Padres fans in 2023 don’t have a ton to be excited about. The Friars have been in win-now mode for the last four seasons and are staring down their second losing campaign during that span. One of the two winning seasons was kind of ruined — for everyone in the world — by a raging pandemic, leaving fans with only one year that was both normal and an enjoyable experience since 2010. Unlike a lot of teams with a similar performance record, it’s not for lack of investment in the team. Just a few months after the gigantic trade that brought Juan Soto to town, the team signed Xander Bogaerts to a $280 million contract and kept Manny Machado from opting out with an even spicier $350 million pact. The Padres also agreed on a $100 million contract for Joe Musgrove and locked up Yu Darvish for $108 million. That’s more than $800 million, so we’re not talking about the case of, say, the White Sox having issues in part because they couldn’t be bothered to fill giant holes in the lineup because that would have required money.

As gloomy as the season feels right now, there are still legitimate reasons to think the Padres are a good baseball team. Their 68–54 Pythagorean record is 10 wins above their actual record, and records derived from run differential are more predictive than win-loss record. The projections all still agree there’s a lot to like and similarly have a good record, relatively speaking, of predicting the future. And this holds true even when talking about teams with the largest disagreement between the projections and the record. Looking at the 25 teams that FanGraphs like better than their seasonal winning percentage the most, coin flips missed their rest-of-season winning percentages by an average of 86 points, season to-date records by 81 points, and FanGraphs records by 65 points. Those 25 teams had played .396 ball through August 14 of their seasons; FanGraphs projected a .476 RoS winning percentage, and the actual RoS winning percentage for those teams was .458. We weren’t imagining things.

But the fundamental problem the Padres face is that it’s simply far too late to be the team they hoped they were. Our projections still believe they are a .572 team, but that’s only good enough for a 19% chance of making the postseason with a divisional probability that rounds to zero; the ZiPS projections have it at 15%. While those are still pretty good odds, especially compared to how the season has felt, it’s still far more likely than not that this year ends up being a dark companion to the 2021 season that also ended in stunningly bleak fashion.

And here’s the problem: the Padres project to be worse in the future than they are now. You could say that about most teams, but the Padres are also a team that has a massive amount of payroll already tied up in a declining roster, an unsigned Soto approaching free agency, and probably not a lot of room left to grow in a payroll sense. Complicating things even further is the financial collapse of Bally Sports, as the team has not yet figured out how to replace that revenue. Forbes estimated the Padres lost $53 million in 2022, and things are likely to get worse from there. Peter (Seidler) actually saw a wolf.

Running some up-to-date projections for players signed long-term demonstrates the enormity of the team’s challenge. I’m going to start with the Padres’ core of six players who have guaranteed contracts with annual salaries of at $10 million or more through at least the 2026 season. Whatever happens elsewhere on the team, these six are almost certainly going to be part of the foundation.

You may cringe looking at the end of Machado’s contract, but ZiPS already expected that before the season. Machado put together a strong enough July — though he’s slumped since then and is nursing a sore hamstring — and experienced a clear return to defensive form to cause his 2024-and-on projections to tick up slightly. While ZiPS didn’t like the deal, it doesn’t like it any less than it did in February.

Bogaerts was mired in a deep slump in May and June, aided by a sore wrist, but has hit a more Xanderian .290/.351/.413 since the start of July, in-line with preseason expectations. As with Machado’s recent deal, the Padres go into this contract knowing that they’re paying for Bogaerts to decline.

This is a bit of an awkward projection because it highlights an assumption in team construction that turned out not to be true. Typically, a decent defensive second baseman who can credibly fake playing shortstop will usually fare well at first base, but that just has not happened, at least so far, with Jake Cronenworth. With Ha-Seong Kim 김하성 firmly entrenched as a starter, the Padres have a player with value but not a logical place to play him in order to get that value. The difference is extreme enough that ZiPS thinks that Cronenworth is now more than a win per season less valuable at first than second base.

Add in the fact that Cronenworth is having a down year (and a pretty odd one in terms of Statcast data), and there’s just a lot less reason to like his future than there was before.

Where the positional gods punished the Padres with Cronenworth, they were far kinder here. Tatis’ bat isn’t quite where it was, but he’s actually turned out to be an excellent defensive outfielder, at least so far. Given his age, he’s the one player who projects to finish out his contract as a plus contributor to the team.

