Officially, the Braves have sewn up the NL East, after having completed a four-game weekend sweep of the Phillies. The division was already more or less decided, but an unlikely Phillies sweep could’ve at least brought it down to the wire. Instead, the Phillies will play out the string, while the Braves get themselves set for the playoffs. On the one hand, the Phillies can’t be too disappointed — they would’ve been arriving a year or so ahead of time. On the other hand, the Braves arrived a year or so ahead of time. And this is a plot of the 2018 Phillies’ playoff odds:

As recently as August 7, the Phillies were in first place and 15 games over .500. Since then, they’ve gone an NL-worst 14-28, while the Braves have gone 27-19. Very obviously, when a team collapses, several components have to be involved. One thing I’ll highlight, though: dating back to August 8, according to Baseball Savant, Phillies pitchers have ranked seventh in baseball in expected wOBA allowed, while Braves pitchers have ranked 16th. And yet, Phillies pitchers have ranked 26th in baseball in actual wOBA allowed, while Braves pitchers have ranked third. Call it noise if you want. I’m certain that’s a part of it. The other part is defense. The Phillies’ team defense has let them down, and as the headline suggests, they’re on the verge of establishing a new record.

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The summer, rich with relevant amateur baseball, has ended. With it ends an important stretch on the player-evaluation calendar, one that is being weighed more heavily with each passing draft. We consider this checkpoint to be a sensible time to revisit our draft prospect rankings and make a sweeping update to the amateur wing of THE BOARD. A link to the 2019 draft board is here, but it can also be accessed through our brand new prospect landing page, which encompasses all of our content (shout-out to Sean Dolinar!) here.

Below we’ve attempted to anticipate some questions readers might have and to answer them as well as possible.

Q. Why is the summer so important for draft evaluation?

A. The high concentration of talent in collegiate wood-bat leagues and in scout-run high-school showcase events (which are designed to be evaluation-friendly) more closely approximates the talent environment of pro baseball. It’s hard to know if a high-school hitter facing a lot of suburban varsity, upper-70s fastballs is actually any good, but watch a prep hitter face Division I breaking balls and 90-plus mph fastballs for eight weeks, and you’re going to learn a lot about him.

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Early this year, Dallas Mavericks owner and perpetually frustrated baseball-team-owner-of-the-future Mark Cuban, during a team dinner, said this:

“I’m probably not supposed to say this, but, like, I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night, and here we are, you know, we weren’t competing for the playoffs. I was like, ‘Look, losing is our best option. [Commissioner] Adam [Silver] would hate hearing that, but I at least sat down and I explained it to them. And I explained what our plans were going to be this summer, that we’re not going to tank again. This was, like, a year-and-a-half tanking, and that was too brutal for me. But being transparent, I think that’s the key to being kind of a players owner and having stability.”

The National Basketball Association was, shall we say, peeved at Cuban, fining him $600,000. Why? Because of the implication that the Mavericks were intentionally losing games.

“Yes, it’s not what you want to hear as commissioner,” Silver told reporters at a news conference following a league meeting. “I will say that Mark has a long track record of being provocative, and… I think he acknowledged it was a poor choice of words.

“When we looked at what was actually happening on the floor, which is most important to me, there was no indication whatsoever that his players were intentionally losing games. And so we were satisfied with that, and again, and we moved on.”

Despite the resolution of that particular incident, tanking continues. In fact, the league’s fine of Cuban more or less confirmed that, while intentionally losing games is forbidden, intentionally losing seasons is acceptable — as long as no one talks about it. And while, for years, we talked about tanking as a uniquely NBA problem, that’s not the case anymore. In Major League Baseball, the tank is on.

That raises some interesting questions: under the MLB rules, is tanking legal? Is tanking legal under the law? And if it isn’t, what’s the redress? Believe it or not, these are not at all simple questions. And so we’ll start by asking a simpler question — namely, what is tanking, anyway? Royals Review gives this definition, which seems good for our purposes.

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Four of five NL Central teams were playoff-relevant for at least part of the 2018 season. The exception? The Cincinnati Reds. Despite having begun the season with hopes of emerging from their rebuild, the team will end the year having improved by only a couple of games over their 68-95 record from 2017.

