Mike Ilitch had a nondescript career as an infielder. Signed by Detroit in 1952, he was assigned to Class D Jamestown where he played alongside Coot Veal and Charlie Lau. Veal went on to play shortstop for the Tigers. Lau went to the big leagues as well, then became a legendary hitting guru.

Ilitch spent four years in the low minors, then became a pizza magnate and a beloved owner of two sports franchises in his hometown. On Friday, he passed away at the age of 87.

Ilitch opened his first Little Caesars in 1959, and in 1982 he bought the Detroit Red Wings. Ten years later, he bought the Detroit Tigers. All three thrived under his ownership.

Little Caesars is the third-largest pizza chain in the United States. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup four times from 1997-2008, and have reached the playoffs for 25 years running. The Tigers have gone to the postseason five times in the last 11 years, and their lowest attendance over that stretch was 2.46 million.

What will happen now that the patriarch of the Ilitch empire is gone? Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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Right-handed reliever David Robertson is earning $12 million per year on a rebuilding Chicago White Sox team that has little need for a high-priced closer. The Washington Nationals, meanwhile, might need a closer if they aren’t comfortable with internal options who, whatever their qualifications, lack proven closer experience. As a result, it isn’t surprising to find that the two teams have been discussing a trade. Robertson is owed $25 million over the next two years, a relatively reasonable fee given the cost of closers on the free-agent market. If the White Sox are looking to dump salary, Robertson might make sense for multiple teams, but if the Sox want prospects back, both Chicago and Robertson’s suitors might be better off waiting until July, even if the price for relievers is higher at that time.

From 2011 to -15, Robertson was one of the very best relievers in baseball. During that time, he averaged nearly two wins above replacement per season. The only relievers with a higher total WAR during that time frame were Aroldis Chapman, Greg Holland, Kenley Jansen, and Craig Kimbrel. That 2015 campaign, Robertson’s first with the White Sox, was also arguably the best of his career. He struck out 34% of batters while walking just 5%. A very low 66% left-on-base percentage gave him just a 3.41 ERA (compared to his 2.52 FIP), but the results were fine nonetheless. Entering the 2016 season, Robertson was again set to be one of the very best relievers in the game, earning a 1.9-WAR projection on our Depth Charts projection. The season didn’t go as well as expected.

Robertson put together a solid season, recording a good 3.58 FIP (82 FIP-) and a similar 3.47 ERA (82 ERA-). The result: a 1.0-WAR season, making him one of just a dozen full-time closers to hit the one-win mark last year. The results were good, but they represented a decline from his elite numbers the five years prior to 2016. His strikeout rate dropped from 34% to 28%; his walk rate more than doubled, up to 12%, after having remained below 9% since the 2011 season. Last season might be an outlier. It’s possible that Robertson return to form this year. It could be a new normal for Robertson going forward, though — or, worse, it could represent a decline that could continue into this season. The problem is that nobody really knows.

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The Rays are one of the under-the-radar teams that the FanGraphs and PECOTA projection systems forecast to be in the AL Wild Card mix.

As Jeff wrote last month following the Logan Forsythe-for-Jose De Leon deal, the Rays have continued to add years of control and surplus value this offseason. While the Rays do not necessarily need pieces like Mallex Smith and De Leon for 2017, they have moved some of today for more of tomorrow. It’s generally a good practice for a small-market club that must constantly balance the present with the future. I wrote last month that the Rays would be wise to remain opportunistic and fill their second-base void internally and take advantage of the overcorrection against bat-only players that Dave Cameron identified earlier this offseason.

The market has long overpaid one-dimensional power hitters. This, though, feels like more than just a simple market correction. When perfectly useful players on one year deals for $7 million can’t get moved for even a non-prospect, it feels like the pendulum has swung too far the other way. It’s time to jump on this, contenders; these bargains won’t last forever.

And the Rays responded this week by signing one of the remaining such bats in Logan Morrison, who was, of course, with the club last season. There was such a supply of these bat-only, or bat-mostly, players that it caused Eno Sarris to wonder if they would all even find homes this offseason, so we’re happy to report Morrison, Chris Carter and Mike Napoli have all indeed found teams willing to employ them this week.

With their collection of transactions to date this offseason, the Rays have added a quality controllable arm, an interesting outfielder, while losing little, if any, production at second, first and in the rotation. The Rays are quietly one of the offseason’s winners.

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We just had a conversation on Monday about the league’s ideas for changing up the game, and about tilting at windmills. Intentional walks aren’t that big a deal. Now extra innings are killing baseball, apparently.

Jeff Passan has reported that baseball is going to start testing out a new policy at Rookie-level ball. Every extra inning will start with a runner automatically standing on second base, with the idea of ending the game quicker. I can see the argument. Extra innings drag, especially if they go on for extended periods of time. This rule would theoretically protect against 19-inning wars of attrition in which position players get to try out their fastballs. Nobody wants to sit around into the wee hours of the morning until someone finally pushes a run across the plate. That’s the rationale behind this, right?

“What really initiated it is sitting in the dugout in the 15th inning and realizing everybody is going to the plate trying to hit a home run and everyone is trying to end the game themselves,” Joe Torre told Passan. And the same is likely true of the fan still sitting out in the bleachers in the 15th inning, no? Is anybody still watching at home in the 15th inning? The sooner a baseball game can end, the better. That seems to be the message here.

Yet this proposed cure may not be any better than the supposed disease.

