Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest lockout stalemate and how to decide where to lay blame, a changing of the umpirial guard in which Joe West (finally) leaves and John Libka enters, and whether there could be an MLB equivalent of the NFL’s current tanking scandal, then answer listener emails about watching baseball during the playoffs, whether to raise a child to root for the Yankees or Red Sox, the root of Hall of Fame culture, the criteria for becoming a baseball cover model, a foul-tip rule, and identifying MLB players without their identifying features, plus (1:11:54) Stat Blasts about home run trees, the modern equivalent of “Three-and-Two Jack” Graney, and whether MLB adheres to the Pareto Principle.

Audio intro: Sloan, “Laying Blame”
Audio outro: Boat, “I Believe in the Principle”

Link to Evan Drellich’s latest
Link to MLBPA statement
Link to MLB statement
Link to AP lockout piece
Link to player tweets collection
Link to Emma on players and social media
Link to umpires press release
Link to story about umpires and age
Link to another story about umpires and age
Link to Umpire Scorecards leaderboard
Link to Libka episode wiki
Link to story on Flores lawsuit
Link to Hue Jackson tanking story
Link to Joe Posnanski on the Browns tanking
Link to story on tanking and the NFL draft
Link to Shakeia Taylor EW interview
Link to Posnanski on the Hall of Fame
Link to Lawrence Taylor story
Link to another LT story
Link to MLB rulebook
Link to foul-tip thread
Link to EW’s Trout hypotheticals
Link to home run trees info
Link to “Three-and-Two Jack” story
Link to 3-2 count leaderboard
Link to Pareto principle wiki
Link to Pareto principle post
Link to combined WAR leaderboard
Link to Travis Sawchik salary research
Link to Ben Clemens on Super Two
Link to Clemens on arbitration

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2:02	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks and welcome to my first chat from the absolute darkest spot on the MLB calendar, the interval between the end of the Hall of Fame election cycle and the opening of spring training, which…. ain’t gonna happen for awhile.

2:04

Jay Jaffe: It’s an appropriately gray and rainy day here in Brooklyn, and as i write this, the players’ union has told MLB what to do with its request for mediation to settle the lockout, which was completely unnecessary to begin with MLBPA Communications @MLBPA_News Statement from the Major League Baseball Players Association: 4 Feb 2022

2:05

Jay Jaffe: I haven’t yet gotten through Evan Drelich’s piece on where things go from here but suffice it to say that if you thought you were going to see spring training games in late February or March, you should start nailing down those backup plans https://theathletic.com/3112497/2022/02/04/why-the-players-rejected-ml…

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Anyway, i’ve been on staycation this week since publishing my five-year outlook for Hall of Fame elections https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dialing-it-down-a-notch-the-next-five-year…

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Today I went to the eye doctor and I’m still dilated, so we’ll see how long i can sustain this blurred/haloed vision thing while we chat

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I released a study of the average compensation that players who qualify for Super Two arbitration receive in their pre-free-agency years. Today, I’m replicating the same study for players who reached standard arbitration. This should help add numerical context to the negotiations between the league and the MLBPA around pre-free-agency compensation – though those negotiations aren’t going well at the moment.

As a reminder, I’m looking at the production and subsequent-year salaries of every player since 2013 to establish a rule of thumb for what players can expect to receive in arbitration given their production in the preceding year. The methodology will follow, but first, here’s the high-level summary of what players have received based on their service time, position, and production:

This table displays the amount of money a given player should make above the minimum salary based on who they are and what they did. Just as with the Super Two numbers, this broadly makes sense – players receive less per unit of production than they would in free agency, but their compensation gets close and closer to free agency levels (roughly $6.5 million above minimum salary per WAR) as they go further into arbitration. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Gonzales hasn’t changed much as a hitter since he was selected seventh overall out of New Mexico State University by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2020 draft. That’s good news for a rebuilding Bucs club badly in need of some offensive oomph. The 22-year-old infielder logged a .399/.502/.747 slash line as a collegian, and while his numbers weren’t nearly as gaudy in his first professional season, he nonetheless continued to square up baseballs. Playing for the High-A Greensboro Grasshoppers, Gonzales slashed .303/.385/.565 with 18 home runs in 369 plate appearances, and he followed that up with a 1.032 OPS in the Arizona Fall League.

