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I think most people know that Aaron Nola and Jake Arrieta are members of the Philadelphia Phillies’ rotation. I’m guessing that a lot of you — even those not from or otherwise affectionate towards Philadelphia — could identify Vince Velasquez as a Philly starter, too. It may interest you to know, then, that none of these three men, all possessed of relative fame, led their club in strikeout percentage as a starter last year. The man who did so struck out fully 27.1% of the batters he faced, which was the 14th-best such mark in the league among starters with as many innings thrown. He also posted, at 1.01, the second-highest differential between his ERA (4.80) and FIP (3.79) in the game. His name is Nick Pivetta. Nick Pivetta is 25 years old. You may wish to consider Nick Pivetta.

When my colleague Jeff Sullivan last considered Nick Pivetta, back in April, he called him “the newest good Phillies starter,” and gave particular attention to Pivetta’s renewed confidence in his curveball. Nothing in Pivetta’s 2018 performance suggested Jeff was off the mark in this assessment, and indeed there may now be more reasons to be optimistic about the right-hander’s future than there were before the year.

Here’s one of them: a heat map of all the curveballs Pivetta threw this year (from the pitcher’s point of view):

And here’s that same chart, but for 2017:

In 2017, the curveballs Pivetta threw were basically in the same spot — down and away to righties; down and in to lefties — whether he was ahead or behind in the count. As a pitcher, it’s good not to do the same thing all the time. So it’s very encouraging that this year, Pivetta found two new places to throw his curveball: in on right-handers’ hands, even when behind in the count, and down and away to lefties.

Pivetta used to have one curveball, and now he has four. Because of the way his pitches interact — as Jeff noted, he uses his curveball mostly to set up his fastball — that means an even greater increase in the number of possible pitch sequences available to him.

And it’s not as if Pivetta spent the entire year reliant on that promising curve. Although he ended 2018 having thrown the pitch 21.7% of the time — more than six points above his 2017 mark — he wasn’t consistent in his use of the pitch throughout the season. In April, when Jeff wrote about it, Pivetta was going to the curve around 27% of the time. By the end of the year, with the Phillies solidly out of contention and (presumably) with a tiring arm, Pivetta went to the curve a little less than 19% of the time. The difference was, for the most part, made up by his increased use of a sinker, which generates an unusually high percentage of whiffs for a pitch of its kind (8.3% in 2018). That ability to adjust an otherwise successful approach as the season goes along augurs well for his future.

Which brings me to another promising thing about Pivetta’s 2018 — he didn’t really get worse as the season went along, despite setting a career high in innings pitched:

When it comes to pitching, the best predictor of success in the future is success in the past, and we now have evidence that Pivetta can put up a FIP- better than league average (92) over a full season. That isn’t evidence we had before the season (Pivetta was never especially highly regarded as a prospect), and it means that it’s now reasonable to expect something at least close to that level of performance in 2019.

Pivetta is never going to be a guy who blows you away with his stuff or his velocity — his spin rate is just about average, and his velocity is fast but not otherworldly in this supercharged environment — but he can be a guy fully in command of four serviceable big-league pitches, and that’s not nothing today or any day. For a fourth starter, it’s very good indeed.

What I’ll be paying attention to in 2019 is whether the large gap between Pivetta’s ERA and his FIP, which I noted at the beginning of this piece but have left unmentioned until now, persists for a third consecutive season. There are some players who just consistently under-perform their peripherals for one reason or another, and a third season with an ERA more than a full point above his FIP might be reasonable evidence that Pivetta is one of those guys. It might also just be evidence that Philadelphia’s defense is unusually terrible.

Batters hit over .300 on ground balls against Pivetta in 2018, which is unusual given that the league average usually sits in the .240s; he also allowed an unusually high slugging percentage on fly balls. Maybe some of those balls will find gloves in 2019. Maybe they won’t. Again, Philly’s defense was very bad in 2018. Either way, we’ll learn something. For now, Pivetta remains one of the better young starters in the game, and a key component of what could be — depending on how free agency plays out — a very solid Phillies team in 2019.

The team that made openers baseball’s hot new thing made a run at the playoffs with a blazing final act, but fell short of the playoffs thanks to the daunting win total non-AL Central teams needed to stretch the season into October.

