Just a few weeks after extending third baseman Austin Riley, Alex Anthopoulos and the Atlanta Braves are at it again. This time, the recipient of a long-term deal is one of the team’s two rookie standouts, Michael Harris II. The freshly inked contract runs for a minimum of eight years, with $15 million and $20 million club options in 2031 and ’32 that each carry a buyout of $5 million. All told, Harris stands to pocket at least $72 million; the deal will be worth $102 million if the Braves exercise both options.

That Harris would be signing an extension that takes him into the 2030s in August of 2022 while nearly doubling up the next-best National League rookie hitter by WAR would have been a surprising revelation to someone living in the pre-lockout days. After all, Harris had not yet played above High-A, and while he was excellent in the Sally League, he wasn’t dominating the way Julio Rodríguez was at a similar level of play. But like Rodríguez, it only took six weeks of Double-A ball before Harris was ready to star in the majors.

When Harris was called up in late May, the Braves were still scuffling below .500, 7 1/2 games behind the Mets in the NL East. Atlanta’s outfield beyond Ronald Acuña Jr. was sorely tested, as Eddie Rosario was out with eye surgery, Marcell Ozuna had an OPS hovering around .650, and it felt as if the Baha Men had a hit more recently than Travis Demeritte. Some teams would have taken the path of least resistance and called up journeyman fifth outfielder Delino DeShields or eternal prospect Drew Waters. Instead, the Braves went with the bolder move, calling up Harris. Unlike the other options, Harris was at least playing excellent baseball, hitting .305/.372/.506 in 43 games for Double-A Mississippi. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: And we are live!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Or possibly dead and this is a very odd afterlife.

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Oops, sorry didn’t answer yet lol

Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into the year, expectations were high in Arlington. The Rangers, fresh off of a 100-loss season, went big in free agency, bringing in Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Jon Gray. They shopped in the second tier of free agents as well, signing Martín Pérez, Garrett Richards, Brad Miller, and Kole Calhoun to short-term deals. Trades brought in more starters: Mitch Garver joined the team this spring, and last year’s Joey Gallo trade netted several potential contributors in Ezequiel Duran, Josh H. Smith, and Glenn Otto.

Depending on how you weigh the contributions of those last three, that’s something like nine new players. It didn’t make the Rangers overnight playoff contenders – we gave them a 75-win projection and an 8% chance of reaching the playoffs before the season started – but it felt like the opening salvo of a new contender. Sign your free agents when you can get them, supplement them with a burgeoning farm system headlined by top prospect Josh Jung, and pretty soon, you’ve got a stew going.

A lot can change in a few months. This week, the Rangers ownership group, led by majority owner Ray Davis, delivered a clear sign that they aren’t happy with the way things are going. On Monday, they relieved manager Chris Woodward of his duties. Woodward had overseen some down years in Texas after taking over before the 2019 season. He’d shepherded this team adequately, at least as far as wins and losses go; we’re currently projecting the Rangers for 72.5 wins, basically the same as their preseason expectation, and it’s not like we were outliers in that projection; pretty much everyone around pegged them in the 70-75 win range.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on Tony La Russa’s suspicious pinch-runner call, banter about Joey Gallo on the Dodgers and Andrew Benintendi on the Yankees, the utility of booing, and the parochial concept of being unable to play in New York, the curious timing of the Rangers’ firing of long-tenured executive Jon Daniels, the Athletics’ curious release of Elvis Andrus, the Braves extending Michael Harris II and the domino theory of extensions, and Joey Votto’s season-ending injury, then answer listener emails about which ownership group they would most want to compel to open its books and an MLB vs. NPB/KBO All-Star Game, plus (1:06:38) a Past Blast from 1891 and a bonus question about recursive caps.

