Chaim Bloom’s plan to replace Trevor Story began to take shape Wednesday morning, as the Boston Red Sox signed outfielder Adam Duvall to a one-year, $7 million deal. Duvall can earn an additional $3 million in playing time incentives; he missed the second half of the 2022 season with an injured wrist, and the Red Sox are hedging their bets against another IL stint.

A couple of weeks ago, this signing wouldn’t have made much sense. Boston’s outfield looked all set with Masataka Yoshida in left field, Enrique Hernández in center, and Alex Verdugo in right, plus Rob Refsnyder on the bench and Jarren Duran at Triple-A. But then their second baseman/potential shortstop underwent major surgery on his throwing arm, and the Red Sox were thrown for a loop. The versatile Hernández, who’s played every position save for catcher, became the shortstop by default, and Boston needed a new center fielder. Enter Duvall.

Duvall took up center field late in life, making his first appearance there a few weeks before his 32nd birthday. He started his first game there the following April and didn’t become a primary center fielder until last year, his age-33 season. In 2023, he’ll attempt to play his first full season as a center fielder at an age when most players are already moving down the defensive spectrum. Read the rest of this entry »

12:00

Dan Szymborski: The appointed time in the prophecy has been reached.

12:01

Dan Szymborski: They’d offer him a set number of dollars in return for a set number or seasons!

12:01

Dan Szymborski: (Sorry, it’s opening)

12:04

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS would offer 5/119 or 6/138

Read the rest of this entry »

In my last article on swing-mirroring, I detailed how, on average, one hitter’s result impacts the first-pitch swing decisions of the next hitter. I was inspired by Asch Conformity, or social influence, something I’ve experienced in my own life whenever I’ve been the last among family and friends to tune into a TV show or movie series. Usually, I cave and watch because I either want to be able to join cultural conversations and/or I convince myself that if everyone else likes a piece of media, so will I. These reasons typify the two general types of social influence: Normative, or when you are enticed to conform for the sake of fitting in; and informational, or when you conform because you think doing so is the right course of action (i.e., maybe I’ll actually enjoy the TV show).

Going back to baseball, each offensive result didn’t fall neatly into either category of social influence (nothing in life truly does). Additionally, for some results like double plays, other psychological factors such as reference dependence played a part. So I instead went very general and ended up categorizing outcomes based on whether they tended to increase, decrease, or have no consistent impact on the subsequent hitters’ first-pitch swing rate (FPS%).

This process served as a lesson in how difficult it can be to disentangle individual psychological drivers of behavior from the broader workings of the environment and the mind, especially when using observational data. But at the same time, I also noticed that the general trends varied based on the first-pitch swinger in question. This opened up another avenue to explore: Examining the patterns of individual differences in swing-mirroring could get me closer to isolating the effect of social influence. Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy Pham has only played in nine major league seasons, accruing a little more than seven and a half seasons’ worth of service time. It feels like it should be more. This man has drifted to so many ports, made headlines for conduct meritorious, ignoble, and points in between. He has lived and died a hundred times in a baseball uniform, and every one of those lives has been fascinating. Pham is as close as you’ll get among millennials to one of those old-timey ballplayers with an unbelievable backstory, like Dazzy Vance or Turkey Mike Donlin. Now he’s a New York Met, signed to a one-year, $6 million deal with another $2 million possible in incentives.

I’ll leave the fantasy football jokes to the comment section, but I will mention what Andy Martino of SNY noted as the news broke:

Yes, Tommy Pham slapped a man because of fantasy football, but the background work Mets did on him turned up intel that he's a very well-liked teammate and good clubhouse presence. The man he slapped was on a different ballclub, after all

— Andy Martino (@martinonyc) January 18, 2023

Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the St. Louis Cardinals.

Batters

Yesterday, I compared the Seattle Mariners to the St. Louis Cardinals. Today, it’s time for the real thing. The Cardinals possess that extra thumper I wish the Mariners had in the form of Paul Goldschmidt. Otherwise, the lineups don’t look all that dissimilar: Nolan Arenado plays an older superstar third base version of Julio Rodríguez while the rest of the lineup is low-key, solid, and not particularly exciting, at least at the plate. The Cardinals are rarely a bad team, and it would be tremendously challenging for them to be one in 2023. Want to know one of my favorite freak stats? The last time the Cardinals ranked worse than 20th in baseball in wRC+ was in 1978. From Whiteyball to Jockettynomics to Moneyball to Mozeliakanalia, the Cards almost always manage to score runs.

