The Divide Between the Best and Worst Is Growing

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July 26, 2018

There’s room for debate over whether the present mix of super teams and tanking teams is good for baseball.

On the one hand, the Astros-Dodgers World Series last fall — as well as many of the matchups that preceded it — made for compelling theatre. The Astros featured one of the best offenses in MLB history. The Indians’ rotation was the definitely the best by some measures. There’s something to be said for appreciating rare performances in real time. And the field of elite clubs likely to participate in this coming October’s postseason — especially in the American League — promises more of the same.

Meanwhile, teams at the other end of the spectrum are operating rationally. Clubs are best positioned to win by acquiring premium long-term, cost-controlled assets. The best way to do that is by loading up on early draft picks and bonus-pool dollars. Even with the addition of the second Wild Card, few clubs seem interested in sustaining mediocrity.

Still, there can be consequences if too many teams are simply not competitive and the best teams are dominant.

Fans might be responding at the gate already. Earlier this year, two million fans were missing. Now, through July 23rd, 2.55 million fans are missing.

While a frigid April had something to do with attendance woes, gate receipts are still down nearly two million fans, or roughly 5%, from last April 15 through July 23 compared to the same period last season.

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The Rays Played a Pitcher at Third Base

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July 26, 2018

Wednesday was a busy day for the Rays front office. First, they traded starter Nathan Eovaldi to the rival Red Sox. Then, they traded versatile righty Matt Andriese to the Diamondbacks. As I write this, Wednesday still has another few hours to go, so it’s possible they have even more in store, something you’ll have heard about by the time this post is published. Though the Rays are still incredibly north of .500, they’re not really in the hunt, so they’re shifting their priorities to the future. The nearer-term future, but the future nevertheless.

In the middle of the Rays’ busy Wednesday, there was a baseball game. It was a baseball game Eovaldi was scheduled to start. Based on that fact alone, the game was out of the ordinary, but it got stranger still. The Rays, of course, are the team that brought you the opener. They’re the team that used a catcher to protect a late lead. They’re the team that played a pitcher at first base. And now they’re also the team that played a pitcher at third base. These weren’t emergency circumstances the Rays were playing under. It was the same strategy as it was before, with Jose Alvarado. This time, it was Sergio Romo’s turn to head to a corner.

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Effectively Wild Episode 1248: Hustle and Slow

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July 26, 2018

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Zach Britton and Nathan Eovaldi trades, the Yankees’ unbelievable bullpen, the Rays’ most recent Sergio Romo experiment, and the Gary Sanchez hustle/groin-strain saga, follow up on athletes dominating lesser competition and Noah Syndergaard’s latest affliction, then answer emails about Odubel Herrera, Rhys Hoskins, how a bad fielder affects a better fielder’s positioning, and the future of specialty coaches. Lastly, they bring on comedian Jim Jefferies (57:06) to discuss the down-and-up Dodgers, being a celebrity fan, the sport’s pace of play, how he learned to love baseball after moving to the U.S., baseball vs. cricket, the use of stats in baseball and cricket, steroids, Mike Trout vs. Bryce Harper, and more.

Audio intro: Gord Downie, "The East Wind"
Audio interstitial: The White Stripes, "Jimmy the Exploder"
Audio outro: Lou Reed, "Oh, Jim"

Link to Ben’s article about Cano’s hustle
Link to community manager ratings

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The Rockies Take on Final Boss

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July 25, 2018

The first of what will likely be several Blue Jays players to depart Toronto before the deadline has been traded this evening: right-handed reliever Seung Hwan Oh is headed off to Planet Coors. While the majority of the Blue Jays’ most likely trade candidates — Josh Donaldson, for example, and basically all the starting pitchers — have generally been disappointing this year, Oh was one of the legitimate success stories for Toronto in 2018. Coming off a 4.10 ERA/4.44 FIP campaign in St. Louis, a significant decline from the 1.92 ERA he put during his first season in the United States, Oh signed with the Blue Jays for just one year and $2 million this offseason — with a $2.5 million club option for 2019 after his contract agreement with the Rangers fell through. Oh needs his slider working to have sustained success and, by and large, it’s worked this year.

