At last, nearly four months after originally planned, the Opening Day of the 2020 season is upon us. It begins this evening at 7 pm ET in Washington, DC, with an impressive pitching matchup that reprises last year’s World Series opener, albeit with one of the principals having changed teams. At Nationals Park — where, in acknowledgement of his leadership during the coronavirus pandemic that caused the delay, Dr. Anthony Fauci will throw out the ceremonial first pitch — three-time Cy Young winner Max Scherzer will take the ball for the defending champion Nationals while Gerrit Cole will inaugurate his record-setting $324 million contract with his first regular season start as a Yankee. The night’s other contest, beginning at 10 pm ET, calls upon one of the sport’s top rivalries, pitting the Dodgers — albeit with Dustin May as a last-minute substitute for Clayton Kershaw, who was placed on the injured list due to back stiffness on Thursday afternoon — against the Giants and Johnny Cueto.

This will be Scherzer’s fifth Opening Day start, and third in a row, all with Washington; a fractured knuckle in his right ring finger forced him to yield to Stephen Strasburg in 2017. Cole has just one previous Opening Day start, in 2017 for the Pirates. Both pitchers lost at least a couple such starts to Justin Verlander, Scherzer’s teammate in Detroit from 2010-14 and Cole’s teammate since late ’17; Scherzer didn’t even get the nod when he was fresh off his 2013 AL Cy Young award. Verlander, who will take the ball in the Astros’ opener against the Mariners on Friday, will move into the active lead in Opening Day starts with his 12th. Kershaw would have taken sole possession of third with nine:

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One of the great unknowns in this season of great unknowns is what 2020 means for salaries. Not 2020 salaries, mind you: we’ve already figured that one out, give or take some J.A. Happ corner cases and Jacoby Ellsbury grievances. This offseason, however, is an entirely different ball of yarn. Will teams commit as much money to free agency and arbitration this year as they did last year, knowing all the while that fans in stands might be an iffy proposition in 2021? Heck, even with fans back in 2021, would teams avoid free agency to recoup the losses, real or imagined, that they suffered in 2020?

Today, the first new data point is in: per reporting by Jeff Passan, the Dodgers have signed Mookie Betts to a massive extension, totaling $392 million over 13 years. His 2020 arbitration salary ($27 million, of which he’ll receive a prorated $10 million) is in that mix; the new part of the deal is 12 years and $365 million. Per Ken Rosenthal, the deal will include salary deferrals totaling $115 million. Also per Rosenthal, there’s some financial tomfoolery on the front end; a $65 million signing bonus that confers some tax benefits and a salary structure that pays him only $17.5 million per year in 2021 and 2022, shielding the Betts from any loss due to prorating of salaries over the next two years should something unforeseen happen. Depending on how you feel about the specifics of Mike Trout’s extension and deferred money in general, it’s either the biggest or second-biggest contract in MLB history, and it takes the biggest name out of the upcoming offseason’s free agency market.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that money will flow like wine this offseason. The contract Betts signs doesn’t have all that much bearing on what a mid-tier veteran will get, or whether teams will be more aggressive about non-tendering arb-eligible players to save money. Top tier free agents have hardly been the ones getting pinched in free agency in the past five years.

The biggest point of interest from an economic side, in my opinion, is the length of the deal. Everyone knows that Mookie Betts is wildly valuable. Still, I wondered if he might be forced to accept a short but lucrative contract while teams sorted through the long-term fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Will stadiums fill to quite the same capacity ever again? Likely, but it’s no longer a certainty. Owners off-lay risk onto players wherever possible; short-term deals leave the risk of a fall in baseball revenue squarely on the guy taking the field every day. They also, of course, give the player upside should baseball’s economic fortunes improve, but that’s not at the forefront of anyone’s mind at the moment. Read the rest of this entry »

It was in many ways a very normal late-July afternoon: Fan blasting, a 1.5-liter water bottle at my side, idly watching the Yankees from my couch. Gio Urshela hit a weak single into right field, and the crowd, whose noise had been hovering at a comfortable murmur up to that point, cheered. In that moment, if I hadn’t looked at the screen, if I’d just taken in the familiar sonic cues of televised baseball, I could almost have convinced myself that it was a normal baseball game in a normal major league season.