Audio intro: Ryan Oxford, “Fa Fa Fa Fired”
Audio outro: Roland Roberts, “All About the Timing”

Link to La Russa video
Link to La Russa response
Link to Gallo’s quotes to The Athletic
Link to later Gallo quotes
Link to Updike’s New York quote
Link to MLBTR on the Daniels firing
Link to Levi Weaver on the Daniels firing
Link to press release about Daniels
Link to longest-tenured team execs
Link to FG farm rankings
Link to MLBTR on the Andrus release
Link to A’s WAR leaders
Link to MLBTR on the Harris extension
Link to Passan tweet about Braves core
Link to MLBTR on the Votto injury
Link to biblical losses quote
Link to KBO ASG story
Link to Team USA WBC roster
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to 1891 story source 1
Link to article on 1900 Phillies
Link to 1891 story source 2
Link to 1891 story source 3
Link to Orioles cap

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Alex Binelas has big-time power. The extent to which he can get to it will go a long way toward determining his future. The 22-year-old corner infielder has gone deep 23 times this season between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland, but he’s also fanned 126 times in 418 plate appearances. As Eric Longenhagen wrote this spring, “Binelas’ calling card is plus-plus raw power… but it comes with plenty of swing-and-miss.” His left-handed stroke has produced a 104 wRC+ this season and a .206/.318/.445 slash line.

The potential for Binelas to do far more than he’s shown since being drafted 86th overall last year out of the University of Louisville is real. The Red Sox certainly think so. Enamored by his exit velocities and ability to hit moonshots, Boston acquired the Oak Creek, Wisconsin native from the Milwaukee Brewers last winter as part of the Hunter Renfroe deal.

Binelas discussed his do-damage approach and the in-progress mechanical adjustment he’s hoping will help him turn the corner prior to a recent game at Portland’s Hadlock Field.

———

David Laurila: How would you describe yourself as a hitter?

Alex Binelas: “I go up to the plate looking to impact the ball. I obviously want to put together quality at bats — I want to swing at the right pitches — but my ultimate goal is putting the ball in play as hard as I can. I’m not trying to hit a home run every time, but when you try to impact ball hard with quality swings and are attacking the right pitches, you put yourself in a good position to do damage.”

Laurila: Exit velocity is a priority.

Binelas: “Yes.” Read the rest of this entry »

Speculating about the playoffs in August always feels strange. The regular season isn’t over. It isn’t nearly over, either – the 45 or so games remaining on each team’s schedule will change how we think about them. The best two records in baseball belong to the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros right now, but some team could go 35-10 and wrest that title away from them.

Still, today I’m going to speculate about the playoffs. Whether the Dodgers and Astros hold onto their top spots or not, they’re both playoff locks – our Playoff Odds give them both 100% odds of reaching the postseason. In the past week, they’ve also each gotten rotten injury news that will affect their playoff rosters. So suspend your inherent skepticism of articles in August that talk about October as we consider the playoff impact of losing Walker Buehler and Michael Brantley. Read the rest of this entry »

The delayed start to the 2022 season due to the lockout has had a lot of small consequences for the structure of the season, ranging from expanded rosters to my least favorite thing, the continued use of zombie runners in extra innings. The last (we hope) of these changes is a slight alteration to the playoff schedule, which the league sees as a necessity in order to keep the postseason from straying too far into November. On Monday, MLB announced that the three-game Wild Card Series will be played without any off-days, while an off-day will be trimmed from the Divisional Series (between Games 4 and 5); teams in the ALDS get one additional off-day, without travel, between Games 1 and 2. The Championship Series will lose an off-day between Games 5 and 6). The World Series is business as usual.

While I expected this configuration for the Wild Card round (it was already accounted for in the generalized ZiPS projections for postseason performance), there are some slight tweaks that need to be made to account for the changes to the Division and Championship Series with respect to pitching. When projecting the roster strength of a team for the purposes of postseason probabilities, ZiPS weighs pitchers at the top of the rotation more heavily. That’s because historically they have gotten a larger percentage of starter innings in the playoffs than during the regular season. But losing an extra day of rest could result in teams using the pitchers after their No. 3 starters more heavily, as well as more dilemmas involving bringing back a top starter on three days rest. There are also possible consequences for the bullpens. In other words, teams will need to be slightly deeper than normal this playoff season.

