This offseason was supposed to be a spending bonanza that would see teams throwing money at generational talents like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, rotation stalwarts like Dallas Keuchel, and bullpen anchors like Craig Kimbrel. Instead, that quartet, along with among many others, remains unsigned as yet another slow winter drags on. It turns out that last offseason, to that point the slowest offseason ever, wasn’t unique. It may have been, instead, a harbinger of the new normal.

The Major League Baseball Players Association’s new chief negotiator, Bruce Meyer, told the Wall Street Journal that teams’ inactivity was among the biggest threats facing the game.

And it’s not just the union. That trend hasn’t gone unnoticed by the players, whose frustration with owners’ unwillingness to spend is spilling into public forums. Players are now using social media to engage with fans, and each other, about the stagnant market.

The war of words was elevated to a new level last Wednesday, when Dan Lozano, the agent who represents Machado, took to twitter to strongly admonish Bob Nightengale and Buster Olney for their recent reporting. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter can be an awfully contentious place. After noting NL Central payrolls in a tweet over the weekend, I received a barrage of replies and quote tweets loudly complaining about the Pirates’ failures to invest in the team. And it’s not just folks who are mad online causing a stir. Pirates fans have spoken with their wallets as well; attendance has dwindled since the team made three straight playoff appearances earlier this decade. The Pirates have a decent team, but have done almost nothing this offseason to improve it, and seem likely to enter 2019 with payroll at it’s lowest point in the last five seasons.

PNC Park opened in Pittsburgh in 2001, and despite a 100-loss team, nearly 2.5 million fans showed up to watch the Pirates play. The team averaged 93 losses and attendance of 1.75 million fans over the next 11 seasons. After topping two million fans in 2012 — as the club approached a .500 record for the first time since Barry Bonds left for San Francisco — Pittsburgh made the playoffs each year from 2013 to 2015 and averaged 2.4 million in attendance per season. The 2016 season was a losing one, and attendance waned as the summer wore on, but positive expectations kept it at a reasonably high 2.25 million fans. Expectations were lowered in 2017; attendance dropped below two million. After trading Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole, confidence in the club among fans seemed to drop to a new low as attendance dipped below 1.5 million despite a winning record.

The Pirates actually put together a decent team a year ago, but losing their two stars meant that the club’s surprising start didn’t translate in to people at the gate. At the All-Star break, Pittsburgh was averaging just 18,155 fans per game. Contention and the acquisition of Chris Archer breathed some excitement into the franchise, and in the month after the All-Star Break, the team averaged 25,357 fans per game, a two-million-plus pace over the course of the season. But as the Pirates fell out of the race, attendance plummeted again.

Last June, Pirates President Frank Coonelly acknowledged that fans had lost some of their faith in the team, faith the team would need to earn it back.

“We are genuinely focused on those great Pirates fans who are coming out to PNC Park and how much we appreciate their support,” Pirates President Frank Coonelly said in a statement responding to a request for comment. “At the same time, we appreciate that we have work to do to bring back fans who are not joining us at the park this year. Our television ratings remain in the top five in MLB, so we know that Pirates fans are following the team. We understand that we need to provide a compelling reason for all of our fans to come to the best ballpark in baseball.”

It was perhaps with those sentiments in mind that Pittsburgh pursued Chris Archer and Keone Kela, players who might have helped them if they had continued to contend in 2018, but who also could improve the club in future seasons. Given that Archer’s contract, assuming the team picks up his option years, runs through 2021 — a timeline that coincides with that of their best player, Starling Marte — it would be reasonable to assume the Pirates see a window of contention during that stretch.

