Well, after a winter spent fretting over the pandemic and the free agent market’s glacial pace (and what both might mean for baseball), the 2021 season is 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. Despite the 11th-hour format switcheroo, the FanGraphs staff ended up doing pretty well when it came to last year’s playoff field, though with eight teams in each league advancing to the postseason, the odds were in our favor. Still, with the exception of the Marlins (we thought the Nationals would do a better job defending their World Series title) and the Blue Jays (whither the Angels we picked instead?), we had October pretty well pegged. The 2020 individual awards? A big goose egg! Such is the prognostication business.

Folks from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs weighed in; here are the results.

American League

The American League once again appears to be stratified into the haves and the yet-to-arrives, though our writers see two of the three divisions as competitive at the top. Twenty of our voters submitted ballots with Houston and New York as division winners; their Central votes were split between the Minnesota (12 votes) and Chicago (eight). Meanwhile, four teams received no playoff votes (the Mariners, Rangers, Tigers, and Orioles), while two more (Royals and Red Sox) received just one. I expected Kansas City to be a more popular sleeper pick. I’m don’t think they’re ready to compete in earnest with the AL’s other Wild Card contenders, but they certainly seem to think they are, and it’s always good to have a little zag in a ballot full of zig. Better luck next year, Royals. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 916

Happy Opening Day! On this episode, we cover some 2021 projections — and the reactions to them — before catching up with a former major league manager.

• To start the show, Meg Rowley is joined by Ben Clemens and Dan Szymborski to discuss the 2021 positional power rankings. The trio goes over the process behind the projections and some of the biggest surprises — including “the great Rangers shortstop controversy.” Meg, Ben, and Dan also discuss their Opening Day excitement, the potential effects of a few super-teams hoarding starting pitching depth, and our spring Membership drive. [5:53]
• In the second half, David Laurila welcomes Jeff Banister, former manager of the Texas Rangers. Banister discusses what it’s like to work with a college program nowadays before sharing some of his favorite Opening Day memories. He and David also discuss the decades-long Pirates rebuild and the many challenges associated with such slow progress. David also puts Banister on the spot with a trivia question that he’s the answer to. [34:37]

Read the rest of this entry »

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Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another weekend of college baseball and week of spring training. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Kevin’s Notes

Sam Bachman, RHP, Miami (Ohio): 3 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 9 K

Bachman has cross-checkers around the country Googling where the hell Oxford, Ohio is (it’s in the southwest part of the state; fly into Cincinnati and it’s about an hour drive north from there). He’s been getting into triple digits most weekends and touched 101 on Saturday against a sub-par Northern Illinois squad; his outing featured nine up, nine down, and nine strikeouts on 41 pitches. Bachman is being treated with kid gloves as a starter due to some early-season shoulder soreness, but most teams see him as a pure reliever due to an awkward, unathletic delivery. At 6-foot-1 and somewhere in the neighborhood of 235 pounds, he’s built like a linebacker, and he seems to throw like one as well. The scary thing about him is that his 96-100 mph fastball might not even be his best pitch. Of the 41 offerings on Saturday, he threw 24 sliders, and it’s a 70-grade pitch that features massive velocity and equally impressive break; in the end, it generated eight of his nine whiffs. Despite the concerns about his delivery and ultimate role, this is some of the best pure stuff in the draft and Bachman is starting to generate some mid-first-round buzz.

Jacob Campbell, C, Illinois: 4-for-7, 2B, HR, BB, K

I was talking to a front office person the other day when he suddenly stated, “Catching around the league is so awful.” It’s baseball’s most difficult position, and takes a physical toll that greatly limits backstops’ ability to perform at the plate. There are 30 everyday catching jobs, but there aren’t 30 everyday catchers. That forces teams to move catchers up on their draft boards, and Campbell could end up a beneficiary of that strategy. A 36th-round pick by the Cubs in 2018 out of a Wisconsin high school, he hit just .197 in his first two years at Illinois, but scouts remained optimistic because of his athleticism and power, though there was concern about the latter following offseason hamate surgery. He’s come out strong so far this spring, going 12-for-27 with three bombs, and he’s suddenly being talking about in the third round, give or take 30 picks. Campbell moves well behind the plate and has a plus arm, and while there’s some swing-and-miss in his game, he has a solid approach to go with sneaky pop. Catching around the league is awful and players like Campbell are in a good position to take advantage of that come July. Read the rest of this entry »