Except the crowd kept cheering. It was just a little unimpressive single, and there were two out. The sound, flat and consistent, stretched far beyond where you would expect a collective breath, that fracturing of excitement that happens when one play has ended and everyone is anticipating the next one. And when it did fade, it didn’t dissolve the way it usually does, back into the thousands of individual conversations, all with their own volumes and paces. It faded back to that comfortable murmur, smooth and fast, like someone pushing down a volume slider. When Urshela was caught in a rundown soon after, there wasn’t the dismayed frenzy of people groaning, yelling “No! No!” in frustrated inevitability, standing up in their seats as though doing so could convince the deviant baserunner of the error of their ways. There was just a rise, and then a fall; gentle and unified, a mechanical sigh. Urshela left, and the inning was over. Cut to commercial. Go get a snack.

But wait, no — the inning wasn’t over, somehow. There were, undeniably, three out, and there was, undeniably, the large form of Aaron Judge standing at the plate. The eyes of Aaron Boone and Joe Girardi, peeking out from over their masks and looking across the diamond, connected. The inning would continue. Vince Velasquez, on the mound, would throw a few more pitches. Why? Because he needed to, maybe. Because he might as well.

And when Judge launched a fastball into the empty seats in right, he rounded the bases tentatively, confused. The ball had left the yard, and the lights were flashing, and the noise had swelled. On the replay, they showed the Statcast data, the exit velocity and the ball’s high arc in the air. All the signs we have come to associate with a home run. But was it? This is baseball we’re watching, right? Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and again I’ll conduct an interview that falls through the cracks. For one reason or another, the audio file ends up on the back burner long enough that its timeliness evaporates. Due to my neglect — and often to my consternation — the conversation never sees the light of day.

There are notable exceptions. Jordan Weems will reportedly be on Oakland’s Opening Day roster. In 2017 spring training, I’d talked to the then-24-year-old about his recent conversion from catcher to pitcher. He was in the Red Sox organization at the time, and while it was an interesting story… again, sometimes things fall through the cracks.

Fortunately I kept the audio, because it’s an even better story now. Nine years after Weems was drafted as a catcher out of a Columbus, Georgia high school, and seven months after he signed with the A’s as a minor-league free agent, he’s poised to make his major league debut as a reliever.

Weems was well south of the Mendoza line when his position player days ended midway through the 2016 season. The 2011 third round pick had a .119/.241/.134 line with Double-A Portland, and his OPS over 1,180 professional plate appearances was a paltry .568. He knew that his career was in peril, but at the same time, he wasn’t expecting a move to the mound. Read the rest of this entry »

Think of the stereotypical curveball thrown to start an at-bat. Picture it in your mind’s eye. It’s big and loopy, starting high and then swooping into the zone to steal a strike from the incredulous batter. It’s an optical illusion, a strike disguised as a ball. It’s probably more or less 12-6 when it comes to break; a perfect rainbow from pitcher’s hand to catcher’s mitt. And if it’s an active player throwing it, you’re probably picturing Rich Hill.

In some ways, you’re not wrong. Rich Hill does throw a ton of curveballs, and first-pitch curveballs are in the strike zone far more often than hooks thrown on every other count. Hill isn’t the foremost practitioner of the art, however. Of the 359 pitchers who faced 100 batters and threw at least one curveball last year, Hill had the 41st-highest first-pitch curveball rate at 32.4%. He was just outside the top 10% of the league, not out front by a mile.

In fact, relative to how often he throws his curve, Hill is one of the least likely pitchers to throw it on the first pitch. On non-first-pitches, Hill threw it 44.4% of the time, 12 percentage points more often. Only 12 pitchers had a bigger negative differential when it came to starting batters off with curveballs relative to the rest of their pitch mix.
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Over the past week and a half, we’ve published our annual season preview, ranking the league’s players by position based on a blend of our projections (a 50/50 split between ZiPS and Steamer) and our manually maintained playing time estimates courtesy of Jason Martinez of RosterResource fame. The result is a document that rivals In Search of Lost Time for length, though we’ve striven to make it a touch more readable. If you happen to have missed any of those installments, you can use the handy navigation widget above to catch up. And remember, if you’re a fan of say, the Dodgers, and don’t want to see any other teams’ rankings but theirs, you can use the “View by Team” feature in any of those pieces, and look at that, all Dodgers. No stinkin’ Astros for you.

