After going all in on their rebuild in 2019, the Mariners have cycled through what seems like a million different pitchers in just two years. (The real figure is 61, the highest number of pitchers used by any team over the last two seasons.) That shouldn’t be surprising considering general manager Jerry Dipoto’s reputation for roster churn and the team’s goal of building a contender in just a few years time; scouring the waiver wire and the Mariners’ minor league system for pitchers who might show enough promise to stick around for a while requires a constant flow of transactions.

Finding plenty of lumps of coal in their quest to uncover those hidden gems, Seattle’s bullpen has been particularly bad as the team prepares to contend again. Over the last three decades, no relief corps has posted a league- and park-adjusted FIP worse than the 2020 Mariners, 33% below league average. They would have had the worst league- and park-adjusted ERA too if it weren’t for the 2020 Phillies’ atrocious bullpen and their 7.06 ERA. When we adjust their collective strikeout-to-walk ratio for their historical context, the 2020 Mariners had the fourth worst K/BB+ in that period, 37% worse than league average.

With their eyes set on coming out of their rebuild as early as next year — but more realistically in 2022 — Dipoto has made addressing that historically bad bullpen a primary goal of this offseason. The Mariners already re-signed Kendall Graveman, one of the few bright spots in the bullpen this year, and selected Will Vest in the Rule-5 draft last week. Yesterday, they took another next step in bolstering their bullpen by acquiring Rafael Montero from the Rangers. In return, 17-year-old prospect Jose Corniell and a Player To Be Named Later are headed to Texas. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the dead-ball era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts, and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year. But despite the verdicts, the specter of PEDs hasn’t left Clemens’ case, even given that in March 2015, he settled the defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount.

Amid the ongoing Hall of Fame-related debates over hitters connected to PEDs — most prominently Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa — it’s worth remembering that the chemical arms race involved pitchers as well, leveling the playing field a lot more than some critics of the aforementioned sluggers would admit. The voters certainly haven’t forgotten that when it comes to Clemens, whose share of the vote has approximated that of Bonds. Clemens debuted with 37.6% of the vote in 2013 and only in ’16 began making significant headway, climbing to 45.2% thanks largely to the Hall’s purge of voters more than 10 years removed from covering the game. Like Bonds, he surged above 50% — a historically significant marker towards future election — in 2017, benefiting from voters rethinking their positions in the wake of the election of Bud Selig. The former commissioner’s roles in the late-1980s collusion scandal and in presiding over the proliferation of PEDs within the game dwarf the impact of individual PED users and call into question the so-called “character clause.”

Clemens’ march towards Cooperstown has stalled somewhat in the three years since, as he’s added just 6.9% to reach 61.0%. Whether or not the open letter from Hall of Fame Vice Chairman Joe Morgan pleading with voters not to honor players connected to steroids had an impact, the end result has been time run off the clock. He now has just two more shots to get to 75%, which will require voters changing their minds — something only a dwindling number of voters have been willing to do when it comes to Clemens or Bonds.

Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Miami Marlins.

Batters

To make the playoffs in 2020, the Marlins needed a few things to happen. First, some of their young starting pitching, the organization’s strength, had to take a big step forward. The other thing was that the offense had to become, well, an MLB-ready lineup. With a 2018 team wRC+ of 83 and 2019’s woeful 79, run scoring (or the lack thereof) was a serious drag on the team’s hopes. Doubling this humiliation is the fact that Miami’s punchless attack could be directly linked to the trades of Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna, and J.T. Realmuto.

But with the lineup improving to a 95 wRC+ and the pitching being a plus, the Marlins snuck into the playoffs for the first time since 2003. The temporary (crossing fingers) expansion to the playoff field and some fortune also aided, allowing Miami to play October baseball despite a record right around .500 and a Pythagorean record of 26–34. But again, flags fly forever!

