This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Players Are Through Negotiating With MLB

I won’t delve into this in too much detail, as my colleague Craig Edwards already published a typically comprehensive story this morning on Major League Baseball’s battle with the players over the 2020 season (I would eagerly point you to his work on the subject in general), but to very quickly sum up the events of the weekend:

On Friday afternoon, MLB offered the Players Association a 72-game season at 70% prorated salary, with the potential for the players to receive 83% if a full postseason is played, and an expanded postseason field of 16 total teams. That offer represented little to no movement from MLB’s previous two offers, which made it especially rich to find out that the offer came with a five-page letter from deputy commissioner Dan Halem chastising MLBPA negotiator Bruce Meyer and the rest of the union for negotiating in bad faith.

The players’ response came quickly, with MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark indicating that the union was finished negotiating with the owners, and is now only interested in receiving a date to report to camp.

Major League Baseball Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark today released the following statement: pic.twitter.com/d1p3Oj4K70

— MLBPA Communications (@MLBPA_News) June 13, 2020

Meyer responded to Halem the same day, demanding that MLB “inform us of your plans by close of business on Monday, June 15.” That, you might notice, is just a few hours after this roundup’s publication. Whether MLB actually adheres to that deadline remains to be seen, but assuming a dramatically different offer than those it has made up to this point isn’t on its way, there’s a good chance we’ve reached the point of negotiations where the Commissioner unilaterally imposes a season of fewer than 60 games, with players receiving full pro-rated salary. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2001, HBO Films aired a made-for-television movie called 61*, about the 1961 race between Yankees sluggers Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris as they attempted to topple the hallowed single-season home run record held by Babe Ruth. The movie opened with footage of Mark McGwire hitting his 60th home run in 1998, as actors playing Maris’ sons paged through a scrapbook their mother kept of their late father’s accomplishments. Soon enough, the movie delved into a dramatization of the 1961 race, with a script that reflected upon the question offered by 61*’s tagline: “Why did America have room in its heart for only one hero?”

Nineteen years later, Long Gone Summer, an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary that premiered on Sunday night, looks back at that 1998 race between McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and the brief stretch when the baseball world carried the two rival sluggers in its collective heart as the pair challenged a record that had stood for nearly four decades. While subsequent allegations about both players’ use of performance-enhancing drugs have dulled the luster of their achievements and astronomical home run totals — 70 for McGwire, 66 for Sosa — director A.J. Schnack’s movie is far less interested in scolding anyone than it is in reliving the excitement of the race and the mutual respect and camaraderie of the two rivals. That’s not to say that the topic of PED usage goes unaddressed, but it does take a back seat to what was, at the time, a feel-good story in a sport that was still recovering from the impact of the 1994 season-ending players’ strike.

I was one of more than three dozen people interviewed for Long Gone Summer, nearly all of whom were otherwise connected to the race as players, coaches, managers, executives, club employees, family members, broadcasters, or print media; to my eye, Effectively Wild’s Ben Lindbergh and MLB.com’s Jennifer Langosch were the only other participants besides myself who were outsiders at the time. It was a unique opportunity, and while my time onscreen was limited, I’m glad that the final product — which I only viewed for the first time late last week — turned out well while taking a lighter tack than we’ve seen over the past two decades. It’s not hard to find people, inside baseball or beyond, willing to rebuke McGwire, Sosa, and MLB itself for the game’s drug problem, as the annual Hall of Fame voting reminds us. Schnack, a native of Edwardsville, Illinois — about half an hour from St. Louis — and an award-winning documentarian whose previous credits include films covering They Might Be Giants and Kurt Cobain, chose a different route. In doing so, he secured the cooperation of both McGwire and Sosa, both of whom offer a generous share of recollections and introspection regarding that season 22 years ago.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Tuesday, the Major League Baseball Players Association offered a quick response to an owner proposal to resume the 2020 season that was fundamentally no better than MLB’s first offer. The players reduced the number of games they proposed to play from 114 to 89, offered expanded playoffs for the next two seasons, and made concessions on service time for players who opt out of the season. The offer looked like a step toward compromise. On Friday, MLB responded with an offer similar to its previous two offers. In response, the players have opted to stop negotiating against themselves, and have asked Rob Manfred to set the schedule and decide how many games the owners want to have this season.

The new offer was staged differently than owners’ the previous attempt, but the foundation of it presented the same reductions the owners have been attempting to pass on to the players since it became clear the season can’t be played with fans in attendance. MLB proposed a 72-game season with 70% pro-rated pay, amounting to $1.268 billion in game salaries. If the postseason, which was to be expanded, were completed, the players would receive another 10% of their pro-rated pay — around $181 million plus a $50 million bonus pool — essentially maxing out at $1.5 billion. Let’s compare the three offers made by MLB to the likely a 54-game season with full pro-rated pay as stipulated by the March agreement:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller interview AJ Shnack, the director of ESPN’s new 30 for 30 documentary about the 1998 home run race, Long Gone Summer, touching on the involvement of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, how AJ structured the story, which slugger was the star of the race, the myth that the home run race “saved baseball,” whether he thought about interviewing Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds, what the auctioned-off record home run balls are worth now, Jeff Tweedy’s score, and more. Then (26:51) Ben and Sam banter about what the ’98 home run race was like at the time, what they learned or remembered about it from the documentary, whether baseball could be that big again, the role of the ball in the offense of the so-called PED era, how we remember McGwire and Sosa, and more.