Burned by bullpens that ranked among the bottom-third of baseball each year from 2014 to -16, the Rockies have spent on relievers recently, an effort which led to the seventh-best reliever WAR among clubs in 2017. The team doubled down last winter, spending $106 million to bring back Jake McGee while adding Wade Davis and Bryan Shaw to replace Greg Holland. These moves worked out less well, to be generous: McGee and Shaw have combined for an ERA well past six, while Wade Davis is in the midst of an unremarkable, though less disastrous, season as the closer. With Nolan Arenado creeping towards free agency, the team’s window to contend is now, so bringing in Oh, who can also help in 2019, is a good add, and one that didn’t require an obscene amount of money. Colorado has more problems, but they did address one of their pressing needs.

Of the players included in the return, first basemen Sean Bouchard and Chad Spanberger, the latter is interesting enough — and probably sufficiently low in the organization’s pecking-order — that I tried to acquire him for the Orioles in exchange for Adam Jones this morning. This is the preferable haul for the Rockies, though. Not likely being able to play outfield professionally — and certainly not in a large outfield like the one Coors possesses — Spanberger is probably limited to first or designated hitter. Simply put, with other first basemen in the system and no DH in most games, he didn’t have a great deal of utility for the Rockies. In Toronto, he’ll have more of an opportunity. The Sally League is a long way from the majors and McCormick Field in Asheville is the second-best home-run park in the league (behind Greensboro), but Spanberger’s shown enough raw power that he merits some attention. For a relief pitcher in whom you’ve only invested a couple of million dollars, that’s good enough.


Scouting the Rays’ Return for Matt Andriese

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July 25, 2018

The Rays traded RHP Matt Andriese to the Diamondbacks this afternoon for minor leaguers Michael Perez and Brian Shaffer.

Tampa Bay has targeted basically two kinds of player in trades over the past few years — specifically, big-league-ready types who either (a) could function as a starting pitcher or (b) feature contact skills and the capacity to play an up-the-middle defensive position. Perez, a catcher, fits the latter category and has made strides this year defensively, moving from a 50 to a 55 behind the plate, driven by his improvement metrically in the framing department. There isn’t much in the way of publicly available minor-league framing numbers, and there’s some variance even with the big leagues ones, but multiple front-office sources described Perez’s figures this year as “elite.” He’s a definite hit-over-power type offensively and is seen as a future backup with just mistake power, but sometimes these types can turn into low-end regulars for a few years. He will likely be a 40+ FV in the coming update to THE BOARD, adding to Tampa Bay’s embarrassment of minor-league depth that was already supplemented earlier today.

Perez was the headliner here. Shaffer, meanwhile, is more of a generic depth arm. He was a sixth-rounder in 2017 out of Maryland and would occasionally show fringey stuff (87-91 mph) and sometimes more than that (90-93 mph with above-average life). His 6-foot-5, 220-pound frame is durable and he throws strikes, so any kind of improvement in the stuff department would make him a solid bet to turn into a back-end starter. He’s been mostly 89-92, touching 94 mph, this year with a slider that’s fringey to average and a changeup that’s a little better but mostly average. In today’s game, this is somewhere in the range of a sixth starter, swing man, innings-eating middle reliever or up/down fill arm, as indicated by the fact that Shaffer is still pitching in Low-A at nearly 22 years old. Shaffer will likely be a 35 or 35+ FV.


The Pirates Are in This Thing

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July 25, 2018

Not to be too harsh to the Pirates, but the club hasn’t been all that relevant for much of the year. They started off the season pretty well and, at the end of April, their 17-12 record put them just half a game out of first place. With three other teams — teams considered more talented — all hovering around the same spot, it was safe to assume the Pirates would eventually get lost in the shuffle. On May 17, after winning eight of nine games, the Pirates were in first place with a 26-17 record and a 30% chance at making the playoffs. Then the expected fade occurred, and the team went 16-32 over the next 48 games. Their playoff hopes looked shot, as the graph below shows.

Now here is what the playoff odds look like after an 11-game winning streak, but before today’s loss.

Simply approaching a 20% chance of qualifying for the postseason might not seem particularly notable, but the National League is a jumbled mess right now. After the Dodgers and Cubs, there are nine teams with a reasonable shot at one of the three remaining playoff berths and none of the teams has odds greater than 60%, as the table below indicates.

