RIP Vida Blue. No-hitter at 21, MVP/CY at 22, 3x World Series winner 22-24, 6x All-Star
7 May 2023
2:07
Yeah Well Hiura Towel: What are the chances Manfred & the other owners will get sick of the Athletics stadium search clown show and force Fisher to sell?
If you look at teams with long-term stability, you’ll tend to find teams who have managed to get a lot of their best talent inked to contract extensions. When it comes to team construction, that certainty makes resolving other questions about the team a simpler matter and reduces the risk of a nasty surprise when your rival decides to spend the GDP of a small country on one of your best players in baseball. Making sure your core is locked up has been trickier since the mid-1970s, as it shockingly turned out that when you allow players to choose their employer, they may choose to find new employment! Teams as widely varying as John Hart’s 1990s Cleveland teams to today’s Braves employed these strategies as foundation of their continued success.
This year has already seen a number of key players signing long-term contracts that guarantee them healthy amounts of guaranteed cash: Corbin Carroll, Andrés Giménez, Keibert Ruiz, Miles Mikolas, Jake Cronenworth, Logan Webb, Ian Happ, Pablo López, Bryan Reynolds, and Hunter Greene have all signed deals within the last two months. Signing players now is usually better than waiting to later, so here are my eight players who teams should most urgently attempt to sign to long-term deals. For each player, I’ve included the current ZiPS-projected contract.
First off, let me address two players who you might expect to see here but who are not: Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto. Ohtani looks like such a mega-blockbuster free agent that I’m not sure the Angels can realistically keep him from hitting the open market, and in any case, the projection would just be “all the currency that exists or ever will exist.” As for Soto, as much as it suprises me that I’m saying this, there’s enough of a question around where his ability level is right now that I think a meeting of the minds may be very difficult. The fact is that he’s a .234/.398/.437 hitter over the last calendar year, and with extremely limited defensive value, I’d actually be a little squeamish about offering him the 14-year, $440 million extension he turned down from the Nats. Read the rest of this entry »
An increase in stolen bases wasn’t the primary aim of MLB’s offseason rule changes, but it was expected to be a happy side effect of new timing rules and bigger bases. Baseball fans will argue about just about anything, but stolen bases enjoy near-universal popularity. They’re exciting to watch, and they reward athleticism and initiative. The only drawback: They’re risky. And the new rules would mitigate that risk.
Over the first weekend of the season, the Orioles brought forth a new golden age of basestealing in the span of two days. In 10 attempts, they stole 10 bases off the Red Sox, and they did so without coming particularly close to getting thrown out.
“We just knew we needed to do a better job with the run game after that series,” Red Sox catcher Connor Wong says. “You can’t let guys run all over you and get into scoring position all the time.” Read the rest of this entry »
Last year, as you might have heard, the Guardians cracked the code. I say “you might have heard,” but let’s be honest: you heard. You couldn’t walk five feet without someone telling you that contact was in, that this team of genius mavericks had turned baseball on its ear by finding players who don’t fit the modern-day ideal. What dummies, those other teams! All you have to do is not strike out, and then baseball is easy. Why didn’t anyone else try this plan before?
Good news! The Guardians have continued their no-strikeout ways this year; they’re fourth in baseball in strikeout rate (lower is better), striking out only 20.3% of the time. But bad news! They stink. Their offense is hitting an aggregate .224/.301/.330, good for a 75 wRC+, the worst mark in baseball. The Athletics are in the middle of recreating the plot of Major League, and the Guardians are comfortably worse than them offensively. The Nationals traded everyone who wasn’t nailed down, then traded the nails they had left over, and the Guardians are comfortably worse than them offensively. They’re comfortably worse than everyone offensively; the Tigers are in 29th place, and they’re six points of wRC+ better. Only the Tigers and Marlins, who combine awful offense with awful baserunning, have scored fewer runs.
What gives? To some extent, this is about overhype. The Guardians had the lowest strikeout rate in baseball last year, but it’s not like they lit the world on fire offensively. They produced a 99 wRC+, which is below average (that’s how it works), and scored 698 runs, 15th in baseball. That’s despite playing a lot of games against the Royals, White Sox, and Tigers, who were all bad pitching teams. They did that with Andrés Giménez putting up a 140 wRC+ and Oscar Gonzalez coming out of nowhere to hit .296/.327/.461 over nearly 400 plate appearances. To put it mildly, those two haven’t backed up their performances this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an evaluation of the prospects in the Chicago Cubs farm system who readers should consider “imminent big leaguers,” players who might reasonably be expected to play in the majors at some point this year. This includes all prospects on the 40-man roster as well as those who have already established themselves in the upper levels of the minors but aren’t yet rostered. We tend to be more inclusive with pitchers and players at premium positions since their timelines are usually the ones accelerated by injuries and scarcity. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. Reports, tool grades, and scouting information for all of the prospects below can also be found on The Board.
This is not a top-to-bottom evaluation of the Cubs farm system. We like to include what’s happening in minor league and extended spring training in our reports as much as possible, since scouting high concentrations of players in Arizona and Florida allows us to incorporate real-time, first-person information into the org lists. However, this approach has led to some situations where outdated analysis (or no analysis at all) was all that existed for players who had already debuted in the majors. Skimming the imminent big leaguers off the top of a farm system will allow this time-sensitive information to make its way onto the site more quickly, better preparing readers for the upcoming season, helping fantasy players as they draft, and building site literature on relevant prospects to facilitate transaction analysis in the event that trades or injuries foist these players into major league roles. There will still be a Cubs prospect list that includes Alexis Hernandez, Cade Horton, and all of the other prospects in the system who appear to be at least another season away. As such, today’s list includes no ordinal rankings. Readers are instead encouraged to focus on the players’ Future Value (FV) grades. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh talks to Will Leitch about the Cardinals’ horrendous start, their baffling decision to bar big free-agent addition Willson Contreras from catching, how Yadier Molina’s legacy looms over the franchise, how Oli Marmol and John Mozeliak have handled the team’s struggles, how the rest of the season might go, and more, along with the Effectively Wild connection in Will’s new novel, The Time Has Come. Then (54:51) Ben talks to David Hrusovsky about wearing a SpongeBob costume to Guardians games and David’s ongoing effort to map every high school baseball field in the country and document the weirdest ones. After that (1:19:58), Ben brings on frequent Stat Blast consultant Ryan Nelson to deliver several Stat Blasts, followed by (1:51:35) a Past Blast from 2004 and a few follow-ups.
