Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about having baseball on the brain and the NL Central’s measly World Series odds, then answer listener emails about umpire underwear and repeated pants-splitting, an eccentric baseball billionaire who wants his son to break Cy Young’s career wins record, whether they would pitch a big-league game in exchange for Trevor Bauer’s single-start salary, Nelson Cruz and the Hall of Fame character clause, what percentage of teams have a Hall of Famer, what Pirates fans can look forward to, whether time off in 2020 may help pitchers in the long run, whether Red Sox fans should heckle Manny Machado, and whether and why we’re seeing a golden age of shortstops, plus a Stat Blast about the Angels’ rotation and the other least productive positions on teams over the past five seasons.

Audio intro: Pulp, "Underwear"
Audio outro: Elvis Presley, "Patch it Up"

Link to Ben Clemens on the playoff odds
Link to 1936 Retrosheet pants-splitting play log
Link to 1939 pants-splitting story
Link to 1964 pants-splitting photo
Link to 1966 pants-splitting story
Link to 1974 pants-splitting story
Link to 1976 pants-splitting story
Link to 1988 pants-splitting story
Link to 1990 pants-splitting story
Link to Sam on being embarrassed in a game
Link to Allan Travers SABR bio
Link to Pedroia-Machado play
Link to Grant Brisbee on Pedroia and Machado
Link to Pedroia on the Machado slide
Link to Travis Sawchik on the golden age of shortstops
Link to Travis on the new shortstop power profile
Link to Ben on the Infante signing
Link to Stat Blast least productive positions data
Link to Lindsey Adler on MLB’s new policies

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Earlier this offseason, Dan Szymborski wrote about the Giants’ remade rotation and the strategy behind it. In short: Alex Wood and Anthony DeSclafani were interesting free agents, and without much chance of reaching the playoffs, the team opted to buy low and hope to catch lightning in a bottle. In the weeks since, San Francisco has repeated the same project, only this time for the bullpen, highlighted by Jake McGee’s two-year, $7 million dollar deal announced on Tuesday.

McGee joins a sampler platter of relievers who might be good on cheap deals. In early December, the Giants signed Matt Wisler to a one-year deal. Later that month, they signed John Brebbia, who will spend at least the first half of the year rehabbing from Tommy John surgery but could be a late-season bullpen piece. They’ve also extended minor league deals to Dominic Leone, James Sherfy, Silvino Bracho, and Zack Littell. Spaghetti, meet wall.

McGee is the most interesting member of this group, which explains why he got two years and real money while everyone else got only a single year. He combines three things that teams look out for in relievers: he strikes out more batters than average; he walks fewer batters than average; and he’s left-handed. Those three traits alone are enough to get a job, and indeed, the Dodgers signed McGee to a one-year deal before 2020 when he was coming off back-to-back -0.3 WAR seasons.
Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2020, for the first time in three seasons, the Miami Marlins finished above dead-last in the majors in home runs. You can blame some of that bad stretch on Marlins Park, which is decidedly pitcher-friendly in the way it suppresses homers. But mostly, it’s because the team just hasn’t had good power hitters. From 2018-19, just three players logged 20 homers in a season, with the highest total being Starlin Castro’s 22. The additions of Jesús Aguilar and Corey Dickerson helped to bolster the team’s totals in 2020, but the Marlins still only out-homered four other teams. It isn’t as though the team can’t hit — Miguel Rojas, Jon Berti and Garrett Cooper were all well above-average hitters last year despite combining for just 12 homers. Miami just lacked an true established slugger in the middle of the order.

On Tuesday, the Marlins took a step toward remedying that by signing free agent outfielder Adam Duvall. The deal is an interesting one — it guarantees Duvall $5 million, but will only pay him $2 million in 2021. The rest will come in 2022, either in the form of a mutually agreed-upon second-year at $7 million, or a $3 million buyout. The mutual option cost, if exercised, would award Duvall a decent chunk of money — the same amount that Adam Eaton and Joc Pederson signed for this winter. Even if it isn’t, however, the $5 million guarantee itself isn’t bad for a slugger in his 30s who just two years ago spent the majority of the season in Triple-A.

The Marlins are hoping the version of Duvall they get is similar to the one who broke out with the Reds back in 2016. That year, he was a surprise All-Star, and finished the season with a .241/.297/.498 line, 33 homers, a 104 wRC+ and 2.4 WAR. He knocked out 31 more homers and notched 1.6 WAR the following year, further establishing the kind of player Duvall could be when things were going his way. He was a right-handed power bat capable of good defense in an outfield corner, but one who was also going to strike out a lot without walking enough to salvage a league-average on-base mark.