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Rob Manfred, Mike Trout, and Knowing When You’re Winning

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July 25, 2018

Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. He has 25 homers (third in the league), a 20.7% walk rate (best), and has contributed nearly five runs on the bases (12th). He’s also made 100% of routine plays, 100% of likely plays, and 100% of even plays in center, good for a 3.4 UZR/150. He’s tied with Jose Ramirez for the league lead in WAR. Mike Trout is good at everything! You know this. I know this. All hail Mike Trout.

Commissioner Rob Manfred recently identified what he regards as a flaw, though:

Player marketing requires one thing for sure — the player. You cannot market a player passively. You can’t market anything passively. You need people to engage with those to whom you are trying to market in order to have effective marketing. We are very interested in having our players more engaged and having higher-profile players and helping our players develop their individual brand. But that involves the player being actively engaged.

Mike’s a great, great player and a really nice person, but he’s made certain decisions about what he wants to do and what he doesn’t want to do, and how he wants to spend his free time and how he doesn’t want to spend his free time. That’s up to him. If he wants to engage and be more active in that area, I think we could help him make his brand really, really big. But he has to make a decision that he’s prepared to engage in that area. It takes time and effort.

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Did the Yankees Just Win the Wild Card Game?

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July 25, 2018

There’s a reason some have connected starting pitchers to the Yankees.

According to ERA- and WAR, the Yankees’ rotation ranks behind that of the other AL elites like the Astros, Indians, and Red Sox, which rank 1-2-3 in ERA-. The Yankees rank sixth (95), just better than league average.

Only Luis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka, and Fringe Five alumnus Jonathan Loaisiga project to produce ERA and FIP marks below four the rest of the way, according to FanGraphs Depth Charts. While Severino is an ace, playoff contenders typically always want more starting pitching. Even Yu Darvish wasn’t seen as a luxury item to the pitching-rich Dodgers last season.

But on Tuesday, the Yankees continued to do what they’ve done since last deadline season by adding to the game’s best bullpen — according to ERA, WAR and ERA- — with the addition of Zach Britton.

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Rays Add Lefty Jalen Beeks to Deep System

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July 25, 2018

Here are my very brief thoughts on Jalen Beeks, who was acquired by Tampa Bay from Boston in exchange for Nathan Eovaldi:

Beeks was ranked 6th in a bad Red Sox system entering the year and received a 45 FV grade from us as we thought he had passable control and a deep enough pitch mix to start. He proceeded to dominate the International League and had accumulated 117 strikeouts in 87.1 innings at the time of the trade.

We still have a 45 FV on Beeks, who has a fringe fastball in the 89-93-mph range, an above-average curveball, and an average changeup and cutter. Finding some way for the fastball to play is of paramount importance to Beeks’ ability to start, and it’s probably going to take heavier in-zone use of his curveball to keep hitters from sitting on a relatively hittable fastball. Tampa Bay’s pitchers have used their fastballs less than all other big leagues teams aside from the Yankees, so this seems likely to occur. Beeks projects as a No. 4 or No. 5 starter, and because we’re talking about a lefty with a good breaking ball, his injury-independent floor is that of a good bullpen piece.

You could argue this was Boston’s best realistic trade chip as none of the other 45 FV prospects in the org have really performed this year, and 50 FV prospects Michael Chavis (PED suspension) and Jay Groome (Tommy John) have other issues impacting their value.


Red Sox and Rays Both Bet on Results

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July 25, 2018

The Astros have it relatively easy: They’re a super-team lacking meaningful divisional competition. The Indians have it even easier: They should resemble a super-team as well, playing in one of the very worst divisions in modern baseball history. This isn’t what it’s like for the Yankees or the Red Sox. While both teams are almost certainly going to the playoffs, one of them will have to survive the wild-card game, which brings an abrupt end to one competitive team’s season. Even though either team would be favored in this year’s matchup, neither is excited by the prospect, so they’re working to try to finish in first. Late Tuesday, the Yankees got better by fetching help in the bullpen. Early Wednesday, the Red Sox responded by fetching help in the rotation.

Red Sox get:

Rays get:

It’s a clean trade — a one-for-one between a team in the hunt and a team watching it from the outside. In general, it looks how these trades usually look. The good team is getting a veteran rental, and the worse team is getting a longer-term prospect. Indeed, you could say this is a normal trade for the teams to make. But even normal trades are interesting! And for both sides, this is a bet on the numbers. It’s a bet on the new Eovaldi, and on the new Beeks. Both have been pitchers in transition.

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