The Setup

The Tampa Bay Rays, newly shorn of the Devil in their name, were rightly one of baseball’s darlings from 2008 to 2013, winning 90 games in all but one season and making four playoff appearances, including one World Series. That’s no easy feat in a division with the Red Sox and Yankees, the baseball versions of Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly come to life. If Tampa has an avatar, it’s more akin to Chris Farley’s plaid-jacketed motivational speaker who lives in a van down by the river.

The initial run of the Rays eventually lost steam, the team dragged down by some difficult realities they had to face. One of the biggest problems for the Rays was that the common notion that building a consistent winner will lead to increased attendance (which would in turn lead to larger revenues that could keep the team together), didn’t actually work in their case. Whether it’s the fault of the park or not, by the time of their final 90-win season, the team was welcoming barely 100,000 fans more to the Trop than they were in 2007, a 66-win slog and the team’s tenth consecutive losing season.

For a team payroll that has never even come close to nine digits to compete in the AL East, the Rays absolutely have to have an assembly line of prospects, a continual cycle of replacement of talent. The team has always shown a knack for trading or letting players depart before their collapses rather than after, but that isn’t enough by itself.

What failed the team was largely the amateur drafts, starting around 2008, not providing enough quality to replace the departures. Entering 2018, only a single player drafted by the Rays over the previous decade had established himself as an impact player in the majors, Kevin Kiermaier. Let’s put in this way: The Rays made 14 first-round picks from 2008 to 2017 and the second most-accomplished player after Tim Beckham of that group is likely Ryne Stanek or Mikie Mahtook. (I’m talking players taken in the first round proper; the Rays got Blake Snell as a supplementary pick.)

The virtuous cycle of rebuild-invest-push-repeat failed to work for the organization for whatever reason and without a steady flow of prospects, the fact that the Rays have only had one season in which they fell below 70 wins is a testament to the front office’s scrounging abilities. Running the Rays is a bit like being asked to turn straw into gold and oh yeah, you don’t actually have the budget to buy straw.

Trading Evan Longoria, Brad Boxberger, Steven Souza, Corey Dickerson, and Jake Odorizzi before the season didn’t do wonders for the team’s reputation among fans, either. It could rightly be argued that most of these moves made sense from a baseball perspective — almost all of these players were at the height of their value, with the obvious exception of Longoria — but the problem with always making the cheap move is that your fanbase will come to believe that even the good, cheap move was done purely for reasons of thrift.

Not helping the Rays coming into 2018 season was the revelation that every pitcher the Rays had, ever had, or ever will acquire, required Tommy John surgery before the season started. OK, that’s what they call a “lie,” but it felt a bit like the truth when Brent Honeywell and Jose De Leon, both pitchers who the Rays hoped to count on, needed elbow surgery within just a couple weeks of each other.

The Projection

While the projections didn’t adopt quite the same panicked tone many writers displayed regarding the team over the winter, I can hardly claim ZiPS was predicting greatness with a 76-86 projection and a 6% chance at making the playoffs. The computer felt that pretty much every player Tampa Bay traded would have a worse season than with the Rays, but also predicted that with the loss of Honeywell and De Leon, the pitching was stretched too thin, and it was hard to see the Rays improvising enough of a lineup to make up for these losses.

The Results

THE TAMPA BAY RAYS BROKE WINS ABOVE REPLACEMENT!

Sometimes things just need capital letters. If you made a movie about the 2018 Rays, it would be impossible to craft a trailer that didn’t heavily mention the “openers,” possibly with some hoary An Experiment So Crazy That It Just May Work cliché booming over Ryan Yarbrough striking out batters to an 80s rock anthem.

For those curiously still unaware of this concept, beginning with Sergio Romo’s one-inning, three-strikeout “start” on May 19th, the Rays started using relievers to open games; they would quickly give way to a long “reliever,” who would pitch several innings. The general idea was that with a thin pitching staff — the Rays didn’t engage in any such shenanigans with the Blake Snell or Chris Archer starts — there was a benefit to being able to play matchups early in the game and get guaranteed innings from relievers, who are easier to find than a starter with an identical ERA.