In any given season, Arenado and Goldschmidt will compete to be the best at their respective positions. Still, I would take the under on our depth charts’ playing time projections, as both are at the age where declines in playing time due to injury are expected, especially Goldschmidt. Add in Tommy Edman, who may be the most underrated shortstop in baseball, and better-than-league average performances pretty much everywhere else, and this is a team that should dominate every NL Central team other than the Brewers.

The Cards are so solid that they’re almost uninteresting, just as Mike Trout can sometimes seem a bit boring compared to more volatile (and flawed) stars. If there’s a weakness here, it might be the lack of usable depth in the high minors to serve as midseason reinforcements. Jordan Walker’s projection looks a little disappointing on the surface, but ZiPS has him with huge upside numbers in 2024 and beyond. The role player depth is thinner, though; a lot of the usual cast of Triple-A hangers-on have moved on in minor league free agency and ZiPS isn’t particularly impressed with additions like Taylor Motter and Juniel Querecuto. But there’s still time for the Cardinals to add more NRIs, so I wouldn’t necessarily call this a done deal.

Pitchers

You’ll notice a bit of a disconnect between the pitching staff’s projected WAR and ERA figures, with the latter a lot more fun than the former. This is a relic of the team’s outstanding defensive projections, even with Harrison Bader in New York. As a result, the ERAs are a lot lower than the FIPs across the board, and while ZiPS WAR gives more credit to a pitcher than just using FIP, in this case it’s mostly the defense.

That’s not to say the Cards have a bad rotation — it just lacks the exciting highlights the offense possesses. Once you accept that there’s a good chance that peak Jack Flaherty isn’t coming back, there’s nobody here who really blows you away, except maybe Jordan Montgomery during his run late last summer. It’s a quietly competent starting five and there’s more depth in the upper minors than there is with the lineup.

The biggest disagreements between ZiPS and Steamer appear to be in the bullpen. Where Steamer views the team’s bullpen as middle of the pack, ZiPS much prefers the team’s second-tier relievers, seeing Chris Stratton, Génesis Cabrera, and Andre Pallante as plus contributors, while Steamer thinks of them as closer to replacement level. Only the season will sort out which computer is correct.

My think the Cards are a 89-93 win team and not quite in the tier of the very best in baseball, but ZiPS disagrees, putting St. Louis in the same range as the Padres, Astros, Braves, Dodgers, and Mets. My personal feeling is that the Cards really need a true ace at the top of the rotation, but perhaps that’s just my inclination to play devil’s advocate. ZiPS has beat me before (see the Tigers last year!).

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2023 due to injury, and players who were released in 2022. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Death Dixieland Bubblegum Ska-Funk band, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.22, above 2022’s level of offense but lower than other years. Pitchers who appear to have a fairly definite change in the majors from start-to-relief or vice-versa from these projections will receive reconfigured updates in the spring.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about passing the halfway point of the offseason, another way in which baseball is unusual among team sports, a few minor transactions, and (11:15) recent PR missteps by the Reds and Orioles owners’ respective sons. Then (39:16) they talk to writer Dan Moore about his reporting on public stadium subsidies, the financial cost of keeping teams in a city and the intangible cost of letting them leave, the architectural and economic legacies of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the soaring valuations of sports franchises, and the A’s ballpark situation, followed by (1:25:49) a Past Blast from 1957 and mascot banter.

Audio intro: The Bootheels, “Halfway There”
Audio interstitial: Television, “Elevation”
Audio outro: Pit Pony, “Profit”

