For the full introduction to the Replacement-Level Killers series, follow the link above, but to give you the CliffsNotes version: yes, things are different this year, and not just because the lone trade deadline falls on August 31. We’ve got a little over a month’s worth of performances to analyze (sometimes less, due to COVID-19 outbreaks), about a month still to play, and thanks to the expanded playoff field, all but six teams — the Pirates, Angels, Red Sox, Mariners, Royals, and Rangers — are within two games of a playoff spot.

While still focusing upon teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), I’ll incorporate our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation, considering any team with a total of 0.3 WAR or less — I lowered the threshold by a point, starting with this installment, to keep these final lists from getting too overgrown — to be in the replacement-level realm (that’s 0.8 WAR over the course of 162 games, decidedly subpar). I don’t expect every team I identify to upgrade before the August 31 trade deadline, I’m not concerned with the particulars of which players they might pursue or trade away, and I may give a few teams in each batch a lightning round-type treatment, as I see their problems as less pressing given other context, such as returns from injury, contradictory defensive metrics, and bigger holes elsewhere on the roster.

Note that all individual stats in this article are through August 26, but the won-loss records and Playoff Odds include games of August 27.

This time, I’m covering third basemen and center fields, mainly so I could give a rather daunting left field herd — nine teams at 0.4 total WAR or less, and eight at 0.3 or less, when I ran the numbers on Thursday — another couple days to thin out, either by more representative performances or teams slipping below that odds threshold. Read the rest of this entry »

When the season is just 60 games long, it can be hard to wrap your head around seemingly simple concepts like whether or not a team has a decent shot of making the playoffs. In a normal season, we’ve had four months to assess teams by the time we get to the trade deadline, and get two months after that to see them potentially reap the benefits of the moves they make. Halfway through this season, however, there hasn’t been much time for separation, and instead of having two months left to go, there’s just a single, month-long sprint to the finish. Add in the expanded playoffs, and there’s even more confusion regarding what constitutes a good shot at the playoffs. To attempt to provide some clarity, I’ll go through every team’s playoff odds in tiers and compare them to other teams in similar positions over the last half-dozen seasons.

First, here are the playoff odds for every team through Thursday with roughly a month to go in the season:

And in graph form:

Read the rest of this entry »

Since Voros McCracken pondered the meaning of BABIP back in 2001, much of sabermetric research has had an increased focus on volatility. This is especially important when you run projections — as I do from time to time when the mood strikes me — since that volatility has a way of confounding your prognostications. While the evidence suggests that hitters have much more of an actual BABIP “ability” than pitchers do, it doesn’t mean that such an ability is on the same firm ground as, say, plate discipline or the ability to crush the ball into an alternate universe. Even still, outliers tell us a lot even if we expect some of those outliers to remain outliers to some degree.

As odd as it still seems, we’re essentially at the halfway point of the 2020 season for most teams. Weird BABIP numbers don’t magically just work themselves out in a normal 162-game schedule, so we would expect them to do so even less when the season is only 60 games. In a situation like this, estimates of what BABIP a player “should” have based on their advanced data will have more relevance to future seasons than the actual BABIPs do.

One feature built into ZiPS — and into the next iteration of the in-season model — are “z” stats, ZiPS’ attempt to make sense of volatile numbers. For stats like pitcher homers, zHR is far more predictive than the actual number of home runs allowed is (the most predictive model using just HR and zHR weighs the latter about nine times that of the former). zBABIP for hitters isn’t quite on the same level, with an r-squared of only 0.54 historically, but it does still add a lot of information about which players exceeding or falling short of typical BABIP numbers “deserve” to do so. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like every year there’s another incident in major league baseball that spurs renewed media and public interest in the game’s unwritten rules. In 2018, there was Ronald Acuña Jr. being injured by a José Ureña beanball; in 2019, there was Brad Keller throwing at Tim Anderson after a bat flip (and Anderson’s ensuing suspension). As the 2020 season began, I wondered whether a strange, truncated year under the shadow of a pandemic would allow for the annual unwritten rules controversy to arise. Two weeks ago, I got my answer in the dustup around Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 3-0 grand slam.

