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The White Sox don’t need an elite bullpen to compete. They had the most valuable position player group in baseball in 2020, and that was without two stars, Yoán Moncada and Luis Robert, playing to their full potential. They also have a rotation that boasts two aces and a fair amount of rotation depth. Give them last year’s Phillies bullpen, and they’d still likely be able to fight for a playoff spot, especially in their division. Fit them with an average ‘pen, and their postseason expectations begin to look like more of a certainty.

Much to the chagrin of the other AL Central teams, Chicago’s bullpen doesn’t look like it’s going to be average, and it definitely doesn’t look like it will be awful. That much was made clear when the White Sox signed Liam Hendriks — the best reliever in this year’s free-agent class and at worst a top-three-or-four reliever in baseball — on Monday. Since the start of 2019, he has been nearly two wins more valuable than any other relief arm in baseball, posting a 1.79 ERA and 1.70 FIP in 110.1 innings. Our Depth Charts have Hendriks forecast for 1.6 WAR in 2021, tying him with Aroldis Chapman and Edwin Diaz for the highest relief WAR projection in baseball. With that considerable boost, the White Sox’ bullpen now projects to be the second-best in the majors, albeit with loads of free-agent talent still unsigned.

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Planning a starting rotation for 2021 carries innumerable pitfalls. Nearly every pitcher in the league saw a reduced workload last year, and they did it in strange circumstances to boot. It’s not merely that the short season set everyone’s innings back — though that’s a huge component. A large number of cancelations and postponements also meant more doubleheaders and more cobbled-together games, another way to throw pitchers off their rhythm.

Put it all together, and protecting arms sounds like an appealing plan for 2021. The Mariners announced that they’ll use a six-man rotation next year, a continuation of the plan they leaned on for all of 2020. The Red Sox are talking workload management. Since initially publishing this piece, Jeff Zimmerman pointed out that the Tigers will use a six-man rotation as well. Is an embiggened rotation the solution to this universal problem? Let’s do the math.

It depends, first of all, on what you give up. The innings tradeoff of a six-man rotation is straightforward. Giving your pitchers an extra day off limits their workloads, naturally enough. The math on that is straightforward if you assume it doesn’t affect their in-game workload. Take a pitcher who averages six innings per start. In a five-man rotation, that’s 192 innings of work. Adding a sixth pitcher to the rotation cuts that down to 162 innings.

How much do those 30 innings of work matter when it comes to health? I’ll level with you — I’m not sure. We simply don’t have the data to say with any amount of certainty, because the number of comparable situations is so small. Pitchers have light workloads all the time, but in most cases it’s due to age or injury. Looking at what a 21-year-old pitcher did in first building up stamina probably can’t tell us much about how many innings Jake Odorizzi, to pick a random example, should throw in 2021. Likewise, a pitcher’s workload in his first year back from Tommy John surgery can’t tell us how many innings Trevor Bauer can be effective for. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about why the free-agent market has been both slow-moving and fairly lucrative for the players who’ve signed, the White Sox inking closer Liam Hendriks, whether the White Sox are the American League’s front runners, the latest report that the season will start on time, napping, MLB’s plans for fans in the stands, why MLB owners aren’t pursuing expansion, the league’s next broadcast contract with ESPN, a rumored extension for Fernando Tatis Jr., the legacy of the late Tommy Lasorda, and the recent direction of the podcast.

Audio intro: The Bangles, "Mixed Messages"
Audio outro: Dion, "(I Used to Be A) Brooklyn Dodger"

Link to Craig Edwards on the Hendriks signing
Link to report about the season starting
Link to report about health and safety standards
Link to expansion story
Link to Craig on MLB’s TV revenue
Link to Meg on Bradley
Link to Meg on Lind
Link to Outsports story on Lasorda
Link to Outsports on Lasorda and Minnie Miñoso
Link to New York Times story on Lasorda’s son
Link to Jay on Lasorda

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With the White Sox signing Liam Hendriks, the top option for teams looking to upgrade their bullpen is now off the market. Perhaps that will open up the floodgates for the other free-agent relievers, as nearly every would-be playoff squad is in the market for relief help. But whether it’s financially motivated or a matter of roster construction philosophy, there are a few contending teams who simply won’t be making a splashy addition to their bullpen. The Twins fall into that category.

In 2020, Minnesota’s bullpen was the unheralded strength of a division-winning team. The Twins’ relief corps was fifth in the majors by park- and league-adjusted FIP and ERA, and their relievers posted the majors’ third-best strikeout-to-walk ratio. But two of their best relievers from last year — Trevor May and Matt Wisler — have left via free agency. With their starting lineup and rotation mostly carrying over from last year, replacing them both should be a high priority.

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While there were plenty of good options in this year’s free-agent reliever class, with Trevor May, Brad Hand, Archie Bradley, and Blake Treinen representing the near-top tier, there was just one ace available: Liam Hendriks. That elite reliever is now off the board, with the White Sox continuing their aggressive offseason by signing the former A’s closer to a four-year deal worth $54 million. Yahoo Sports’ Tim Brown was the first with the news of the signing, and ESPN’s Jeff Passan was the first to report the unusual structure of the deal: Hendriks will be paid $39 million in the first three years, with the remaining $15 million coming either as a fourth-year team option or as a deferred buyout if the option is declined.