The challenge is that the offense remains a team weakness, and it’s unlikely there’s any savior in the organization. While it would be incorrect to say that the Marlins didn’t get anyone solid in return for their quartet of traded stars — Sixto Sánchez is a wonderful young pitcher to have under your employ — it is fair to say that there’s a real chance they didn’t get any offensive contributors in these trades. Starlin Castro is already one (and wasn’t a prospect), and none of Jorge Alfaro, Lewis Brinson, Monte Harrison, Isan Díaz, or Magneuris Sierra were the reasons they made the playoffs. Miami did indirectly pick up a solid prospect by the transitive property of trade-ality — Zac Gallen was acquired in the Ozuna trade and was later swapped for Jazz Chisholm — but only Chisholm projects by ZiPS to have a 10-WAR career. Only two position players project to have at least 10 WAR remaining: Chisholm and Brian Anderson. The average in ZiPS is about five hitters per team, and a young team emerging from a rebuild ought to have more than this at this point. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is great, but it can be better. While earlier versions of this piece had an overwrought and overly long intro on the delicate balance between the intimacy of the pitcher-batter matchup and the frenzied multi-actor action across beautiful acres of wondrous expanse resulting from a ball put in play, let’s just get to my suggestions to improve the play on the field.

Shrink the Strike Zone

One of the unfortunate side effects of the balls-in-play discussion is that strikeouts and walks tend to get lumped together. In reality, walks are a pretty static feature through baseball history, while strikeouts have fluctuated. Here’s a graph showing walk and strikeout rates over the last 50 years.

Over the last 50 years, the average walk rate has been 8.6%, which is the same as it has been the last five years, and over the last 10 seasons, it is 8.2. Whatever hitters and pitchers are doing in recent history, it hasn’t caused more walks. Strikeouts, though, have soared, and on average, there are about 26 fewer free passes per year over the last decade as opposed to the previous 40 years, compared to an additional 352 whiffs per team per year over the same time frame. While you can argue that the increase is due to changes in hitting philosophy, the average fastball has gone from 89 mph in 2002 to 93 mph last season, while pitchers throw more and more offspeed pitches and fewer pitches in the strike zone. It’s not batter philosophy causing the rise in strikeouts; it’s the pitching just getting better and also being better aided by an increase in the size of the strike zone of about 10%. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

For better or worse, I’m a completist. In 17 years of analyzing Hall of Fame ballots using my JAWS system, I’ve never let a candidate pass without comment, no matter how remote his chance of election. From the brothers Alomar to the youngest Alou and the elder Young, I’ve covered ’em all. Thus it’s my sworn duty to tackle the minor candidates on the 2021 BBWAA ballot. I count 18 major ones — the 14 holdovers plus Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, Torii Hunter, and Barry Zito (the only newcomer to win a major award) — leaving seven candidates for this series.

To be eligible for election, a player must appear in games in at least 10 major league seasons, with a career that ended at least five calendar years ago, and then be nominated by at least two members of a six-member screening committee — a step that can produce some arbitrary results, as I’ve noted in the past, though their leaving the younger Young off this year’s ballot given his meager numbers and high-profile mistakes on and off the field was merited. Getting this far is a victory unto itself, but these candidates aren’t going any further; given that the seven players have combined for a single mention on the 36 ballots published so far, it’s fair to say that none is going to get the 5% necessary to remain eligible, let alone the 75% needed for election. Just the same, these one-and-done candidates were accomplished players who deserve their valedictory, and in this series, they’ll get it.

Our first batch covers a pair of outfielders who seemed to take forever to secure major league jobs, though both wound up helping several teams reach the playoffs before injuries eroded their performances and led them to walk away in the their mid-30s. Read the rest of this entry »

2:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to my first chat in [mumbles] weeks. I’ve been busy with my annual Hall of Fame series and just a few minutes ago the first entry in my One-and-Done set, covering outfielders Shane Victorino and Michael Cuddyer, went live https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2021-hall-of-fame-ballot-one-…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: You can see the full schedule here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-2021-hall-of-fame-ballot-of-your-own-and…, and find a link to our Crowdsource Hall of Fame ballot, which allows registered users to vote for up to 10 candidates, just like the pros.

2:05	Jay Jaffe: I’d also like to call your attention to my spot with Shakeia Taylor on last week’s FanGraphs Audio podcast, where we discussed the life of Dick Allen, and the racism and other obstacles he encountered during his career https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-reflecting-on-dick-allen/

2:05	Jay Jaffe: And since it’s been awhile, I’d like to wish those of you out there celebrating a Happy Hanukkah. I hope your latkes are as good as the ones in the Jaffe-Span household.