This is what the Pirates have done so far this offseason:

• Traded Jordan Luplow and Max Moroff to Cleveland for Erik Gonzalez, Dante Mendoza, and Tahnaj Thomas
• Signed Jung Ho Kang
• Signed Lonnie Chisenhall
• Signed Jordan Lyles
• Traded Ivan Nova for Yordi Rosario and international cap space.
• Claimed Aaron Slegers off waivers

The team has also made the typical MLB teams minor league signings; among those, Tyler Lyons is the most interesting and promising. They also let Jordy Mercer go in free agency and declined Josh Harrison’s team option, though those weren’t big losses. The issue is the lack of progress on the major league roster from a team that, as Jeff Sullivan noted earlier this week, isn’t far from a playoff spot but currently has a projected Opening Day payroll of roughly $68 million. Only the Tampa Bay Rays have a lower projected payroll at the moment. This is how Pirates payroll has progressed over the years compared to MLB averages.

The first thing we might note is that the Pirates have always been a good bit below league average when it comes to spending. Given that the team plays in a smaller market, that’s not too surprising. The most obvious complaint for Pirates’ fans is the huge downturn in 2019 payroll we see as of now despite competing in 2018, losing no significant contributors this offseason, and gaining a full season of Chris Archer and Keone Kela. But that’s not where the angst regarding the Pirates’s spending really begins. If we were to look at graphs like the ones above for teams from similarly small markets like Milwaukee, Cleveland or Kansas City, we would expect to see similar graphs. What we would actually see, though, is that when those teams became competitive, they immediately invested more money into the roster to capitalize on that excitement, and ran close to (Cleveland) or above league-average payrolls (Milwaukee and Kansas City).

It’s that failure to invest that has disillusioned fans, and created a need for the team to somehow draw them back to the ballpark. Trading for Archer and Kela was a very good start, but at this point in the offseason, it’s hard to see how much more the Pirates can do given the remaining options and their purported budget constraints. They have mostly let the offseason pass them by, leaving deficiencies in the middle infield and in their rotation depth largely unaddressed.

In the middle infield, the team has options like Adam Frazier, Kevin Newman, Kevin Kramer, and Erik Gonzalez, but in a free agent market with a glut of reasonably priced options at second base, it’s hard not to think an opportunity was missed.

In the rotation, Mitch Keller might be ready to take a spot, but further depth would have raised the floor — and potentially the ceiling — for a team still close to contention. There are still some starters out there who could help, like Wade Miley, Gio Gonzalez, and of course, Dallas Keuchel, but it is possible the Pirates missed the boat on a better fit earlier in the offseason.

The Pirates had an opportunity this offseason to continue repairing their relationship with their fans. But an approach that looked so promising at the trade deadline has left much to be desired this winter. In order to win back the fans — and potentially gain back close to a million attendees a season — the team will have to win consistently, or at least offer a reasonable expectation that they might. There are lots of teams with built-in buffers that help keep their attendance from falling too far. The Pirates are not one of those. Their quiet offseason isn’t likely to attract more fans to the park on Opening Day, and their lack of additions might also hurt them at the end of the season in the standings.

Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Miami Marlins.

Batters

The lineup projections didn’t come out as poorly as I expected, though that may just mean I’m a particularly pessimistic individual. J.T. Realmuto is for real, of course, but that pretty little 3.6 WAR in the graphic may well be replaced with a WAR figure starting with a zero by the time the season actually starts. The effort to trade Realmuto has been a fascinating process, now going on for the better part of a year, with the team making noise that it would take a phenomenal offer for them to part with the catcher. Now, it could be interpreted as posturing, given that the team reportedly asked for the stars for the members of their Giancarlo Stanton/Christian Yelich/Marcell Ozuna outfield and settled for a moon pie. But I’m coming around to the idea that if Realmuto actually could be acquired for an ordinary package, he’d already be gone at this point. With the large-market teams continuing to display a real tendency to avoid spending, there may be a less willingness to part with a large pile of top prospects, those being needed to continue this cheap frugal strategy.

