The average innings per start across MLB has been in decline for a few years now. The last time starting pitchers threw more innings than they did the previous season was in 2014, at 5.97 per start. Just five years later, that number had dropped all the way to 5.18, a loss of nearly 400 starter innings league-wide. At the forefront of this were the Rays, who began using openers in 2018 and finished the year with their starters throwing nearly 200 fewer innings than those of any other team.

Two seasons later, a pandemic-shortened season introduced a number of factors — injuries, larger rosters, seven-inning doubleheaders, and more — that helped the rest of the majors take a step toward Tampa Bay’s minimization of the starter’s responsibilities.

With the 2021 season two months away, it seems apparent that those two lines are about to diverge. With roster sizes being trimmed back to 26 and a somewhat more typical offseason hopefully leading to fewer injuries, I would guess that the average starter workload will go up for the first time in seven years. The Rays, however, appear to be heading for a season of pitching management even more extreme than what they had in 2018, after signing two pitchers over the holiday weekend: 40-year-old lefty Rich Hill and 33-year-old right-hander Collin McHugh, each at one year apiece, with the former set to make $2.5 million and the latter $1.8 million. Read the rest of this entry »

For the second time in his career, Jake Arrieta will join a rebuilding Cubs team. The soon-to-be 35-year-old righty spent four seasons and change with the Cubs from mid-2013 to ’17, joining a team en route to 96 losses and helping Chicago to four straight playoff berths, including a long-awaited championship in 2016. During that stretch he emerged as an ace, throwing a pair of no-hitters and winning a Cy Young. This time around, he’s trying to re-establish himself as a reliable starter via a one-year, $6 million deal, that for a team that’s in the process of blowing up the roster that won the NL Central in the abbreviated 2020 season.

The contract is a big step down from the complex three-year, $75 million deal Arrieta just completed with the Phillies, but then he struggled mightily while trying to live up to that contract. Over the course of those three seasons, he delivered a 4.36 ERA, 4.55 FIP and 3.7 WAR in 352.2 innings, making a full complement of starts only in 2018. The recurrence of a bone spur in his right elbow, which had bothered him the previous year as well, limited him to 24 starts in 2019 before he underwent season-ending surgery in mid-August. While Arrieta could have opted out and sought a larger payday at that juncture, it clearly wasn’t in the cards for him amid the diminishing returns.

Those returns continued to diminish in 2020, as Arrieta made just nine starts before being shut down in mid-September due to a right hamstring strain. His 5.08 ERA was his highest mark since 2012, when he was still trying to find himself with the Orioles; the season was his fifth straight with an ERA that increased from the previous year. He broke a similar streak in the FIP department with a 4.66 mark, down from 4.89 in 2019 and in the vicinity of league average (101 FIP-). Read the rest of this entry »

Grayson Rodriguez is a top-100 prospect thanks to a four-pitch mix that includes an explosive high-spin heater. As electric as that mid-90s offering is, it’s not the most eye-catching item in his arsenal. The Orioles’ top pitching prospect throws a changeup with screwball characteristics. While not technically a screwball — Juan Marichal and Mike Norris come to mind — the movement profile is anything but run-of-the-mill for a right-handed change. At age 21 with a bright future ahead of him, Rodriguez is armed with a unique pitch.

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David Laurila: You’ve developed a good changeup. What makes it effective?

Grayson Rodriguez: “The way I like to attack with my fastball sets up my changeup well, how it moves and what it looks like out of my hand. As I’ve learned how to throw it with TrackMan and Edgertronic cameras, I’ve figured out a way to get the ball to spin exactly how I want it to. Those things have really helped me, because my changeup is different from a lot of other guys’. It’s almost like a screwball. Hitters don’t see it as much as they do a normal changeup.”

Laurila: How do you get the screwball action?

