Kevin Gausman had a career year with the San Francisco Giants last season. Pitching a personal-best 192 innings, the 31-year-old right-hander won 14 of 20 decisions while logging 227 strikeouts with a 2.81 ERA and a 3.00 FIP. Buoyed by that performance, he was bestowed a five-year, $110M contract by the Toronto Blue Jays, who inked him to a free-agent deal in December.

Gausman’s Giants experience was as educational as it was successful. Signed to a less-lucrative free-agent deal with San Francisco prior to the 2020 season, the LSU product embraced not only his new surroundings, but also the organization’s pitching development process.

“Their big thing over there is pitching to your strengths, and we’d do things to kind of teach ourselves what we’re good at,” explained Gausman, who’d previously pitched for the Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves, and Cincinnati Reds. “For me, it was pitching up in the zone. My bullpens would be focused on strings up in the zone, trying to throw above them, and then on splits down in the zone.”

Brian Bannister, who Gausman called one of the best pitching minds he’s ever been around, played an important role. The righty pointed to Bannister’s knowledge of how grips work for each individual pitcher, how an arm path works, and “what you can do to manipulate a ball.” Gausman wasn’t the only beneficiary. San Francisco’s Director of Pitching also helped Anthony DeSclafani have a career year. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their impressions of Opening Day, the “baseball zen” interludes on MLB.TV and Apple’s proposed broadcast innovations, Joey Votto’s in-game interview (and in-game interviews in general), a tasty new MLB sponsorship, PitchCom and pace of play, the fraught relationship between Ronald Acuña Jr. and Freddie Freeman, the Padres-Twins trade involving Chris Paddack and Taylor Rogers, and extensions for José Ramírez, Ke’Bryan Hayes, and J.P. Crawford but not for Aaron Judge (or a pair of Red Sox), plus a Stathead-sponsored Stat Blast (1:11:14) about the “on the money” players whose career production most closely matched their career earnings, and an ode to catcher receiving techniques (followed by a few updates and postscripts).

Audio intro: Spirit, “Life Has Just Begun”
Audio outro: Colin Blunstone, “I Wonder if You Know What You’ve Begun”

Link to Jeff Passan on the CBA negotiations
Link to article on Witt’s first hit
Link to Ohtani pitching highlights
Link to Tungsten Arm O’Doyle tweet
Link to Beer walkoff homer
Link to MLB/Dairy Queen press release
Link to Votto in-game interview video
Link to Ben on in-game player interviews
Link to Ginny Searle on the Votto interview
Link to Apple broadcast details
Link to Acuña/Freeman story
Link to second Acuña/Freeman story
Link to Ben on “Let the kids play”
Link to Lindsey Adler on Judge
Link to Andy McCullough on Judge
Link to Ken Rosenthal on Judge
Link to Rogers twin pitching video
Link to Ben Clemens on Ramírez
Link to Jay Jaffe on Hayes
Link to Jay on PitchCom
Link to player impression of PitchCom
Link to Stathead
Link to Stat Blast data
Link to Bart framing video
Link to EW wiki on Episode 1523
Link to EW wiki Stat Blast page
Link to Tigers tweet about Paredes
Link to MLB player names guide

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Judging by their 69-win projection and negligible odds of winning the World Series, the Pirates don’t have a great deal to look forward to from a competitive standpoint in 2022. But Opening Day is a time for celebration and optimism nonetheless, and early on Thursday afternoon, FanSided’s Robert Murray reported that the team had agreed to an eight-year, $70-million extension with third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, the largest contract in Pirates history.

The contract for the 25-year-old Hayes is also a record for a player with between one and two years of service time. It covers his final two pre-arbitration years, his three years of arbitration-eligibility, and the first three years of his free agent eligibility, through his age-32 season. The exact details have not been reported at this writing, including the value of his club option for the ninth year (2030).