ZiPS isn’t yet impressed with Austin Dean, but outside of his modest projection, the only gaping wound — I’m still more optimistic than ZiPS on Brinson, though my cheerful good nature is dissipating — is at first base, where ZiPS projects the Marlins to have a worse first base situation than the Orioles do. Generally speaking, you’d like your first baseman to be above the Chris Davis Line. O’Brien did have a decent cameo appearance with the big league club, but he has a rather pedestrian minor league record and little defensive value. There’s one caveat though: O’Brien really did show far more patience than he ever had before in his brief stint in Miami, which is at least a good sign. He’s always had power and if his approach at the plate continues to be more scientific than his previous method of smashing lab equipment with a meteor hammer while blindfolded, perhaps he can make the computer look foolish.

There’s very little regression projected from Brian Anderson, which is also a positive note. Well, it’s positive if he does it; Anderson is one of the bigger disagreements ZiPS has with Steamer. If he can, it’ll improve the package the Marlins get in a trade when they’re required to pay Anderson something commensurate with his contributions!

One of the strangest rumors so far this offseason was the late buzz that the Marlins were interested in Nick Markakis. Markakis likely would have been a short-term upgrade over Dean, but it’s hard to see what the point would have been. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that fans will come out to see an additional win or two from a bad team, this is the Marlins we’re talking about. After so much ill will richly earned by the organization, they may be at the point where it takes something of a miracle to grow the fanbase; this isn’t a matter of winning 65 game instead of 64. Markakis has been safely returned to Atlanta, a destination that makes far more sense for him; the Marlins have safely returned to their paltry outfield projection.

Pitchers

The biggest positive here is Pablo Lopez, one of four players picked up from the Mariners in the David Phelps trade back in 2017. ZiPS doesn’t project a Luis Severino-esque breakout season for Lopez, but it does have him as a contributing, if fairly ordinary, starting pitcher. Even more, ZiPS has Lopez as the team’s best starting pitcher, and does so with an unusual level of certainty for a minor league pitcher of the non-elite variety.

Lopez is far from guaranteed a rotation spot in spring training, which strikes me as a mistake. If the team is actually serious about a full-on rebuild, rather than simply lurching from fire sale to fire sale to bide time between new ballparks, it’s important to see as much of pitchers like Lopez, Sandy Alcantara, Zac Gallen, and Caleb Smith as possible.

There’s unlikely to be much of a market for Wei-Yin Chen or Dan Straily no matter how long you “showcase” them. There are only so many roster spots and it will be harder to give pitchers like Lopez an extended audition with some of the pressure from below (Nick Neidert, Edward Cabrera, Jorge Guzman, etc.). If the Marlins want to be eternally “thrifty,” then they need to run the roster in such a way where they can find the inexpensive players who will actually make that strategy possible.

Bench and Prospects

It’s galling, but ZiPS isn’t terribly hopeful about the chances of the team getting any core players from the Stanton/Yelich/Ozuna dealing. My colleagues Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen are more optimistic, and Marlins fans have to be pulling for them to make the computer look foolish. What it comes down to is that ZiPS wants to see, at some point, the raw power actually become game power for Isan Diaz, and in the case of Monte Harrison, for him to not strike out 200 times in Double-A. Brinson’s struggles in the majors have been well-documented, and you don’t want me to tell you what projection percentile Magneuris Sierra has to meet in order to match the dizzying heights of Tom Goodwin.

Overall, the minor league system is still in the below-average range, but it’s certainly improved from the desolate days of recent yore, when a mannequin dressed up as Nolan Ryan might have made the team’s top 20 list.

If I apply human feelings to ZiPS, I think it would like to see Miguel Rojas get a chance at being a stopgap shortstop for someone. It would have to happen fairly quickly, as he’ll turn 30 next month, but with 2.4 WAR in 834 PA over the last two seasons, a projection in the same time zone as two wins for 2019, and the ability to play multiple positions well, he could be a solid fill-in for someone in an emergency. I mean, a major league team* actually voluntarily played Alcides Escobar in 2018.