The Tatis incident seemed to draw more online attention than past unwritten rules controversies — a glance at Google Trends would appear to confirm that feeling. It also seemed to draw essentially universal disdain. Usually, there will be at least a few public holdouts against unwritten rules violations like bat flips, often citing “respect” — for “the game,” or for the pitcher victimized by the home run — as a reason why baseball should continue to hold onto its unspoken traditions. But in the case of Tatis, the violation perceived by Chris Woodward and Ian Gibaut was so patently ridiculous that almost no one joined them in saying it was wrong. Former and current players, media commentators — all were pretty much united in support for Tatis and scorn for the people trying to make him apologize. MLB itself handed down suspensions to Woodward and Gibaut for Gibaut throwing behind Manny Machado in response, making this particular unwritten rules scandal feel like it could be a turning point in the yearly discourse merry-go-round.

Watching everything unfold, though, I found myself wondering about the history of these incidents — not the unwritten rules themselves, but the public fascination with them. When did baseball writers start trying to document the unwritten rules, to name them as such? What kinds of violations of these rules have historically sparked interest, and how can the controversies of the past illuminate our present discussions?

As I dug into the newspaper archives, I found that the ways in which the unwritten rules of baseball were discussed shifted in interesting ways over time. So this history will be divided into three parts. What follows is a survey of the earliest days of baseball’s unwritten rules — from the late 19th century into the first decade of the 20th.

***

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley reflect on the recent protests, statements, and strikes across the sports world and in MLB specifically, touching on why some teams did or didn’t opt to play on Wednesday and Thursday, the messages that those decisions sent, and whether this week will mark a lasting break from MLB players’ past apolitical tendencies. Then (24:34) they welcome shift-doubting Baseball Prospectus author Russell Carleton and shift-endorsing Sports Info Solutions analyst Alex Vigderman for a knock-down, drag-out debate (OK, maybe more like a friendly discussion) about the present and future of fielder positioning, in an attempt to answer a few pressing questions about how MLB does defensive alignments: Is it possible that the shift is actually increasing scoring? If so, why are teams shifting more often every year? Can teams shift more effectively than they do now? And what can we learn from the, er, shifting perceptions of the shift over time?

Audio intro: Bill and Joel Plaskett, "Solidarity"
Audio interstitial: Snowgoose, "Shifting Sands"
Audio outro: Ty Segall, "I Am Not a Game"

Link to FanGraphs’ Jon Tayler on MLB’s scattered response
Link to Brodie Van Wagenen video and transcript
Link to Bradford Williams Davis on the Mets mess
Link to video of Mets and Marlins
Link to statement by The Players Alliance
Link to David Roberts on rethinking kneeling
Link to Shakeia Taylor on Jackie Robinson Day
Link to Marc Normandin on players taking a stand
Link to Michael Baumann on MLB’s apolitical foundation
Link to Ken Rosenthal on players exerting their power
Link to Russell on killing the shift
Link to Russell on room for nuance in the shift
Link to video about the Mets shifting less
Link to Tom Tango on shifting
Link to Matt Trueblood on shifting
Link to leaguewide shift rates by year in the Statcast era
Link to Ben on outfield shifting
Link to Alex on the latest uptick in shifts
Link to Alex on shifts being added to Defensive Runs Saved
Link to Alex on the most extreme catch locations
Link to FanGraphs post on the 2020 DRS update
Link to article about the Tigers shifting in 2020
Link to Josh Levin on what early sabermetrics got wrong
Link to The Fielding Bible, Vol. V
Link to Russell’s book, The Shift
Link to the Sports Info Solutions Baseball Podcast

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Because they have had so many pitcher injuries, it was a bit of a surprise to see the Rays make a trade for an outfielder, let alone one who hasn’t been able to crack the starting lineup on a last place Royals team. But today, the Royals sent Brett Phillips to the Rays for prospect Lucius Fox.

It’s hard to say what Phillips will bring because he hasn’t been given much of a chance to do anything in Kansas City. Only twice this month has he gotten more than two plate appearances in a game, leaving us with an insufficient 2020 sample to evaluate him. He has historically struggled to make consistent contact in games but plays the outfield well and has elite arm strength. He appears to have slightly altered his swing this year, changing where his hands begin and how early his leg kick starts, but because he has barely played I don’t know if this has made a difference on the contact end of things. I still have him as a fifth outfielder type.

Phillips is not an easy roster fit for Tampa Bay. He is on the 40-man, so this move does not help to clear the small 40-man crunch the Rays will deal with as the Rule 5 roster deadline approaches, and Phillips has no options left. He’ll be on an active roster with several other outfielders who run well and have big arms, Phillips’ two most notable traits. Read the rest of this entry »

When the league announced an expanded playoff format on the eve of the season, the Blue Jays were clear beneficiaries. In the old, five-team format, we gave them just a 9.7% chance of reaching the postseason; the cream of the AL crop had a stranglehold on those spots. With eight spots and only six teams in the top tier (New York, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Cleveland, Houston, and Oakland), however, there was more space for interlopers. The Jays’ playoff odds in the new format opened the season at 29.8%.

