FanGraphs Baseball

Everyone likes to compare young, phenom centerfielders to Willie Mays and/or Mickey Mantle. Mike Trout is, of course, the most deserving, but people have also made those comparisons to Ken Griffey Jr., Ronald Acuña Jr. and Juan Soto, Andruw Jones, Josh Hamilton, and many others.

In many cases, these types of comparisons are either early, ambitious, or downright wild. Josh Hamilton was only Mickey Mantle in terms of his personal struggles; Ed Rogers was just a bit worse than Alex Rodriguez. At one point, though, the Mays/Mantle comparisons were fresh, and long before it became a cliche, a young outfielder named César Cedeño was compared to Mays by by future Hall of Fame manager Leo Durocher.

Durocher was not one to be overly sentimental; Cedeño’s early performances did evoke Mays. At age 21, Cedeño broke out for the Astros, hitting .320/.385/.537 (wRC+ of 163) while winning a Gold Glove as a center fielder, his first of five. Rather than falling prey to the dreaded regression to the mean, he basically did that again the following season, hitting .320/.376/.537 (wRC+ of 155). There were obviously no wins above replacement stats to look at in 1972, FanGraphs and other sites like it being decades away from existence, but we can look back at Cedeño’s phenom years with even more certainty about his place in baseball’s pantheon than they could at the time. Read the rest of this entry »

The OOTP Brewers’ season has reached a classic lull in activity. The early rush of figuring out which parts on the team fit and which needed to be replaced has hit pause; the starting rotation has stabilized, injured hitters are returning, and a few trades shored up the team’s weakest points. The draft, the next big event on the calendar, has passed as well, and all of our draft picks look likely to sign. With more than a month remaining before the trade deadline, we’ve hit a bit of a transaction dead zone.

Games are still being played during this period, of course. On that front, the team is chugging merrily along; after taking two out of three games from the Reds, we stand at 41-30, three games ahead of a surprising Pittsburgh team:

Our run differential continues to creep in the right direction, even after starting in the basement. Christian Yelich and Brock Holt are still mashing; Yelich sits at 4.9 WAR despite missing the last series with a mild shoulder strain (seriously mild — he suffered it while throwing the ball and will be back to full strength by tomorrow). Holt is still crushing, despite legitimate questions about how real his start was; he had a 122 wRC+ in April, peaked at 163 in May, and is sitting at a totally acceptable 112 for June.

Those are the boring facts of the situation: the team’s doing well, and there’s not much reason for us to tinker with it. Honestly, though, that’s boring. We aren’t running the Brewers so that we can clap politely from the GM’s excellent seats while we watch the team motor through the NL Central. We’re here to leave our mark, at least a little bit; we don’t need to finish the year with our five best players gone and Gleyber Torres playing second base, or anything like that, but it would be nice to make a change or two. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Players Are Through Negotiating With MLB

I won’t delve into this in too much detail, as my colleague Craig Edwards already published a typically comprehensive story this morning on Major League Baseball’s battle with the players over the 2020 season (I would eagerly point you to his work on the subject in general), but to very quickly sum up the events of the weekend:

On Friday afternoon, MLB offered the Players Association a 72-game season at 70% prorated salary, with the potential for the players to receive 83% if a full postseason is played, and an expanded postseason field of 16 total teams. That offer represented little to no movement from MLB’s previous two offers, which made it especially rich to find out that the offer came with a five-page letter from deputy commissioner Dan Halem chastising MLBPA negotiator Bruce Meyer and the rest of the union for negotiating in bad faith.

The players’ response came quickly, with MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark indicating that the union was finished negotiating with the owners, and is now only interested in receiving a date to report to camp.