The celebration was almost immediately dampened when Hayes left the Pirates’ opener against the Cardinals in the bottom of the first inning due to an apparent injury to his left wrist. He dove trying to catch a bloop into left field by Dylan Carlson, but the ball fell and turned into a double. After Tyler O’Neill singled Carlson home two batters later, Pirates head athletic trainer Rafael Freitas and manager Derek Shelton came out of the dugout to check on Hayes, unwrapping his left wrist and taking him out of the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Diamondbacks and Rangers made a minor deal on Opening Day, with Texas sending upper-level infielder Yonny Hernandez to Arizona for low-level center field speedster Jeferson Espinal. Arizona desperately needs big league infield help with Nick Ahmed (shoulder) and Josh Rojas (oblique) starting the year on the injured list. They traded cash to Chicago for upper-level infielder Sergio Alcántara a few days ago and now add the plucky Hernandez, who was squeezed out of Texas by the additions of Corey Seager and Marcus Semien from above, and by the bevy of prospects (among them Ezequiel Duran, Josh Smith, and Davis Wendzel) who are either on, or are soon-to-be-on, the 40-man from below. Read the rest of this entry »

Just before Opening Day, the Brewers played musical chairs with their catching corps in a pair of moves perhaps triggered by losing Pedro Severino to a PED suspension. They made two trades, adding two backstops and subtracting another, and shipping a couple of lower-ranked prospects out as part of the deals. They are:

From Miami: C Alex Jackson
To Miami: 2B Hayden Cantrelle and RHP Alexis Ramirez

From San Diego: C Victor Caratini
To San Diego: C Brett Sullivan and UTIL Korry Howell Read the rest of this entry »

2:10	Jay Jaffe: HAPPY OPENING DAY! And welcome to FanGraphs’ Opening Day chat

2:11	Jay Jaffe: Thrilled to be here, particularly in light of how bleak things looked regarding the start of the season just a few weeks ago. We’ve all made it through a very tough winter

2:12

Jay Jaffe: We’re gonna be clickety-clacking along this afternoon, starting with the Brewers-Cubs game. In the meantime, I’d like to pass along a quick message from Meg: Meg Rowley @megrowler earnest tweet alert: It pales in comparison to (gestures at everything) but the last two years have been a pretty stressful time to be in the baseball website biz, so as we celebrate another Opening Day, thanks for sticking with @fangraphs. It has made all the difference 🥰 7 Apr 2022

2:13	Jay Jaffe: Thank you for following along!

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday, the White Sox rotation took a hit when Lance Lynn limped off the mound in pain after tearing a tendon in his right knee. In the wee hours of Tuesday, just before Lynn underwent surgery, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that Chicago signed free agent Johnny Cueto to a minor league deal. The move helps to replenish the team’s depth and offers the promise of another go-round for for a pitcher who has been beset by injuries in recent years but has long ranked among the game’s most entertaining hurlers.

Via ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the 36-year-old Cueto will make a prorated share of $4.2 million dollars if he’s in the majors. According to MLB Network’s Jon Heyman, he has a May 15 opt-out date if he’s still in the minors.

Cueto spent the past six seasons with the Giants via a $130 million deal, but the team cut bait last November by declining his $22 million option for this season, instead paying him a $5 million buyout — a move that was hardly a surprise given his ongoing injury problems. After making a full complement of 32 starts in 2016, he never made more than 25 in a season during the remainder of his deal. Blisters limited him to 25 turns in 2017, and an ankle sprain and Tommy John surgery to just 13 in ’18-19. He did make 12 starts during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but just 21 last year, scattered around separate trips to the injured list for a grade 1 lat strain, a flexor strain, COVID-19 protocol, and then an elbow strain that limited him to just one September appearance, the first relief appearance of his major league career.

