Yesterday, I posted my 10 favorite breakout candidates for our abbreviated 2020 season. Now it’s time for that piece’s inevitably less-optimistic companion, the breakdowns.

As with the breakouts, precisely defining a breakdown in exact statistical terms is difficult and, I feel, counterproductive. Sometimes it’s a guy with a few dangerous leading indicators; other times, it’s a player who has already seemingly fallen off the cliff and it’s whether he can catch the ledge. Occasionally, a player reaches an age when decline is nearly inevitable; time eventually defeats all of its opponents after all.

With all that in mind, here are my “favorite” 10 breakdown selections for 2020’s 60-game sprint.

Justin Verlander, Houston Astros

Don’t get me wrong, I still think Justin Verlander is a terrific pitcher. But he’s at an age when pitchers can decline very quickly and he’s recovering from a significant groin injury. ZiPS is still convinced he’s an easy ace, but those low-percentile projections have gotten a bit scarier. Verlander’s projection for 2020 is quite close to his 2019, but the differences at the bottom are stark; ZiPS projects an 14% chance of Verlander having an ERA+ under 80; when re-projecting 2019 with a 60-game season, that number was only 5%. There’s no methodology change that accounts for these differences. As breakdowns go, this is a mild one, but it’s significant given Houston’s increased reliance on Verlander without Gerrit Cole around. Read the rest of this entry »

2:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to my first chat of … summer camp? Spring training 2.0? The long-delayed preseason? I’m still working on what to call it. What’s in no dispute is that I’d like to start the chat with some entry music from the most badass soundtrack composer of all, Ennio Morricone:

2:06

Jay Jaffe: That’s a good question, and not being a lawyer myself, I don’t have a definitive answer. I do know that the discussion of grievances with  regards to the negotiations concerning the return to play centered around whether MLB was making a good-faith effort to schedule as many games as possible, so I would think that the union would have to prove something similar here, and I bet it would be harder given that they did in fact sign off on the health and safety protocol involving this testing regimen just a couple of weeks ago.

2:08

Jay Jaffe: Eugene Freedman, who often writes about labor relations, including for FanGraphs, would be a better person to ask on that score. (((EugeneFreedman))) @EugeneFreedman @RuthKapelus @NickFrancona @barrysvrluga I haven’t received/read the agreement on health and safety, so I don’t know the answer. Normally, the remedy for a dispute over implementation & interpretation of a negotiated agreement is the parties’ grievance procedure. But, in the case of imminent safety and health 1/ 7 Jul 2020

2:09

Jay Jaffe: I have to admit my eyebrows did some funny things when I saw the report that Cohen is re-entering the fray. I’d assume that he’s the best capitalized of any potential buyer, and no, I don’t think Jeff Wilpon is going to get five years this time around because I don’t think the Wilpons have the kind of leverage that they believed they did a few months ago.

Read the rest of this entry »

In what’s becoming a weird tradition on FanGraphs, I wrote an article about bunting last week. It included the usual disclaimers: these are rules of thumb rather than absolutes, managers should absolutely consider edge cases, and so forth. Disclaimers are for nerds, though, and writing about bunts is a sure way to get a good amount of “Hey you have to consider the specific players doing it, stop using neutral contexts.”

Most of the time, I’d just ignore it. All players aren’t created equal, and yet rules of thumb exist. Surely managers are bright enough to realize that if Mike Trout is up there, maybe you should reconsider your guidebook written for average major leaguers. Today, though, I was looking for a topic. So let’s get Mike Trout up there! Let’s put Jeff Mathis on deck! Let’s create those corner case scenarios that everyone always mentions when writers talk generic rules.

The first scenario is simple: let’s put Mike Trout at the plate in a tie game in the bottom of the 10th. You probably already know the simple math: if instead of Trout a generic batter had the first at-bat of the inning, bunting would be a wise choice. Instead, we’re starting with Trout, followed by an exactly average team behind him. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka got hit upside the head and ultimately concussed by a 112-mph screamer off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton, the third player he faced in the team’s first simulated game of summer camp. By Monday, a good portion of Major League Baseball could identify with the headaches and other scary consequences of being knocked down so soon after restarting amid the coronavirus pandemic. The testing program that represents a foundational piece of the protocol to keep players and essential staff safe broke down, causing teams to delay or cancel workouts and amplifying a crisis of confidence within the sport.