Rodriguez: “At my release point, my wrist is pronating a lot more than normal. If you break down my hand movement and wrist position — break everything down in slow motion — it’s really turning over. It’s kind of an aggressive, violent turn-over. You don’t see that very often. My ball, on an axis, is spinning at about 3 o’clock to 3:30. If you were to picture that on a clock, it’s almost like a left-handed slider, or a left-handed curveball.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always struggled to understand the “ceiling” projections that accompany prospects. It’s not that I don’t get the concept — 95th- or 99th-percentile outcomes aren’t the same for everyone, and that’s interesting. And it’s not that I don’t think some prospects have higher ceilings than others. It’s merely that I have a hard time discerning which types of prospects have the greatest chance of being superstars. For every Bryce Harper where the talent smacks you in the face, there’s a Mookie Betts. Fine, it’s not a one-to-one ratio, but plenty of prospects exceed their supposed ceilings, and I’m no good at figuring out which ones are the most likely to do so.

Because of this deficiency, I’ve always looked at prospects slightly differently. I tend to look for players who have a good chance at becoming average regulars, assuming that the best way to find prospects who’ll go completely ham and turn into MVP candidates is to find as many minor leaguers who have the skills to make the big leagues as possible.

This process has led to some successes — like Eric Longenhagen, I was optimistic about Randy Arozarena when the Rays acquired him in 2019. It has also led to some failures — like former FanGraphs editor Carson Cistulli, I’m still waiting for Max Schrock to ascend to batting-title contention. This year, I’ve been working on putting a little more intellectual rigor behind my process, and Eric and Meg Rowley were kind enough to let me share the Prospects Week stage to yammer on about it.

As befits any Ben Clemens project, I used a combination of statistical modeling, careful observation, and semi-rigorous gibberish to synthesize a group of hitters I’m interested in. If you want to ignore the methodology and just get to the sweet, sweet list, I totally understand, but for everyone else, let’s talk about that “statistical modeling” part.

The natural impulse when looking at minor league statistics is to apply some kind of translation. Strike out 15% of the time in Double A? You’ll strike out 23% of the time in the majors. Nine percent walks and a .330 BABIP? That’ll be 6% and .295, thank you very much. Then you add a little age-related improvement dust, and bam, major league prediction. One problem with that method: it’s terrible and doesn’t work. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: This story includes a discussion about attempted suicide and mental health. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or is in emotional distress, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK(8255) or at suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

I woke up and everything was dark. My eyes were open; it felt like they were open. But I couldn’t see anything. Where was I? What had happened? There was a horrible taste in my mouth, and it was bitterly cold. There were strange sounds, whirring, sharp, mechanical noises, and I could hear large things moving around me. People, maybe, but I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see anything.

“Can you tell me what the date is today?” a voice said.

So I’m in the hospital, I thought. Okay. I had been in the hospital enough, woken up for enough early-morning blood tests, to know this drill. They have to confirm that you know who you are, that you know where you are, even though they already know who you are and where you are. Okay. Okay. It had been, the night before, January 30th. “It’s January 31st,” I said, with strange difficulty, my voice garbled and unfamiliar.

“It’s February 2nd,” the voice said.

I remembered, suddenly, what I had done. Oh, fuck, I thought, and the darkness in front of my eyes seemed to grow. I couldn’t move, but the void around me was moving, shifting, ready to consume me. There was nothing that could ever exist; there was nothing else to be imagined. There was no way out.

Oh, fuck, I thought, I’m still alive.

***

Six years later — six years to the day — I stare at my computer screen, scrolling through tweets. I am comfortable and warm. I live in a lane house with my partner. We have two cats. My eyes hurt, but only because of the blue light. When I look outside, I see the sun shining; later, I think, when I am done writing, I will go for a walk, and see if there are any new birds at the pond. I’ve gotten very into birds lately, ever since the pandemic started. They are everywhere, these intricate, wonderful little creatures. You just have to take the time to notice them. Most of the time, nowadays, I do. Most of the time, I am happy. Read the rest of this entry »

Typically, we roll out most of our international amateur free agent reports during Prospect Week, which falls just five months ahead of those players’ usual signing day on July 2, with a few more trickling in as the signing date approaches. The lingering effects of the pandemic mean the next signing period likely won’t begin until January 2022, but there are still fresh scouting reports on The Board for your perusal. You’re going to want to open that up in a new tab as you read this article, because I’m going to reference some names to illustrate how players who aren’t eligible to sign for another 10 months are still impacting how teams are behaving right now.

