The Nationals finished the 2020 season with several major holes on their roster, and two of the biggest were related. They needed a new first baseman, after the now-departed Asdrúbal Cabrera and Eric Thames combined for -0.7 WAR at that spot last year. They also needed a cleanup bat, with no existing roster option looking fit to follow Trea Turner and Juan Soto in the lineup. Fortunately for them, a good first baseman typically bats in the middle of the order, meaning they could fix two major weaknesses with a single player. Two days before Christmas, they did just that, acquiring Josh Bell from the Pirates in exchange for right-handed pitching prospects Wil Crowe and Eddy Yean.

A trade of Bell has felt inevitable for a while now, as the Pirates are usually rebuilding in some capacity and always looking to shed salary. Set to turn 29 in August, he is entering his second season of arbitration after making $4.8 million last year, was in line to be the second-most expensive player on the team behind Gregory Polanco, and was one of the only remaining veterans on the team who could have fetched some kind of prospect haul in a trade. With Pittsburgh going nowhere in 2021, holding on to Bell didn’t make much sense. Read the rest of this entry »

Late last night, the Padres and Rays consummated a blockbuster trade that is a microcosm of the two orgs’ approaches to contention. Tampa Bay sent electric lefty Blake Snell to the pitching-hungry Padres for a collection of four young players: Luis Patiño, Blake Hunt, Cole Wilcox, and Francisco Mejía. The move bolsters a San Diego rotation that was beset by injuries so late and so severe in 2020 that the club’s rotation depth and quality for next season was clearly still lacking despite their trade deadline efforts to improve it. The Padres have spent most of the last several years building one of the most impressive collections of minor league talent in the sport and, now that they’ve closed much of the gap between themselves and the Dodgers, have begun cashing in their prospect chips for elite big leaguers, while the Rays continue to bet on their ability to scout minor leaguers who can turn into long-term pieces for their club given its limited payroll. Below are my thoughts on the prospects headed back to the Rays in the trade; Ben Clemens will assess the Snell side of the deal later today.

The obvious headliner here is Patiño, who turned 21 in October. He’s coming off a rocky rookie year during which the Padres promoted him to work in a multi-inning relief role. In mostly two-ish-inning outings, Patiño threw 17.1 innings, struck out 21, walked 14, and amassed a 5.19 ERA. Despite the poor surface-level performance in a small sample, Patiño’s stuff was strong. His fastball sat 95-99 all year, his mid-80s slider was often plus, and his power changeup, which is often 87-91 mph, also has the look of a bat-missing pitch.

Despite his velocity, Patiño’s fastball wasn’t generating frequent swings and misses, perhaps because it sometimes has a little bit of natural cut, especially when Patiño is locating it to his glove side. Fastballs with cutting action tend to run into more bats than ones with a combination of tail and rise. The Rays altered Pete Fairbanks’ heater in such a way that they were able to correct this for 2020 and got an extra gear out of him. It’s possible they’ll do the same with Patiño. 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.

On the field, Curt Schilling was at his best when the spotlight shone the brightest. A top starter on four pennant winners and three World Series champions, he has a strong claim as the best postseason pitcher of his generation. Founded on pinpoint command of his mid-90s fastball and a devastating splitter, his regular season dominance enhances his case for Cooperstown. He’s one of just 18 pitchers to strike out more than 3,000 hitters, and is the owner of the highest strikeout-to-walk ratio in modern major league history.

That said, Schilling never won a Cy Young award and finished with “only” 216 regular-season wins. While only one starter with fewer than 300 wins was elected during the 1992-2014 span (Bert Blyleven), four have been tabbed since then, two in 2015 (Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz) and two in ’19 (Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina), suggesting that’s far less of an obstacle than before.

Schilling was something of a late bloomer who didn’t click until his age-25 season, after he had been traded three times. He spent much of his peak pitching in the shadows of even more famous (and popular) teammates, which may have helped to explain his outspokenness. Former Phillies manager Jim Fregosi nicknamed him “Red Light Curt” for his desire to be at the center of attention when the cameras were rolling, while Phillies general manager Ed Wade said, “Schilling is a horse every fifth day and a horse’s ass the other four.” Whether expounding about politics, performance-enhancing drugs, the QuesTec pitch-tracking system, or a cornerstone of his legend, Schilling wasn’t shy about telling the world what he thought.

That desire eventually extended beyond the mound. Schilling used his platform to raise money for research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and, after a bout of oral cancer, recorded public service announcements on the dangers of smokeless tobacco. In 1996, USA Today named him “Baseball’s Most Caring Athlete.” But in the years since his retirement, and particularly over the past half-decade, his actions and inflammatory rhetoric on social media have turned him from merely a controversial and polarizing figure to one who has continued to create problems for himself. Read the rest of this entry »

Taijuan Walker is coming off a strong 2020 season that followed a pair of lost seasons. The 28-year-old free agent fashioned a 2.70 ERA in 11 starts — five with the Seattle Mariners and six with the Toronto Blue Jays — after tossing just 14 innings in 2018-2019. We’ll hear from Walker on his return from Tommy John surgery and shoulder woes, as well as his pitch-design efforts, in the near future. Today we’ll touch on some of his career highlights. Earlier this week I asked the 2010 first-rounder for a ranking of his top performances to date.