Again, not much has changed.

“I’m mostly the same guy [mechanically],” Gonzales said prior to playing in last November’s Fall Stars Game. “I think my leg started lifting a little higher during the COVID summer, and it was kind of that way earlier in the season, but now it’s probably back to where it was during college. At least it’s pretty similar.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my 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.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 960

This week, we welcome a coach who is a big part of a remarkable big-league staff before a conversation about what some of us are working on and pondering lately.

• To kick things off, David Laurila welcomes Craig Albernaz, bullpen and catching coach for the San Francisco Giants. We get some insight into the impressive coaching staff employed by the club, and what it is like to work with Brian Bannister, Farhan Zaidi, and Gape Kapler (guest on episode 896). We also hear stories about coaching (or being teammates with) players like Logan Webb, Buster Posey, Alex Cobb, Jeremy Hellickson, Jake McGee, Patrick Bailey, and more. [2:44]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens and Eric Longenhagen catch up on how their offseason projects are going before discussing pitchers who throw both four-seamers and sinkers, just how challenging it is to quantify deception, and Ben’s SABR award nomination. The duo also go in-depth on how difficult it can be to evaluate pitching prospects nowadays given how inconsistent and unpredictable they can be. [40:44]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour 9 minute play time.)

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It’s a challenge to talk about baseball every week when nothing is really going on, but we at least have some laughs on this week’s episode of Chin Music. To help facilitate those laughs, I’m joined by Andy McCullough of The Athletic. In an episode that was recorded before Thursday afternoon’s news of MLB requesting federal mediation, we begin by talking about where we are (or rather, are not) in the labor negotiations. Then we return to Hall of Fame voting, with Andy explaining why he’s made a conscious decision not to participate. Then it’s your emails on whether team owners actually like baseball and vacationing in the Dominican Republic, followed by some talk of underground hip-hop and a Netflix series to avoid. As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Weakened Friends.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Warning One: While ostensibly a podcast about baseball, these conversations often veer into other subjects.

Warning Two: There is explicit language.

Run Time: 1:28:25.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs writer Dan Szymborski briefly set aside the lockout blues to discuss the current state of rosters and projected standings, touching on how the talent still available via free agency compares to previous offseasons at the same stage, how the division races stack up today, the weakest-projected team positions, the best-projected players, the teams that have the most and least to do when the transaction freeze finally thaws, and much more.

Audio intro: The Cranberries, “Astral Projections”
Audio outro: XTC, “Burning With Optimism’s Flames”

Link to Dan’s 2022 ZiPS intro
Link to Dan’s team ZiPS series
Link to ZiPS player projections
Link to projected NL standings post
Link to projected AL standings post
Link to Dan’s 2021 hitter breakout picks
Link to Dan’s 2021 pitcher breakout picks
Link to Dan’s 2020 team projections review
Link to Dan’s 2020 hitter projections review
Link to Dan’s 2020 pitcher projections review
Link to Ben Clemens on Cardinals consistency
Link to Jeff Passan on the labor situation
Link to Evan Drellich on the labor situation

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One major point of contention in this offseason’s collective bargaining impasse is compensation for young players. In the two sides’ competing proposals, the existing Super Two system, which each year awards an additional year of arbitration to some pre-arb players with two-plus years of service time, has come up repeatedly. Whether it’s being replaced with an algorithmic solution, increased pay for some players based on performance, or an expansion of arbitration within the two-plus group, compensating these pre-arb but multi-year players is a key point of debate as the lockout wears on.