As for breaking WAR, starters and relievers are pegged to different replacement levels, reflecting the better quality of free or cheap talent among relievers than starters. But what happens to WAR when relievers are being used as starters and vice-versa? A pitcher like Yarbrough ends up getting pegged relative to the higher replacement level of relievers even though he’s been given the workload of a starter. If these changes become pervasive, it will likely require a reimagining of how we categorize starters and relievers for these purposes.

In the end, the Rays had “relievers” who went five innings 31 times in 2018, the fourth-most going back to 1908 (the limit of Baseball-Reference’s Play Index). The entirety of baseball in 2016 and 2017 only had 37 such games combined. The last team with even ten five-inning relief stints was the 1991 Orioles and that wasn’t so much by design as due to the fact that the team’s rotation was a terrifying Lovecraftian amalgamation.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, however, and none of this would have persisted if the Rays didn’t get results. In the five-inning “relief” stints, the team (Yarbrough was the most notable, but the team also used Austin Pruitt, Yonny Chirinos, and Jalen Beeks prominently in this pseudo-starter role) combined to throw 170 2/3 innings with a 3.48 ERA, sort of like a weird J.A. Happ chimera to join the A-Rod centaur among baseball’s mythical menagerie.

After starting this opening strategy, the Rays went 69-50, a 94-win seasonal pace, and after receiving quick boosts from midseason trades for Tommy Pham and Ji-Man Choi, the team went 36-19 in their closing kick.

Unfortunately, this was the wrong year for that kind of thing. The AL and NL have reversed roles the last couple of years, with the NL becoming wide-open and the AL the league bifurcated into essentially two leagues, one with super-teams, the other with rebuilders.

What’s depressing from the point of view of the Rays is that the team still would have missed the playoffs by two and a half games if the standings reset on the morning of May 19th.

If the Rays had won 94 games instead of their actual 90, it would have been enough to take the AL East in 2017, 2016, and 2015, while earning a wild card appearance in 2014, 2013, and 2012. The last time 94 wins didn’t get October baseball for an AL team was 2010, when there was only one wild card spot; the Yankees went 95-67 that year. Whether 94 or 90 wins, it was only enough in 2018 to make the Rays the last team eliminated from the playoffs in the American League.

What Comes Next?

The Rays will remain misers for the foreseeable future if they don’t finagle their way into a new stadium. Even with the recent success, the team will have to continue to find values on a shoestring budget, something that is harder to do than it used to be with the general inflation of smartness in front offices over the last 15 years.

From a general baseball standpoint, it also remains to be seen how the opener strategy will affect pitcher salaries if more teams adopt this for their lesser pitchers. I don’t believe that in the end it’ll make a big difference; teams are far less likely to care about a starter’s win totals or a reliever’s saves than even ten years ago. But I’m naturally cynical, so I expect to still be watching this closely.

The really good news for the Rays is that they’ll return almost the entire core of the roster in 2019, with only Vidal Nuño, Carlos Gomez, and Sergio Romo hitting free agency. The 2017-2018 bloodletting has resulted in a roster that, even with everybody tendered, has only a single player making $5 million (Kiermaier) and a payroll that can stay short of $50 million.

I suspect we won’t see the Rays shedding much in the way of 2019 talent this winter; if they were close to doing that, I don’t see them adding Mike Zunino, now the team’s veteran in terms of service time. A Kevin Kiermaier trade strikes me as very unlikely, both because he’s coming off a down year full of injuries and because they just traded Mallex Smith. Nor would Austin Meadows be a candidate to make such a trade practical as he’s the probable right fielder.

The very early projections, based solely on what the Rays have on the roster right now, see a team in the mid-80s for wins, with diminished expectations on the De Leon/Honeywell returns. The Rays are a clever organization, however, and with the farm system recovering over the last few years from the doldrums of the early-mid ’10s to once again be in the top tier, I suspect this team can continue to punch above its weight class, even if in miserly fashion.

Preliminary ZiPS Projection, Blake Snell

I think that Snell is likely to be the AL Cy Young winner when the award is announced this afternoon, and with his performance being a key factor in the team’s revival, avoiding serious regression is crucial for Tampa. ZiPS saw an improvement for Snell in 2018, projecting a 3.70 ERA and 186 strikeouts in 175 1/3 innings, enough to just about the hit the three-WAR mark (with a four-to-five win peak), but it didn’t see the Cy Young breakout.

