Meg Rowley is joined by the New York Daily News’ Bradford William Davis and Baseball Prospectus’ Shakeia Taylor to discuss Major League Baseball’s response to the police killing of George Floyd and the recent Black Lives Matter protests, why the league’s statements have been so wanting, whether teams have a role to play — both in their communities and in their clubhouses — in conversations about systemic racism, players’ increased willingness to support BLM publicly, some concrete steps MLB should be taking to make baseball more accessible to Black players and fans, and how the media should engage with players around activism and questions of social justice, police brutality, and racism. Plus, Shakeia and Bradford share their thoughts on the strange, short season of baseball we’re about to see.

Audio intro: Otis Redding, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
Audio outro: The Police, “Truth Hits Everybody”

Link to Shakeia’s piece on Tim Anderson.
Link to Bradford’s piece on the need for pro sports leagues to say more in their statements on police brutality.
Link to Shakeia’s piece on how diversity in baseball begins in Little League.
Link to Bradford’s piece on how MLB is (and isn’t) involving public health officials in its resumption of play plans.
Link to the Five and Dive showpage, the podcast Bradford co-hosts at Baseball Prospectus with Craig Goldstein of BP and Emma Baccellieri of Sports Illustrated.
Link to Demetrius Bell’s piece “What Jackie Knew,” the first in a series of articles at Baseball Prospectus by Black authors that will explore op-eds and articles written by Jackie Robinson throughout and after his career.

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If you’re looking for a way to assess pitchers’ respect for hitters, staying away from the zone is a decent proxy. Pitchers know Mike Trout has power, so they try to keep the ball away from him. When an opposing pitcher steps up to bat, it’s the opposite: it’s time to flood the box with impunity, because they’re unlikely to do any damage even if they do make contact.

You could, if you were so inclined, get even more specific. Forget the strike zone: let’s focus on the heart of the plate, middle/middle. It’s not a sign of disrespect to throw Cody Bellinger a slider on the black, low and away. Lobbing a meatball down Main Street? That’s really what we’re after. While we’re at it, let’s adjust for context, in a crude way, by looking only at 0-0 counts. Throwing down the middle on the first pitch of the at-bat doesn’t make sense against a power hitter — you can only get one strike if they take, while bad (for the pitcher) outcomes abound when they swing.

Indeed, if you’re looking for a list of batters who pitchers disrespect, the highest middle/middle rates on 0-0 counts (minimum 50 PA) really paint a picture:

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Last week, for the seventh and final time, I asked readers how they thought the season would go. While we don’t know for sure how many games will actually be played this year or when the season will end, should the two sides settle on health and safety protocols, the current plan is to play 60 games and have a standard postseason that concludes at the end of October. In addition to looking at the last round of results, we’ll take a look at how the reported season compares to the results over time.

First, this is how readers answered regarding whether there would be a season (voting closed Monday morning):

Here’s how the responses have gone since late-March:

For the first five surveys, two out of every three readers believed there would be a 2020 season, but the negotiations over the last month turned it into a 50/50 proposition. While it certainly seems that we will get a season, there’s still a month to go before a potential Opening Day. Read the rest of this entry »

2:05

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to the latest Cape Cod-based edition of my weekly chat. We’re still awaiting word on the go-ahead for the wee 2020 season, and while i remain cautiously optimistic, I also know that Tony Clark and Rob Manfred are as likely to bury salad forks in each others’ eyes as to shake hands on anything.

2:06

Jay Jaffe: While the universal DH is expected to be part of this year’s agreement, it doesn’t yet appear to be a done deal for next year, as had been previously proposed. Nonetheless, I have a new piece today noodling on some DH candidates for NL teams https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-look-at-some-nl-designated-hitter-candid…

2:08	Jay Jaffe: It wouldn’t surprise me to see some contending AL teams make moves to shore up their DH spots if their current plans go pear shaped, but until we know about a trade deadline, I’m not sure we can expect much.

2:09	Jay Jaffe: Very much so. It’s an utter catastrophe what’s going on in those states, driven by irresponsible politicians.