So, how do we account for that? To get a rough estimate — I’m not sure there’s a methodology that will let us do any better than that — of the potential effects of the compressed schedule, I went back into the ZiPS game-by-game postseason simulations and put together a new, quick simulation for starting pitcher usage. I used projections as of Tuesday morning. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter a bit more about whether Dottie dropped the ball on purpose in the movie version of A League of Their Own, then discuss an Angels defensive meltdown, a vomiting Oakland Athletic, a Javier Báez bad-ball batted ball, Tony La Russa (and Bill Veeck) taking suggestions from the stands, the Mets’ promotion of Brett Baty, Francisco Lindor, Andrés Giménez, and the Lindor trade revisited, Walker Buehler’s Tommy John surgery, Fernando Tatis Jr.’s suspension, and the Rangers firing Chris Woodward and the dubious utility of one-run records in evaluating managers, then Stat Blast (51:34) about Drew Rasmussen and almost-perfect games versus nine-inning no-hitters and a Max Scherzer/Bryson Stott fun fact, share a Past Blast (1:04:01) from 1890, and talk (1:10:02) to Dr. Justine Siegal, trailblazing baseball coach, founder of Baseball For All, and Baseball Coordinator for the A League of Their Own TV reboot, about her work on the baseball scenes in the series and the progress of women in baseball.

Audio intro: Tommy Roe, “Dottie I Like It”
Audio interstitial: Neil Young, “Field of Opportunity”
Audio outro: Tami Neilson, “Green Peaches”

Link to info on Dottie debate
Link to show creators’ comments
Link to Dottie/Kit scene
Link to A League of Their Own movie
Link to A League of Their Own show
Link to A League of Their Own trailer
Link to video of Ohtani’s new pitch
Link to thread of Angels plays
Link to article on Angels plays
Link to Angels fan reaction GIF
Link to Julio’s almost-homer
Link to Santana’s sunflower seeds
Link to Ben on broken counts
Link to Bois on broken counts
Link to article on Bolt vomiting
Link to Báez batted ball
Link to La Russa video
Link to info on Veeck’s stunt
Link to MLBTR on Baty
Link to Fabian Ardaya on Buehler
Link to Dan S. on Tatis
Link to Tatis Sr. tweet
Link to other Tatis Sr. tweet
Link to Tatis bobblehead tweet
Link to Levi Weaver on Woodward
Link to worst one-run records
Link to Bill James on one-run records
Link to Rob Mains on one-run records
Link to Chris Jaffe’s managers book
Link to Ben Clemens on Rasmussen
Link to thread on perfectos vs. no-nos
Link to Stathead
Link to Ryan Nelson on Twitter
Link to Scherzer fun fact tweet
Link to Stathead on fourth time through
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to 1890 story source 1
Link to 1890 story source 2
Link to Atlas Obscura story
Link to EW review of League
Link to Justine’s website
Link to Justine’s wiki
Link to Baseball For All’s website
Link to Maybelle Blair video
Link to Outsports on Blair
Link to The L.A. Times on Blair
Link to MLB.com on Blair
Link to Pitch coordinator episode
Link to Twilight coordinator episode
Link to watch party link

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Read the rest of this entry »

With less than a third of the season remaining, it’s crunch time for a number of teams on the playoff bubble. There are still division titles up for grabs in both Central divisions, and both Wild Card races are shaping up to remain exciting down to the last day.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by IP share) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. New for this year, I’ve opted to include defense as a component, though it’s weighted less heavily than offense and pitching. Some element of team defense is captured by RA9-, but now that FanGraphs has Statcast’s OAA/RAA available on our leaderboards, I’ve chosen to include that as the defensive component for each team. 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.

Note: All stats are through Sunday, August 14.

The Dodgers had a 12-game win streak — which included sweeps of the Giants, Padres, and Twins — snapped on Sunday. They’ve lost just four times since the All-Star break and have asserted themselves as the best team in baseball as the summer rolls on. This hot streak comes despite plenty of uncertainty surrounding their starting rotation; Clayton Kershaw hit the injured list last week with a lower back strain, and the team announced yesterday that Walker Buehler would undergo elbow surgery, ending his season. They’ll be glad to welcome back Dustin May from his Tommy John rehab this weekend. Read the rest of this entry »