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On the heels of a year in which a record seven Hall of Famers died, the baseball world couldn’t get a full week into 2021 without losing another. Tommy Lasorda, the charismatic and voluble manager who piloted the Dodgers to four National League pennants and two championships during a run of 19 full seasons (1977-95) and two partial ones, died of cardiopulmonary arrest on January 7.

The 93-year-old Lasorda had returned home earlier in the week after being hospitalized since mid-November due to a heart condition. He had been the oldest living Hall of Famer since Red Schoendienst passed away on June 6, 2018; that title now belongs to 89-year-old Willie Mays.

For over 60 years, as stars and even Hall of Famers come and went from the Dodgers, Lasorda remained a constant. Including the final years of his professional career as a pitcher, he had been continuously employed by the team in one capacity or another since 1957, their final year in Brooklyn. He spent the past 14 years as special advisor to the chairman during the ownership tenures of Frank McCourt and Guggenheim Baseball Management. He professed a loyalty to the franchise that transcended his own mortality, a subject on which he spoke with frequency. “I bleed Dodger blue and when I die, I’m going to the big Dodger in the sky,” he often said.

As the manager of the Dodgers from September 29, 1976, when he replaced Walter Alston with four games remaining in the season, to June 24, 1996, when he suffered a heart attack and left the team in the hands of Bill Russell, Lasorda won 1,599 games, the 22nd-highest total in major league history; he’s 21st in losses (1,439, for a .526 winning percentage), and he’s the runaway leader in both categories among managers who were primarily pitchers during their playing careers. The Dodgers won seven NL West titles during his run, in 1977, ’78, ’81 (via the split-season format necessitated by the players’ strike), ’83, ’85, ’88, and ’95. They won pennants in the first three of those years, losing to the Yankees in the World Series in 1977 and ’78 before beating them in ’81; those teams were powered by the legendary Longest-Running Infield of first baseman Steve Garvey, second baseman Davey Lopes, shortstop Russell, and third baseman Ron Cey, all of whom Lasorda managed in the minors. In 1988, with an already-meager offense hamstrung by the limited availability of MVP Kirk Gibson, they upset the heavily-favored Mets in the NLCS and then the A’s in the World Series, a victory that is widely considered Lasorda’s greatest triumph.

Stylistically, Lasorda was less a tactician than an emotional leader, one who broke down the traditional walls that separated a skipper from his crew. He hugged his players, ate dinner with them, pulled pranks with them. “I brought a whole new philosophy of managing into the major leagues,” he told Steve Delsohn, author of True Blue, an oral history of the Dodgers published in 2001. “I wanted my players to know that I appreciated them. I wanted them to know that they were responsible for whether I’d even stick around or not.” Read the rest of this entry »

Mickey Tettleton was largely underrated throughout a career that spanned from 1984 to ’97. A switch-hitting catcher who blossomed after finally getting an opportunity to play full time at age 28 — this after being released by the Oakland A’s — he quietly excelled thanks to plus power and a keen eye. Playing with the Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, and Texas Rangers, Tettleton had baseball’s third-highest walk rate (18.2%) from 1989 to ’95, a seven-year stretch where he slashed .245/.384/.474 with 185 home runs and a 133 wRC+.

There are those who took notice. In The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, published in 2001, Tettleton is ranked as the 37th-best catcher of all-time. A low batting average and high strikeout numbers may have sullied his reputation with casual fans, but those who truly understand the game know better. Tettleton — a proud son of Oklahoma — provided a lot of value to his teams.

——

David Laurila: You’re from Oklahoma. Were you a big baseball fan growing up?

Mickey Tettleton: “I was. Of course, it was different back then. The one game a week was on Saturday, and you were glued to your TV to watch it. I was a huge sports fan in general — I played football and basketball growing up — and was always a big-time baseball fan.”

Laurila: Did you follow a specific team?

Tettleton: “Cincinnati was obviously very big, and their main rival was the Dodgers, who had Bill Russell at shortstop. He’s from Oklahoma. But with the Johnny Bench connection, Cincinnati was really big around here.”

Laurila: I’ve read that you were named after Mickey Mantle. Read the rest of this entry »

Consider the plight of the base stealer. In the 1980s, their role was sacrosanct. Get on base first, then cause havoc. For fans of speed and baserunning, it was a veritable golden age. Rickey Henderson and Vince Coleman each stole 100 bases in three separate seasons. Since 1980, the 13 top seasons in terms of stolen bases per plate appearance were 1980 through 1992.

Alas, the scurrilous forces of math and efficiency conspired to dethrone the stolen base. As it turns out, advancing one base is less good than creating an out is bad. It’s bad enough, in fact, that you need about three successful stolen bases to make up for the downside of getting caught once. The very best thieves managed that level of efficiency, but in aggregate, the league only crested a 70% success rate once from 1980 to 1992. Steals simply weren’t advancing teams’ goal of scoring as many runs as possible.

For a time, there was a reasonable counter-argument: what if attempting a stolen base has positive value that isn’t solely contained in reaching second base? Perhaps the pitcher has steals on the brain, or the defense loses its cohesion while attempting to cover the base for a throw. It doesn’t need to add much edge to make the math add up.

In 2007, the authors of The Book took up this question. They found a large advantage to batters when a runner was on first — exactly what proponents of steals suggested. There was a big problem, however. That advantage was for all runners on first base. The faster the runner, the smaller the advantage. In addition, actually attempting a steal carried a huge hit to the batter, more than enough to offset the advantage of having a runner on base. Read the rest of this entry »