Loss of Britton Puts a Dent in Yankees’ Bullpen

Despite an atypically mediocre performance from their bullpen last year, the Yankees project to have the strongest relief corps in 2021 according to our forecasting systems. However, their chances of fulfilling that expectation have taken a hit with the news that Zack Britton, the team’s top setup man, will undergo arthroscopic surgery to remove a bone chip in his left elbow. The 33-year-old lefty could be out until mid-June or later.

Britton had already been slowed this spring by a bout of COVID-19, which he contracted in January while going to the hospital when his wife was giving birth to the couple’s fourth child. He told reporters that he lost 18 pounds and had been set back in his offseason throwing regimen. After experiencing elbow soreness in the wake of a bullpen session on Sunday, he underwent an MRI on Monday that showed the chip.

The surgery will be performed on March 15 by Dr. Christopher Ahmad, the Yankees’ team physician. As WFAN’s Sweeny Murti pointed out, Dr. Ahmad’s website suggests a timeline of six weeks before a pitcher undergoing such a procedure can be cleared to throw, and that a return to full competition could take 3-4 months:

Roughly speaking, three months from now means a mid-June return, and four months a return just after the All-Star break (the All-Star Game is scheduled for July 13 in Atlanta). Even a best-case scenario, involving a minimally invasive operation and a buildup to a reliever’s workload instead of a starter’s, might shave a month off that. In 2019, for example, the Rays’ Blake Snell missed about eight weeks after undergoing surgery to remove loose bodies (bone chips or cartilage fragments). He wasn’t built up to a full workload upon returning to help the Rays secure a Wild Card berth and reach the postseason, totaling just 10.1 innings in six appearances and maxing out at 62 pitches, but he was reasonably effective. Because this is happening out of the gate rather than towards the end of the season, the Yankees and Britton have less incentive to hurry back. Via ESPN’s Marly Rivera, Britton isn’t in a rush, saying, “However long that takes is how long I’m going to be out. I know that I’m going to be back with the team at some point this year and pitch significant innings. So that’s all that matters.” Read the rest of this entry »


Where Did Ketel Marte’s Power Go?

I’m sure plenty of us would like to simply forget that 2020 ever happened. In this fictional world where a Men In Black neuralyzer is used to erase the memory of the last 12 months, Ketel Marte would be feeling pretty good about his previous season. 2019 was a big year for Marte. He posted a 150 wRC+ and accumulated 7.0 WAR, both easily career highs, and earned a fourth place finish in the NL MVP voting. With last year wiped clean, he’d be looking forward to building off his breakout in 2021 and establishing himself as a bonafide superstar. Instead, the memory of nearly 200 so-so plate appearances in 2020 comes flooding back and all sorts of questions about his true talent level begin to popup.

When compared to his performance prior to 2019, his 2020 season doesn’t seem all that out of place. His power output dropped back to where it was before his breakout, leading to very similar overall offensive contributions to his early career line.

Ketel Marte Career Stats
Year PA K% BB% ISO BABIP wRC+
2015-18 1548 15.7% 8.1% 0.126 0.302 92
2019 628 13.7% 8.4% 0.264 0.342 150
2020 195 10.8% 3.6% 0.122 0.311 94

Which season seems like the outlier when put into this context? Of course, it isn’t so easy as simply throwing out his 2019 and settling on a true offensive talent that falls somewhere around 5% below league average. Most of the projection systems think he’ll fall somewhere in between, with some but not all of his power returning.

Marte’s power surge in 2019 was driven by a significant increase in the number of hard hit balls he put in play in the air. He increased his average launch angle from 5.8 degrees in 2018 to 11.5 degrees in 2019. Along with making more authoritative contact more often, those hard hit balls were pulled more often, too. Every single adjustment he made resulted in greater damage when he put the ball in play. Read the rest of this entry »


Marking a Pandemic Anniversary

There has been a lot of discussion this week about the pandemic anniversary, as we are now one year removed from when things really hit the fan. Most people in the United States realized that things were really bad, or were about to be, sometime during the second week of March 2020. And as it is for many, my pandemic anniversary is today, March 11, which is also when I was in the Dominican Republic for the last time.

