If life reveals anything, it’s that the best way to contend with the past isn’t to process it calmly and deliberately but rather to push it far away and pretend it never existed and hope blindly that the future will somehow facilitate better outcomes.
Today, FanGraphs is happy to participate in this very healthy and doctor-approved process by presenting the 2019 Steamer projections. The work of Jared Cross, Steamer represents the first opportunity of the offseason to peer into the gauzy mists of the future. The prorated version of the forecasts (known as Steamer 600) is useful, too, as a sort of quick estimate of true talent.
What does one find in the numbers? That Mike Trout remains strong in the baseball department, for one. And that free agents Bryce Harper and Manny Machado are likely to produce very similar age-26 campaigns. And that, whatever happens next week, Boston left-hander Chris Sale is the AL Cy Young favorite for 2019.
| 9:08 |
: Hello friends |
| 9:08 |
: Welcome to Friday baseball chat |
| 9:08 |
: Usually I’m late to start because of a pre-chat podcast. Today it was a pre-chat phone conversation with the boss! Always something |
| 9:09 |
: First Friday baseball chat in a while with no active…baseball. Weird feeling. Also weird that it already feels normal |
| 9:09 |
: Hello, friend! |
| 9:09 |
: Hello friend |
Unlike Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, who retired after the 1973 and -76 seasons, respectively, Willie McCovey was still playing in 1978, which means that I was old enough to see the tail end of his career, and to have more than an inkling of his significance. My father and grandfather, lifelong Dodgers fans, spoke with a mixture of awe and “ohhhh” regarding the towering slugger nicknamed “Stretch,” while my eight-year-old brain marveled at the back of his 1978 Topps card, which required a different, smaller font than the standard cards in order to contain every season, and every home run — 493 of them, 92 more than any other player in the set — of a career that stretched back to 1959. McCovey was power-hitting royalty, with a regal bearing and a uniform number (44) that linked him both to Aaron, whose home run heroics I’d already read about, and Reggie Jackson, whose exploits I’d seen on television.
So it was a sizable pang that I felt upon hearing Wednesday night’s news that McCovey passed away at the age of 80 after what the Giants called “a battle with ongoing health issues.” Of the small handful of Hall of Famers whose autographs I’ve obtained myself, I don’t think any had shuffled off this mortal coil until McCovey.
Free agency officially begins on Saturday. While clubs have had the right this week to negotiate exclusively with their own departing players, that stops tomorrow. Tomorrow, anyone can talk to anyone.
As we enter free-agent season and attempt to understand which deals are likely and which are less so, it helps to have a sense of how much each club has to spend. Last offseason unfolded slow: teams and players battled on contract terms until spring. When the dust finally settled, payroll hadn’t actually increased from the previous year — a relatively rare occurrence, especially in an era when the game is so financially healthy.
That lack of upward movement in salaries was attributed, in part, to the impressive free-agent class of this winter. By looking at payrolls from the past couple years, we can get an idea of who has the most money to spend and who will need to significantly increase payroll if they want to get in on free-agent spending.
To begin, let’s consider what payrolls looked like at the beginning of the 2018 campaign.
That massive payroll worked out pretty well for the Red Sox: the World Series winners took advantage of the attempt by others clubs to stay under the competitive-balance tax threshold. At the other end of the payroll spectrum, meanwhile, Milwaukee, Oakland, and Tampa Bay managed to win a bunch of games without spending big, though the relationship between payroll and wins remains relatively strong.
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This past Sunday’s notes column led with Scott Radinsky’s evolution as a pitching coach. Admittedly old-school when he first started out, the former big-league left-hander has since incorporated a heavy dose of new-age into his approach. TrackMan and the Angels’ analytics team were his allies as he served as Anaheim’s bullpen coach each of the past three seasons.
Today we’ll hear from Radinsky on several of the team’s relievers going forward. He won’t be with them — along with a few other Angels coaches, he won’t be returning — but he certainly knows each of them well. Having been hands-on with their development — particularly the youngsters of the bunch — he sees plenty of blue skies ahead for the club’s bullpen.
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Radinsky on Hansel Robles: “Sometimes it takes awhile for a guy to buy in to what we’re sharing with them, but once he does, he can make real strides. It’s not the Bible, but it is well-thought-out information. This isn’t like back in the day when a pitching coach was on his own island and relying on the naked eye. It’s valuable data that is given to us as coaches, and it’s our job to translate it and pass it along to the players. We can use it to make them better.
“We had guys come [to the Angels] and buy in. They would realize, ‘Damn, man.’ Hansel Robles, from the Mets. This guy was headstrong about using his fastball. His fastball is a great pitch — he can really backspin it at the top of the zone — but our encouragement was, ‘When the catcher puts down slider, you don’t always have to shake. Utilize the thing.’ And do you know what? The more he used it, the better it got. Not only that, the more respect his fastball got. The next thing you know, he became more of a complete pitcher, and we were able to use him in higher-leverage situations.
