Though the owners could end their self-imposed lockout of the players at any time and allow the baseball season to proceed on schedule, the first week of spring training games has been scrubbed. Odds are that more cancellations are to come, and commissioner Rob Manfred’s February 28 deadline to reach an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement that would preserve Opening Day is fast approaching. With a newfound sense of urgency that stands in marked contrast to Major League Baseball offering one formal proposal in the lockout’s first 10 weeks, representatives for the owners and the players union have been meeting on a daily basis in Jupiter, Florida this week to discuss core economic issues — and those meetings have lasted more than 15 minutes at a time! But even with the more frequent back-and-forth and some minor movement here and there, including a formal proposal from the players on Tuesday, the two sides still appear to be far apart on the most central issues.

If there’s optimism to be had, let us know, because we could sure use some. In the meantime, here’s an attempt to capture where things stand as of Wednesday morning.

Competitive Balance Tax

The lack of optimism regarding an impending resolution to the lockout centers on the players making the tax “the lodestar” of negotiations, to use Jeff Passan’s term, and so far this week, neither side has budged from where things stood as of the owners’ February 12 proposal. I broke down the recent history of the CBT — the threshold for which has not kept pace with the growth of revenue over the past decade — in my previous analysis in the wake of that proposal.

The short version is that the players believe the CBT functions as a salary cap. With teams’ total payrolls down 4.6% from 2017 (from about $4.25 billion to $4.05 billion), and with most of the biggest-spending teams pulling up just short of the threshold in 2021 — the Phillies, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, and Astros were all within $4 million of the $210 million bar, with only the Dodgers and Padres paying the tax — one can understand their frustration. In Tuesday’s proposal, the players didn’t budge from their previous position from January 24. While generally preserving the previous CBA’s tiered penalties for teams exceeding the thresholds by more than $20 million and more than $40 million, they’ve sought an increase in the base threshold from $210 million to $245 million, growing to $273 million by 2026. That jump in part makes up for the threshold’s meager growth over the life of the last CBA (from $195 million to $210 million over five years, an average of 2.1%), while revenues grew at a quicker rate. The only real difference in that aspect of their proposal is that there’s no draft-related penalty involved, where the previous CBA bumped the draft place for the highest pick of any team with a payroll at least $40 million above the threshold down by 10 spots (unless it was a top-six pick). Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Grayson Rodriguez continues to ascend. Ranked 30th last year, the 22-year-old right-hander in the Baltimore Orioles organization is No. 3 on our newly-released 2022 Top 100 Prospects list. Moreover, he’s the highest-ranked hurler. Blessed with a lethal arsenal of pitches, Rodriguez possesses, in the opinion of Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein, “the potential to be a No. 1 starter and Cy Young candidate.”

On the eve of last year’s Top 100 release, we ran an interview with Rodriguez that focused on his changeup/screwball. To augment this year’s ranking, we caught up to the fast-rising righty to discuss the developmental strides he’s made since last season, and to ask him what it feels like to be the top pitching prospect in the game.

———

David Laurila: We talked 12 months ago. What’s changed since that time?

Grayson Rodriguez: “I would say the one thing I’m most proud of is that my average velocity has increased. When we last talked, the previous year’s average velo was 95.7 [mph]. This past season, I was able to get it up to 98.5. That [is], up until the last month of the season when it dropped a little bit; in September, it was 96.8. So, getting the average velocity up was big for me. I was working in the strike zone more often with that little extra velo.”

Laurila: How and why did your velocity go up? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is our list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. The scouting summaries were compiled with information provided by available data and industry sources, as well as from our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

And now, a few important things to keep in mind as you’re perusing the Top 100. You’ll note that prospects are ranked by number but also lie within tiers demarcated by their Future Value grades. The FV grade is more important than the ordinal ranking. For example, the gap between Julio Rodríguez (No. 4) and Triston Casas (No. 16) is 12 spots, and there’s a substantial difference in talent between them. The gap between Mark Vientos (No. 64) and Patrick Bailey (No. 76), meanwhile, is also 12 numerical places, but the difference in talent is relatively small. You may have noticed that there are more than 100 prospects in the table below, and more than 100 scouting summaries. That’s because we have also included 50 FV prospects whose ranking fell outside the 100. Their reports appear below, under the “Other 50 FV Prospects” header. The same comparative principle applies to them.

