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Barry Bonds last played in a major league game in 2007. Eight years later, he is now reportedly preparing to file a grievance against Major League Baseball, contending that MLB and its teams improperly colluded to prematurely drive him from the game.

As you may recall, back in 2007 Bonds hit an impressive .276/.480/.565 during his age-43 season, all while setting MLB’s all-time career home run record by hitting his 756th career HR in August. And although Bonds was projected to post a .380 wOBA for the 2008 season, he nevertheless went unsigned that off-season, effectively ending his major league career. This despite the fact that he had even gone so far as to offer to play for the league minimum salary (set at the time at $390,000 per year).

These relatively suspicious circumstances caused many to speculate that MLB’s teams conspired together to drive Bonds from the game. Indeed, both Bonds’ agent (Jeff Borris) and the Major League Baseball Players Association expressed concern at the time that MLB clubs had jointly agreed not to sign Bonds, with the MLBPA announcing after the 2008 season that it had found evidence of improper collusion. Despite all of this, however, Bonds and the union ultimately decided at the time not to officially charge MLB’s franchises with collusion, instead reaching an agreement with MLB to postpone any grievance against the league until Bonds had resolved his then-pending criminal charges relating to his alleged perjury and obstruction of justice during the federal BALCO investigation.

Fast-forward to last month, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Bonds’ criminal conviction for obstruction of justice. With Bonds’ criminal troubles now all but behind him – technically, prosecutors are still considering whether to file a long-shot, last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court – he is now once again returning his attention to potentially filing a grievance against MLB. So does Bonds has any chance of winning a case against the league, and if so, what might he stand to gain from charging its teams with collusion?

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Aroldis Chapman was a major-league rookie in 2010, but it took no time at all for him to make a name for himself. Joel Zumaya had re-introduced the population to consistent triple digits, but Chapman pushed the limits to the extreme. In his 11th-ever outing, Chapman took the mound in San Diego, and the first pitch he threw came in at 101.5 miles per hour. Then he broke 100 again, then he broke 100 again. Then he did it again, then he did it again. Chapman threw 25 pitches on the night, and the slowest of them was an even 100. That fact was one highlight. The other highlight was one individual pitch he threw to Tony Gwynn Jr. With the count 1-and-2, Chapman missed just inside at 105.1. The enemy crowd came to life as soon as the scoreboard flashed the reading.

Last week, the Marlins took on the Dodgers in Los Angeles. Giancarlo Stanton was granted the opportunity to face Mike Bolsinger, and in an 0-and-1 count in the top of the first, Bolsinger left a fastball over the middle of the plate. Stanton swung, and connected, and the next thing the baseball knew, it was somewhere in one of the parking lots. Stanton hit a ball literally out of the stadium, and as he rounded the bases and approached home plate, he was given something of a standing ovation by the fans who just watched their team fall behind.

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Ben and Sam banter about Bryce Harper, then talk about what Barry Bonds could have contributed to or cost a baseball team in 2008.

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Milwaukee at New York NL | 13:10 ET
Peralta (45.0 IP, 100 xFIP-) vs. Syndergaard (5.1 IP, 128 xFIP-)
Young Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard’s major-league debut wasn’t a rousing success, necessarily, in terms either of run prevention or defense-independent numbers. It also wasn’t a complete failure by those standards, either, though. And more relevant to the reader searching for maximum pleasure this afternoon is that the giant Nord exhibited the repertoire which has earned him considerable praise from scouting types, sitting at 97 mph with his fastball and throwing a curveball capable of provoking considerable duress for opposing hitters.

This curveball, specifically:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Milwaukee Radio or New York NL Television.

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The lead article in this week’s column is a little off the wall. Indirectly, it celebrates Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971, which opens today at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Chris Archer was unfamiliar with Ono when I approached him with this idea. That didn’t matter, because the 26-year-old Tampa Bay Rays pitcher is among the most thoughtful players in the game. The subject matter was in his cerebral sweet spot.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ono, she is more than an avant-garde artist. She is also a legendary singer-songwriter, and was married to the late John Lennon. One of her compositions is “Beautiful Boys,” which appeared on their album Double Fantasy. What follows is lyrics from the song (in italics), followed by Archer’s interpretation of them.