One of the worst called balls of the season was thrown, and called, in the seventh inning of a White Sox game on September 10. I always just measure these things by the distance from the center of the strike zone. Lucas Giolito threw a two-strike pitch close to the center of the strike zone. It was taken, and called a ball. I’m only bringing this to your attention because of the subsequent call on the Royals TV broadcast:
Steve Physioc: Right down the middle for ball three.
Rex Hudler: [laughing] Wowwwwww. Woo! We got away with one there.
Physioc and Hudler were *on it.* They talked through a slow-motion replay and everything. And, I mean, the call was clearly absurd. It merited some attention. But we’re talking about a mid-September game between the White Sox and the Royals. At the end of the day, who cares, right? Still, the announcers were sufficiently locked in. Just four days later, we saw the true worst called ball of the season. It happened in the seventh inning of a game between the playoff-hopeful Dodgers and the playoff-hopeful Cardinals. As usual, a pitch sailed right down the middle, and it wasn’t called as a strike. It obviously should’ve been a strike. But no one said a word about it. Not on either side, not on TV or radio. It was as if the call didn’t happen at all. The worst such call of an entire baseball season.
That makes it sound ridiculous. Ridiculously negligent, on the part of everyone involved. In reality, there was a good reason. There’s usually a good reason. What happened is that Dakota Hudson threw a slider, right down the middle, and it was called a first-pitch ball. It was also maybe the least interesting part of the entire sequence.
| 2:02 |
: Good morning from Tempe. Let’s begin our final pre-prospect list chat.
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| 2:02 |
: Do you know if Anderson Espinoza has started throwing, and if so how he looks?
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| 2:03 |
: He did not throw during Padres instructs. He may be throwing off a mound but, if he is, it’s private, so I don’t know how he looks.
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| 2:03 |
: Hey Eric. How do Luis Basabe and Luis Robert look so far?
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| 2:04 |
: LouBob has been fine, Basabe has not been great.
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| 2:04 |
: Do you guys have any planned draft coverage coming up?
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One would think that setting a 15-year record for wins would feel more satisfying than it ultimately did for the 2018 edition of the Mariners. Alas, the world is as cruel as the Wheel of Fortune suggests: consonants are free but you have to pay for vowels. The A’s finished ahead of the M’s, giving the former club a place in the Wild Card Game.
One of the defining features of the Seattle Mariners during the Jerry Dipoto regime is that the payroll has increased — from among the bottom 10 in 2012-13 to the back of the top 10 in 2018 — even though the club hasn’t been particularly active in free agency or signing young talent to long-term extensions.
| 12:02 |
: Hey folks, good afternoon and welcome to today’s first chat of the long, dark offseason. I’m still catching my breath from an exhausting month and working on some stuff that has yet to see the light of day, including an ESPN-Plus piece on the Defensive Players of the Year, a piece on the passing of the great Willie McCovey, and my contributions to our Top 50 Free Agents list. The Jaffe-Span household is also battling various stages of a low-grade but stubborn cold, and all of the Haribo gummies left over from Halloween can do only so much.
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| 12:03 |
: what % chance do you think the Nats have of retaining Harper?
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| 12:07 |
: That’s a very good question. it wasn’t entirely clear whether Scott Boras was merely joking when he said the other day that a deal was “already completed and done, but Bryce has told me that he wanted to tell you personally.” https://nypost.com/2018/10/29/scott-boras-drops-improbable-bryce-harpe…
If that’s true, the only team that could be with is the Nationals, who do enjoy a particularly chummy relationship with Boras such that Stephen Strasburg actually went the extension route rather than free agency. Most believe Boras had tongue in cheek when he said that. Still, I think that there’s a reasonable chance, somewhere between 33% and 50%, that Bryce stays in Washington. |
| 12:08 |
: hi Jay! What do you say are the chances Yankees don´t sign either Machado or Harper? It´s gotta be higher than 50% considering neither is a great fit for the team.
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| 12:10 |
: I’d put it around 50%. Given the re-signing of Gardner, even at fourth outfielder money, as well as the continued presence of Judge, Hicks and Stanton and the pending arrival of Clint Frazier, Harper doesn’t make much sense. Machado makes more sense given Didi Gregorius’s Tommy John surgery. The team loves him some Didi but he’s going to miss roughly half of his final season under club control. If they really want Machado, it’s not just to alleviate what might be a three-month absence.
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| 12:10 |
: hi Jay! IF Kershaw extends his contract with the Dodgers, is something like 5/175 in the ballpark?
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