Audio intro: Dan Bern, "I Miss the Steroid Era"
Audio interstitial: The Roots, "Rising Up"
Audio outro: Lonestar, "Don’t Let’s Talk About Lisa"

Link to Long Gone Summer
Link to David Schoenfield on the 1998 season
Link to Schoenfield on the 1998 home run race
Link to Tim Keown on the 1998 home run race
Link to Matt Trueblood on Sosa’s offensive evolution
Link to Steve Wilstein’s 1998 andro article
Link to Ben on steroids and the 1998 home run race
Link to Tom Tango on the 1990s home run spike
Link to Eric Walker’s site about steroids and home runs
Link to Rob Arthur on steroids, the ball, and power surges
Link to Nate Silver on stats and steroids

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Daniel Moskos was drafted fourth-overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2007. It was a dream come true for the Clemson University product, who went into that June day not knowing what to expect. Some teams viewed him as a starter, others saw him as a reliever, and he hadn’t been at his best in the ACC tournament. The uncertainty led to, in his own words, “a lot of stressful emotions.”

He thought his most-likely destination was Colorado. The Rockies (who ended up taking Casey Weathers) had the eighth pick and were reportedly looking for a close-to-ready college reliever who could conceivably contribute down the stretch. The Pirates more or less came out of the blue. While they’d shown interest, Moskos hadn’t receive a phone call prior to the pick being announced, nor had his advisor/agent.

Moskos isn’t in denial of what Pittsburgh probably had in mind.

“Given the way things played out, I have to assume they didn’t see me as someone would cause a financial concern,” said Moskos. “That’s something that steered their draft around that time: they looked more in the bargain-hunting bin than they did at the highest-profile guys. Whatever fault you want to put to that, they didn’t see me a signability issue.”

Moskos, whom Baseball America had projected to go eighth-overall, inked a $2.475M contract and set forth on a professional career that went anything but smoothly. Hampered by injuries and an inconsistent breaking ball, he ended up playing just one big-league season. In 2011, the southpaw came out of the Pirates bullpen 31 times and logged a 2.96 ERA over 24-and-a-third innings. Then his elbow started barking. Read the rest of this entry »

In this week’s MLB The Show 20 stream, featuring Paul Sporer, Ben Clemens, and Dan Szymborski, the Los Angeles Dodgers head to Atlanta in a battle of first-place teams.

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This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Second Wave of COVID-19 Infections

The biggest sports news of the week, affecting everything from baseball to tennis, isn’t sports-related at all. Wrapped up in some of the economic turmoil between MLB and the MLBPA is the concern of many owners over a second wave of COVID-19 derailing the playoffs. (The bigger worry is the risk that a second wave will derail a 2020 season in its entirety.) Americans have largely moved on from peak coronavirus watchfulness and cities that didn’t bear the brunt of the initial wave, such as San Antonio and Houston, are seeing new case count peaks in recent days. Even if a second wave proves not to be severe enough to cut down the 2020 season, MLB may need to re-think things like game location on the fly, meaning it’s crucial they reach an agreement on the economic issues quickly.

Commissioner Rob Manfred said on Day 1 of the draft that he was 100 percent sure that there would be baseball in 2020. This should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, given that the commish and the owners also claim that every game plays loses them $640,000.

The NFL Officially Suspends Minicamps

In a move that was long expected, the NFL officially suspended minicamp through the end of June and extended the “virtual offseason” to June 26. Mike Vrabel, the head coach of the Titans, was optimistic about training camp opening early in July, enough so that he ended the team’s virtual offseason two weeks before the June 26 deadline. Read the rest of this entry »

It fell several steps short of a rally, but it was the closest Hanwha had gotten to one in weeks. Down 5-0 against the Doosan Bears in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Eagles finally showed life with a pair of singles, the second of which resulted in an error in left that allowed the first to score. A wild pitch, a walk, and a fielder’s choice later, the Eagles had a second run. The tying run was in the on-deck circle, and one of the KBO’s most volatile bullpens was about to use its fifth reliever. Sometimes, this is how the improbable happens. But Hanwha was in the process of defying a much different set of odds — one that is far less fun than prying victory from the jaws of defeat.

The Eagles fell to Doosan 5-2 on Friday, giving them their 18th loss in a row, a stretch of futility with no end in sight and nearly no precedent. In the history of the Korean Baseball Organization, only the 1985 Sammi Superstars have lost as many games consecutively; one more loss would place Hanwha in a class by themselves. In over 150 years of Major League Baseball, an 18-game losing streak has happened just 22 times, with only two of those occurring in the last 40 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fifth in a series of baseball-themed lessons we’re calling FanGraphs Prep. In light of so many parents suddenly having their school-aged kids learning from home, we hope is that these units offer a thoughtfully designed, baseball-themed supplement to the school work your student might already be doing. The first, second, third, and fourth units can be found here, here, here, and here.

Overview: A one-week unit centered around the MLB Draft.

The amateur draft is one of the most important events in baseball. Months and years of work go into each team’s preparation for the exercise. In this unit, you’ll squeeze all of that work into a single week as you learn about the decision-making process that goes into making a selection in the draft.

Learning Objectives:

• Gather data from various sources to form an opinion.
• Evaluate a dataset using a set of criteria to identify data points that fit.
• Project potential fits based on needs and trends.
• Adapt and adjust as new data is available.
• Explain the reasoning behind a decision-making process.

Read the rest of this entry »