The Setup

Cincinnati’s last period of competitive baseball burnt out quickly, the team’s most recent peak ending after the 2013 season and three playoff appearances in four years. The Reds weren’t exactly overeager to start rebuilding, an August trade of Jonathan Broxton to the Brewers (during one of Broxton’s ever-narrowing periods of effectiveness) representing the only nod to the future in 2014.

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Episode 835
Meg Rowley, managing editor of The Hardball Times, approves of National League postseason race and uses this edition of FanGraphs Audio to explain why. Also discussed: how the Rockies are like a careless dad with a nut allergy and the dark side of position players pitching.

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 1 hr 3 min play time.)

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In all likelihood, Tyler Clippard’s numbers are better than you realize. In 696 career appearances encompassing 752 innings, the 33-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander has a 3.17 ERA. Moreover, he’s allowed just 6.5 hits per nine innings, and his strikeout rate is a healthy 10.0. Add in durability — 72 outings annually since 2010 — and Clippard has quietly been one of baseball’s better relievers.

He also has 68 saves on his resume, and the fact that nearly half of them came in 2012 helps add to his under-the-radar status. It also helps explain the size of his bank account.

“My biggest jump in salary was the year I had 32 saves, and that was essentially the only reason,” explained Clippard, who was with the Washington Nationals at the time. “My overall body of work was pretty good, but numbers-wise it wasn’t one of my better seasons. I had a bad stretch where I had something like a 10.00 ERA, so I ended the year with a (3.72 ERA). But because I got all those saves, I received the big salary jump in salary arbitration.”

Circumstances proceeded to derail the righty’s earning power. The Nationals signed free-agent closer Rafael Soriano to a two-year, $22M contract, relegating Clippard to a set-up role. While Soriano was saving games, Clippard was being paid less than half that amount while logging a 2.29 ERA and allowing 84 hits in 141 innings. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday night, Melisa Reidy-Russell, ex-wife of Cubs shortstop Addison Russell, for the first time went public with specifics about the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her former husband. The blog post contains explicit descriptions of spousal abuse, infidelity, and domestic violence. As a result of the allegations, Russell was no longer with the team by Friday afternoon. He was later placed on administrative leave.

Major League Baseball has been investigating allegations that Russell was physically abusive to his now ex-wife since last year — allegations which Russell denied at the time. It should be noted that Melisa is not the person who made those allegations last year; in fact, at the time, she declined to speak further with MLB investigators. Nevertheless, this is the first detailed statement we have from either party regarding the matter. It’s worth noting that the parties’ divorce was finalized on August 30, 2018.

Longtime sports and law analyst Lester Munson was struck by the nature of Melissa’ account:

“I must say that her statement is among the more compelling and persuasive statements I have seen as I have reported on these events over the last 25 years…. Her language is so forceful. It has such detail that you really begin to think there’s no question that all of this happened.”

I won’t reproduce Melisa’s account here in full, but some of her allegations merit further discussion. Note that, among those I won’t be discussing, are Melissa’s charges of infidelity. While perhaps indicative of a troubled relationship, infidelity is also generally not illegal or abusive. Accordingly, I’ve omited any consideration of it from the following.

Instead, let’s focus on what abuse was specifically alleged and what the legal ramifications might be for Russell. We don’t know exactly where all of this took place, but we do know that Russell played for the Cubs, so it’s reasonable to assume that some or all of the episodes mentioned in Melissa’s account occurred in Illinois. The following quotes are excerpted from her blog post. Please note that some of what follows is unpleasant.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the response to their previous episode, whether improvements in catching or improvements in umpiring have done more to reduce the variation in framing performance among teams, a Mike Trout snub, Breyvic Valera‘s contact rate, and the latest revelations about Addison Russell’s alleged domestic abuse, then answer listener emails about Luke Voit and Yankees home-run records, Mike Clevinger and Indians strikeout records, whether it would be noticeable if baseball gradually grew twice as loud, cryogenic freezing after Tommy John surgery, and how long a fan would last as a GM, plus a Stat Blast about two surprising Royals, Ryan O’Hearn and Adalberto Mondesi.

Audio intro: The Milk Carton Kids, "Hear Them Loud"
Audio outro: The Band, "Thinkin’ Out Loud"

Link to Ben’s article on framing
Link to Melisa Reidy’s post about Russell
Link to Trout snub response

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