ZiPS was always fairly pessimistic about the Darvish extension, and without him reversing the continued slow decline in his peripherals, it hasn’t changed direction since the start of the season. While I always say “hitters age, pitchers break,” Darvish is at an age where cliffs do, in fact, beckon. ZiPS didn’t even want to project the final two seasons of his extension; I’ll be kind and not force it to, so we’ll call those zero-WAR seasons, which is sunnier than what ZiPS would say if I made it.

The performance projections of Musgrove have stayed about the same — hardly surprising considering that when he was healthy, he was having a similar season to last year. But his return this season remains up in the air, and new injuries create new risk for a pitcher, so his projected innings totals have dropped considerably.

OK, let’s throw everybody into one table, complete with their salaries.

If the projections hold true, these six will make up less than a third of the WAR needed to be a 90-win team as soon as 2026, when they combine for $120 million in salary. Unless the team continues to spend more and more money, it’s going to get harder and harder to use dollars to patch holes, which means that the farm system has to get back to producing very quickly. The Padres aren’t likely to be able to win on the backs of these six players for very long, which means that they likely have to come up with a whole new core of talent around these players.

The risk here is one of dynastic failure. I’m not calling the Padres a dynasty in terms of baseball success, but more how the term has been used historically. Lots of warlords in history managed to get a throne, but to establish long-term rule, they had to survive the transition to the next rulers. The Astros are an example of a team that has avoided dynastic failure; only a handful of the players on the team that won the World Series in 2017 were still on the roster when Houston won the World Series in 2022. Only Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman remain among the Astros’ offensive contributors today, and the only pitcher still in Houston, Lance McCullers Jr., won’t pitch again until 2024 [and Verlander who I forgot about for some very odd reason -DS]. They basically came up with nearly an entirely new team in five years.

Baseball history is riddled with successful teams that were unable to transition to the next era without a significant interregnum, such as the Utley-Howard Phillies and the Tigers during the peak Miguel Cabrera years. But those Phillies won a World Series, and while the Tigers didn’t, they had more playoff success than these Padres teams have had. To achieve that success, the Padres are going to have to be extremely creative over the next five years, lest they end up as one of the great “what ifs” in baseball history. Spending money and having a few big stars won’t be enough.

Among all 30 big league franchises, the Guardians have one of the richest recent histories of developing pitchers. Dating back to the days of CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee, Cleveland always seems to be churning out young pitching from a stockpile of talent acquired through the draft, international free agency, and the trade market. Coming into the 2023 season, the team’s rotation already featured four former Guardians draft picks — Shane Bieber, Aaron Civale, Zach Plesac, and Triston McKenzie — and the onslaught doesn’t show signs of stopping.

In April, the Guardians promoted a pair of top-100 prospects to their starting rotation in Logan Allen (No. 63 on The Board at the beginning of 2023) and Tanner Bibee (No. 74). In June, Gavin Williams (No. 76) made his big league debut. With Bieber, McKenzie, and Cal Quantrill missing time to injury and Civale traded to Tampa Bay at the deadline, a full 47 starts have gone to this trio of 24-year-old rookies – plus another 17 to less-highly touted prospects Peyton Battenfield, Hunter Gaddis, and Xzavion Curry:

Read the rest of this entry »

Freddie Freeman is a fantastic baseball player. Since the beginning of 2020, he is tied with Juan Soto for fourth in wRC+, sitting at 157. He is also as durable as any other position player in the league, ranking third in games played in that same span. But wRC+ and durability aren’t why I’m here to discuss Freeman today. Instead, I’m interested in his baserunning.

Baserunning is certainly not the most important aspect of Freeman’s game, but he is darn good at it. Before I get into how and why, though, I want to talk about his lack of speed. At 26.6 ft/s on average, Freeman is a 35th-percentile runner; in the landscape of the league and other good baserunners, he is a bit of a tortoise. But that doesn’t stop him on the bases.