The trip had been planned for a while, and I was scheduled to leave for Santo Domingo on Saturday, March 7 with an overnight stop in Newark. It sounds crazy now, but at no point did I or anyone else with the Astros’ contingent heading to the island think twice about traveling. As I departed for O’Hare International, the CDC reported 437 cases of the virus in the United States. More than a quarter of those were from cruise ships or a long-term care facility in Washington State. New York, which would soon become the epicenter for the virus domestically, reported a grand total of 13 new cases. The only related sports story was a rumor that the NBA was working on a contingency plan for playing without fans if things got bad — if.

And so, partially because of our case rates, and partially because The Guardian’s home base is in the UK (I was, and usually still am, getting my COVID-19 news from them), the pandemic still felt like something happening over there. Things in China were dire, obviously, and COVID-19 was starting to spread like wildfire in Europe, where some countries were just beginning to talk about shut downs. In the United States, though, things felt safer. Read the rest of this entry »


Yusei Kikuchi Could Make the Mariners’ Rotation Compelling

The Mariners’ starting pitchers can be broken into two different groups. There are the veterans at the top in Marco Gonzales and James Paxton, who between them have spent about 10 seasons in Seattle. They’ve both been successful, and so long as they stay healthy — not a given for Paxton — we know what to expect from them. The other half of the Mariners’ rotation is the young guys: Justus Sheffield, Justin Dunn, Logan Gilbert, and others. Each of them had or has considerable prospect stock, but while they’re expected to be successful at some point in the future, we can’t be sure that success will arrive in 2021.

Holding those two groups together in the middle is left-hander Yusei Kikuchi, fittingly, as he represents something from both. At 29 years old and with nine seasons spent in NPB, he’s already a veteran. But as with the young guys, there is still a lot to learn about how he will fare in the majors, given that his MLB experience amounts to two years. The first was 2019, his rookie season and first time pitching in the U.S., when he posted a 5.46 ERA and 5.71 FIP in 161.2 innings as Seattle finished last in the AL West.

The pandemic-shortened 2020 season, though, suggested there could be a lot more to him. Kikuchi’s ERA stayed above 5.00, but his FIP plummeted to 3.30, and he made significant progress with his strikeout and home run rates. If his surface numbers take the step forward this year that his peripherals did last year, it would be a major boost to the Mariners as they try to crawl toward contention.

Read the rest of this entry »


Strasburg’s Return and a Thumbnail Guide to the Majors’ Most Improved Rotations

The 2020 season couldn’t have been much fun for the Nationals or Stephen Strasburg. In the wake of their World Series victory over the Astros, the team sputtered out of the gate, while Strasburg, the MVP of that World Series and a newly-minted $245 million man via his opt-out and re-signing in December 2019, was limited to two starts before undergoing late August surgery to alleviate carpal tunnel neuritis.

On Tuesday, Strasburg took the mound for his first Grapefruit League appearance — against the Astros, coincidentally, albeit a much different team from the one he faced in the World Series, with Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley, Carlos Correa, and Yuli Gurriel the only starters in both games. The 32-year-old righty threw 38 pitches, had good command of a fastball that reportedly sat at 93 mph and ranged from 91 to 93 (he averaged 93.9 mph in 2019, via Statcast), and retired five out of the six batters he faced. He struck out four, including Correa looking at a high fastball to end the first, Kyle Tucker looking at a fastball in the second, and Gurriel check-swinging at a low curveball.

These descriptions come from the Washington Post’s Jesse Dougherty and will have to do, as there was no television or Trackman for the game. The Nationals’ Twitter account did celebrate Strasmas by posting a press box-level video of the four strikeouts:

Read the rest of this entry »


Szymborski’s 2021 Bust Candidates: Hitters

Last week, we looked at my favorite breakout candidates for the 2021 season. Today, we shift to the players I’m more bearish about, and I’m not talking about pilfering picnic baskets. Whether it’s players who I don’t believe will match their 2020 performance, meet their 2021 projections, or who have some aspect of their game that worries me, each of these eight hitters is one who I would place firmly in the “sell” column. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be awful or bad, but it does mean I don’t think the best is yet to come.

José Abreu, Chicago White Sox

Busts are a relative notion, and a player can make this list and still be a contributor. Abreu was terrific in 2020 and is one of the few players in baseball you could inarguably call a leader, but the fact remains that it was by far his best performance in years. Sure, he pasted the ball to the tune of the 10th-highest average exit velocity in the league, but he destroyed baseballs in 2018 and ’19 as well and was far less valuable in those full seasons. Abreu’s far more likely to be an average player than he is to contend for the MVP again, and when you have a guy whose WAR projection for an entire season comes in under his 60-game WAR from last year’s short season, who you have to admit he has some bust potential. That’s doubly true when he’s in his mid-30s; sluggers aging like Nelson Cruz are the exception, not the rule.