“Numbers-wise it wasn’t my best, but I pitched a must-win game in Toronto,” recalled Walker, who was with the Mariners at the time. “This was [September 24, 2014] and while we didn’t end up winning, I feel like my fastball was the best it’s ever been. My breaking ball and my changeup probably were as well. We ended up losing 1-0, but stuff-wise I felt it was my best game.”

Out-dueled by Mark Buehrle in a contest that flew by in a crisp 1:59, Walker went eight innings and allowed four hits, one walk, and the game’s lone run. Six Blue Jays went down by way of the K.

Walker went on to cite his “two best games numbers-wise,” each of which was an 11-strikeout effort in a Mariners win. On July 31, 2015, he allowed just one hit — a solo home run by Minnesota’s Miguel Sanó — and a single free pass. On September 13, 2016, he threw a three-hit, no-walk, shutout against the Angels. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 902

On this week’s episode of FanGraphs Audio, David Laurila is joined by Detroit Tigers pitcher Daniel Norris. The pair discuss the strange 2020 season, which featured a strong performance from the left-hander. Norris also talks about going from growing up in Tennessee to living the surfer life, how great it was to play for Ron Gardenhire, and how finding your feel for certain pitches can be like rekindling old friendships.

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Ben Lindbergh talks to Jacky Bing-Sheng Lee, translator of the traditional Chinese edition of Ben’s book The MVP Machine, Hyunsung Kim, translator of the Korean edition of The MVP Machine, and Brendan O’Connor, assistant professor and linguistic anthropologist at the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University, about the challenges of translating a baseball book from English into other languages, how Jacky and Hyunsung got jobs in baseball and became translators, the ascendance of the CPBL and the KBO on the international stage, linguistic “borrowing” in baseball, the cultural conversations surrounding baseball bilingualism, the greatness of Korean baseball drama Stove League, and much more.

Audio intro: Field Music, "Share the Words"
Audio outro: Joel Plaskett, "So Many Words"

Link to Jacky’s post in the Facebook group
Link to Jacky’s baseball blog
Link to Hyunsung’s list of American baseball books available in Korean
Link to Chinese edition of The MVP Machine
Link to Brendan’s ASU faculty page
Link to Brendan’s Sapiens article
Link to Part 1 of Sung Min Kim’s KBO series
Link to Part 2 of Sung Min Kim’s KBO series
Link to stream Stove League
Link to paperback English edition of The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about why MLB reportedly isn’t interested in short-term expansion and an observation about Tyler Glasnow, Martin Shkreli, and Cillian Murphy, then review the accuracy of last year’s annual ESPN MLB insiders survey, predict and assess the responses to the just-released, latest edition of the survey, answer a listener email about the cutoff for “young” players, and share a Stat Blast about Byron Buxton and the lowest on-base percentages by league-average hitters (plus an addendum on the longest baseball player Wikipedia pages).

Audio intro: Oasis, "Stay Young"
Audio outro: The Just Joans, "No Longer Young Enough"

Link to Stark’s story about Dombrowski
Link to story about NBA expansion
Link to Sam on the Crasnicks in 2012
Link to Sam on the Crasnicks in 2014
Link to last year’s Rogers MLB insiders survey
Link to this year’s Rogers MLB insiders survey
Link to Ben on young hitters and aging curves
Link to lowest OBP list
Link to lowest OBP+ list
Link to longest baseball player Wikipedia pages

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Last month, we at FanGraphs put out a call for broadcaster ratings. The votes are now in. Starting yesterday and continuing today, we are releasing a compilation of those rankings, as well as selected commentary from each team’s responses. A similar survey of radio broadcasts will follow early next year, with a final summation at some point after that.

As a refresher, our survey asked for scores on four axes. If you’d like a thorough explanation of them, as well as a listing of each team’s broadcast groups, you can read our articles for the East, Central, and West divisions. I’ll also recap them briefly here before starting off with the bottom third of the league.

The “Analysis” score covers the frequency and quality of a broadcast team’s discussion of baseball. This isn’t limited to statistical analysis, and many of the booths that scored best excelled at explaining pitching mechanics. This score represents how much viewers feel they learn *about baseball* by watching.

“Charisma” covers the amount of enjoyment voters derive from listening to the announcers fill space, which takes on many forms. The booths that scored best on charisma varied wildly, from former players recounting stories of their glory days to unintentional comedy and playful banter between long-term broadcast partners.

“Coherence” focuses on play-by-play, but it also covers how well broadcasters stay in tune with the game. The most coherent broadcasts strike a balance between telling stories and informing viewers of the current state of the game. That’s a tough balance to strike, and many broadcasts that scored well on charisma did worse in terms of coherence. 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 St. Louis Cardinals.

Batters

Can we just say 87 wins and call it a day? It feels like that’s what I’ve been projecting for the Cardinals for the last 15 years or so. That’s an exaggeration, but not an extreme one: ZiPS hasn’t projected them outside the 85–90 win range in a full season since 2011. Going back to the first official ZiPS team standings in 2005 — I only did players in the initial couple of years — St. Louis’ projections have been below .500 once (2008) and above 90 wins once (2010). The lineup rarely has superstars at the top of the lineup, but the Cards have a knack for keeping their floor incredibly high.

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