When it comes to baserunning, your chances are much better of being above average on the basepaths if you can boogie. If you peruse the BsR or Statcast Runner Runs leaderboards, you’ll see mostly 90th-percentile runners and above, with the bottom line being in the mid-70s. Rarely does a name like Freeman’s pop up, but he ranks 17th of 139 in BsR and 37th of 295 in Runner Runs. For him, these results come about because of other aspects of the game that you don’t need speed for: instincts, reads, and preparation. The further down you are in the speed department, the more important these skills become. This wasn’t always a positive part of Freeman’s game, but in the last few years, he has been consistently above-average. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello and welcome to another edition of Five Things, a collection of plays I had a blast watching. There was a lot to love in baseball this week: baserunning derring-do, great defense, and tons of exciting young players. There was so much to like, in fact, that I don’t have a single negative thing to say about what I watched on the field. The action was non-stop, and cool plays were everywhere, all the time. I left out an inside-the-park home run, for goodness sake. It might be the dog days of summer, but it was a spectacular week of baseball. So let’s get right to it. Read the rest of this entry »

With Ben Lindbergh still in Sweden, FanGraphs’ Michael Baumann takes the co-host chair for a spin. He and Meg Rowley begin (2:10) by delighting in a picture of Lance Lynn and Enrique Hernández from Dodgers photo day, then take advantage of Ben’s absence to discuss (7:30) college baseball and how conference realignment might affect the sport (and the athletes who play it). They then turn their attention (32:13) to Cole Hamels, who recently retired, and Félix Hernández, who was recently inducted into the Mariners Hall of Fame. Meg and Michael discuss what Hernández and Hamels meant to each of them, the similarities (and important differences) that marked their respective Hall of the Very Good careers, and what it’s like to have a pitcher ruin a pitch for you. Meg and Michael also discuss (51:00) the most impressive players and tools they’ve seen in person, including Fernando Tatis Jr., Corbin Carroll, and Aaron Judge, plus center field defense and big power. Finally, they close with a Future Blast from 2047 (1 hr 06 min).

Audio intro: The Gagnés, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Dodgers photo day photos
Link to Michael on Lance Lynn’s first Dodgers start
Link to Michael on conference realignment
Link to Teddy Cahill on conference realignment
Link to Michael on Cole Hamels’ retirement
Link to Meg on Félix Hernández’s final Mariners start
Link to Hamels and Hernández’s career stats
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Future Blast wiki

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Look at the top of the leaguewide standings and you’ll find both types of elite teams: First, the Braves, an all-conquering, all-chewing-up-and-spitting-out combine harvester that sits atop the standings. After them: an Orioles club that’s outplaying its Pythagorean record by eight games.

That’s not to take anything away from the Orioles, who are dogwalking the hardest division in baseball thanks to a dizzying collection of talented young hitters and the best bullpen in the sport. Besides, they don’t ask how — they ask how many. But this is yet another reboot of a classic from the generation prior; in 2012, the O’s romped to the playoffs with a 93–69 record and the run differential of an 82–80 team. Now they’re doing the same thing, with Félix Bautista as Jim Johnson, Gunnar Henderson as Manny Machado, and Kyle Bradish as… Wei-Yin Chen, I guess?

It’s not just the Orioles: the Marlins (minus-37 run differential) are beating the Cubs (plus-62) to the last Wild Card spot. The Brewers are 10 games over .500 with the run differential of a .500 team. Every year, it seems like a low-payroll team with a good bullpen smashes its expected record to smithereens and barges into the playoffs. Is there an actual pattern here, or is this just trivia? Read the rest of this entry »

Kerry Carpenter has quietly emerged as a productive big league hitter. Largely flying under the radar on a middling-at-best Detroit Tigers club, the 25-year-old outfielder is slashing .286/.347/.521 with 16 home runs and a 139 wRC+ in 285 plate appearances. Since debuting in the majors last August, he has 22 round-trippers and a 135 wRC+ over 398 plate appearances.

His success has been equal parts unexpected and untraditional in execution. Selected in the 19th round of the 2019 draft out of Virginia Tech, the left-handed-hitting Carpenter was an unranked prospect going into last season, only to bash his way to Detroit with 30 dingers in just 400 trips to the plate between Double-A Erie and Triple-A Toledo. He believes the lion’s share of the credit for his out-of-the-blue offensive explosion should go to a hitting instructor who employs unconventional methods.

Carpenter discussed his path to big league success when the Tigers visited Fenway Park last weekend.

———

David Laurila: How did you go from a low-round pick to a guy putting up solid numbers against big league pitching?