If we want to understand this debate, we need to understand how Super Two players have been compensated in the existing system. Without that context, the dispute can feel more theoretical than consequential, and it is obviously very consequential to the players involved. To that end, I decided to look at the last eight years of Super Two awards and come up with a rough heuristic for how their compensation relates to their production in those years. From there, I’ve created some rules of thumb, which I’ll share with you here before we get into the nitty-gritty details of how I did the calculations. Here it is, separated out by player type:

This table displays the amount of money a given player should make above the major league minimum based on how many times they’ve been through the arbitration process, their position, and their previous year’s production. Broadly speaking, the numbers make sense — players receive less per unit of production than they would in free agency, but their compensation gets closer and closer to free agency levels (roughly $6.5 million above minimum salary per WAR) as they go further into arbitration. Now let’s talk about how I got to these numbers, and the merits (and limits) of using this style of calculation to model arbitration awards. Read the rest of this entry »

Doug Latta’s name is well known in the baseball world, and for good reason. The long-time hitting instructor has worked with a plethora of players over the years, including a number of major league notables, at his Ball Yard facility in Northridge, California. Latta has been featured here at FanGraphs previously — most recently by Sung Min Kim in 2019 — and we’ll hear from him again in the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series.

———

David Laurila: I’ve asked a lot of hitters if they view hitting as more of an art or more of a science. A lot of people reading this might assume you’d say science, but is that actually the case?

Doug Latta: “No, and it’s not just both. It’s more than that. It’s a combination of science and art and everything in between. People look at a swing as a mechanical thing, and they’ll look at all of the [physical] elements, like movements, but there is an incredible psychological-and-mental side that plays into hitting in a game. You’ve got to transcend the mechanical side, because hitting is quite a feat at the major-league level.”

Laurila: Does the swing itself get overemphasized by some hitting instructors?

Latta: “I think a lot of instructors look at the swing itself, and part of that is, ‘This was a swing that did X in a game versus the swing you took the other day.’ I’ve always seen it as how we move. The things that may or may not affect us happen long before we initiate the swing. We talk about movement patterns and how that plays a role in what swing is going to come out. If your body isn’t working in an optimal way, the swing that’s going to come out is going to be affected.”

Laurila: You shy away from addressing guys you work with, but I assume Hunter Pence is fair game given that he’s spoken openly about what he learned from you?

Latta: “He would definitely be an outlier example of a body that moves in a different way than most other people. It’s almost an awkward movement pattern. Hunter came to us and make some changes during the 2018 offseason, and his 2019 year was incredible. He was able to integrate the changes, which were so different than everything else his body had been doing for 28 years.

“It’s also not only what his body was patterned to do, but how he would think about hitting — the concepts of hitting and how he would regard his moves. So, when the changes were made, it wasn’t just movements. It was thoughts. I love hearing Hunter talking about hitting now, because late in his career he was able to tap into the movements.”

Laurila: With the caveat that not every hitter is the same, what do all hitters need to do to be successful? What are the core components?

Latta: “I think the biggest core component is they have to move athletically. I’m constantly talking about balance, because balance is the integral element to athletic movement. And in hitting, a lot of moves we make really aren’t based on balance. When we start moving better, from the standpoint of clean moves to a position to hit, this changes a lot of things for the positive. For instance, timing and vision are improved. These are intangible elements that people often don’t consider. They’re looking at a hitter and saying, ‘Let’s change a swing,’ whereas when we move better, we see the ball better. If seeing the ball better isn’t a good thing for a hitter, I’m not sure what it is.

“When people start understanding that small compensation moves will affect how you see the ball — and how you move to do that — it makes sense that you essentially need to make hitters more efficient. Pitching has been getting really far ahead from the standpoint of development over the last 10 years, and not just in the major leagues; it runs all the way down to the minor leagues into the amateur side. The quality of pitching is going up, so hitters need to be more efficient. When the body moves efficiently, hitters are so much more effective, and that goes well beyond ‘executing a swing.’
Read the rest of this entry »