The week before the regular season begins is usually extension season, as teams and players scramble to complete deals before the day-to-day rigors of playing baseball for six straight months get in the way of discussions. While this year hasn’t seen many extensions so far, it hasn’t seen none; on Wednesday, the Astros signed Lance McCullers Jr. to a five-year, $85 million extension, as FOX 26’s Mark Berman first reported.

McCullers would have reached free agency after this year; all five years of his extension would have been free-agent years, which makes comparisons easier. This deal is essentially a pre-agreement to a free-agent contract, with none of that squirrely nonsense of buying out arbitration years or extra team options on the end. Five years and $85 million, simple as that.

How does that rate look next to comparable free agents? For once, I’m stumped. The pandemic-shortened season, and teams’ subsequent financial retrenching, makes using past years as a guidepost a poor idea. Madison Bumgarner, for example, signed a five-year, $85 million deal — the exact terms! — but did so before the world changed. This offseason, no comparable pitchers hit the market; the only pitcher who signed a multi-year deal with an average annual value above $10 million was Trevor Bauer, and that’s not a useful comp here either.

You could, if you were so inclined, use Dan Szymborski’s research from last week that estimated the cost of one WAR in future years. The estimate has wide error bands, because it’s based only on multi-year contracts signed this offseason, but it looks like so:

With that in hand, we next need to estimate how good McCullers will be in the relevant 2022–26 timeframe. Luckily, ZiPS has us covered there as well:

With the projection in tow and a cost per WAR (I added $250,000 per year after the years in the table), we can just do the math. That’s a 9.3 WAR projection overall, and after applying the relevant yearly multipliers, the projections would suggest a $75 million contract. That implies the Astros overpaid, but take a gander at those innings projections. McCullers’ past injury history leads ZiPS to a pessimistic playing time assumption. An extra 15 innings per year would move the deal up to fair value. So would four seasons of 150-inning production and a single missed season. In other words, it comes in pretty close to what we’d expect after accounting for his skill and risk factors.

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This morning, Kevin Goldstein kicked off the outfield rankings in left. Now we shift our attention to center field, home to the game’s best player.

What a fun time for center fielders. We still have Trout, but there are only a couple of genuine stars after him. Instead, a changing of the guard is afoot. Luis Robert, Ramón Laureano, Trent Grisham, Kyle Lewis, Cristian Pache. All of those players could conceivably headline our list in future years, and we get to spend 2021 learning who will take the jump. At the same time, a handful of veterans have remained productive into their 30s, headlined by Aaron Hicks, Starling Marte, and Lorenzo Cain. There are a ton of plausible All-Stars here and quite a few players who probably won’t be back for next year’s edition.

As you might expect, our rankings get very jumbled in the middle. Marte and Lewis rank 16th and 17th, for instance, and I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash if they were 10 spots higher. These are not anyone’s personal rankings, but rather a projection based on ZiPS, Steamer, and our playing time estimates. Go ahead and disagree with the list; you won’t be alone. Read the rest of this entry »

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Hello, been trying to figure out why it’s not on the front page!

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Oh wait, NOW it is!

12:05

Dan Szymborski: lol

12:06

Dan Szymborski: I don’t know who is in it yet!

12:06

Dan Szymborski: I want to see some 19th century mustache petes

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The Detroit Tigers have a number of promising young pitchers, as well as a handful of veteran arms who retain upside. The bulk of them will have to thrive if the club hopes to compete in the AL Central anytime soon. But while there’s little doubt that Detroit’s rebuild is moving steadily in the right direction, the franchise’s fortunes will largely be determined by how soon and to what extent the pitching staff blossoms. Now under the watchful eye of Chris Fetter, Tigers pitchers head into the 2021 season with a plethora of potential, but also no shortage of question marks.

Here are conversational snapshots from, and about, six Detroit hurlers.

———

Tyler Alexander has the most-varied mix on the Tigers’ staff. The 26-year-old left-hander has five pitches in his arsenal, and last season he threw each of them between 103 and 140 times (per Statcast). His second-most-frequent offering was a slider that yielded middling-at-best results. Despite an improved movement profile and a 31% whiff rate, opposing hitters logged a .333 batting average and a .606 slugging percentage when they put the pitch in play.

I mentioned that lack of success to Alexander, pointing out that he got, on average, nine more inches of drop, and slightly more horizontal, compared to the previous year. Why the lack of results?