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Ok, on with the show

Read the rest of this entry »

During the abbreviated 2020 season, the Red Sox saw their right fielders post an offensive line 30% above league average. It was a valiant effort on the part of Alex Verdugo and Kevin Pillar to replace the lost production of Mookie Betts. But with Pillar out of the picture and Verdugo seemingly shifted over to center to replace the departed Jackie Bradley Jr., that Betts sized hole in right field loomed large for the second straight offseason. On Monday, Boston addressed that need by signing Hunter Renfroe to a one-year, $3.1 million contract, with additional incentives that could bring the total amount to $3.7 million.

Earlier this offseason, Renfroe was cut loose by the Tampa Bay Rays after they balked at the raise he was scheduled to receive in his first year of arbitration. (MLB Trade Rumors projected his arbitration salary to fall between $3.6 million and $4.3 million.) His escalating salary combined with a significant step back in performance on the field made the decision easy for the penny-pinching Rays.

After establishing himself as a legitimate power threat in San Diego, Renfroe was shipped off to the Rays in the Tommy Pham deal prior to the 2020 season. During his first four seasons in Southern California, he launched 89 home runs for the Padres, backed by a .259 ISO, an 11.0% barrel rate, and a 39.2% hard hit rate. Despite a propensity to strikeout a little too often, he was five percent better than league average at the plate as a Padre. In his lone season in Tampa, his wRC+ fell to a career-low 76, though his power seemed mostly intact. His barrel rate dipped a couple points to 9.3% leading to a corresponding dip in his ISO to .238, but his hard hit rate stayed stable.

Read the rest of this entry »

Before the 2020 season, the Cincinnati Reds were a team on the rise. For two straight seasons, they’d built for the present, acquiring a dynamic pitching staff and attempting to rebuild their once-potent lineup. 2020 was going to be their year, the last year before Trevor Bauer’s free agency and the first with Mike Moustakas, Nick Castellanos, and Shogo Akiyama in tow.

The year didn’t work out particularly well for them, though. Their pitching was excellent, but the offense sputtered, and they scored a literal zero runs in their two playoff games, one of which went 13 innings. Just like that, the season was over. The team has been busy so far this offseason — they non-tendered Archie Bradley and Brian Goodwin, extended Bauer a Qualifying Offer before seeing him leave, and traded relievers Raisel Iglesias and Robert Stephenson. They’re also reportedly open to dealing Sonny Gray. Is the Reds’ brief run over?

I’m not so sure. Yes, the Reds have gotten worse this offseason. There’s no arguing that. Their Cy Young winner left in free agency (assuming he doesn’t return to Cincinnati, which seems unlikely). They traded their closer to save $8 million. They might be trading one of their other two great starters to save a little more money. That all sounds bad, no doubt.

Heck, though: you can make anything sound bad by describing it that way. The Cubs non-tendered two high draft picks who both contributed in 2020 to save a few bucks. The Cardinals declined an option on Kolten Wong that would have been a bargain — they explicitly stated that it was entirely to lower their payroll commitments for next year. The Brewers didn’t want to pay Corey Knebel, so they sent him to the Dodgers, who very much wanted to pay Corey Knebel. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been altered begin by telling you so. For the others, the blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside the org than within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there. Lastly, in effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both in lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Editor’s Note: Jesus Galiz and Wilman Diaz were added to this list after they agreed to deals with the Dodgers on January 15.

Josh Sborz (previously ranked 39th on this list as a 35+) was traded to the Rangers in exchange for Jhan Zambrano. Sborz will appear on the forthcoming Rangers list. Zambrano sat 86-91 in 2019 and would not have been ranked on the Rangers list.

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Detroit Tigers.

Batters

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: the Tigers are quite clearly the worst team in the AL Central. They may not be the worst team in baseball — the Orioles, Rangers, and Pirates will likely have something to say about that — but the Royals have made enough short-term improvements and Cleveland isn’t selling off fast enough to drop down into Tigers-territory.

But rather than belabor the point (none of this is remotely controversial), we can focus on some of the green shoots that sprouted during the bizarre 2020 season. These developments are extremely important because while Detroit has an array of quality pitching prospects, their lumber doesn’t match up. Where spot-fillers such as Jonathan Schoop, Austin Romine, Jordy Mercer, and C.J. Cron have been useful in recent years when the cupboard was empty, those types aren’t as necessary this time around. There are few possible stars among this group, but there are several guys who are at least interesting, kind of like the O’s and their supply of Quad-A 1B/DH types. Read the rest of this entry »