Jonathan India started his career with a bang. In 2021, the Cincinnati second baseman put up a 120 wRC+ and 3.0 WAR over 150 games, good enough to snag National League Rookie of the Year honors. Last year, a hamstring injury limited him to just 103 games, and he struggled to a 95 wRC+ at the plate. He looked like a natural bounce back candidate coming into the 2023 season, and here he is bouncing back. After a big day on Sunday, India’s .306/.397/.460 slash line consists of three career-best figures. His underlying metrics are also better than ever in a host of categories.
Jonathan India – Year-Over-Year Stats
Season
Chase%
Whiff%
BB%
K%
GB/FB
Exit Velocity
HardHit%
wRC+
2021
25
22.8
11.3%
22.3%
1.32
87.6
38.1%
120
2022
27.9
21
7.2%
21.8%
1.14
85.1
28.8%
95
2023
22.1
14.3
11.6%
14.4%
1.19
90.2
43.8%
130
Let’s start with plate discipline. India is chasing less than ever, whiffing less than ever, walking more, and striking out way less. Those developments are all — and please excuse the inside baseball jargon here — very good. His chase rate has either improved or held steady against every pitch type except for sinkers, which have been something of an Achilles’ heel this year. He’s hitting them harder, but 71% of the sinkers he’s put in play have been groundballs, up from 54% in previous years.
India is reaching base more and hitting the ball much harder. After the previous paragraph, you might assume that his increased exit velocity has come from hitting more pitches in the zone, but the difference is smaller than you might think: 87% of his balls in play came on pitches in the zone, as opposed to 84% in 2021. Further, a close look at his batting line reveals something interesting: Although he’s hitting the ball harder and his BABIP is at a career high, his production on balls in play is still a ways off from where it was in 2021.
Jonathan India – Balls in Play
Season
BABIP
wOBA
xwOBA
2021
.326
.413
.395
2022
.305
.357
.339
2023
.343
.390
.366
Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing; walking more and striking out less has so far made this a worthwhile tradeoff. But it’s worth exploring why India’s newfound exit velocity hasn’t translated into as much power as we might expect. He’s currently running a .153 ISO, closer to the mark he put up last year than the .190 he posted in 2021. His barrel rate is likewise between his 2021 and ’22 figures, and his HR/FB is at a career low. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week’s darlings are this week’s dogs, as the Pirates and Orioles slide down in the rankings. The Rays continue to run roughshod over the American League, and the Braves have started to put some distance between themselves and the rest of the field in the National League.
A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), their pitching (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by starter and reliever IP share), and their defense (RAA) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. I also add in a factor for “luck,” adjusting a team’s win percentage based on expected win-loss record. The result is a power ranking, which is then presented in tiers below.
Tier 1 – The Best of the Best
Team
Record
“Luck”
wRC+
SP-
RP-
RAA
Team Quality
Playoff Odds
Rays
28-7
0
144
69
89
5
182
97.8%
Braves
24-11
1
116
80
84
-7
148
99.4%
Rangers
20-13
-3
122
88
94
0
154
51.6%
The Rays keep chugging along atop the American League standings with five wins in six games last week, steamrolling the Pirates and winning a hard-fought series against the Yankees over the weekend. So far, they’re outpacing the 2001 Mariners and are showing no signs of letting up on the gas. Even if they come back down to Earth a bit this summer, these banked wins give them a huge margin over their AL East competitors.
The Braves also continue to cruise, with six wins in eight games last week: a split doubleheader against the Mets, a sweep of the Marlins, and a series win over the Orioles. Marquee offseason acquisition Sean Murphy is crushing the ball, leading an offense that’s scored the second most runs in the NL. Their schedule doesn’t let up either; they’ve got dates with the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Rangers, Mariners, Dodgers, and Phillies lined up over the next three weeks. Read the rest of this entry »
The Cardinals snapped their eight-game losing streak on Sunday thanks to Paul Goldschmidt’s three-homer day, but not before finding new ways to embarrass themselves this weekend. Saturday’s loss dropped them to 10–24, their worst record through 34 games since 1907. On top of that, that same day the team declared that Willson Contreras, the marquee free-agent catcher signed in December to replace the retired Yadier Molina, would no longer be the primary backstop but would instead spend his time as a designated hitter and corner outfielder, drastically reducing his value. A day later, St. Louis backtracked, announcing that Contreras will DH but have a path to returning to catching duties.
What in the world?
This is jaw-dropping, panicky stuff coming from what was supposed to be a well-run organization. The Cardinals entered the season having reached the playoffs in four straight years and won at least 90 games in each of the last three full seasons; twice in those four years they took home division titles, including last year, when they went 93–69. But more than 20% into this season, they own the National League’s worst record at 11–24, three games worse than the Rockies (14–21), the NL’s next-worst team, and only three games ahead of the godforsaken A’s (8–27) for the majors’ worst record. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first chat of the month — apologies, as I had to punt last week’s due to other responsibilities.
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