Major League Baseball Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark today released the following statement: pic.twitter.com/d1p3Oj4K70

— MLBPA Communications (@MLBPA_News) June 13, 2020

Meyer responded to Halem the same day, demanding that MLB “inform us of your plans by close of business on Monday, June 15.” That, you might notice, is just a few hours after this roundup’s publication. Whether MLB actually adheres to that deadline remains to be seen, but assuming a dramatically different offer than those it has made up to this point isn’t on its way, there’s a good chance we’ve reached the point of negotiations where the Commissioner unilaterally imposes a season of fewer than 60 games, with players receiving full pro-rated salary. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2001, HBO Films aired a made-for-television movie called 61*, about the 1961 race between Yankees sluggers Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris as they attempted to topple the hallowed single-season home run record held by Babe Ruth. The movie opened with footage of Mark McGwire hitting his 60th home run in 1998, as actors playing Maris’ sons paged through a scrapbook their mother kept of their late father’s accomplishments. Soon enough, the movie delved into a dramatization of the 1961 race, with a script that reflected upon the question offered by 61*’s tagline: “Why did America have room in its heart for only one hero?”

Nineteen years later, Long Gone Summer, an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary that premiered on Sunday night, looks back at that 1998 race between McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and the brief stretch when the baseball world carried the two rival sluggers in its collective heart as the pair challenged a record that had stood for nearly four decades. While subsequent allegations about both players’ use of performance-enhancing drugs have dulled the luster of their achievements and astronomical home run totals — 70 for McGwire, 66 for Sosa — director A.J. Schnack’s movie is far less interested in scolding anyone than it is in reliving the excitement of the race and the mutual respect and camaraderie of the two rivals. That’s not to say that the topic of PED usage goes unaddressed, but it does take a back seat to what was, at the time, a feel-good story in a sport that was still recovering from the impact of the 1994 season-ending players’ strike.

I was one of more than three dozen people interviewed for Long Gone Summer, nearly all of whom were otherwise connected to the race as players, coaches, managers, executives, club employees, family members, broadcasters, or print media; to my eye, Effectively Wild’s Ben Lindbergh and MLB.com’s Jennifer Langosch were the only other participants besides myself who were outsiders at the time. It was a unique opportunity, and while my time onscreen was limited, I’m glad that the final product — which I only viewed for the first time late last week — turned out well while taking a lighter tack than we’ve seen over the past two decades. It’s not hard to find people, inside baseball or beyond, willing to rebuke McGwire, Sosa, and MLB itself for the game’s drug problem, as the annual Hall of Fame voting reminds us. Schnack, a native of Edwardsville, Illinois — about half an hour from St. Louis — and an award-winning documentarian whose previous credits include films covering They Might Be Giants and Kurt Cobain, chose a different route. In doing so, he secured the cooperation of both McGwire and Sosa, both of whom offer a generous share of recollections and introspection regarding that season 22 years ago.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Tuesday, the Major League Baseball Players Association offered a quick response to an owner proposal to resume the 2020 season that was fundamentally no better than MLB’s first offer. The players reduced the number of games they proposed to play from 114 to 89, offered expanded playoffs for the next two seasons, and made concessions on service time for players who opt out of the season. The offer looked like a step toward compromise. On Friday, MLB responded with an offer similar to its previous two offers. In response, the players have opted to stop negotiating against themselves, and have asked Rob Manfred to set the schedule and decide how many games the owners want to have this season.

The new offer was staged differently than owners’ the previous attempt, but the foundation of it presented the same reductions the owners have been attempting to pass on to the players since it became clear the season can’t be played with fans in attendance. MLB proposed a 72-game season with 70% pro-rated pay, amounting to $1.268 billion in game salaries. If the postseason, which was to be expanded, were completed, the players would receive another 10% of their pro-rated pay — around $181 million plus a $50 million bonus pool — essentially maxing out at $1.5 billion. Let’s compare the three offers made by MLB to the likely a 54-game season with full pro-rated pay as stipulated by the March agreement:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller interview AJ Shnack, the director of ESPN’s new 30 for 30 documentary about the 1998 home run race, Long Gone Summer, touching on the involvement of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, how AJ structured the story, which slugger was the star of the race, the myth that the home run race “saved baseball,” whether he thought about interviewing Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds, what the auctioned-off record home run balls are worth now, Jeff Tweedy’s score, and more. Then (26:51) Ben and Sam banter about what the ’98 home run race was like at the time, what they learned or remembered about it from the documentary, whether baseball could be that big again, the role of the ball in the offense of the so-called PED era, how we remember McGwire and Sosa, and more.