The pandemic and its financial fallout caused MLB to push the start of the 2020 signing period from July 2 to January 15, 2021, allowing owners to avoid having to spend a collective $150-plus million on signing bonuses in the middle of a summer without big league ticket revenue. Of course, there were other long-term financial incentives for owners to do this as well. Pushing the signing period also likely delayed the free agency of whichever star players emerge from that international class by a year. Instead of signing in July and coming to the US for 2020 Fall Instructional League — where they’d be seen by the front office and perhaps put themselves in a position to receive an aggressive assignment the following year — players who signed in January might not arrive in the States until instructs this year, if they do at all. So rather than be on the Juan Soto fast track and make their big league debuts as teenagers, whichever young phenoms might emerge from this most recent group will likely reach the big leagues, and therefore free agency, at least a year later because of how the COVID dominos fell. The altered signing timeline and delayed pro development could end up costing someone tens of millions of dollars.

Those financial incentives extend to the upcoming signing class. Further delays weren’t set in stone when the Players Association gave the league the right to change the start of the next few signing periods, but because of these incentives and the desire to have a full, 11-month window for 2021 signings rather than condense it into six months, the class that was supposed to sign in July of 2021 is now very likely to start signing in January of 2022. And if that next signing period is also going to be 11 months long, it will extend into December of 2022, just as this year’s is set to stretch to December (there’s always a couple weeks gap between the end of one signing period and the beginning of another). Stash that in your brain for a few paragraphs from now. Read the rest of this entry »

The A’s continued to stockpile relievers over the weekend, signing free agents Yusmeiro Petit and Sergio Romo to one-year contracts, both for a little over $2 million for the 2021 season.

Petit is a familiar face in Oakland and will likely play a similar role as he has since 2018: pitching mostly mid-leverage innings, mainly in the sixth through eighth innings. He was rarely used for longer than an inning in 2020; the odd shape of the season and the more expansive roster made this less desirable and less necessary. Still, in the past, he’s been one of the closest players to the old long reliever archetype that has largely faded out of baseball.

Among active pitchers, only Stammen has made more two-inning relief appearances. Compared to history, though, 106 appearances only gets Petit into a tie for 323rd all-time, behind the relief stars primarily from the 1960s, 70s and 80s who dominated this usage.

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The good news is that the Hall of Fame will host an induction ceremony in 2021. The bad news is that it won’t be open to the public, and that just about everything else in connection with the Hall’s annual festivities has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic for the second year in a row. The institution announced as much in a press release on Friday:

“Though we are having to cancel our 2021 Hall of Fame Classic Weekend, the Hall of Fame is maintaining its commitment to hold an Induction Ceremony on July 25,” said Jane Forbes Clark, Chairman of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. “We had hoped to be in a position to welcome loyal baseball fans back to Cooperstown for Induction Weekend, but with the continuing uncertainties created by COVID-19, the Board of Directors has decided not to hold Induction Weekend ceremonies at the traditional Clark Sports Center location. We have prepared alternative plans to conduct our annual Awards Presentation and Induction Ceremony as television events taking place indoors and adhering to all of the required New York State guidelines.”

Induction Weekend was scheduled to take place July 23–26, with the big ceremony at the Clark Sports Center on Sunday, the 25th. Instead, it will be broadcast live on MLB Network that day beginning at 1:30 pm ET.

Though nobody was elected from the 2021 cycle — the BBWAA voters pitched their first shutout since 2013, while the Early Baseball and Golden Days Era Committees had their meetings postponed — last year’s honorees did not get their moment in the Cooperstown sun. Thus, the Hall is making arrangements for Derek Jeter, Larry Walker, Ted Simmons, and whoever will represent the late Marvin Miller (it’s complicated) to receive their plaques and give their speeches via an indoor event that will adhere to all of the required New York State COVID-19 guidelines. Jeter and Walker were elected via the 2020 BBWAA ballot; Simmons and Miller were chosen via the Modern Baseball Era Committee.

Read the rest of this entry »