ZiPS Projection Percentiles – José Abreu
Percentile BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ WAR
90% .295 .351 .580 562 85 166 40 3 38 134 40 116 3 148 4.2
80% .287 .339 .536 565 81 162 38 2 33 127 37 123 2 134 3.2
70% .283 .334 .518 566 80 160 36 2 31 121 36 128 2 128 2.7
60% .278 .328 .505 568 78 158 35 2 30 118 34 132 1 123 2.3
50% .276 .326 .491 568 76 157 34 2 28 114 34 136 1 119 2.0
40% .274 .323 .478 569 75 156 33 1 27 112 33 141 1 115 1.7
30% .272 .320 .463 570 74 155 32 1 25 108 32 146 1 110 1.4
20% .270 .317 .454 571 73 154 31 1 24 105 31 152 1 107 1.1
10% .265 .310 .429 573 70 152 29 1 21 102 29 160 0 99 0.6

Jackie Bradley Jr., Milwaukee Brewers

The popular conception of JBJ is that he had something of a comeback season in 2020, and that’s true on the surface, as his wRC+ of 120 was 30 points above anything he’s done in recent years. The only problem with that part of the tale is that in this case, his .343 BABIP, 45 points above his career average, was the driver of his flashy line. Remove that and his season looked a lot like 2019, when one of the questions entering the offseason was whether the Red Sox would even tender him a contract for 2020. From the specific hit data, ZiPS thinks that he played like a player with a .306 BABIP rather than one in the .340s. He’s still a solid defensive player, but his speed numbers are starting to slip, which tends to be a leading indicator of defensive decline for an outfielder. The relatively small outfield in Milwaukee isn’t the best park to take advantage of JBJ’s talents; his defensive performance would have been more welcome in places like San Francisco or Kansas City. All that said, I should note that ZiPS disagrees with me on this one.

ZiPS Projection Percentiles – Jackie Bradley Jr.
Percentile BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ WAR
90% .243 .336 .476 456 72 111 25 3 25 63 56 118 16 111 2.9
80% .240 .328 .444 459 70 110 24 2 22 59 53 125 13 102 2.3
70% .239 .324 .427 461 69 110 23 2 20 57 51 131 11 97 1.9
60% .236 .321 .422 462 68 109 22 2 20 55 50 134 11 94 1.8
50% .233 .317 .413 463 67 108 22 2 19 54 49 138 10 91 1.5
40% .232 .313 .402 465 66 108 21 2 18 53 47 143 10 87 1.4
30% .230 .309 .393 466 66 107 21 2 17 52 46 147 9 84 1.1
20% .229 .305 .378 468 65 107 20 1 16 50 44 154 8 80 0.8
10% .227 .300 .357 471 63 107 20 1 13 48 41 163 6 73 0.4

Justin Upton, Los Angeles Angels

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A Conversation With Los Angeles Angels Right-Hander Dylan Bundy

Dylan Bundy had his best statistical season in 2020. Pitching for the Los Angeles Angels after four-plus years with the Orioles, the 28-year-old right-hander posted career-bests in ERA (3.29), FIP (2.95), and K/9 (9.87). Small sample that it was — 11 starts in a pandemic-shortened campaign — the results represented a breath of fresh air. Bundy had become somewhat stagnant in Baltimore, putting up pedestrian numbers for a club that was going nowhere in terms of short-term contention. Change proved to be a panacea.

Bundy’s secondary pitches, paired with improved command, went a long way toward his success. The fourth-overall pick in the 2011 draft no longer has a plus fastball, but buoyed by a better understanding of his craft, he no longer needs one. With his third decade on planet Earth looming in the not-too-distant future — and his early-career injuries long in the rearview — Bundy has made the full transformation from thrower to pitcher.

———

David Laurila: How would you describe your career so far?

Dylan Bundy: “It’s flown by, that’s for sure. You learn a lot when you first break into the league — 2016 is when I stayed here — and that’s [continued] up to now. The game doesn’t change, but with hitters’ swing paths, the analytics, the shifting… there are ways that the game does change, slowly over time. I think that would be the biggest thing I’d take away from when I first started, to now.”