Indeed, if one didn’t already feel a fair bit of ambivalence regarding MLB’s attempt to stage even an abbreviated season amid the pandemic, the dysfunction that’s been on display since late last week has certainly provided cause for concern. While the league reported results of its intake tests that initially appeared promising, the caveat attached — incomplete results from most teams — was enough to raise some eyebrows. Beyond that initial stumble, Monday brought news of at least half a dozen teams whose workouts were delayed or canceled due to holiday-related holdups in receiving test results, a matter that should have been anticipated well in advance. All of this comes while the ranks of players testing positive and those opting out both continue to grow, producing absences that could potentially reshape the season and in some cases have life-altering consequences. And of course, this is all unfolding (unraveling?) against the backdrop of record-setting numbers of new cases in the U.S. with totals topping 50,000 for three consecutive days.

Should MLB attempt to proceed at all? Can it? From here, the likelihood of the league pulling this off seems more remote than ever.

Though it was overshadowed by the rancorous and all-too-public exchanges between the owners and the Players Association, MLB sold the union and the public on the viability of a restart based on its ability to expedite a high volume of tests, primarily via saliva-based tests — faster and less invasive than nasal swabs — that a repurposed anti-doping lab in Salt Lake City could process for a 24- to 48-hour turnaround. Even before that turnaround time could be called into question, MLB made a mess of its intake testing, which began at players’ home stadiums on July 1. Players and essential staff were given temperature checks, saliva or nasal swab diagnostic tests for the coronavirus itself, and antibody tests using blood samples. Only those who tested negative were permitted to enter facilities for the first workouts beginning on Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

Today on FanGraphs Live, let’s grapple with the fact that sometimes Christian Yelich gets hurt. Read the rest of this entry »

While most of the attention yesterday rightly went to the potential deficiencies in MLB’s testing protocol as delays prevented multiple teams from getting ready for the season and left many players unaware of their own test results, the league did release this year’s schedule. The season begins with a doubleheader featuring the Nationals against the Yankees followed by the Dodgers against the Giants on July 23, with a full slate of games the following day. If all goes well, teams will have finished the full 60-game season on September 27.

The Schedule is Going to Look Weird

As the league decided to limit travel this year in the hopes of containing the coronavirus, teams are playing games in their own division as well as the corresponding geographical division in the opposite league, with 40 games played in-division and 20 games against the opposite league; six of those interleague games are against each team’s so-called natural interleague rival. So, this serves as your official reminder that Atlanta actually lines up pretty close to the Indiana-Ohio border going from North to South!

Breaking down every @mlb teams updated 2020 travel schedule… Pretty cool looking at the divisional separation of the schedule this way. pic.twitter.com/ht2Bg3qBnj

— Daren Willman (@darenw) July 6, 2020

The Central is clustered together in the middle and the East is all in the same time zone, while the West has some outliers with the Mariners and the two Texas teams a considerable distance apart and Colorado off on its own. Where the schedule gets even weirder is that teams in the division don’t play an equal number of home and road games against their opponents. Teams will play every team in their own division 10 times, but instead of playing five home games and five road games, the number of home games will range from three to seven. That being said… Read the rest of this entry »

Predicting breakout candidates is one of the hardest and most frustrating tasks for anyone who tries their hand at baseball soothsaying. By its very nature, a breakout (or breakdown) projection is a low probability event. If it wasn’t, it would be the basic projection! Your big hits will be next to some embarrassing mistakes. For example, if I were of a mind to gloat about having said in this 2018 piece for ESPN that Christian Yelich had a peak Joey Votto/Will Clark season in him, I couldn’t get around the fact that the player listed right after Yelich was Danny Salazar, who has appeared in one game since that article ran.

So what constitutes a breakout season? Is it a player making a significant change in one aspect of their game? A bounce-back season? Is a top prospect showing improvement a breakout? Or is it a sudden step forward along broad lines? I’d argue that it’s any and all of these things. I used to try to statistically define a breakout season, but in the end, I found no purely mathematical estimation that was satisfactory. As I’ve written this piece over the years, I’ve gone with a more abstract definition: when a player, capable of contributing to a playoff contender, is able to fundamentally change what we think of them.

Predicting breakouts and breakdowns for 2020 is even tougher than usual thanks to the 60-game season, which will complicate knowing if I’m right even if it is somehow miraculously played to completion. But it’s part of the job, so let’s get to the bet-making instead of the bet-hedging. Here are my 10 favorite breakout picks for 2020.

Eloy Jiménez, Chicago White Sox

Eloy Jiménez had a vaguely disappointing rookie year in 2020, with a .513 slugging percentage in a pinball season not enough to balance out the .315 on-base percentage and mediocre defense. What keeps me a believer is that he was a more well-rounded hitter in the minors than he’s displayed in the majors and it’s way too soon to peg him as a low-OBP slugger. It was encouraging that his plate discipline numbers improved over the course of 2019, and ZiPS thinks his second-half .337 BABIP is closer to his real number than his .275 over the season’s early months.