With roughly half the season in the books, their odds have only increased. After Wednesday’s games, the Jays looked like a clear favorite for the final spot in the playoffs:

Still, as evidenced by the fact that their odds still hover at only 65%, they don’t have anything sewn up. Their pitching, in particular, has been a weak point. Hyun Jin Ryu has been as good as advertised holding down the rotation, but you can’t make a rotation out of one pitcher. Nate Pearson has struggled in his first taste of the big leagues and is currently on the Injured List, Matt Shoemaker has a lat strain, and Trent Thornton has hardly pitched this year due to injury. Piecing together the 31 remaining games of the season looked like a challenge.

To that end, the Blue Jays brought in reinforcements today, acquiring Taijuan Walker from the Mariners. In return, they’re sending a player to be named later. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic confirmed that the player will be outside the 60-man player pool of players eligible to be traded in-season this year, which means we won’t officially know who it is until the offseason, but the Jays have no shortage of interesting prospects. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

To look at the New York Yankees roster, as is typically the case, is to gaze upon a dizzying number of potential star hitters. But as the last couple of seasons have shown us, the roster of players in the Yankees organization doesn’t often match up with the guys they actually have available to take the field. In 2019, the team had a large chunk of its starting rotation and lineup on the IL by the second week of the regular season, and the problem never got much better. Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Aaron Hicks, Didi Gregorius and others all missed substantial time during the season.

The injury bug has continued to bite them in 2020, with Stanton back on the IL alongside Gleyber Torres and DJ LeMahieu while Judge only recently returned from missing time himself. In spite of all of this, the team has remained extremely competitive thanks to the contributions of role players who have consistently stepped into the spotlight. Last year it was Gio Urshela and Mike Tauchman leading the charge in keeping the Yankees afloat. This year, the man stealing the spotlight is Luke Voit.

After appearing in 118 games for the Yankees last season, Voit has secured the job as the team’s starting first baseman in 2020. The longer he plays, the harder it is for the Yankees to justify handing his spot in the lineup over to someone else. Voit has seemed to get hotter each week he’s been on the field — over the Yankees’ first 14 games, he carried an OPS of .816. Over their next seven, he had an OPS of .945. Last week, he began to go berserk, going 8-for-20 over his last six games with six homers, three walks and three strikeouts.

He started his most recent tear by clubbing two homers in a game against the Red Sox last Monday: Read the rest of this entry »

From the moment that MLB decided to try to plow ahead with a season in a country seemingly coming apart at the seams, it’s been an open question as to what value sports should have in our lives. “Sports are like the reward of a functioning society,” as Sean Doolittle put it in back in early July — a quote that’s routinely resurfaced on Twitter in the weeks since and mushroomed all over timelines on Wednesday, as the men and women whose bodies and work provide the foundation for their sports decided that this is a society that no longer deserved the privilege.

In the wake of yet another police shooting of an unarmed Black man — this time in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where local cops fired seven rounds into the back of 29-year-old Jacob Blake as he tried to break up a fight — and protests unfolding across the nation, NBA players, frustrated that their pleas for social and racial justice were bouncing off the walls of the league’s Orlando bubble, said enough. Led by the Milwaukee Bucks and followed soon thereafter by the rest of the teams slated to appear on the day’s playoff schedule, the players — and only the players, without seeking approval from or giving advance knowledge to the NBA — effectively canceled their games. “Boycott” was the initial word of choice, followed by “postponement,” but the most accurate descriptor for all this is “strike” — a labor force demanding change through an emphatic and sudden stoppage.

The NBA was soon joined by the WNBA (here it’s worth noting that the latter league has long been at the forefront of the conversation and action around the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis, and countless other social endeavors) and MLS in bringing itself to a halt. For a moment, it looked like MLB would follow suit. The Brewers, who have been one of more vocal teams when it comes to supporting the protests and Black Lives Matter on the whole this season, held a meeting during which they voted not to play in their scheduled game against the Reds; Cincinnati’s players, in a show of solidarity, agreed to cancel the contest. Similarly, the Mariners and Padres called off their game in San Diego, as did the Giants and Dodgers in San Francisco. Read the rest of this entry »