco plaza on Friday morning, an incident captured on video by a witness and under investigation by city police.

The video shows Baer stepping over his wife, Pam, as she sits in a chair in the plaza in Hayes Valley before noon. She screams, “Oh, my God, no, help!” as Baer appears to try to grab a phone out of her right hand.

You can see that video here; we’re not going to embed it due to its disturbing nature. Not long after the incident was initially reported, Baer released a statement purporting to clarify the events shown on video.

Larry Baer told The Chronicle in an interview, “My wife and I had an unfortunate public argument related to a family member and she had an injured foot and she fell off her chair in the course of the argument. The matter is resolved. It was a squabble over a cell phone. Obviously, it’s embarrassing.”

Later Friday, the pair issued a joint statement through the Giants: “Regrettably, today we had a heated argument in public over a family matter. We are deeply embarrassed by the situation and have resolved the issue.”

After a public backlash, however, Baer issued an additional statement apologizing for his conduct.

Pam Baer issued a statement of her own.

It is worth noting that Pam’s description of events does not fully match those depicted in the video; she does not, for instance, mention yelling for help.

Today, the Giants’ Board of Directors released a statement noting that Baer has asked to take away from the team.

Ordinarily, these events, unfortunate though they are, wouldn’t be the province of FanGraphs. However, Baer’s status as Chief Executive Officer of the Giants means that there could be real repercussions for him and the team as a result of his conduct. Baer was appointed by the team’s owners to oversee its operations; he actually helped to constitute the team’s current ownership group, and owns a small stake himself. He is also the Giants’ designated “control person,” and attends league ownership meetings on their behalf. The control person is the face of the franchise to Major League Baseball; they’re “accountable to MLB for the operation of the team and for its compliance with the rules of baseball.” In other words, they’re the member of the ownership group the team designates as the person in charge of its operations.

As a result, Baer is subject to a policy substantially similar to the Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Child Abuse policy found in the Major League Baseball Collective Bargaining Agreement, which requires parallel prohibitions under a separate policy for non-player employees.. Article X of the Joint Policy (you can find it on page 325) says this (emphasis mine):

The Parties agree that Major League Baseball, its affiliated businesses, every Club and the Players Association shall institute Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policies that are comparable both in terms of scope and discipline for their respective employees, managers, executives, and owners. The cost of implementing and administering these comparable policies will be the responsibility of the individual organization.

In other words, we can reasonably expect that Baer is covered by a policy that contains approximately the same prohibitions, and approximately the same discipline, as the Joint Policy. And we can also expect that this policy is administered at least in part by Major League Baseball, which has already begun an investigation. Indeed, Baer appears to have the ignominious distinction of being the first non-player investigated under the league’s domestic violence policy.

So what can we expect in terms of discipline for Baer? Craig Calcaterra took a look at this, but his analysis was performed in the context of discipline for owners. The problem is that while Baer does own a small stake in the team, he also works for the team in an employee capacity as a representative of the owners. So the relevant question is what power Commissioner Rob Manfred has to discipline Baer and the Giants for this sort of conduct, not just as an owner, but as an employee as well.

As far as disciplining team employees goes, things are actually fairly straightforward. The Major League Rules leave little ambiguity that teams, and those they employ, are subject to the Commissioner’s disciplinary power. Rule 22, for instance, states:

All Clubs and players shall submit themselves to the discipline of the Commissioner as provided in the Major League Constitution and accept the Commissioner’s decisions rendered in accordance with the Major League Constitution and these Rules.

And Rule 24 goes one step farther:

Both the Commissioner and a Club are entitled to discipline any manager, trainer, coach, scout, or other personnel who is not a player, in case of a violation of contract, the Major League Constitution, the Major League Rules, the Commissioner’s regulations, or other rules, policies and guidelines. Such discipline may include fining, dismissing, releasing, suspending or expelling the offender. Any Club dismissing, releasing, suspending or expelling any such person shall at once notify the Commissioner’s Office in writing stating the cause of such action. . . . Unless prior approval of the Commissioner is granted, no person who has been suspended or otherwise declared ineligible shall perform any function for any Club or any other entity related to the Clubs during the duration of the suspension or period of ineligibility.

So what does the Major League Baseball Constitution say about the commissioner’s disciplinary power?