Despite those maladies, Cueto’s 4.08 ERA (101 ERA-), 4.05 FIP (100 FIP-), and 1.5 WAR made for his best season since 2016, even though his 114.2 innings were 32.2 fewer than his total in ’17, when he produced 1.2 WAR. He struck out 20% of batters, right at his career average but placing him in just the 25th percentile according to Statcast; walked just 6.1% (good for the 75th percentile); and allowed 1.18 homers per nine, 0.15 lower than the major league average for starters. Though his exit velocity and barrel and hard-hit rates were better than average, with his 6.4% barrel rate coming in at the 71st percentile, his low strikeout rate inflated his xERA to a gaudy 4.99. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back, baseball! After a prolonged offseason rife with drama and surprises, Opening Day is finally upon us. Last year, I introduced these power rankings as a way to think about all 30 teams in baseball and stack them up against each other outside the rigid structures of leagues or divisions. Nearly every major site has some form of power rankings, usually derived from whatever panel of experts each site employs. These rankings, though, are entirely data driven.

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-) — and weight and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. For these Opening Day power rankings, I’ve used each team’s projected stats based on their Depth Charts projections. 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 OAA/RAA from Statcast available on our leaderboards, I’ve chosen to include that as the defensive component for each team. For just this run of rankings, I’ve used the projected fielding component of WAR that appears on our Depth Charts projections. Read the rest of this entry »

Much of the New York-market media attention that’s followed the announcement that Ron Marinaccio will be on the Yankees’ Opening Day roster has centered on his roots. A boyhood fan of the team that he now plays for, the right-hander was born and raised in Toms River, New Jersey.

There’s much more to his story. A 2017 19th-round pick out of the University of Delaware, Marinaccio has gone from a marginal prospect to the doorstep of a major-league debut in a little more than a year. As Eric Longenhagen put it when he wrote up the 26-year-old reliever for our 2022 Yankees Top Prospects list, “Marinaccio was a 2021 revelation.” In 40 outings comprising 66.1 innings between Double-A Somerset and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Marinaccio logged a 2.04 ERA and allowed just 35 hits. Moreover, he fanned 105 batters.

A pitch that he hadn’t previously featured has played a big role in his ascent. Described by Longenhagen as a “trapdoor-action changeup,” the offering grades out at 60 on the 20/80 scouting scale — and it’s not his only effective weapon. Marinaccio has increased the velocity of his fastball, and he’s also revamped his slider, in the process adding a horizontal-in-the-opposite-direction component to his arsenal.

Marinaccio — No. 20 on on the aforementioned Yankees list — discussed the analytics-driven evolution of his repertoire prior to a recent spring training game.

———

David Laurila: What is the story behind your changeup?

Ron Marinaccio: “I’ve always had it, and the analytics kind of helped bring it out. With the boost of my velo last year, they moved me up a level, and from there we started diving a little bit deeper into the analytics. I realized that I’d only been throwing the changeup around 5% of the time, whereas last year it was probably closer to 40%, maybe even 50%. The usage went way up.”

Laurila: You said the analytics helped bring it out. Had you not known that it was good?

Marinaccio: “Yes, but in the past things were generally more fastball/slider. That was the way people thought righties should pitch to righties. I would throw it mostly to lefties, but once I started throwing it more to righties, I started to get more confidence in it. That’s when I was like, ‘Wow, I was only throwing this 5% of the time?’ My first outing, I threw over 50% changeups.”

Laurila: When and where did you first learn your changeup? Read the rest of this entry »

After an offseason that saw labor acrimony bookended by two frenetic free agency periods, the 2022 season is almost upon us; we made it. And on this, the morning of Opening Day, we engage in our annual tradition of asking our staff to open themselves up to public ridicule and predict the year in baseball. Some of these predictions will prove to be prescient; others will make their forecaster feel a little silly. Last year’s Braves? Our staff thought they’d win the NL East. Last year’s Angels, Mets, Twins, and Padres? Whoops! Such is the prognostication business.

We asked the staff to predict the expanded playoff field, pennant and World Series winners, and the individual award recipients. Folks from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs weighed in; here are the results. Read the rest of this entry »