In 2018, we found out what kind of player Duvall is when things aren’t going his way. The power that comprised all of his value fell off considerably, and he finished the year with just 15 homers and a 69 wRC+. He was particularly bad after being traded to Atlanta in July (.132/.193/.151 with zero homers in 57 PAs), and started the 2019 season in Triple-A. It seemed like a sign of where Duvall’s career was headed — his weaknesses exposed, he was now a luxury power bat for playoff teams to keep on the fringes of their roster, never to be trusted with a full-time opportunity.

And yet, he’s since earned that trust back. He was a force at Triple-A, hammering 32 homers in 101 games. The Braves couldn’t fit him into their crowded outfield until the last week of July, but once they did, he was suddenly an everyday player in the majors again. He hit .267/.315/.567 with 10 homers in 41 games to finish the season. With the helpful addition of the DH in the National League, Duvall kept that everyday role in 2020, slashed .237/.301/.532, and homered 16 times, making him one of just 14 hitters to hit at least that many last year. That included one torrid stretch during which he recorded two three-homer games just one week apart.

Being able to capitalize on his power with this kind of frequency is what helps Duvall make up for his low batting average and walk rates. Because of the limits placed on his playing time over the last couple years — first because of the Braves prioritizing other outfielders, then because of the pandemic — his 26 big league homers since the start of 2019 have him tied for just 124th in the majors. But if you take all players with at least as many home runs as Duvall in that time and divide those totals by their number of plate appearances, he emerges as one of the best bang-for-your-buck power hitters of the last couple seasons.

Keep in mind, this leaves out the 32 homers he hit in 429 Triple-A plate appearances at the start of 2019 — a HR/PA rate of 7.45%. And as you may have noticed in the last video clip above, the Marlins have had a front row seat to Duvall’s most explosive performances. That kind power output is what Miami is hoping to acquire in this deal, and while the transition to the more pitcher-friendly ballpark may pose some challenges, there’s some reason to believe it shouldn’t hamper him too much. According to Statcast’s Expected Home Runs by Park feature, the number of home runs Duvall would have hit in Miami since the start of 2019 (28) is the same number he actually hit for Atlanta.

As for as the rest of the Marlins lineup, there are all sorts of effects signing Duvall can have. Right now, our RosterResource page has him starting in right field, with Dickerson in left and Starling Marte in center. Such a construction, however, would signify a huge step toward giving up on Lewis Brinson, the former top prospect who headlined the Christian Yelich trade return, but has been 2.8 wins below replacement level in three seasons with Miami. Abandoning plans for Brinson could prove too unnerving for management to go through with, though, and the above arrangement would also leave out Magneuris Sierra and Cooper. Instead, it seems likely that without the designated hitter in 2021, the Marlins will platoon the outfield quite heavily — with Dickerson and Duvall splitting up left and some combination of Brinson, Sierra and Cooper taking right, with Cooper also splitting first base reps with Aguilar.

The logistics of adding Duvall, then, are a headache the Marlins didn’t really need to volunteer for. He does, however, make them better, which makes this a fun move. Even after a surprise entry into the second round of last year’s playoffs, a run at contention for Miami in 2021 still feels far-fetched, and Duvall doesn’t change that. But for an offense that managed to be close to league-average last year while getting by on little more than spunk, his muscle will be a welcome addition — especially for Marlins fans who have waited years for another fearless slugger to swing it for their side.

Josh Staumont has intriguing StatCast numbers. The 27-year-old Royals right-hander ranks in the 99th percentile for fastball velocity, and his curveball is 91st percentile in spin rate. That combination helped produce a 2.45 ERA and 37 strikeouts over 25.2 relief innings last year. A former second-second pick whose command issues have dogged his development path, Staumont allowed just 20 hits but walked 16 batters.

There’s another metric on Staumont’s Statcast page that jumps out just as much as his velocity and spin. When the Azusa Pacific University product didn’t miss bats, the results tended to be loud. Somewhat remarkably, given that he had a solid season overall, Staumont was 2nd percentile in hard-hit rate — not second best, but rather second worst among his contemporaries.

Staumont addressed that conundrum, as well as his high-profile arsenal and his love-hate relationship with pitching analytics, over the phone last week.

———

David Laurila: Looking at your Statcast numbers, I see elite velocity and a lot of spin. What do those things mean to you?