In the case of conduct by Major League Clubs, owners, officers, employees or players that is deemed by the Commissioner not to be in the best interests of Baseball, punitive action by the Commissioner for each offense may include any one or more of the following:

(a) a reprimand; (b) deprivation of a Major League Club of representation in Major League Meetings; (c) suspension or removal of any owner, officer or employee of a Major League Club; (d) temporary or permanent ineligibility of a player; (e) a fine, not to exceed $2,000,000 in the case of a Major League Club, not to exceed $500,000 in the case of an owner, officer or employee, and in an amount consistent with the then-current Basic Agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association, in the case of a player; (f) loss of the benefit of any or all of the Major League Rules, including but not limited to the denial or transfer of player selection rights provided by Major League Rules 4 and 5; and (g) such other actions as the Commissioner may deem appropriate.

In other words, the Commissioner can exercise a tremendous amount of discretion when it comes to determining punishments in cases like this. This kind of blanket authority is known as plenary power: “Power that is wide-ranging, broadly construed, and often limitless for all practical purposes.” If the Commissioner decides that you’ve behaved in a manner which violates a Rule, he has complete authority to punish you for doing so. We saw this when Major League Baseball suspended Padres General Manager A.J. Preller for 30 days for failing to disclose that southpaw Drew Pomeranz was injured prior to trading him to the Boston Red Sox. Preller agreed to accept that discipline under Rule 22 with no recourse even before it was issued: that’s how plenary authority works. Similarly, then-Commissioner Fay Vincent suspended late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for life back in 1990; he was later reinstated. So Manfred could strip Baer of his role as CEO, but allow him to keep his ownership stake – or both, or vice versa.

Now, you might ask why the Commissioner’s authority is greater here than it is concerning players. That’s because the players have collectively bargained for greater protections, such as appeal rights. In fact, as you can see above, the MLB Constitution defers to the CBA as to player discipline – but contains very different limits as to non-players. Front office personnel, who aren’t unionized, are essentially subject to the Commissioner’s plenary authority. And the “such other actions” catchall essentially means that the Commissioner can do what he wants. The Commissioner is limited by the expressly included fine restrictions, but a person fined $500,000 would, in theory, have no appeal rights to anyone other than the Commissioner himself.

You might also wonder why the Commissioner has more power to discipline an executive under the Joint Policy than he does a player. That’s because of that “scope” and “discipline” language we mentioned before – the appeal rights (i.e., the players’ safeguards) don’t apply here. In other words, the employees of a team are subject to a policy that is required to cover the same conduct, but doesn’t need to follow the same procedures for meting out discipline.

So what can Manfred do to punish Baer? He can reprimand him. He can fine him up to $500,000 with no appeal. He can suspend him for any period of time, ranging from one day to forever, barring any involvement with the Giants during that period. He can order him replaced as the Giants’ control person. He can bar him from owners’ meetings for any period of time. Baer’s role as an owner makes the situation more complicated — Manfred could strip Baer of his role as CEO, but allow him to keep his ownership stake – or both, or vice versa, though given the circumstances under which owners have been removed historically, Baer being forced out seems unlikely here. And it’s worth noting that the Giants as an organization have the authority to punish Baer, though it’s unclear whether that option is even on the table beyond the personal leave the Giants indicate he voluntarily requested; also unclear is who will assume the position of control person in his absence.

The problem is that, as we mentioned before, no front office employee or executive has ever been investigated or disciplined under the domestic violence policy before, so there’s no real precedent here. Further, Pam Baer’s statement downplaying the incident means that she may be unwilling to cooperate with MLB investigators, making any discipline more complicated. As a result, we really have no idea how Manfred will respond to this. If he uses player suspensions as precedent, we may be looking at a lengthy one. But it’s also worth noting that Manfred may be unwilling or unable to harshly discipline a team’s control person, given that the 30 control agents are, in essence, Manfred’s bosses. On the other hand, the Players’ Association would justifiably be irked if Baer went undisciplined, with the message being sent that front office executives aren’t subject to the same standards of conduct that players are.

Whatever Manfred decides is going to set a pretty significant precedent moving forward. It remains to be seen what message he and Major League Baseball want to send – and who they want the recipients of that message to be.

On the heels of a 104-loss 2018 season, the Royals’ 2019 campaign was already heading nowhere in particular; projected for a mere 69 wins by our Depth Chart projections, only the Tigers (68 wins), Orioles (63), and Marlins (62) are expected to be worse. But on Friday, things went from bad to worse with the announcement that catcher Salvador Perez has damage to the ulnar collateral ligament of his throwing (right) arm. The 28-year-old backstop could miss the season due to Tommy John surgery, a procedure that’s relatively rare among catchers, without any resounding success stories on the level of other position players. Gulp.