I don’t think a year similar to Yordan Alvarez’s .313/.412/.655 2019 would be all that shocking. Neither does ZiPS; in a 600 PA season, it put his 90th percentile home run total at 54.

I kind of wanted to put Nomar Mazara here as a tandem, but I resolved to stop picking him after doing so for three consecutive seasons and whiffing each time. A breakout is still a possibility for Mazara, but if I pick him for a decade and he finally does break out, I’d just be the blind squirrel finding the nut.

Adrian Houser, Milwaukee Brewers

You’d be excused for not getting excited about Adrian Houser as a prospect; he was never especially enthralling in the minors. What was exciting, however, was Houser’s two-seamer/sinker, which he used to great effect in 2019. Pitch-classification algorithms can have issues with a pitcher like Houser, but while he upped his grounder game considerably last season — useful for a right-handed pitcher given Miller Park’s history as a haven for left-handed sluggers — he did it while avoiding the somewhat dated approach of simply constantly throwing hard and down.

Houser did have considerable splits last year depending on his role, with a 4.57 ERA as a starter compared to 1.47 in relief. But in a rotation that seems overstuffed with third and fourth starters, Houser’s upside is interesting.

Dinelson Lamet, San Diego Padres

One thing people forget about Dinelson Lamet is how little experience he actually has as a pitcher, with only 500 professional innings under his belt. I think there’s a good chance that if not for the Tommy John surgery, he’d be a legitimate ace right now for the Padres; his change was a work in progress at the time. Lamet has been 16 runs below-average with his mid-to-upper 90s fastball — which came back faster post-surgery — but I don’t think this is a case of Nathan Eovaldi, a pitcher who had trouble turning his velocity into outs. Lamet just hasn’t the time to refine his potent fastball-slider combination yet.

Luis Urías, Milwaukee Brewers

It strikes me as odd that in some circles Luis Urías is already thought a bust despite just turning 23. After sitting out the spring with a recovering from surgery on a broken hamate bone, Urías’ poor injury luck has continued; he tested positive for COVID-19 prior to the Brewers’ intake procedure for training camp. His case was reported to be asymptomatic and while we have little practical evidence of how cases like that will affect elite athletes, Craig Counsell appeared optimistic about Urías’ chances of rejoining the team in fairly short order. Urías had a disappointing stint in the majors in 2019, but even taking a huge chunk out of his .315/.398/.600 Triple-A effort due to the league offense and the level, there’s strong evidence that his baseline is well above his .223/.329/.326 major league line last year.

Victor Robles, Washington Nationals

It seems a little weird with the benefit of hindsight, but Victor Robles was always supposed to be the new hotness before Juan Soto exploded onto the roster in 2018. Robles isn’t going to catch up to Soto any time soon — or likely ever — but he showed signs of being a fairly complete hitter as a prospect and his defense in center field has been about as good as advertised. His main problem remains that he makes very soft contact, especially on groundballs, and I think his tendency to be overaggressive on the first pitch and top a soft grounder is hurting him here; he just doesn’t have the contact skills of a David Fletcher. Victor Robles will never hit for power like a Joey Gallo, but better pitch selection would give him a shot at retaining his 2019 home run bump. Too much of his current plate discipline comes from simply being willing to take a hit by a pitch.

Dansby Swanson, Atlanta Braves

Poor Dansby Swanson is at risk of becoming the new Gregg Jefferies, a player who is always measured versus our lofty initial expectations, found wanting, and ends up underrated by “only” being a B+ player in the majors. Swanson hit the ball harder in 2020 than he ever had before in the majors, with his barrel rate more than doubling his 2017 and ’18 numbers and his weak contact hits dropping considerably. It didn’t show up in his overall stats, but ZiPS “thought” he should actually have been a .492 slugger instead of the .422 mark he posted. zSLG isn’t an outlier, either; Statcast’s xSLG had Swanson at .480.

Dylan Bundy, Los Angeles Angels

My working theory on Dylan Bundy is that he needed a change of scenery more than practically any pitcher in the majors, both figuratively in terms of coaching and literally in terms of a park better configured to contain his mistakes. Bundy came out of high school nearly a decade ago as a hard thrower, a pitcher who regularly hit the high-90s and was clocked at 100 as an amateur. Years of injuries killed off the fastball, but Bundy continued to pitch as if he was still that pitcher, aggressively challenging hitters with a 91-92 mph four-seamer. That doesn’t actually work against major league hitters; for his career, he’s allowed a .542 SLG on four-seamers, including a .574 in 2018 and a .642 in 2019.