You’ll also notice that there is a Future Value outcome distribution graph for each prospect on the list. This is an attempt to graphically represent how likely each FV outcome is for each prospect. Before his departure for ESPN, Kiley McDaniel used the great work of our former colleague Craig Edwards to find the base rates for each FV tier of prospect (separately for hitters and pitchers), and the likelihood of each FV outcome. For example, based on Craig’s research, the average 60 FV hitter on a list becomes a perennial 5-plus WAR player over his six controlled years 26% of the time, and has a 27% chance of accumulating, at most, a couple of WAR during his six controlled years. We started with those base rates for every player on this year’s list and then manually tweaked them depending on our more specific opinions about the player. For instance, Elly De La Cruz and Steven Kwan are both 50 FV prospects, but they are nothing alike. De La Cruz could be a switch-hitting shortstop with plus-plus power or he might turn into Seuly Matias. Meanwhile, Kwan has performed through the upper minors and is almost certain to contribute to a big league team, but doesn’t have nearly the same power potential or high-end ceiling De La Cruz does. Our hope is that the distribution graphs reflect these kinds of differences.

This year’s crop of prospects is a little bit down in the 60 and 55 FV tiers. Typically, the 55 FV tier runs to about the 50th overall prospect on the Top 100 (which again isn’t really a Top 100, so much as a ranking of all the 50 FV and above prospects, but that title is an SEO nightmare), but this year’s group only extends through No. 32. This might be due to random variation in the prospect population, or have to do with the lost year of development in 2020 or the new rules surrounding rookie eligibility, which caused several players to graduate off our lists more quickly than in the past. Jose Barrero and Keibert Ruiz, for example, would have been eligible under the older roster rules. Those guys can be found on The Board’s Graduates section. Or perhaps our evaluations are just wrong.

For a further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, please read this and this. If you would like to read a book-length treatment on the subject, one is available here. Read the rest of this entry »

Our story so far: It is a dark time for recognizing Hall of Fame starting pitchers. While the 300-wins-or-bust barrier has fallen, starters born in 1950 or later have become significantly underrepresented in Cooperstown. The cream of the crop within that demographic has been honored, with a couple of notable exceptions whose own actions wounded their candidacies, causing them to age off the writers’ ballot. With falling workloads illustrating that the time of the 250-inning starter is behind us, it makes sense to reframe expectations for what constitutes a Hall-worthy hurler.

Enter S-JAWS, the experimental version of my Hall of Fame fitness metric, introduced during the past election cycle. As an attempt to reduce the skewing caused by the impact of 19th-century and dead-ball era pitchers, S-JAWS prorates peak WAR credit for any heavy-workload season to a maximum of 250 innings. The new metric — which is now the default at the starters’ Baseball Reference page — can help to illuminate some candidates throughout history who deserve a closer look even after being passed over so many times, though from a practical standpoint the oldest pitchers of the group could be a decade away from actual placement on an Era Committee ballot.

Before taking a breeze through those candidates — the part of this series many of you’ve been waiting for — here once again is the graphic summary of Hall of Fame representation rates for starting pitchers by birth decade, expressed as a percentage of “qualifiers” who reached 2,000 career innings. It’s a handy practical cutoff that includes every enshrined pitcher from the NL, AL, and bygone white leagues except Dizzy Dean (who fell 32.2 innings short), plus relievers Hoyt Wilhelm and Dennis Eckersley, who aren’t included in the counts of enshrined starters.

And here’s an aggregation of longer-term representation rates that I find most helpful:

Before we dive in, I’ll note that there just aren’t enough eligible pitchers of quality that we can level the representation rates entirely. That isn’t even my goal here, but I am looking to boost the rates of more recent pitchers while keeping in mind that the somewhat looser standards make it apparent that a few guys from the more ancient eras look even stronger in the light of S-JAWS than in JAWS. We shouldn’t leave them by the wayside, but the staggered Era Committee process — with Early Baseball candidates (those who made their marks before 1950) not yet eligible for reconsideration before 2032, and Golden Days candidates (1950–69) not until 2027 — already defaults to making them lower priorities anyway.

With that, I’ll break this down into the top starters for each period who are outside the Hall, identifying those who fall within the top 100 of the rankings — about 43.0 S-JAWS, which captures shorter-career guys such as Félix Hernández, who’s an electoral longshot, to Sandy Koufax, who’s enshrined despite the brevity of his career. This is not to say that all of the pitchers on the outside that I’m highlighting here are Hall-worthy or that S-JAWS should be the only consideration for anointing them. The hope is that by appreciating what their candidacies do offer, we can come up with an appropriate list of pitchers whose elections should be prioritized. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday marks the 83rd day of the owner-initiated lockout. It still remains to be seen how long it will last, but whatever its length, we’re likely to see a whirlwind of a mini-offseason as soon as the league and the players come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. While that kind of thing is fun to cover — the week before the lockout was a thrilling frenzy — there’s still quite a lot for baseball to do. So let’s roll up our sleeves, lend a hand, and find some new homes for a few of the remaining free agents. The trick here is that they actually have to make at least a lick of sense for the team signing them — but just a lick.