A six-time All-Star and five-time Gold Glove winner who was the MVP of the 2015 World Series, Perez is a big (6-foot-4, 240 pound) free-swinging slugger with a powerful arm and a strong reputation for handling pitching staffs. He’s not without shortcomings — he hasn’t posted an on-base percentage of .300 or better since 2013, and has been about 10 runs below average as a pitch framer in each of the past three seasons according to Baseball Prospectus — but he’s immensely popular, a fan favorite who’s been elected to start the All-Star Game in each of the past five seasons. Last year, after missing the first 20 games of the season due to an MCL sprain in his left knee (a freak injury suffered while carrying a suitcase upstairs), he hit .235/.274/.439 with 27 homers, an 89 wRC+, and 1.7 WAR in 544 PA; by BP’s framing-inclusive stats, he was worth 1.3 WARP. For his career, he owns a 92 wRC+ and a total of 17.7 WAR.

Manager Ned Yost said that Perez began experiencing elbow soreness in January, at which time an MRI revealed that he had suffered a flexor strain, which resulted in the team shutting down his throwing program for four weeks. He was cleared to start throwing once he reached the Royals’ camp in Tempe, Arizona in mid-February, but soreness after live batting practice led to another MRI that revealed ligament damage. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported that surgery has been recommended for Perez, who will get a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAtrache on Tuesday before a final decision is made. If he’s out, the team will likely turn to Cam Gallagher, a 26-year-old former second-round pick who has just 35 games of major league experience and figured to back up Perez.

As is the case with all position players, Tommy John surgery for catchers is much more rare than it is for pitchers, though because of the volume and intensity of throwing involved with the job, it’s more common for them than it is for any non-pitching position besides outfielders. Still, the limited number of such surgeries is striking. According to the Tommy John Surgery List kept by Jon Roegele, which now includes 1,669 surgeries, just 44 have been done on professional catchers, six of which occurred while they were still amateurs. As best I can tell, a total of 20 catchers who have had the surgery have played in the majors, eight of whom are still active:

So far, the returns haven’t been great, to say the least. We don’t have any information on the relative severity of these players’ injuries (Perez included) and, the further back we go, less information about players’ defense. But while it’s not hard to find examples of TJS recipients at other positions besides pitcher who have recovered to enjoy productive multi-year stretches or careers afterwards — Jose Canseco, Matt Carpenter, Shin-Soo Choo, Mike Greenwell, Kelly Johnson, Paul Molitor, Luke Scott, and Randy Velarde come to mind, and hopefully we’ll count Didi Gregorius and Corey Seager among them some day (Gleyber Torres too, though his surgery was on his non-throwing arm) — the best that can be said about the catchers is that some of them were able to slog onward with their careers.

Perhaps Knapp or Casali will eventually prove me wrong, but none of the eight catchers who underwent TJS in college or the minors have gone on to have substantial major league careers; Casali is the only one of that group who even reached 1.0 WAR post-surgery. It’s not like those guys were supposed to be stiffs, either. Teagarden was a third-round pick who made two Baseball America Top 100 Prospects Lists post-surgery, and the rest were all drafted in the first 10 rounds, too: Knapp (second, 2013), Tatum (third, 2004), House (fifth, 1999, and a two-time Top 100 prospect pre-surgery), Kieboom (fifth, 2012), Higashioka (seventh, 2008), Jimenez (ninth, 2008), and Casali (10th, 2011). Sure, many picks from the first 10 rounds don’t even reach the majors even without undergoing TJS, or fail to produce in their limited opportunities. Nonetheless, the extent to which the catchers in this subset failed to blossom in the aftermath of surgery is not encouraging.

Leaving those players aside, of the 10 who had major league experience prior to TJS, four (Christmas, Coste, Davis, and Wilson) never played in the majors again. That count doesn’t include d’Arnaud, who is in camp with the Mets and, his ongoing penchant for injury notwithstanding, seems likely to stumble into a game at some point. Of the other five, none has equaled his pre-surgical offensive potency or made a particularly large impact post-surgery. To be fair, the jury is still out on d’Arnaud and Vazquez, though the latter has never even come close to the solid offensive contributions he made at Single-A and Double-A levels.

The biggest name among this group besides Hundley — a two-time All-Star whose pre-surgical performance is clouded by his later appearance in the Mitchell Report, and whose post-surgery peformance featured back and hand woes — is Wieters, a player whose post-surgical plight had been on my mind even before the news about Perez was announced. When I began writing about the Nationals’ post-Bryce Harper era last week, Wieters — Washington’s regular catcher for the past two seasons, at least during the two-plus months of 2018 that he wasn’t sidelined by injuries — was still jobless. By the time that piece was published, the 32-year-old switch-hitting catcher had agreed to a minor-league deal with the Cardinals, still a rather humbling outcome for a player who made nearly $37 million over the past three seasons, and whose career was supposed to be so much more.