You’re a beautiful boy with all your little toys
Your eyes have seen the world, though you’re only four years old
And your tears are streaming even when you’re smiling
Please never be afraid to cry. Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Washington at San Diego | 20:40 ET
Scherzer (49.2 IP, 77 xFIP-) vs. Cashner (44.0 IP, 87 xFIP-)
Over the first seven starts of his 2015 season, Washington right-hander Max Scherzer has produced roughly the same strikeout rate that he recorded over his three most recent years in Detroit while also somehow halving his walk rate. Neil Weinberg examined some potential explanations for this development on Friday for the electronic pages. As one might expect, it’s some combination of irresponsible and impossible to reach any firm conclusions on the matter. Here’re two notable and possibly related developments, however: Scherzer is (a) throwing his fastball more often and also (b) inducing more swings at pitches out of the zone. The reader is invited to look for evidence of these trends during Scherzer’s start this evening. Also, because it’s a Saturday in late May, the reader is also probably invited to a graduation party for a relative or family friend.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

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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, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.

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Episode 562
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the mostly unfeeling guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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 11 min play time.)

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This post is part of an ongoing arbitration research project and is coauthored by Alex Chamberlain and Sean Dolinar.

April 24: Modeling Salary Arbitration: Introduction

Feb. 25: 2015 MLB Arbitration Visualized

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A couple of weeks ago, we introduced a couple of regressions that modeled arbitration results using a basic formulae predicated on wins above replacement (WAR). Ultimately, the models estimated that an arbitration-eligible pitcher could expect his salary to increase by 14 percent, and his raise in salary to increase by 56 percent, for each additional WAR. A hitter could expect increases of 13 percent and 46 percent, respectively.

The models, however, were incomplete: they did not incorporate any other stats aside from WAR. This was by design, as we wanted to introduce simple one-variable equations for the sake of demonstration. WAR is, conveniently, a comprehensive variable that attempts to summarize a player’s worth in one easily digestible number. But what about the effects of a player’s age or arbitration year?

Moreover, the r-squared statistic — a quick-and-easy check of a model’s validity — for each specification is not especially strong, clocking in anywhere between .30 and .56. This is partly a result of specifying only one explanatory variable, so including more variables — which we have done in this post — should improve the goodness of fit of the models, assuming the variables are relevant.

With that said, we have new-and-improved models to share with you: one comprised of composite statistics and another comprised of traditional statistics. They are all vanilla, linear ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models, and it is important to remember that the values for each stat can only be used in the context of that specific model.

Non-Traditional Statistics

For each player, we specify…

• a composite statistic, such as wins above replacement (WAR) for batters and RA9-WAR for pitchers, to measure overall performance (RA9-WAR uses runs allowed per nine innings rather than FIP);
• a service statistic, such as plate appearances (PA) and innings pitched (IP), to measure playing time;
• a “glory” statistic, such as home runs (HR) and saves (SV), to account for baseball’s affinity for traditional statistics and social constructs;
• arbitration year (for pitchers*), indicating a player’s total service time;
• and his age (for hitters*), to measure as best we can the number of years for which he has inhabited the earth.

We identify these particular stats not only to cover as much analytical ground as possible but also minimize the use of stats that have high correlation among themselves (multicollinearity). We want to isolate different aspects of player performance or value as best we can.

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In the next round of negotiations between the players’ union (MLBPA) and the owners, the union’s aim will be to close the growing gap between player salaries and owner revenues. Player salaries a decade ago represented 50% or more of revenue, but that percentage has fallen under 40% as salaries have not kept pace with revenue. The players have several options to try and increase salaries, but the simplest and perhaps most effective route is to significantly increase the minimum salary.

The players separate themselves into classes based on service time, prioritizing the money in free agency upon reaching six years of service time above all else. A tier below the free agents are those with at least three years of service time who are eligible for salary arbitration and generally receive between 40-80% of free agency salaries on one-year contracts. A step below the arbitration eligible-players are active Major League Baseball players with under three years of service time (except for the top 22% of players with between two and three years of service time who are also eligible for arbitration). The MLB players not eligible for arbitration have their salary set by their team, usually very close to MLB minimum which is currently $507,500 and has slowly increased in the past decade. In the tiers below active players, there are players on the 40-man roster in the minor leagues who receive union protection and a minimum minor-league salary, and then there are the rest of the minor leaguers who are not in the union and had many potential protections and salary bonuses bargained away by the players’ union.

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