Today, I’m going to summarize the results. We’ll look at some tables and pick out a few interesting tidbits, but first, it’s important to remember that this exercise captures a snapshot of how we project teams to perform now. Teams aren’t static, however. Since we’ve published our rankings, for instance, Gavin Lux has been optioned. Colin Poche likely needs Tommy John. Jordan Montgomery didn’t make the Yankees’ Opening Day roster. Hell, Franchy Cordero was traded to the Royals about 12 hours before the right field rankings were set to go live. Guys suffer injuries, lose playing time due to underperformance, and get traded. That’s why we maintain a Team WAR Totals page, which lists projected positional WAR by team and updates regularly throughout the season as we learn more about who is likely to take the field every day and what shape they’ll be in when they do. Now, don’t be alarmed — the WAR numbers you see there may vary slightly from what you see on the positional power rankings, mostly because those figures are aware of the injuries and transactions that have altered our playing time estimates since the power rankings went live. The z-scores I include later uses the WAR from the Team WAR Totals page. It’s a good page. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Baseball Prospectus editor-in-chief Craig Goldstein banter about whether official scorers will be more or less accurate when they’re working from home. Then they conduct the second of two drafts that have been presented on back-to-back episodes, completing the set by selecting five things apiece that they’re excited to see (or not see) during the shortened 2020 season. (On the preceding episode, they drafted five things apiece that they’ll miss this season.)

Audio intro: White Denim, "Good News"
Audio outro: Paul Weller, "Here’s the Good News"

Link to article about official scorers
Link to Scherzer photo tweet
Link to Chris Taylor’s satisfying-sounding home run
Link to Ben on the strikeout-rate increase streak
Link to Ben on sabermetrics meeting the 60-game season
Link to Ben on embracing small-sample randomness
Link to photo of masked pitching coach covering mouth
Link to Rob Arthur on bat cracks in 2014
Link to Rob Arthur on bat cracks in 2020
Link to Ben Clemens on non-playoff teams improving
Link to Hawk-Eye intro
Link to Alyssa Nakken video
Link to Five and Dive podcast archive

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Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Baseball Prospectus editor-in-chief Craig Goldstein banter about Ben’s latest bad dream about baseball writing and the Toronto (or Pittsburgh?) Blue Jays’ last-minute relocation. Then they conduct the first of two drafts that will be presented on back-to-back episodes, beginning by selecting five things apiece that they’ll miss about “normal” baseball during the shortened 2020 season. (Next time, they’ll draft five things apiece that they’re excited to see.)

Audio intro: Pulp, "You’re a Nightmare"
Audio outro: The Black Keys, "Sit Around and Miss You"

Link to the large baby
Link to Sam on booing the Astros
Link to Ben on the best and worst 60-game spans
Link to FanGraphs 60-game leaderboards
Link to Zach Kram on WAR in 2020
Link to Ben Clemens on Chico

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 Sponsor Us on Patreon
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 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

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The Buffalo Blue Jays? The Pittsburgh Blue Jays? The Biggio-Bichette-Vlad Jr. Traveling Sons of All-Stars and Motor Kings? One way or another Canada’s only Major League Baseball team will be the Toronto Blue Jays in name only during the 2020 season. That’s the upshot of a decision handed down by the Canadian government on Saturday, not because of anything the Blue Jays or MLB has done wrong, but because the United States has done such a poor job of containing the spread of COVID-19 that letting teams travel across the international border between the two countries has been deemed a public health risk. It’s a decision that’s left the Blue Jays and the rest of baseball scrambling for alternatives given that the team opens the season on July 24, with its home opener scheduled for July 29.

Already it was clear that one of the substantial logistical hurdles for any league attempting to play its games in the midst of a pandemic — the wisdom and morality of which are questionable at best, but a topic for another day — is the variation in local laws and mandates, particularly when it comes to quarantine rules and guidelines. Until late last week, the defending champion Nationals weren’t sure they could play at Nationals Park because of a directive for those in close contact with individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 to self-quarantine for 14 days, and a similar situation with respect to the Dodgers in Los Angeles is still being untangled.

But while those situations may tilt in favor of the teams — testifying either to the outsized importance of sports within our culture or to a misplacement of priorities (take your pick) — that’s not the case with regards to the Blue Jays. With the U.S. regularly breaking single-day records for new coronavirus cases, and the U.S.-Canada border already closed to nonessential travel through at least August 21, on Saturday the Canadian government denied the Blue Jays permission to play home games in Toronto, which the same day reported just 43 new cases of COVID-19 infections. The Blue Jays had previously received an exemption allowing them to host their summer camp at the Rogers Centre with players and staff operating under a strict “modified quarantine” in which they were collectively isolated at the facility, which includes a hotel. Read the rest of this entry »