*Legally, the 2018 Royals were part of major league baseball.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

From the time of its inaugural election in 1936, when the late Christy Mathewson (1880-1925) was chosen among the original class of five honorees, the Hall of Fame has often highlighted the stark contrast between baseball immortality and human mortality. In fact, more than one-third of the 329 members of the Hall were elected posthumously, an inevitability given that the major leagues had a 65-year head start on the institution that honors its greats. Yet Tuesday’s election of the late Roy Halladay — who died on November 7, 2017 while flying his Icon A5 light sport airplane — marked the first time since 1954 that the BBWAA elected a deceased player (Rabbit Maranville) and the first time since Mathewson that they did so in the player’s first year of eligibility.

A Denver native who spent 12 seasons with the Blue Jays (1998-2009) and four with the Phillies (2010-2013), Halladay was admired throughout the game for his tireless work ethic and his character as well as his impeccable control of his sinker. His devotion to the mental aspect of the game stood out; he rebounded from an historically dreadful 2000 season aided by the writings and counseling of sports psychologist Harvey Dorfman as much as the remaking of his mechanics and repertoire by Blue Jays pitching instructor Mel Queen. “Roy Halladay was your favorite player’s favorite player. A true ace and a wonderful person,” wrote pitcher Brandon McCarthy upon the news of his death. Read the rest of this entry »

Tony Gonsolin made a name for himself last year. After meriting a mere mention in last spring’s Los Angeles Dodgers top prospect rundown, the 24-year-old right-hander went on to be named the NL West team’s 2018 Minor League Pitcher of the Year. A role change jumpstarted his breakout.

Primarily a reliever in his four years at St. Mary’s College of California, Gonsolin continued in that role after the Dodgers selected him in the ninth round of the 2016 draft. That changed once the forward-thinking organization got an extended look at what he brings to the table. Intrigued by his velocity, multi-pitch mix, and 6-foot-2, 205-pound frame, they decided to try him as a starter.

The results were a resounding success. Pitching between High-A Rancho Cucamonga and Double-A Tulsa, the St. Mary’s graduate — he earned a business degree before turning pro — Gonsolin logged a 2.60 ERA and allowed just 104 hits, while fanning 155 batters, in 128 innings.

Gonsolin discussed his development, including his transition from reliever to starter, earlier this month. Also weighing in on the promising young pitcher was Brandon Gomes, the Dodgers director of player development.

———

Gonsolin on pitching analytics and his fastball: “I feel like every team is moving in that direction — they’re getting into more of the analytical side of baseball. Here, we have things like video with instant feedback where you can throw a pitch in your side work and by the time you get the ball back from the catcher you know how much it spun, and the axis in which it spun. That makes it easier to make pitch-to-pitch adjustments within the training element. Once you’re in-game it becomes, ‘What you have that day is what you have that day.’ You work with that. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about good and bad news for much-traveled pitcher Oliver Drake, the Dodgers’ signing of A.J. Pollock and the team’s perplexing offseason plan and lack of NL West competition, the Cubs’ signing of Brad Brach, and a report about the 10-day DL and the rules about optioning players to the minors, then (21:35) talk to Field of Schemes author Neil deMause about the financial calculus behind why teams aren’t spending more on player payroll, how the game got here and what the union can do, the rationale for rooting for a team despite subpar ownership, whether any progress has been made in educating the public about funding stadiums for sports teams, and more.

Audio intro: The Decemberists, "January Hymn"
Audio interstitial: Supergrass, "In it for the Money"
Audio outro: Old Sea Brigade, "Western Eyes"

Link to Jeff’s Pollock post
Link to Ringer article about the Dodgers’ offseason
Link to AP article about DL and option time
Link to Neil’s article
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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Because of who they are, and because of their extensive resources, the Dodgers have long been linked to Bryce Harper. When Harper’s market didn’t develop quite as expected, the Dodgers seemed a more likely fit. When they cleared some money by means of a large December trade with the Reds, the Dodgers seemed all the more likely a fit. Harper’s market at the moment isn’t entirely clear. We know the Phillies are in there. We don’t know who else is in there, if anyone. The Los Angeles connection has been increasingly easy to draw.