No 219 ERA+ repeats there, but those are legitimate ace numbers, and ZiPS is being surprisingly un-grumpy about downside risk outside of innings in future seasons. ZiPS sees enough talent in Snell to compensate for the inherent fragility of pitchers and the skewed risk you see in all great players (there are simply larger downsides than upsides). It’ll be interesting to see if the Rays can sign Snell to a similar contract to the recently departed Archer.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the St. Louis Cardinals. 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.

***Editor’s note: Andy Young was ranked #12 on this list upon initial publication, but he was traded to the Diamondbacks and removed from this list when the Dbacks list was published.***

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.

UMP: The Untitled McDongenhagen Project, Episode 6
This is the sixth episode of a weekly program co-hosted by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel about player evaluation in all its forms. The show, which is available through the normal FanGraphs Audio feed, has a working name but barely. The show is not all prospect stuff, but there is plenty of that, as the hosts are Prospect Men. Below are some timestamps to make listening and navigation easier.

1:40 – Kiley takes a suggestion from Ben Lindbergh about a slogan for the podcast

2:50 – TOPIC ONE: Free Agency Preview

3:57 – Eric brings up how short the 2019 free agent class is set to come, relative to expectations a year or two ago

5:05 – Kiley gets in a solid Jeff Passan burn

5:20 – Discussing how we got here and how stock has moved in the past year or two, feat. Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, Clayton Kershaw, David Price, Patrick Corbin, Josh Donaldson, Michael Brantley, A.J. Pollock, Daniel Murphy, Andrew McCutchen, Craig Kimbrel, Jed Lowrie, Nathan Eovaldi

7:00 – Eric brings up the junior college gambit Harper made almost a decade ago, specifically to pay off this offseason and Kiley speculates how much that ended up making him

8:20 – Kiley revisits how Harper, Machado and Jameson Taillon would’ve been evaluated using today’s amateur scouting methods as a way to get into comparing their markets today

11:00 – Kiley shares some buzz he’s heard about Washington’s willingness to spend on Harper (this is before the report came out about the $300M offer)

13:38 – Eric makes the case that Machado fits the Nationals better than Harper

14:50 – Eric comes off the top rope with a #RobotUmps leading to Harper being a catcher hypothetical

16:48 – Kiley comes off a different top rope with an Isaac Asimov reference

17:02 – Kiley comes down strong on Patrick Corbin vs. Dallas Keuchel

19:00 – Eric proposes a use case where Keuchel could uniquely fit with progressive clubs

21:30 – Josh Donaldson, Michael Brantley, A.J. Pollock, Yasmani Grandal, Jed Lowrie are discussed as a group of similarly-regarded hitters that are tough to evaluate

26:00 – Kiley (we now know correctly) calls Hyun-Jin Ryu being the only to accept the QO.

27:35 – Eric reviews the Cleveland outfield situation with Brantley and Lonnie Chisenhall leaving, and holdovers Leonys Martin, Jason Kipnis, Bradley Zimmer, Oscar Mercado, possibly Yu Chang

29:00 – Kiley points out that Cleveland’s approach paid off in timing Cody Allen and Andrew Miller correctly, as they’re both showing signs of decline

30:00 – The Yusei Kikuchi conversation

34:40 – Why Garrett Richards is so interesting and may draw interest from the most teams in this whole free agent class

38:48 – Kiley breaks down the chatter he’s heard regarding under-the-radar clubs that may spend more than you expect this winter: Padres, Reds, Twins, White Sox, Braves. Eric sees the Padres’ window may be opening.