“Well, I throw good sliders and I throw bad sliders,” was his reasoned response. “And I would assume the bad ones got hit. You know, I’ve worked a lot on that pitch. I’ve worked really hard on on finding the consistency with it. For instance, I thought I was really good yesterday. The outing before that, I thought it was terrible. It’s a feel pitch for me, and I’m slowly starting to get there. I’ve had issues getting it down in the zone; I’ve had issues getting it backdoor. In every interview I’ve ever had, I’ve said, ‘I’m working on my slider, I’m working on my slider.’ I’m always going to be working on it. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad.” Read the rest of this entry »

It may seem a little bit early to start talking about postseason hardware, but what’s the fun of a projection system if you’re not looking at every way to separate the best of the best? In any case, it’s not as interesting an exercise when the season ends, given that we already know what happened (though it’s way more accurate).

Naturally, voting is not going to be a simple ranking of WAR. Each award has 30 different voters, all with differing priorities and philosophical beliefs in the way of excellence. Rather than kidnapping my colleagues and subjecting them to a series of lab tests about voting, our best solution is to use past votes to infer how they’ll vote going forward.

While using a neural network is always tempting, we’re handicapped by the real scarcity of data; 30 votes per award is not a lot to work with. As I’ve worked with the models over the years, the other issue is that there does seem to be a change in how voters are voting, enough to have an effect on who is winning the awards and by how much. I’ve found that chucking out anything before 2000 improves every model and every approach I’ve tried. By and large, we’re not voting on WAR, but it and other analytics have affected the results both directly (more sabermetric-friendly writers joining the BBWAA) and indirectly (influencing existing voters). I could probably make a very accurate model for how I vote, but we’d be treading far too deep into meta territory at that point.

So, what’s new this year? One variable I’ve added to the mix is past award performance — something I wish I had checked in the past, but better later than never. Essentially, players who have received votes recently tend to do slightly better than equally excellent players who have not received votes recently.

Let’s jump right in.

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Yesterday, Jay Jaffe and Ben Clemens wrapped up the infield with analysis of the game’s catchers and shortstops. Today, we shift to the outfield. First up? Kevin Goldstein takes a look at baseball’s left fielders.

When Meg Rowley handed out the assignments for Positional Power Rankings a couple of weeks ago, I was happy to see I’d gotten left fielders. “Great, I get to write about the boppers,” I said to nobody in particular. Then I put together my 30 blurbs and was left wondering, where have all the boppers gone? Scroll down these rankings and look at the primary player listed for each team. How many of these guys actually scare you when they step in the box? Five? I’ll accept an answer up to six. That’s 20% at the most, and for an offensively-oriented position, that just doesn’t feel right. Before we got out of the top 10, we’re already talking about platoon players and guys who just got non-tendered. There’s plenty of offense in baseball, but it sure isn’t in left field.

Instead, the position is something of an island of misfit toys: Players with some offensive pluses who can’t defend and are therefore put at the least-demanding position. Declining veterans. Guys getting a second chance or who are close to running out of chances. It’s become a bit of a dumping ground on big-league rosters, and perhaps the prolonged indecision surrounding whether we’d see a universal designated hitter in 2021 played a role in how we ended up here, but it’s a surprising dearth of talent nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Isiah Kiner-Falefa being mad at Meg (sort of), a billboard in Boston about Mookie Betts, MLB’s renewed attempts to crack down on foreign-substance use, and what an NHL referee oopsie says about umpire makeup calls and automated strike zones, then answer listener emails about whether the season preview podcast series influences their appraisals of teams, how baseball would be different if it weren’t different at all, the definition of a “Chicago,” exploits associated with certain teams, training geese to distract defenders, and the most disruptive form of wildlife to have on the field.

Audio intro: No Doubt, "Magic’s in the Makeup"
Audio outro: This is the Kit, "Greasy Goose"

Link to Kiner-Falefa tweet
Link to shortstop positional power rankings
Link to article on Kiner-Falefa’s positions
Link to story about Betts billboard
Link to report about foreign-substance memo
Link to Evan Drellich on the memo
Link to Ben on foreign substances
Link to foreign substances EW episode
Link to NHL ref hot mic comment
Link to NHL statement about ref
Link to article about NHL ref
Link to FiveThirtyEight study on NHL penalties
Link to article on umpires and close pitch calls
Link to another article on umps and close calls
Link to Russell Eassom on umps and calls by count
Link to Guy Molyneux on umps and calls by count
Link to John Walsh on umps and calls by count
Link to Steve Treder on strikeouts over time
Link to story on 2014 transfer rule kerfuffle
Link to SABR on the “Chicago”
Link to video of goose on the field
Link to Sam on the skunk in the outfield
Link to RJ McDaniel on the angry goose

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On Monday, the Blue Jays announced that Kirby Yates had been diagnosed with a strained flexor in his throwing elbow. A day later, that injury turned into something far more serious, as the righty will need Tommy John surgery (the second of his career) to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament. Signed to a one-year, $5.5 million deal earlier this offseason, it’s likely he’ll never pitch an inning in a Blue Jays jersey.