A former top-five pick (2007) and number one overall prospect (2009, according to both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus), Wieters made a pair of All-Star teams in 2011-12, winning a pair of Gold Gloves and helping the Orioles emerge from a decade and a half of playoff-free futility along the way. Circa 2013, he was a candidate for a major contract extension, though at the time, agent Scott Boras reportedly countered with a request for something in the range of Joe Mauer’s eight-year, $184 million extension with the Twins, despite the fact that Wieters hadn’t racked up anything close to the accolades that Mauer, an MVP and three-time batting champion, had at the time he signed. Needless to say, Wieters didn’t get that kind of money; the Orioles explored trading him in the winter of 2013-14, and then the following season, he tore his UCL after playing just 26 games. While there was initial optimism he would avoid TJS, he ultimately went under the knife in June 2014, at which time I noted the dearth of positive outcomes from among the group above.

Since then, Wieters’ career has been spotty at best. He returned to major league action on June 5, 2015, 12 days shy of a year after surgery, made a solid half-season showing (.267/.319/.422, 102 wRC+, 1.1 WAR in 282 PA), and then, after making a combined $16 million in 2014-15, became just the second player to accept a qualifying offer, after the Astros’ Colby Rasmus. Playing for a $15.8 million salary, he made the AL All-Star team — to this date, he’s the only post-TJS catcher to garner such status — and finished 2016 with a modest 90 wRC+ (.243/.302/.409) and 1.8 WAR.

He’s been considerably less productive since. In February 2017, he signed a one-year, $10.5 million deal with the Nationals, which included a same-sized player option for 2018 (not to mention $5 million worth of deferred money), then stumbled to a 62 wRC+ with -0.3 WAR in the first year and, after exercising that option, something closer to his post-surgical level last year (.238/.330/.374 ,89 wRC+, 0.9 WAR) while making just 271 PA; he missed nearly 10 weeks due to an oblique strain and a left hamstring strain, the latter of which required in-season surgery. Unable to secure a major league deal this winter, he settled for a minor league one, with a base salary of $1.5 million assuming he’s in the majors, another half-million dollars worth of performance incentives ($100,000 apiece for reaching 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 games), and a March 22 opt-out.

Admittedly, once the above catchers are broken into subgroups, we have rather small sample sizes, and as far as the performance outcomes are concerned, we see correlation with surgery but not necessarily causation. Wieters hasn’t made any trips to the DL for elbow problems since returning from surgery, and has continued to throw out would-be base stealers at a more-or-less league-average clip. His decline as a defender — using BP’s FRAA, from 47.9 from 2009-14 to -10.2 from 2015-18 — really began in 2013 and has been driven by subpar pitch framing (-15.8 runs from 2015-18), which depends primarily on his non-throwing arm anyway. Vazquez is still a well above average defender in all facets of the game, averaging nearly 11 FRAA in the past three seasons despite receiving only 798 PA in that span. From among the other active catchers who aren’t on the fringes of jobs, Casali has been solid on both sides of the ball but has only once topped 156 PA in a season, while Knapp has been a rather woeful defender (-15.6 FRAA while making just 419 PA), struggling both with throwing (19% caught stealing) and framing (-9.6 runs).

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that while I don’t think we can draw strong conclusions from the group of catchers who have preceded Perez in TJS, their history doesn’t offer him and the Royals a particularly great roadmap for success. He’s relatively young, and under contract for a total of $36 million through 2021, so it’s unlikely he’ll fade into oblivion like some of the aforementioned recipients, but if his post-surgical success approaches his pre-surgical performance, he’ll be breaking new ground.

12:01

Dan Szymborski: P, T, A. Though I have a soft spot for Harry Crumb

12:02

Dan Szymborski: No.

12:02

Dan Szymborski: LIkely writing something about this!

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 — Bud Black, Zach Davies, and Robbie Ray — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Bud Black, Colorado Rockies [manager]

“In the early 1980s, I was with the Royals in West Palm Beach. It was spring training, and Tom House was writing a book. He wanted to highlight my curveball. There were guys he highlighted on the fastball; there were guys he highlighted on the slider. I was one of the guys he highlighted on the curveball. Because he thought that I had a good one … that heightened my awareness of how I threw it. It kind of threw me back to my youth, and what I was taught about a proper curveball. The true curveball, with overspin, 12-6. The old-school drop. Read the rest of this entry »