Audio intro: Dan Bern, "I Miss the Steroid Era"
Audio interstitial: The Roots, "Rising Up"
Audio outro: Lonestar, "Don’t Let’s Talk About Lisa"

Link to Long Gone Summer
Link to David Schoenfield on the 1998 season
Link to Schoenfield on the 1998 home run race
Link to Tim Keown on the 1998 home run race
Link to Matt Trueblood on Sosa’s offensive evolution
Link to Steve Wilstein’s 1998 andro article
Link to Ben on steroids and the 1998 home run race
Link to Tom Tango on the 1990s home run spike
Link to Eric Walker’s site about steroids and home runs
Link to Rob Arthur on steroids, the ball, and power surges
Link to Nate Silver on stats and steroids

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Daniel Moskos was drafted fourth-overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2007. It was a dream come true for the Clemson University product, who went into that June day not knowing what to expect. Some teams viewed him as a starter, others saw him as a reliever, and he hadn’t been at his best in the ACC tournament. The uncertainty led to, in his own words, “a lot of stressful emotions.”

He thought his most-likely destination was Colorado. The Rockies (who ended up taking Casey Weathers) had the eighth pick and were reportedly looking for a close-to-ready college reliever who could conceivably contribute down the stretch. The Pirates more or less came out of the blue. While they’d shown interest, Moskos hadn’t receive a phone call prior to the pick being announced, nor had his advisor/agent.

Moskos isn’t in denial of what Pittsburgh probably had in mind.

“Given the way things played out, I have to assume they didn’t see me as someone would cause a financial concern,” said Moskos. “That’s something that steered their draft around that time: they looked more in the bargain-hunting bin than they did at the highest-profile guys. Whatever fault you want to put to that, they didn’t see me a signability issue.”

Moskos, whom Baseball America had projected to go eighth-overall, inked a $2.475M contract and set forth on a professional career that went anything but smoothly. Hampered by injuries and an inconsistent breaking ball, he ended up playing just one big-league season. In 2011, the southpaw came out of the Pirates bullpen 31 times and logged a 2.96 ERA over 24-and-a-third innings. Then his elbow started barking. Read the rest of this entry »

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

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

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

Read the rest of this entry »

In this week’s MLB The Show 20 stream, featuring Paul Sporer, Ben Clemens, and Dan Szymborski, the Los Angeles Dodgers head to Atlanta in a battle of first-place teams.

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This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Second Wave of COVID-19 Infections

The biggest sports news of the week, affecting everything from baseball to tennis, isn’t sports-related at all. Wrapped up in some of the economic turmoil between MLB and the MLBPA is the concern of many owners over a second wave of COVID-19 derailing the playoffs. (The bigger worry is the risk that a second wave will derail a 2020 season in its entirety.) Americans have largely moved on from peak coronavirus watchfulness and cities that didn’t bear the brunt of the initial wave, such as San Antonio and Houston, are seeing new case count peaks in recent days. Even if a second wave proves not to be severe enough to cut down the 2020 season, MLB may need to re-think things like game location on the fly, meaning it’s crucial they reach an agreement on the economic issues quickly.

Commissioner Rob Manfred said on Day 1 of the draft that he was 100 percent sure that there would be baseball in 2020. This should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, given that the commish and the owners also claim that every game plays loses them $640,000.

The NFL Officially Suspends Minicamps

In a move that was long expected, the NFL officially suspended minicamp through the end of June and extended the “virtual offseason” to June 26. Mike Vrabel, the head coach of the Titans, was optimistic about training camp opening early in July, enough so that he ended the team’s virtual offseason two weeks before the June 26 deadline. Read the rest of this entry »