Elbow issues have derailed a promising late-career upswing for Yates. Between 2018 and ’19, he was arguably the best reliever in baseball, worth a league-leading 5.2 WAR and with 53 saves to his name as the Padres’ closer. But bone chips in his elbow limited him to just 4 1/3 innings in 2020, and his age — he turns 34 in just a few days — combined with the uncertainty surrounding his health likely led to the below-market deal he signed with Toronto. That elbow reportedly sunk a potential deal with the Braves earlier in the offseason, and his physical with the Jays showed more damage than expected, costing him more money.

Yates’ potential ability to anchor the bullpen was enticing enough for Toronto to take the risk that his elbow could hold up for the whole season. Instead, he didn’t last through spring training, and now the Blue Jays have to figure out how to organize the back end of their bullpen. They already had a number of strong options for high-leverage work; the trick will be determining the best way to cover up the gaping hole in the ninth inning.

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This morning, Jay Jaffe surveyed the league’s catchers. Now, Ben Clemens offers an assessment of the game’s shortstops.

Shortstop is the position where power rankings feel most unfair. It’s absolutely loaded with talent, to the point where the 26th-ranked Athletics have the same WAR projection at shortstop (1.5 WAR) as the 15th-ranked Dodgers do in left field. It’s crowded at the top — Fernando Tatis Jr. is a phenomenal headliner, and you wouldn’t be wrong to call any of the top 10 players at the position a star.

You might wonder whether the depth of the position makes each individual shortstop less valuable. After all, it’s less valuable to upgrade from 1.5 to 4.5 WAR than it is to upgrade from 0 to 4.5. You’d be wrong, though. The high defensive demands on the position mean that displaced shortstops can handle second base or center field — they can handle third as well, but third base is similarly deep with athletic hitters. Additionally, every team wants more shortstops, so acquiring a new shortstop allows you to trade your old one — sometimes in the same transaction, as we saw when the Mets traded Amed Rosario and Andrés Giménez for Francisco Lindor this offseason. So if your team is low on these power rankings, don’t fret. Or, well, do fret, but it’s not the shortstop’s fault. Teams put a lot of their best players at short, which makes it a difficult place to measure up. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Jay Jaffe wrote about the rumors that the Nationals were considering a contract extension for wünderkind Juan Soto, the team’s first step toward keeping him in town for the majority of his career. Though just 22 years old and four years away from free agency, Soto receiving an extension in the $400 million range would hardly be premature. Projection systems — which by their nature are supposed to be dispassionate and shoot for the middle — see him as having a no-doubt Hall of Fame career.

Yet if you’re a Nationals fan, you have cause to be suspicious that an extension gets done. You’ve seen your super-talented homegrown players leave unceremoniously in free agency as soon as they could, and while Soto has a more favorable outlook than Bryce Harper or Anthony Rendon did, you don’t want to see these negotiations drag out any longer than they have to.

It would be enough if Washington had just one young player’s future to stew upon this spring, but in fact, there are two. As Soto has been fielding questions about a possible extension in spring training, so too has shortstop Trea Turner, who at 27 is much closer to free agency; he’s set to hit the market after the 2022 season. That makes any extension decision that much more urgent. Turner knows it, and he’s been open about wanting to get an agreement done. From the Washington Post’s Barry Svrluga:

“I would love to play here my entire career,” Turner said Tuesday. “I’ve said it in the past. I’ve always liked it here, and don’t think the grass is greener on the other side. … I love it here. I love the atmosphere and the ballclub that [General Manager Mike] Rizzo and the coaching staff has put together every single year. We’ll see. I think those talks have happened in the past, and hopefully they’ll happen in the future.”

The Nationals’ position is a tricky one. Turner’s free agency would come two years before Soto’s, but the latter’s contract may still be the most important one, as it will be the larger of the two and must fit within Washington’s payroll. But retaining Turner in 2023 and beyond won’t come cheap. One of the top prospects in baseball when he debuted in 2015, he has slowly but surely started living up to that billing, turning into one of the league’s best shortstops over the last three seasons.

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