Laurila: Have you changed?

Bundy: “Overall, I guess… numbers-wise, I have changed. Obviously, everybody knows about the velocity. It’s come down, so now I’m learning how to pitch more. Ever since 2016-2017, I’ve been learning how to throw more off-speed stuff, and finally it clicked. You know, these hitters can time up a 110 mph fastball if you throw it down the middle three times in a row. Eventually, they’re going to catch up to it.

“I’ve really learned that you’ve got to throw pitches for a purpose. That’s whether it’s off the plate, in, off-speed stuff earlier in the count, heaters later in the count, or whatever it may be on that specific day. But it’s definitely been a long journey, learning this stuff.” Read the rest of this entry »


Baseball on the Radio, 100 Years Later

This season, for the first time since the Toronto Blue Jays played their inaugural games in 1977, there will not be a dedicated radio broadcast of their games. Instead of a radio team broadcasting the game, the audio from television broadcasts will be simulcast to radio listeners. Rogers, the Canadian telecom giant that owns both the Blue Jays and the networks they are broadcast on, has made assurances that this is merely a safety measure in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is unclear what the plans are for the future of the Blue Jays on the radio. Longtime broadcaster Mike Wilner was laid off this winter, and there has been no replacement announced; even apart from the loss of a Jays radio broadcast, the AM sports radio landscape in Canada has taken significant blows recently, with Bell Media, another telecom giant, unceremoniously taking a number of local stations off the air last month. Should this season prove to Rogers that having a dedicated radio broadcast is an expense not worth carrying into the future, Blue Jays baseball on the radio could prove to be another one of the casualties of the pandemic.

It’s been almost a century since the first major league baseball game was broadcast over the radio: an early-August game between the Pirates and the Phillies in 1921. Despite resistance from both traditional print media and team ownership, the popularity of such broadcasts took off, sparking a conflict that would fundamentally change the revenue structure of major league baseball. In his book Crack of the Bat: A History of Baseball on the Radio, James R. Walker writes about the forces that changed the attitudes of baseball higher-ups towards the broadcasting of baseball on the radio. Declining attendance was at first, and stubbornly, blamed on radio broadcasting, leading team ownership to call for bans on such broadcasts. But with the growing influence and financial power of advertising in broadcasting and the realization that radio was a boon to developing geographically-displaced fandom (especially in the western United States, where many people lived far from a major-league team), fewer and fewer teams held out against the practice.

There was, at the same time, a fundamental shift in what the purpose of such broadcasts was. As Walker writes, the World Series, from 1921 until 1933, was broadcast on the radio — not because it was lucrative to do so, but as a service to the country’s interested public. In 1934, though, commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis sold the rights to the World Series broadcast to the Ford Motor Company. Within a few years, a federal judge would hand down a decision naming baseball broadcasts on the radio as the property of the teams involved, and New York, the last holdout of broadcast bans, embraced this new revenue stream. Read the rest of this entry »


Effectively Wild Episode 1665: Season Preview Series: Blue Jays and Giants

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about MLB.TV repetition, Yadier Molina throwing out Jose Siri, teams opting to end innings early, the effect of Jarred Kelenic’s injury on the Mariners service-time controversy, the Astros signing Jake Odorizzi, and teams being more brazen about lowering their competitive balance tax assessments, then preview the 2021 Blue Jays (21:50) with Kaitlyn McGrath of The Athletic and the 2021 Giants (1:06:14) with Grant Brisbee of The Athletic.

Audio intro: Zeus, "At the Risk of Repeating"
Audio interstitial 1: Neil Young, "Far From Home"
Audio interstitial 2: Old & In the Way, "Old and in the Way"
Audio outro: Sloan, "Everything You’ve Done Wrong"