We gave out a half-billion of fictional dollars to hitters last time, but our imaginations could use some pitching too, so let’s get cracking! Read the rest of this entry »

As I was thinking of a title for this piece, it struck me how many puns and turns of phrase related to catching exist in the American lexicon. “Catch as catch can” and some version of “catching catch-all” flitted through my mind, as did “Catchers on the Rise,” an overwrought hat tip to the literary canon. Ultimately, though, a nod to Joseph Heller’s 1961 classic Catch-22 seemed the most fitting. Not just because of the basic facts – conveniently, it’s 2022 and I’m writing about catchers – but also because there’s something paradoxically funny about of one of the greatest catching classes in recent memory coming of age at a time when the role of the catcher seems to be on the brink of fundamental change. Read the rest of this entry »

Picture this: Bases loaded, two outs, full count in a tie game. It’s the ultimate high-stakes situation, and isolated on the mound is the pitcher, left to fend for himself. He can’t mess up — not here, not in front of everyone. He does what only a pitcher can do, and that’s use the adrenaline pent up inside to his benefit. So on the next pitch, he fires off a 100-mph fastball, up and in. The opposing hitter swings… and misses. The crowd goes berserk. Inning over. Jam: escaped.

This is the stuff of legends. It’s a moment we’ve thought about at least once as a kid; there’s nothing quite like a bases-loaded escapade that captures the imagination. The cool thing, though? It’s that major league pitchers have been more than willing to live out this fantasy. In 2018, Sam Miller wrote about which instances produce a pitcher’s fastest fastball, and his conclusions are intuitive: when the pitcher is ahead, especially with two strikes, and when there’s two outs. Our favorite pitchers aren’t just strike-throwing robots; they’re also swayed by the heat of the moment, making them even more entertaining to watch.

Inspired, I started to look at data from last season. With two strikes, pitchers averaged 94.2 mph on their four-seamers. In all other counts, they averaged 93.5 mph, for a difference of 0.7 miles per hour. Not too dramatic, but across a large sample of pitchers, it’s significant nonetheless. It’s here I began to wonder: which pitchers in 2021 had the largest differences between their average four-seam velocity in two-strike counts and non–two-strike counts? Maybe you thought of Max Scherzer, who’s known for having a second, even third gear. He’s up there for sure, but not high enough. Because this is what the top five looks like:

Hey there, Shohei. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have upped the quality of their farm system in recent years, and Paul Toboni has played a key role in that ascent. Boston’s director of amateur scouting since September 2019 — he was assistant director for three years prior — the 32-year-old University of Notre Dame MBA has helped facilitate drafting players such as Marcelo Mayer and Nick Yorke. Originally hired by the Red Sox as an intern, Toboni became an area scout in 2015 before climbing up the ranks to his current position.

On the road scouting when this conversation took place, Toboni talked about the process itself, the philosophies that shape an organization’s decision-making, and some of the notable draftees the Red Sox have brought on board.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with the basics. What exactly does an amateur scout do?

Paul Toboni: “It depends on your responsibility. We have a number of area scouts across the country who are responsible for areas ranging in geographical size, and also in player density. There are a lot of players coming out of Southern California, so maybe we have two scouts there. We also have a scout covering Arkansas, Oklahoma, and all the way through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. An area scout’s job, really, is to be at the grassroots level and get to know these players really well. They talk to coaches, turn in reports, and come up with their lists.

“It flows upward from there, to our regional cross checkers. I think teams around the league are organized pretty similarly in that [the cross checkers] cover four or five area scout’s areas. From there it goes to national cross checkers, who are responsible for covering the whole country. Then it’s the front office.”

Laurila: What goes into the reports that scouts turn in? Read the rest of this entry »

In an all-mailbag episode, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley answer listener emails about baseball with nine DH spots (and separate offensive and defensive units), baseball with eight lineup spots instead of a DH, a visual baseball rulebook, their favorite types of ballpark quirks, adjusting offensive stats for the behavior of the ball, an ethical question about preventing a Shohei Ohtani injury, anointing MLB’s biggest heel, bringing ultimate Frisbee’s self-officiating to baseball, posting the wrong lineup on the scoreboard to confuse an opposing team, a pitcher with one pitch but perfect (albeit limited) command, programming a robomanager, and more.

Audio intro: Roxy Music, “Three and Nine”
Audio outro: Belle and Sebastian, “I Can See Your Future”

Link to Ben on pitcher hitting
Link to BtBS on the universal DH
Link to Star Trek Ringer MLB Show
Link to ballpark homogeneity study
Link to BP on LeMahieu
Link to FanGraphs on LeMahieu
Link to Gonny Jomes EW wiki page
Link to video of Pierzynski play
Link to Michael Baumann on Bregman
Link to Incaviglia rule story
Link to Robinson retirement story

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