43:00 – TOPIC TWO: Arizona Fall League review

44:53 – Glendale (BAL, CHW, CLE, LAD, NYY) players mentioned: Zack Burdi (CHW), Jordan Sheffield (LAD), Estevan Florial (NYY), Ryan McKenna (BAL), Luis Robert (CHW), Yu Chang (CLE), Luis Alexander Basabe (CHW)

53:30 – Mesa (BOS, CHC, DET, LAA, OAK) players mentioned: Brett Hanewich (LAA), Daniel Procopio (LAA), Darwinzon Hernandez (BOS), Erick Leal (CHC), Trent Giambrone (CHC), Esteban Quiroz (BOS), Eli White (OAK), Luis Barrera (OAK), Nico Hoerner (CHC), Bobby Dalbec (BOS)

58:55 – Peoria (ATL, MIL, SDP, SEA, TBR) players mentioned: Kyle Muller (ATL), Wyatt Mills (SEA), Adam McCreery (ATL), Travis Radke (SDP), Matt Krook (TBR), Ronaldo Hernandez (TBR), Hudson Potts (SDP), Buddy Reed (SDP), Trent Grisham (MIL), Keston Hiura (MIL), Lucius Fox (TBR), Joe McCarthy (TBR), Austin Allen (SDP), Ray-Patrick Didder (ATL), Evan White (SEA)

1:06:19 – Salt River (ARI, COL, MIN, MIA, WSN) players mentioned: Jon Duplantier (ARI), Ryan Castellani (COL), Justin Lawrence (COL), Brent Rooker (MIN), Brian Miller (MIA), Monte Harrison (MIA), Pavin Smith (ARI), Carter Kieboom (WSN), Tyler Nevin (COL), Jazz Chisholm (ARI), Travis Blankenhorn (MIN), Daulton Varsho (ARI)

1:11:20 – Scottsdale (CIN, HOU, NYM, PHI, SFG) players mentioned: Forrest Whitley (HOU, Trent Thornton (HOU), Erasmo Pinales (HOU), Garrett Williams (SFG), Sam Wolff (SFG), Melvin Adon (SFG), Luke Leftwich (PHI), J.B. Bukauskas (HOU), Taylor Trammell (CIN), Desmond Lindsay (NYM), Shed Long (CIN), Darick Hall (PHI), Andres Gimenez (NYM), Peter Alonso (NYM)

1:14:50 – Surprise (KCR, PIT, STL, TEX, TOR) players mentioned: Scott Blewett (KCR), Demarcus Evans (TEX), Zach Jackson (TOR), Connor Jones (STL), Nate Pearson (TOR), Evan Kruczynski (STL), Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (TOR), Cole Tucker (PIT), Andy Young (STL), Lane Thomas (STL), Bryan Reynolds (PIT), Khalil Lee (KCR), Cavan Biggio (TOR), Tommy Edman (STL), Nick Heath (KCR)

1:19:30 – TOPIC THREE: A Twins scout sued the team for age discrimination and FanGraphs’ legal expert Sheryl Ring joins the show to break down this case and the efficacies of others like it

1:38:20 – We delve into the hilarious part of this case, tied to the history of the lawyer bringing the suit

1:39:40 – Kiley reads a prior complaint from this lawyer, including the passage, “vast nationwide conspiracy…to bring an end to happy hours”

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @kileymcd or @longenhagen on Twitter or at prospects@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 42 min play time.)

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Episode 842
Jay Jaffe is progenitor of the very famous JAWS metric and author of the reasonably famous The Cooperstown Casebook. On this edition of the programs, he discusses Willie McCovey’s autograph and other people’s autographs. Also: important dates for Hall of Fame season. And: how there’s a shark tunnel at the Winter Meetings.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min play time.)

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The Seattle Mariners’ offseason hasn’t gotten off to an ideal start. Despite a 2018 campaign that saw the team win 89 games and compete for a Wild Card spot most of the year, the club appears likely to blow up its roster, having begun the process already with a trade of starting catcher Mike Zunino to Tampa Bay. That was followed by word that Seattle planned to move ace James Paxton, who still has two years of team control left.

While bad news for the team’s short-term prospects, such deals are at least designed to maximize the long-term health of the organization. Another recent development, however, would seem to have little in the way of silver linings. As Ryan Divish reported on Monday, the team suddenly finds itself in the throes of a messy public parting of the ways with ex-employee Dr. Lorena Martin.

You may recall that Dr. Martin was hired a little over a year ago as the team’s first “director of high performance,” a position crafted to use analytics and medicine to keep players healthy. At the time, Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto issued a glowing review of his new hire, as passed along by the Seattle Times.