The teams are ready, and the rosters are (mostly) set, making it the appointed time for the electrons that make up the projections to dance in their required formations. This is the last run before the season starts, making these the Official ZiPS Projected Standings© for the 2021 season. Thursday starts the six-month marathon that determines which prognostications will achieve fame and which will attain infamy.

So, how do the ZiPS projected standings work? ZiPS makes baseline playing time projections heavily informed by our depth charts; after all, ain’t nobody going to beat Jason Martinez in this space. But rather than assuming that the baseline playing time is the playing time, I use a generalized model to estimate the range of playing time. So in some ZiPS simulations, Mike Trout will play 162 games. Sometimes he’ll play 130 games or 100 games; less often, he’ll play five games or even none. Then ZiPS fills in the “missing” playing time, giving a lot more playing time to Jo Adell and Juan Lagares in center in those injury seasons. Sometimes they’re injured, too; in projection No. 435,221, center field was mainly covered by Brandon Marsh and Scott Schebler. ZiPS then uses the percentile performance projections to (somewhat) randomize what versions of every player we get. There’s a generalized model here as well, as players will tend to get more time when they’re playing better and less when they’re not. After a million runs of this, using the actual schedules and opponents, ZiPS has its standings.

Let’s start with the American League.

Read the rest of this entry »

Burn After Reading, an oft-overlooked part of the Coen Brothers oeuvre, is quietly one of their best films and includes some of Brad Pitt and George Clooney’s the finest work ever captured on celluloid. I’m not going to spoil the ending by giving you the film’s last bit dialogue (you really shouldn’t worry about spoilers for a 12-year-old flick), but the final exchange is one I think about a lot, as it applies to numerous aspects of life.

CIA Supervisor: What did we learn, Palmer?
Palmer: I don’t know sir.
CIA Supervisor: I don’t f***ing know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
Palmer: Yes, sir.
CIA Supervisor: I’m f***ed if I know what we did.
Palmer: Yes sir, it’s hard to say.

Spring training is not especially informative. Team records don’t matter. Players’ performances rarely predict what will happen during the regular season, although access to underlying metrics like those provided by Statcast can help a bit in figuring out what’s small sample and what’s a real change in ability. Still, we all watch spring ball and try our best to glean some kind of insight from the six weeks leading up to real baseball. Here’s what I got from it this year.

Injuries will be the defining factor of the 2021 season

It’s already happening. The Blue Jays will likely be without George Springer on Opening Day due to a strained oblique, while their big offseason bullpen fix, Kirby Yates, is out for the year following Tommy John surgery. The Rays will be without first baseman Ji-Man Choi for a month following knee surgery, and already have five relievers on the 60-day IL due to a smorgasbord of elbow issues. The Yankees will begin the year without slugger Luke Voit and two crucially important lefties out of the pen in Zack Britton and Justin Wilson. Eduardo Rodriguez, Boston’s scheduled Opening Day starter, has a dead arm. Baltimore outfielders Anthony Santander and DJ Stewart are dealing with muscle strains. And that’s just the American League East. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the completion of the season preview series and the Marlins renaming Marlins Park “loanDepot park,” do a draft of current corporate-sponsored MLB ballpark names from least to most objectionable, and then preview the 2021 Dodgers (24:20) with Pedro Moura of the The Athletic and the 2021 Orioles (1:09:03) with Joe Trezza of MLB.com.