Josh Staumont: “Looking at the metrics of baseball… it’s kind of a fickle theme. You see all these numbers, and some of them are leaning toward more consistency. Others are a little atypical. Personally, I see it more as an effort-based system. That kind of goes hand-in-hand with how baseball is progressing. I believe the floor is getting raised a little when it comes to the talent threshold, with all the access to data, the access to training, and things like that. Analytically, I think the focus on numbers has allowed for progression based off of numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

They’re baaaack. If you didn’t get enough of the runner-on-second in extra innings rule or the seven-inning doubleheader games that were introduced at the major league level in 2020, fear not, because they’re part of the package of health and safety protocols agreed to between Major League Baseball and the Players Association for this coming season. Those two breaks with tradition, which received mixed reviews from fans but surprisingly favorable ones in other quarters, were adopted in an effort to reduce the amount of time players and other personnel spend at the ballpark and thus lower their risk of exposure to COVID-19. Their continuation is the most noticeable from among a comprehensive set of practices designed to build upon what the league and players learned in completing the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, both from their own experience and in watching how other leagues completed their seasons.

Developed as a collaboration between the league and the union, and in consultation with medical experts, infectious disease specialists, and experts from other leagues, the agreement keeps major league baseball on track to open spring training on February 17 and the regular season on April 1. It was finalized on Monday night, though it’s subject to adjustment depending upon the circumstances related to the pandemic — including, hopefully, the relaxation of some practices as conditions improve due to mass vaccinations. Most notable among the new rules are wearable technology for the purposes of contact tracing as well as potential fines and even suspension for players who violate protocols, and limited access to in-game video. Left out is the fate of the universal designated hitter, which last year was included within the health and safety protocols but which MLB is intent on reclassifying as an economic matter. Both that and an expanded playoff structure, two issues the league attempted to tie together in previous negotiations, could still be revisited before the start of the season.

Prior to 2020, the extra-innings rule and seven-inning doubleheader games had both been used in the minor leagues to varying degrees. Their adoption not only was intended to reduce potential exposure to the coronavirus but to preventing pitching staffs from being overtaxed, particularly within the context of making up games postponed due to weather or health and safety matters.

The extra-innings rule calls for each half-inning after the ninth to begin with a runner on second base, creating an immediate level of urgency and increasing the chances that extra-innings games end more quickly. In that regard, the rule did what it was supposed to do. As I noted in November while polling FanGraphs readers on their reception of last year’s rules changes, extra-inning games averaged 10.29 innings in 2020, down from 11.14 in ’19 and 11.04 in ’18. The percentage of games going past 11 innings dipped to 0.7%, down from 2.3% in 2019 and 2.8% in ’18. More than three-quarters of our readers who participated in the poll (the full results of which are here) did not want to see the rule retained. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, as is tradition, FanGraphs founder David Appelman went into his garage, turned off all the lights except for some candles, and performed a dark and arcane ritual. Then he went back inside, pushed a few buttons on his computer, and now we have playoff odds for 2021!

Okay, fine, that isn’t exactly how it went down, but it’s close. Our playoff odds incorporate little pieces of a lot of features you’ve already seen on the website. We start with a blended projection that incorporates ZiPS and Steamer’s rate statistic projections. We add in playing time projections from RosterResource, which incorporate health, skill, and team situation to create a unified guess for how each team will distribute their plate appearances and innings pitched.

With playing time in hand, we use BaseRuns to estimate how many runs each team will score and allow per game based on our earlier blended rate statistic projections. That gives us a schedule-neutral win percentage for each team, because you can turn runs scored and runs allowed into a projection via the Pythagorean approximation. From there, we simulate the season 10,000 times, with an odds ratio and a random number generator determining the outcome of each matchup. Voila! Our playoff odds.

Why am I telling you all of this? First, so you can look at them. They’re accessible from the main page, but you can also click here to dive in. Second, because I’m going to walk through some projections I found interesting, as well as a few places where the gap between common perception and our odds merit an explanation. Let’s get started! Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the incredible longevity of Dodgers Spanish-language voice Jaime Jarrín (who’s outlasted his own son in the broadcast booth), break down the new, universal-DH-less health and safety protocols for the 2021 season and MLB’s adjustments to the baseball’s construction, the Elvis Andrus–Khris Davis trade and the unprecedented positional profile of Isiah Kiner-Falefa, and Atlanta’s Marcell Ozuna signing and the biggest surprises on the FanGraphs Playoff Odds page, then (57:34) talk to Andrea Williams about her new book Baseball’s Leading Lady: Effa Manley and the Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues, covering the career of the only woman in the Hall of Fame, how Andrea’s background informed her approach to the book, integration’s effect on the Negro Leagues, the lasting legacies of segregation and Black Baseball, MLB recognizing the Negro Leagues as major leagues, and other underappreciated Black baseball titans.