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It’s a Keston Hiura extension party, and you’re all invited. Read the rest of this entry »

The universal designated hitter will be a reality in 2020, assuming that the Major League Baseball Players Association agrees to the health and safety protocols connected to the March 26 agreement, which is to say, that it will be part of the revised rules for this weird, short season. But because the league and the union were unable to agree to any of the subsequent proposals that have been batted back and forth in recent weeks, the status of the universal DH for 2021 and beyond — with the expectation that it would slip smoothly into the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement — is not a done deal, after all. Rather, it’s something that will have to be revisited within discussions over rules changes for next year, which typically begin at the November owners’ meetings.

Even so, as it’s the rare point upon which both sides agreed amid the otherwise rancorous negotiations, I think I’m still on solid ground in discussing the longer-term changes that could come with such a move. On Friday, I discussed the apparent end of pitchers’ often-pathetic attempts at hitting, and last month, Craig Edwards took an initial stab at how NL teams might handle their DH slots given their roster construction, with special consideration given to the Mets’ situation. This time around, I’d like to consider which players might stand to benefit in the longer run.

For starters, it’s worth noting that the demise of the DH has been somewhat exaggerated. Several years back, the AL saw a notable decrease in the number of players reaching significant thresholds of plate appearances at the spot, but those totals have largely rebounded:

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On Monday night, Major League Baseball released a statement that, despite the legalese and lengthy section recapitulating earlier letters, set the terms under which baseball will return:

88 days after the league and the Major League Baseball Players Association reached an agreement to pay players a pro-rata share of their salaries (with the commissioner retaining the right to set the length of the season unilaterally), the two sides weren’t able to come to a satisfactory agreement for the resumption of play; they’ll instead abide by the terms of the March deal. Sources told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic that the league plans to announce a 60-game season, equal in length to the owners’ final proposal to the players.

Many of the details of the actual season remain unsettled. The union and the league must still agree on health and safety protocols, though representatives from both sides maintain that a deal there is imminent. The league’s statement mentions this specifically, but even without that particular ask of the players, the March 26 agreement is subject to the two parties agreeing on such regulations.

There has not yet been an official declaration that there will be a season. In addition to being contingent on a final health protocol agreement, there’s the matter of a second spring training. MLB has asked the players to report by July 1. The MLBPA seems very likely to comply with this request, however, which means that a followup announcement with an exact season schedule should follow soon. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Back before the Korean Baseball Organization’s Opening Day, I altered the methodology ZiPS uses to project Major League Baseball standings to do the same for the KBO’s 144-game season, as it was nearly the only game in town for viewers in the United States. Because projections aren’t written in stone, and are constantly in flux as actual on-field performance eviscerates old projections, I also update the ZiPS’ in-season methodology. After all, ZiPS is a large set of algorithms, not a time machine; the future never exactly matches the prognostications.

One interesting note is that offense has shot way up in the KBO in 2020. After dejuicing the baseballs for 2019, the league’s ERA dropped from 5.17 in 2018 to 4.17 last year. Nearly a third of the way through this season, that ERA is back up to 4.80, almost entirely due to a bit of a re-explosion of home runs. As far as I know, they haven’t re-juiced the baseball, so it will be interesting to see if this keeps up, and if so, do we see similar results in Nippon Professional Baseball or MLB, possibly as a result of pitchers having less time to prepare for the season?

But enough of that; let’s get to the updated projections.

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In the simulated reality of Out Of The Park Baseball, the season is chugging along normally. There’s no virus keeping stadium doors closed, no season schedule to work out. In fact, while in real life baseball is at a point of extreme uncertainty, the OOTP season is currently in a lull. It’s late June — too early for the All-Star Game or the trade deadline, too late for the new-car smell of April and May performances. In keeping with that between-events ambience, today I’m going to cover a few topics I find interesting but that aren’t of crucial, immediate import to the team.

Keston Hiura Signs

Well, I did say immediate import. The best thing that has happened to the Brewers so far this year is that we’re in first place in late June. Not far behind, however, is the extension Keston Hiura signed on Saturday after we decided to offer him a deal last week. OOTP contracts can look alien, because the game’s contract logic is governed by its own set of rules rather than the ones that major league teams adhere to, but this contract looks both like a real-world deal and an excellent one for the team:

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