Bundy has to reinvent himself the way Frank Tanana did after his injury. There were signs of progress at times in 2019, with Bundy trying to change speeds more often. I still think there’s upside here if the Angels convince Bundy that his comps fall along the lines of Doug Fister, not Randy Johnson.

Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins

Byron Buxton thrived last season when the Twins finally did what they’d resisted doing for years: sticking him in the lineup, letting him play, and not panicking every time he had a bad week. ZiPS gives Buxton a 10% chance at a 130 OPS+, enough that it would make him a superstar when combined with his defense. The shoulder is a concern, but he’s also had the luxury of more time to recover because of the pandemic’s long layoff.

Mitch Keller, Pittsburgh Pirates

I can’t think of a scenario in which Mitch Keller’s .475 BABIP in 2019 represents an actual ability. I’m not convinced that Mitch Webster, coming out of retirement and converted to pitching, would allow a .475 BABIP. Historically, hitters being dragooned as pitchers have a BABIP allowed in the .330 range, which I think sets a soft ceiling of minimal pitching competence. But it was such a wacky number that even ZiPS is having trouble coping and I’d take the under on the .328 projection, even with Keller having similar issues in the minors, though not to the same extreme. Like Lamet above and my eternal example, Kevin Gausman, I think Keller really needs an offspeed pitch he can count on, but the talent is there. It’s hard to strike out 12 batters a game and have no idea what you’re doing.

Tyler Anderson, San Francisco Giants

There’s a chance that this is personal bias since his windup always gives me nightmares in MLB: The Show, but Tyler Anderson was always on the verge of breaking out as command-type pitcher in Coors and with a better outfield defense and a friendly park in San Francisco, I think he could have a Kirk Rueter-type run of success. And yes, I know he’s more of a strikeout pitcher than Rueter — the comp isn’t perfect. Having the extra time to recover from major knee surgery will be helpful, I feel.

These are my breakout candidates. Next, I’ll reveal the sad side of the coin: the breakdowns.

Read the rest of this entry »

You can’t make the postseason in a single day in July. You can’t be eliminated either, of course, even if you’re the valiant Brewers and your opponents are your perennial rivals, those darn St. Louis Cardinals. This past Friday, however, something momentous happened in our OOTP simulation.

Here, take a look at the box score:

So no, it wasn’t a spectacular performance, on either side, that makes this game the rare ultra-meaningful July clash. The 3-2 loss featured more squandered opportunities than you’d generally like to see, including two runners on third left stranded with less than two outs. That’s not really worth a column, though.

The scary part (and there is a scary part) probably jumps right out at you. But just in case, here’s the next day’s box score to drive the point home:

This one was a 4-2 win, keyed by a pinch hit home run from Justin Smoak — first and third, two outs in the top of the sixth, and excellent time to pinch hit. It dropped Jack Flaherty to a woeful 2-11 simulated record — oof. But the key to this game isn’t any of that. It’s Ben Gamel, batting seventh, with a quietly effective day. Read the rest of this entry »

July 3, 2019 was a pretty typical day for major league baseball. Cody Bellinger hit a walk-off home run in the 10th inning against Arizona to give the Dodgers their league-leading 59th win of the season in their 88th game. Last-place Cincinnati defeated first-place Milwaukee to bring all five NL Central teams within 4.5 games of each other. Stephen Strasburg struck out 14 Marlins without allowing a run. Mike Trout hit two dingers, because of course he did. There were close games and there were clunkers, thrilling displays and frustrating setbacks. You probably forgot about all of it.

This July 3 was, well, different. Temperatures notwithstanding, it might as well have been mid-February, as players from all 30 organizations gathered in their respective ballparks for their first official team workouts in months, after the global COVID-19 pandemic suspended the major league season. Players and staff rejoined their teammates only after first undergoing intake tests for the virus, with several wondering even as they took the field whether they were doing the right thing by attempting to play at all. Those circumstances made for a strange and chaotic first weekend of camp.

Longtime star pitchers David Price and Felix Hernandez announced on Saturday that they would opt out of the 2020 season, one day after veteran catcher Welington Castillo was also reported to have opted out. On Monday morning, Nick Markakis also informed his team he would opt out of the season. Their decisions bring the total number of major league players known to have decided against playing this season to nine. Read the rest of this entry »