But now, it would seem the Dodgers have officially gone in another direction. Harper was maybe baseball’s best player in 2015, and while he’s been good since then, that season set the expectations awfully high. In a sense, Harper’s been a minor disappointment. Much of the same could be said of A.J. Pollock, who broke out to become a top-ten player in 2015. He hasn’t been quite the same player since. But he is now the newest player on the Dodgers. He’s getting, technically, a $60-million guarantee, spread over five years.

Pollock doesn’t completely close the door on Harper, in theory. The Dodgers could make it work if they wanted. We know they’re sufficiently creative. Yet it looks like the Dodgers are now focused on trying to add J.T. Realmuto. I wouldn’t say their Harper odds have improved. It’s Pollock who’s the man of the hour.

Read the rest of this entry »

Edgar Martinez sits at the center of my first really clear baseball memory. I have others, hazier ones, with moments that snap into more specific relief. I remember walking up the ramps of the Kingdome. I remember the brief moment of chill you’d experience when you entered its concrete chasm, separated suddenly from Seattle’s July warmth. I remember baseball guys doing baseball things, but which guys and what things are lost. Liking baseball, loving it, has persisted, but I don’t remember specific home runs any more than particular days of kindergarten, even though I still know how to read.

I have a hard time sussing out what of the rest of Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS is real memory and what is the result of having rewatched it, over and over and over, when I was in need of a good thing to hold on to. I do not feel confident that my impressions of Randy Johnson in relief, entering as he did to “Welcome to the Jungle,” are borne of the moment; nine-year-old me would not know to smirk at how much of his warmup was broadcast, would not have thought the hairstyles of those in the crowd funny. That’s what hair looked like in 1995.

But The Double is there. The Double I know. The Double I remember back through the years and into the corners of my living room. I recall the moment before the pitch was delivered. I remember my step-mom nervously fidgeting with the stakes of the moment and the gnawing concern about how long the game might go, how close to bedtime it would stretch. I remember yipping for joy, in that high-pitched way that kids have, annoying but pure. I remember, even if I didn’t yet quite have the vocabulary to talk about obsession and yearning, thinking, “Oh, I have to do this again.” I remember believing that Edgar Martinez was great. (I do not recall a single pitch of the Mariners loss to the Indians in the ALCS. Sometimes our memories spare us.)

I think much of baseball’s fastidious statistical chronicling is attributable to a native curiosity, a desire to be able to answer how this thing over here relates to that thing over there, even when the this and that are separated by generations. But I think a not-small part of our motivation to catalogue lies in an anxiety over the state of our own memories, whether we’re still sharp. We don’t just seek to make sure the deserving are immortalized; we seek to trust our own mortal lives, to know that we know things as they were. That we are reliable narrators. That the moments around which I built my fandom and my professional life, the root of this thing I sometimes recall more carefully than the details of my own biography, is as I thought it to be. That something so foundational need not be met with the same disquieting sensation I experience when I can recall what the third reliever on the Reds’ depth chart looks like, but for a moment, can’t muster up his name.

Edgar Martinez was a Hall of Famer, only for a long time he wasn’t one. And you start to wonder in those moments, despite knowing so many who agree with you, whether we haven’t all gotten it wrong, whether we aren’t a little less smart than we thought. Whether he was great.

And so I think it helps us to feel complete when we are affirmed in this way. We feel our memories and lives rich with detail, our mental pictures not only accurately rendered but placed in their proper context. Perhaps it takes me a beat longer than it used to to recall a player’s name from 1995, but this thing I know. I used to, as a very young person, think that Dan Wilson was a Hall of Famer. I was tiny and dumb and enamored with catchers, and there he was, our catcher and so the best catcher. But he was not the best. To Cooperstown he could only credibly go as a visitor, a witness to his friends’ greatness. I didn’t know what it meant to be great in any sort of a rigorous way back then; good childhoods aren’t often marked by an excess of rigor. I didn’t know. Except maybe on occasion I did.

After all, Edgar Martinez is a Hall of Famer, just like I remember him.