Kerry Carpenter: “The short story is that I didn’t play very well at Virginia Tech. I got drafted in the 19th round and that’s about where I should have been drafted. It’s not as though I slid; I just didn’t have great numbers there in my junior year. I was in a bad mental spot, to be honest. I had a big slump that I couldn’t get out of for so long. I always thought I was better than a 19th-round pick, but again, I just didn’t play very well. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re in a tiny lull in the baseball season, and honestly, I’m happy about it. July is jam packed with draft and trade talk, September and October are for the stretch run and the postseason, but the middle of August is when everyone catches their breath. There’s no divisional race poised on a razor’s edge, no nightly drama that everyone in baseball tunes in for; it’s just a good few weeks to get your energy back and relax.

For me, that means getting a head start on some things I won’t have time to do in September, and there’s one article in particular that I always want to write but never get around to. I’m not a BBWAA member, and I’ll probably never vote for MVP awards, but I spend a lot of time thinking about them every year nonetheless. When I’m looking at who would get my vote, I take Win Probability Added into account. Every time I mention it, however, there’s an issue to tackle. Plenty of readers and analysts think of WPA as “just a storytelling statistic” and don’t like using it as a measure of player value. So today, I’m going to explain why I think it has merit.

First, a quick refresher: Win Probability Added is a straightforward statistic. After every plate appearance, WPA looks at the change in a team’s chances of winning the game. We use our win expectancy measure, which takes historical data to see how often teams win from a given position, to assign each team a chance of winning after every discrete event. Then the pitcher and hitter involved in that plate appearance get credited (or debited, depending) for the change in their team’s chances of winning the game. Since every game starts with each team 50% likely to win and ends with one team winning, the credit for each win (and blame for each loss) gets apportioned out as the game unfolds. The winning team will always produce an aggregate of 0.5 WPA, and the losing team will always produce -0.5, spread out among all of their players. Read the rest of this entry »

Two months ago, if you asked me to name the most disappointing member of the phenom class, I’d have said Bobby Witt Jr. With barely a month of professional games past high school under his belt, he was invited to spring training in 2021 and hit three homers and put up an .851 OPS, creating chatter around baseball that he might start the season with the parent club. That was a bit premature, though he did spend the next six months terrorizing minor league pitchers into thinking long and hard about their choice of occupation. But in 2022 and early on in ’23, brevity was no longer the soul of Witt, as his whirlwind professional progress slowed to become one of those inevitably anemic breezes on an unpleasantly muggy July day.

Things appeared to reach their nadir in late June, when his OPS almost dipped under .700 once again. Since then, however, Witt has been on a tear, hitting .350/.385/.662, not only bringing his OPS safely over the .700 line but also getting it over .800. Since the morning of June 30, he’s been one of the absolute best players in baseball, providing a rare highlight for the 2023 Royals:

I’ve included BABIP here for a very good reason: when players are having hot streaks, BABIP is usually a big reason why. After all, players playing at their peak are more likely to be playing above their abilities than below. Witt is no exception here, with his numbers fueled in part by a .370 BABIP over that period. But I include that figure not to defuse my thesis, but to reinforce it. While a BABIP that high is hard to sustain over the long haul, ZiPS’ zBABIP thinks that .370 mark only barely outperforms what he’s actually done in the last month and a half. Read the rest of this entry »

Look, Juan Soto is going to be fine. In fact, he’s probably fine already. At some point during every season, we start worrying that Juan Soto isn’t performing like Juan Soto anymore, and then he starts performing like Juan Soto again. You know why? Because he was Juan Soto the whole time, and as we all know, Juan Soto was built by robo-umpires from the future and sent back in time to teach us the exact parameters of the strike zone. The robo-umps also gave him the ability to hit dingers and do a little dance in the batter’s box to help him blend in with us humans. Point is, Juan Soto will be fine.

I pitched this article on Monday afternoon, when Juan Soto was definitely not fine. He was in a bit of a slump, batting .121 with a -14 wRC+ over his last eight games. We’re talking about a very small sample here, but once there’s a minus sign in front of your wRC+, it’s not just bad for a time-traveling strike zone robot. It’s bad for a regular human, too. Still, that’s not what made me want to write about Juan Soto. This is what made me want to write about him:

Read the rest of this entry »