The Australian Baseball League has this rule, and some other international formats of play employ it. It hasn’t garnered glowing reviews.

As we know, bunts stink. They’re a waste of an out. They work less often than you’d think. It’s not totally uncommon for a runner being bunted over from second to be thrown out at third. Plus, the league just publicly stated its vendetta against old-fashioned intentional walks this week. If MLB is concerned with pace of play, making extra innings even more of a slog through the mud feels quite counterintuitive.

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Pitchers need to get used to a different ball when they reach the big leagues. The variance is slight, but it is nonetheless noticeable. That was the opinion of four pitchers to whom I spoke, and facts back up their feelings.

According to a source within Major League Baseball:

• The MLB ball is made in Costa Rica, and the MiLB ball is made in China.
• The MLB balls cost more.
• There are some differences in the materials, such as the kind of leather.
• Tests are conducted, and the performance of the balls are in line with one another. Even so, major-league pitchers on rehab assignment are allowed to use MLB balls during their minor-league outings.

That last bullet point seems especially telling. Given the availability of that option, there is clearly a difference.

Here is what the handful of hurlers — all of whom pitched in both MLB and Triple-A last season — told me in mid September. Along with the physical feel of the spheroid, pitch movement and the carry of fly balls were also addressed.

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On the Construction and Feel of the Ball

Ben Heller: “It seems like it’s a bit tighter in the big leagues. And the ball is slicker, too. The way they rub it down here makes it a little slicker in your hand, so I find myself trying to get a little moisture to counteract that.”

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Yesterday, the Miami Herald reported that Jeffrey Loria has an agreement in place to sell the Marlins for $1.6 billion, a more than 10 fold increase in franchise value from the $158 million he paid to buy the team in 2002. If the team actually sells for that $1.6 billion total — and, according to follow-up reports, the final sales price hasn’t been agreed to, and there’s a long way to go between handshake agreement and the actual transfer of the franchise — Loria will have made an 18% compounded annual return on his initial investment.

That’s the kind of annual return promoted by scam artists and ponzi schemers, luring in investors with promises of huge returns that never materialize. An 18% annual return over 15 years that actually materializes is a huge business success, and Loria’s cash-out will serve to make him even more extraordinarily wealthy.

And as Ken Rosenthal wrote last night, these franchise valuations are not going to go unnoticed by the player’s association.

Oh, it’s good to be an owner.

Granted, it’s also good to be a player, but the most recent collective-bargaining agreement, with its modest increases in luxury-tax thresholds, already seems to be stifling salary growth.

The sale of the Marlins for $1.6 billion, or even a lesser but significant sum, would only reinforce to the players that they should be getting more, setting the stage for labor friction in the future.

If you’re one of the free agents that got roundly rejected by the market this winter, and then you see Loria walking away with a $1.5 billion profit on the sale of the team, it’s certainly easy to connect the dots and say that there’s something wrong here. But as easy as it is to hate Jeffrey Loria for the way he’s run the Marlins since buying the team, it’s also important to remember that people buying into MLB franchises right now are purchasing more than just a collection of baseball players.

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September 29, 2016, marked a cool and damp evening in Pittsburgh. PNC Park was sparsely populated for game No. 159 of the regular season, the final Pirates’ home game of the campaign.

The hosts had little to play for, having been eliminated from postseason contention, failing to make the playoffs after three consecutive trips to the postseason. The visiting Cubs had already secured a playoff spot and the best record in the NL.

I sensed many, including those in the press box, were ready for the season to end. Then the rains came. The tarp was deployed. Western Pa. was soaked by more than an inch of rain.

In the sixth inning of a 1-1 tie, the umpires decided they had see enough regular-season baseball in Pittsburgh in 2016. They sent everyone home with baseball’s first tie game since 2005. I was there as a witness, recounting the events for what turned out to be the last game story I wrote as a beat reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

I am revisiting this history today because of the Jeff Passan’s report from Wednesday that revealed the league’s plans to experiment with some radical extra-inning practices at the lower-levels of the minor leagues this season — notably, beginning extra innings with a runner on second base. The goal is to avoid ridiculously long games that tax everyone, most notably young arms. And the experiment could eventually lead to implementation at the major-league level.

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If you come to this site, or are something more than just a casual baseball fan, you likely know that Josh Donaldson is pretty great at this whole baseball thing. With four straight top-10 American League Most Valuable Player Award finishes, and one actual MVP Award in his trophy case, this should seem pretty straightforward. And yet, relative to how good he is, I feel he’s still a little underappreciated. So in that spirit, I wanted to dig in a little on just how good he is. The answer is that he’s been historically great.

Let’s start, as we often do, with a table.

Donaldson didn’t become a regular in the majors until his age-27 season. That was back in 2013, four seasons ago. Since then, he has been one of the best players of all-time for his age. Look at him right there, nestled between Greg Maddux and Mickey Mantle. What?

Before we get to the players who appear on this table, though, let me give you a quick sampling of the players who aren’t on it: Jeff Bagwell, Miguel Cabrera, Steve Carlton, Lefty Grove, Eddie Mathews, Mike Piazza, Cal Ripken, Alex Rodriguez, Tom Seaver, Duke Snider, Tris Speaker, and Cy Young, just to name a few. When was the last time you thought of Donaldson as superior to A-Rod? Obviously, I’m not saying that Donaldson’s career is better. In the time he’s been a regular, however, he been nearly as good as possible.

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