Audio intro: Toto, "We Made It"
Audio interstitial 1: Kiwi Jr., "Dodger"
Audio interstitial 2: Matthew Sweet, "Baltimore"
Audio outro: Gene Clark, "Opening Day"

Link to Ben on the Dodgers
Link to Andy McCullough on the Dodgers as champs
Link to Pedro on Lux
Link to Pedro on Bellinger
Link to Pedro on Seager
Link to Pedro on Bauer
Link to Pedro and Dennis Lin on Dodgers-Padres
Link to Zach Kram on the Dodgers-Padres race
Link to Joe on Mancini
Link to Joe on Santander
Link to Joe on the Orioles’ new Dominican facility
Link to Ben on Jannis and the knuckleball
Link to Ben on the Brennameme
Link to Ben on the new baseball

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Simeon Woods Richardson has big-time potential. Blessed with an impressive combination of power, finesse, and command, the 6-foot-3, 222-pound right-hander is No. 3 on our Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list, and No. 72 on our 2021 Top 100 Prospects list. Just 20 years old, Woods Richardson fashions himself — stylistically speaking — as a modern-day Satchel Paige.

More on that later.

Born and raised in Sugar Land, Texas, Woods Richardson was taken 48th-overall in the 2018 draft by the New York Mets, only to be traded a year later, along with Anthony Kay, to the Blue Jays in exchange for Marcus Stroman. The approach he brought to Toronto was one of a burgeoning craftsman. I learned as much when I asked — in a twist on a question I often ask hitters — if he views pitching as more of an art or a science.

“Both,” responded Woods Richardson. “With pitching you need some feel, and then you have the analytics of it. It’s, ‘Okay, you’re doing this and you’re doing that, you have this break and you have that break.’ So I think it’s a mesh of both worlds. But I like the art side of pitching, where you’re hitting a spot three, four times in a row. You’re keeping them off balance. That’s what I like.”

A self-described visual learner, Woods Richardson prefers video over number-crunching, although he does pay heed to the spin efficiency of his four-seamer — an impressive 98% that he aspires to improve. Delivered at 92-94 mph, it’s one of five pitches in his arsenal. He also throws a two-seamer, a curveball, a slider, and a circle changeup, the last of which he’s diligently honed. ”Shaky” when he broke into pro ball, it’s now considered by many to be his best weapon. Read the rest of this entry »

Join us this evening at 4:30pm PT/7:30pm ET for the final preseason episode of The RosterResource Show live on the FanGraphs homepage or our Twitch channel. I’ll be discussing all of the latest roster developments as teams have set their Opening Day rosters, the biggest surprises over the past few days, and potential impact players who could be called up early in the season.

As always, keeping close tabs on how each roster came together from the beginning of the offseason until Opening Day has been a blast. I hope explaining my process for managing RosterResource on this new platform has proven to be entertaining and informative. Thanks to all of you who have tuned in over the past few weeks!

I will also be joined for a live segment by Jon Becker, one of our new RotoGraphs contributors, who will be helping me at RosterResource. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday was a busy day in the world of the White Sox. Slugger Eloy Jiménez underwent surgery to repair a ruptured left pectoral tendon, an injury that could sideline him for most of the season and alter the balance of power in the AL Central along the way. In an attempt to help offset the loss of Jiménez and to allow for some potential lineup flexibility in the near term, the team signed free agent infielder Jake Lamb to a major league deal. What’s more, general manager Rick Hahn announced that top prospect Andrew Vaughn has made the Opening Day roster, and could open the season in left field.

The 24-year-old Jiménez, who last year bopped 14 homers while batting .296/.332/.559 (140 wRC+), was injured on March 24 when he caught his left arm on the outfield wall while trying to rob the A’s Sean Murphy of a home run:

Jiménez is expected to miss five or six months following surgery, a devastating blow considering that he was projected to clout 36 homers and provide 3.0 WAR as the team’s left fielder. Alas, it’s not even his first significant absence due to an injury suffered while playing defense. In his 2019 rookie season, he missed over three weeks due to a high right ankle sprain suffered while crashing into an outfield wall in an attempt to prevent a home run, and then another 10 days after colliding with center fielder Charles Tilson and suffering a right ulnar nerve contusion. Read the rest of this entry »