Martin, who was the director of sports performance analytics for the Los Angeles Lakers, will oversee the organization’s medical, strength and conditioning, nutrition and mental-skills departments.

“We have spent nearly a year working on creating this position and structure as well as identifying the best person for this role,” Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto said. “Lorena’s background, skill set and previous experience make her a perfect match for what we envisioned.”

Despite the somewhat florid title, Dr. Martin’s role with the Mariners was fairly groundbreaking.

With the Mariners, she was put in charge of all aspects of physical and mental training for the team’s players, incorporating data from various trainers, coaches and physicians to improve performance.

“My passion for statistics derived from my desire to just want to answer a simple question: ‘What are the variables that professional athletes must have in order to become a world class athlete in their sport?’” Martin told GeekWire. “I found that I could answer my questions through research, measurement, statistics, and analytics.”

In June 2018, the Mariners were still lauding Martin and the job she was doing. In July, TJ Cotterill wrote a profile of Martin for the News-Tribune, noting that Martin had reduced the Mariners’ injuries by 50%. She received praise from Felix Hernandez, who told Cotterill that “[s]he’s made a huge impact.”

But the honeymoon didn’t last. Though Martin was signed to a three-year contract, the Mariners terminated her employment in early October. Ryan Divish relays for the Seattle Times that the Mariners didn’t believe she was as successful at changing the organization’s culture as the club originally anticipated she would be.

Martin’s presence with the major-league team wasn’t as visible as first expected. Dipoto gave her oversight over all aspects of the training and conditioning programs for the entire organization. It was was a massive undertaking.

Also, some players were slow to embrace a new style of thinking about their health, conditioning, nutrition and recovery… there were rumblings that she would have her role reduced with the big-league team and that she would instead work out of the team’s complex in Arizona, focusing more on the minor-league staff in 2019.

But on Monday, Martin posted on Instagram a different explanation for her termination.

In other words, Dr. Martin is not only alleging senior leadership used racist language but is heavily implying that she and others were terminated for reporting such language. If true, that would violate both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as Washington’s state-level Human Rights Act. And while we don’t have enough facts to know whether Martin would have standing to file suit for a racist remark if it wasn’t directed at her, terminating her for reporting that conduct is almost certainly unlawful.

The Mariners issued a categorical denial that any such racist conduct occurred.

Martin responded to the Mariners’ statement by confirming that she had, in fact, reported racist incidents to Mariners management.

Of note in Martin’s tweet here is that she provides actual names of trainers she says the Mariners terminated for reporting discriminatory statements. The Mariners, for their part, didn’t deny firing any trainers for that purpose — they denied firing any trainers at all.

So who’s right? We know that Martin didn’t pull the names out of a hat. The team’s categorical denials leave them very little wiggle room should new details emerge. Santiago, for example, was confirmed as working for the Mariners as an athletic coordinator before the 2017 season. I wasn’t able to find any public confirmation that either Santiago or Valdez were terminated, but it should also be noted that neither is listed on the team’s staff directory or coaching roster (though Dr. Martin is still listed). Martin explained her delay in coming forward as the result of ongoing negotiations.

Ryan Divish confirmed at least that such negotiations were occurring, writing that “[s]ources indicated that the Mariners are trying to avoid paying the remaining two years on Martin’s three-year contract for various reasons and that she has hired an attorney.” At the same time, Divish noted that Martin’s contract likely contained an arbitration clause, which would preclude either side from bringing a lawsuit and require both parties to present their claims to an arbitrator.

So why did the Mariners terminate Martin? At this point, we have the team saying it was poor performance and Martin saying it was retaliation for reporting racist comments. It’s also worth noting that the team, including Dipoto, has previously taken a hard line against racist comments, most notably suspending catcher Steve Clevenger without pay for tweets he made regarding Black Lives Matter. The details of this incident are still emerging. Dr. Martin went on the record with the Tacoma News Tribune Monday evening to further detail her allegations; the Mariners once again issued a categorical denial, calling Dr. Martin’s claims “fabricated,” including “her statements about reports to Human Resources and specific allegations about people named in the story.” We simply don’t have enough information at this point to conclusively determine what happened, but either way, this will be a cloud hanging over the Mariners’ already challenging offseason until we have greater clarity.