Link to Kyle’s halfway-point post
Link to Smyth’s halfway tweet
Link to Sam on the pit
Link to Castellini’s 2022 comments
Link to new Castellini comments
Link to projections fact-check
Link to C. Trent on Castellini
Link to Rosie Reds website
Link to story on Orioles donation
Link to Angelos lawsuit info
Link to Connolly on Angelos
Link to Angelos video
Link to Angelos transcript
Link to Forbes team valuations
Link to Sportico team valuations
Link to Dan on team moves
Link to Dan on Camden Yards
Link to Dan on team valuations
Link to WaPo on the Nats’ sale
Link to Will Carroll report
Link to $1.2 billion Baltimore fund
Link to more info on fund
Link to Oakland grant news
Link to A’s CBA deadline
Link to latest on the Royals’ park
Link to Missouri legislator comments
Link to 2022 in stadium funding
Link to Field of Schemes
Link to Dan’s Oakland Roots article
Link to Dan’s website
Link to 1957 story source
Link to Emmett Kelly wiki
Link to Gritty wiki
Link to Dandy article
Link to other Dandy article
Link to Bronxie article
Link to Blooper and Duvall’s son
Link to Buoy the Troll
Link to post about Caillou
Link to Jacob Pomrenke’s website
Link to Jacob Pomrenke on Twitter

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The Colorado Rockies didn’t draft Zac Veen ninth overall in 2020 because of his wheels. They did so because he could bash baseballs. As Eric Longenhagen wrote the following spring, the left-handed-hitting outfielder possessed “the most obvious long-term power projection” among that year’s high school draftees, adding that Veen’s “in-the-box actions are quiet and smooth up until the moment he decides to unleash hell on the baseball.” Longenhagen rated him the organization’s top prospect before he had played his first professional game.

Two seasons into his career, Veen’s still-promising power has been overshadowed by his running game. Through 232 contests, the 6-foot-4 Port Orange, Florida native has left the yard a modest 27 times and swiped an immodest 91 bases. Counting his past-season stint in the Arizona Fall League, those totals are 28 home runs and 107 stolen bases in 253 games.

I asked Veen, who came in at No. 51 on Baseball America’s newly released Top 100 list (our own rankings are forthcoming), about his Eric Young Sr.-like theft numbers prior to an AFL game last October. Was stealing a lot of bases a goal coming into the 2022 season?

“Honestly, it was just something where I learned a lot last year, and I wanted to carry that over to this year,” he told me. “A lot of it is picking the right time to run. Last year I kind of just ran whenever, and this year I really only tried to run when I needed to run.” Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

As images of baseball players engaged in off-field celebrations go, it’s tough to top that of Mike Napoli following the Red Sox’s 2013 World Series victory parade. Over the course of several hours, the burly, bearded 31-year-old slugger went on an epic pub crawl that included stops to tend bar at McGreevy’s of Boston and Daisy Buchanan’s. As widely chronicled via social media, Napoli did shots with fans while soaking in the adulation, and along the way shed his shirt for what quickly became an iconic image.

Mike Napoli is walking around Boston drunk and shirtless #DayMade ? pic.twitter.com/fO7yirlego

— Frank ?? (@SenpaiKoala) November 2, 2013

By that point, Napoli had been through a lot. He’d spent the first half-decade of his major league career (2006-10) locked in an existential position battle that resonated throughout the baseball world. Under the harsh glare of Angels manager Mike Scioscia — a two-time All-Star and two-time champion who caught nearly 1,400 games in the majors before winning the 2002 World Series as manager — the heavy-hitting Napoli battled for the starting catcher job with light-hitting but more highly-touted Jeff Mathis, whose superiority behind the plate appealed to the defense-minded skipper and highlighted the reasons why Napoli couldn’t win the job outright. Even as his own injuries and those of teammates allowed Napoli to expand his positional repertoire, he faced public criticism from his manager. “I think he’s a catcher. He thinks he’s a catcher. He needs to go out and catch like a catcher,” Scioscia said in December 2010. “That is the frustrating part with Mike. We’ve seen it when he first came up.” Read the rest of this entry »

The offseason drama is pretty much over, which means that we’ve reached the least eventful part of the year for the most diehard baseball fans. Still, as we count down the days until the start of spring training — pitchers and catchers participating in the World Baseball Classic will report to their respective camps no later than February 13 — we can at least anticipate the remaining free agents finding a landing spot, as well as announcements of each team’s list of NRIs (non-roster invitees to big league camp). And, if we’re lucky, maybe a big trade or two will go down.

Whatever happens, our Opening Day Tracker will be continue to be updated with a list of every player who will report to a major league camp, as well as their projected roster status.

Here’s a quick primer on who will be in major league camp, what happens as rosters are pared down to 26 players, and how our tracker can help you keep up between now and Opening Day. Read the rest of this entry »