Link to sentient-baseballs email episode
Link to MLB Film Room
Link to Molina/Siri play
Link to Evans/Phillips face-off
Link to Ichiro/Cameron simulated game
Link to story about Kelenic’s knee injury
Link to rule about “rolling” innings
Link to Dan Szymborski on the Odorizzi signing
Link to Odorizzi contract terms
Link to drafts and competitions spreadsheet
Link to story on Kovalchuk’s 17-year deal
Link to story about Kovalchuk penalty reduction
Link to story about Blue Jays’ radio feed
Link to story about Blue Jays’ free agency premium
Link to Kaitlyn on where the Jays will play
Link to Kaitlyn on Vlad
Link to Dan on Vlad as a breakout candidate
Link to Kaitlyn on the Jays’ pitching depth chart
Link to Kaitlyn on the Jays’ new complex
Link to story on the Jays’ high performance department
Link to story on Biggio and the less lively ball
Link to Spin Rate podcast
Link to Ben Carsley on the Giants
Link to Matt Trueblood on Yastrzemski
Link to Grant on Yastrzemski
Link to the Giants’ giant coaching staff
Link to Andrew Baggarly on Alyssa Nakken
Link to Grant on the Giants’ old lineup
Link to Grant on the Giants’ rotation depth
Link to Grant in 2017 on AT&T Park offense
Link to Grant on Oracle Park offense in 2020
Link to Baggs & Brisbee podcast

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David Price Is “Ready for Whatever,” and So Are the Dodgers

Even before they signed free agent Trevor Bauer, the Dodgers appeared to have a stacked rotation, particularly with David Price returning from his opt-out season. Now, with Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, and Bauer in place, and with youngsters Julio Urías, Tony Gonsolin, and Dustin May attempting to reclaim starting spots as well after spending the postseason as swingmen, the unit is bursting at the seams. On Monday, Price made his Cactus League debut, and both he and manager Dave Roberts made clear that his role is up in the air, even if it means pitching out of the bullpen.

It may not come to that, though like every other team concerned about the jump in the schedule from 60 games to 162, the Dodgers will call upon their depth to avoid overtaxing any of their starters, particularly given their expectations for another run deep into October. That’s already been one of the signatures of the Andrew Friedman regime. Between very liberal usage of the Injured List and some fairly quick hooks, the Dodgers allowed just two pitchers to make 30 starts in a season during the 2016-19 campaigns, with only five throwing enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. Under last year’s shortened schedule, no Dodger started more than 10 times (which prorates to 27 in a full season) or qualified for the ERA title, with Kershaw topping out at 58.1 innings.

Here’s how the team’s workload management stacks up relative to the rest of the majors:

Starting Pitcher Workloads 2016-2020
Team 2016-20 IP Qual 2016-20 GS Qual IP WAR
Cubs 19 18 3978.1 59.0
Nationals 15 15 4087.0 76.7
Cleveland 14 10 4161.1 83.2
Astros 13 12 3992.0 69.5
Cardinals 13 12 3906.0 52.5
White Sox 11 10 3868.1 33.0
Rockies 11 8 3886.2 47.6
Giants 10 11 3960.1 40.2
Diamondbacks 10 10 3906.0 53.2
Red Sox 10 10 3844.0 56.4
Royals 10 10 3792.2 31.6
Phillies 10 9 3856.1 53.0
Mets 9 11 3921.2 66.4
Braves 9 9 3819.0 38.0
Twins 9 9 3750.0 46.0
Reds 8 9 3712.1 37.0
Yankees 8 9 3761.2 58.1
Rangers 8 7 3781.0 37.9
Blue Jays 8 7 3669.2 40.2
Rays 7 8 3403.2 54.1
Brewers 6 8 3680.2 42.6
Tigers 6 6 3685.1 45.0
Padres 6 6 3684.1 33.2
Marlins 6 5 3703.0 31.1
Mariners 6 5 3745.2 38.1
Pirates 5 7 3744.1 41.1
Orioles 5 6 3621.2 28.3
Angels 5 6 3506.0 28.0
Dodgers 5 2 3812.0 71.0
Athletics 4 7 3767.0 39.9
IP Qual = one inning per team scheduled game. GS Qual = 30 starts in 2016-19 seasons or 11 starts in 2020

I’ve combined the separate 2016-19 and ’20 totals using the actual innings qualifiers, which vary according to schedule length and don’t need to prorate, and used an 11-start threshold for last year, which prorates to about 30 over a full season. As you can see, over the past half-decade, the Dodgers are tied for the majors’ second-lowest total in terms of innings qualifiers, and have the lowest total in terms of start “qualifiers.” They’re mostly among bad teams via both of those lower rankings, save for the A’s. If you sort the various columns, you can see that Dodgers’ starters rank 14th in total innings in that span, yet third in WAR. It’s a strategy that’s worked out well, to say the least. Read the rest of this entry »