Audio intro: Cat Stevens, "Father and Son"
Audio interstitial: The Tragically Hip, "Ahead By a Century"
Audio outro: Kiwi Jr., "Undecided Voters"

Link to story about Jarrín
Link to video about Jarrín
Link to press release about 2021 protocols
Link to Ken Rosenthal on the 2021 protocols
Link to The Athletic report on the baseball
Link to AP report about the baseball
Link to SI report about the baseball
Link to Emma Baccellieri on baseball changes
Link to Eric Longenhagen on the Andrus-Davis trade
Link to Jake Mailhot on Kiner-Falefa
Link to Andrew Simon on Kiner-Falefa
Link to Jay Jaffe on the Ozuna signing
Link to FanGraphs Playoff Odds page
Link to Craig Goldstein on the Braves’ PECOTA projection
Link to buy autographed copies of Baseball’s Leading Lady
Link to publisher listing for Baseball’s Leading Lady
Link to Manley’s Hall of Fame page
Link to Clinton Yates on the Negro Leagues
Link to Shakeia Taylor on Manley
Link to SABR Analytics Awards voting

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Even against the backdrop of a slow offseason, watching the NL Central this winter has been an exercise in hot stove drudgery. Until the mini-flurry of activity that saw Adam Wainwright and Joc Pederson join the Cardinals and Cubs, respectively, the division’s top signed free agents, at least by ZiPS’s reckoning, were Daniel Robertson and Jace Peterson. Figuring out which team has been the most disappointing has been like an Agatha Christie novel: Bar the doors, everyone’s a suspect!

St. Louis has largely presented a convincing alibi with the Nolan Arenado trade and bringing Wainwright and Yadier Molina back for one last caper. So, whodunit? Was it the Pirates, a team that has become the baseball equivalent of a farm that is paid not to grow crops? Is it the Cubs, a team burdened by the apparent transformation of Chicago from a large-market megalopolis to a tiny town (or so they would have us believe)? Is it the Brewers, who, with Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain at their core, ought to be in full win-now mode? My pick, though, is the Inspector Cincinnati Reds — the division’s hero in the previous two mysteries — going rogue.

The Reds of the last two winters were among the few teams that made an effort to push forward to a division title, acquiring Sonny Gray, Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, Matt Kemp, and José Iglesias. Not all of these players were good additions, but this initial flurry represented a genuine desire to compete. And when this group wasn’t enough, the organization doubled-down instead of folding, picking up Trevor Bauer from Cleveland and signing Mike Moustakas, Nick Castellanos, Wade Miley, and Shogo Akiyama. The result wasn’t an overwhelming success, but it was enough to get the team over the .500 mark and sneak into the playoffs, both things Cincinnati hadn’t done since 2013.

Last year’s playoff run ended ignominiously, with the Reds failing to score a single run in 22 innings against the Braves. It seemed inevitable that Bauer was headed to another city for an enormous raise (and he did), but free agency left the rest of the team’s core intact. With nobody in the division apparently possessing any burning desire to actually win the division — or so it appeared back in November — surely Cincinnati would find other options than Bauer to fix team holes!

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The Mets missed out on signing Trevor Bauer, and they didn’t sign J.T. Realmuto or George Springer, either. That’s not to say they’ve had an unsuccessful winter — their blockbuster deal for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco significantly upgraded the team, and they’ve made other solid moves as well, but center field remains an area of need. Jackie Bradley Jr. is clearly still the top center fielder available, and would make for a sensible fit, but the Mets aren’t the only team pursuing him. Over the weekend, they made a smaller-scale addition signing center fielder Albert Almora Jr. to a one-year deal worth $1.25 million plus incentives. The question is whether that constitutes an insurance policy or an all-too-familiar half-measure.

Almora is best remembered as the player who scored the go-ahead run for the Cubs in the 10th inning of Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. Pinch-running for Kyle Schwarber after a leadoff single, he alertly tagged up and took second base on a Kris Bryant fly ball to deep center field, and came home on Ben Zobrist’s double. He was a 22-year-old rookie at that point, a 2012 first-round pick who had arrived in midsummer and made a solid showing as a bench player. After the Cubs won the World Series, they let Dexter Fowler depart as a free agent and handed the keys to center field to Almora.

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