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On the mound is Ricardo Pinto. He’s 26 years old. At 6-feet and 195 pounds, he has a muscular build that immediately makes him look like an athlete. He’s struggling through this particular appearance, thanks to command issues and some iffy defense behind him, but he hasn’t really been hit hard. His low-to-mid 90s heat is on the faster side of what Korean Baseball Organization hitters typically see, and he leans on it heavily.

At the plate, with the bases loaded and two outs, is Yong Taik Park 박용택. He’s 41 years old. He wears glasses in the batter’s box. As he awaits each pitch, he stands with his front foot resting nearly on the edge of the box behind him. At 6-foot-1, 185 pounds, he doesn’t differ dramatically from Pinto in size, but his baggier uniform makes him look tall and thin.

Pinto begins his violent delivery, and Park brings his front foot square with the plate. As the ball approaches, he twitches it slightly, perhaps as a way to subtly maintain his timing. Finally, at the last moment, his bat explodes through the baseball as Park uncorks his whole body to turn on a pitch high and tight. It’s a gorgeous left-handed swing, and it produces a bases-clearing double.

And then the legendary Park Yong-taik does it again to break it wide open.

A 3-run double for the 41-year-old DH. pic.twitter.com/NJmjw7kQO4

— Locked On Orioles (@LockedOnOrioles) May 13, 2020

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As owners and the players discuss ways to start up the 2020 season, we’ve started to see the outline of a possible plan for play become less foggy. 162 games has, of course, long been impossible; now, the owners are proposing roughly a half-season rather than the expected 100-110 games. 82 games starting in early July gives us less baseball than usual, but it could also result in the “baseball year” following its same basic schedule rather than ending in late November. After all, teams normally play about that many games after early July! This likely represents the desire of the owners to play as many games as possible in the home parks rather than the considerably more exotic Super Spring Training plans that have been floated over the last six weeks.

But a shorter schedule isn’t the only proposed change coming for 2020 baseball. Forecasting how the Players v. Owners fight over revenue-sharing shakes out is beyond my abilities as a projectionista, but there are many other new tidbits that do fall within my scope. For one, while the league standings are still likely to be organized along the usual lines, teams would only play their regional division “partners” and the corresponding geographical division of the other league. This has the rather odd result of the Wild Card standings consisting of a lot of teams that would never play each other. But as ugly as that sounds, the main concern is playing the season rather than maximizing its fairness. For the purposes of these projections, I’ve assumed teams will play 52 games, or 63% of the schedule, in their division with 30 games out of division.

The designated hitter is also expected to become universal this year. I’ve long been of the opinion that as soon as interleague play became a daily activity, pitcher-hitting was on borrowed time. When interleague play consisted of special chunks of the season, NL teams could design their rosters to call up a Wily Mo Pena, a competent DH type without a full-time spot on the team, large pitching staffs having mostly killed off the designated pinch-hitter job. Once DH games became sprinkled throughout the system, it put NL teams at a slight disadvantage when planning to have an extra bat on the roster. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Dan Szymborski: AND GOT HERE

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I was finishing an article and it was a race against the clock!

12:04

Dan Szymborski: A Bartolo Colon who pitches like Gerrit Cole!

12:05

Dan Szymborski: AND HE WOULD BE ALL OF THOSE THINGS

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On November 28, 1902, a young man from Igerna, California, headed north with two friends on a hunting trip into the wilderness of southern Oregon. It was an area he would have known fairly well: He often traveled this way on his way to face the baseball nines of various small towns. The young man’s name was B.R. Logan, and he was a baseball player.

On December 1, Logan, outside the cabin where he and his companions were staying, thought he saw a deer. He bade his friends farewell and headed off in pursuit. A day passed. Then another. Then another. His friends began to worry. After two weeks, they began to despair. It was the winter, in the middle of the forest, and there was no sign of their friend.

On December 13, the Associated Press published an item about Logan’s disappearance. “MISSING BASEBALL PLAYER,” it read. By this point, the search party wasn’t looking for Logan. They were looking for his body.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the difficulty of interpreting the context of old articles about baseball and a man obsessed with smashing certain plate glass windows, then answer listener emails about what qualifies as hitting a ball out of the ballpark and eliminating force outs, plus Stat Blasts about the all-time defensive indifference leaders (inspired by Armando Galarraga’s lobbying for a retroactive perfect game), winning pitchers with more earned runs allowed than the losing pitchers, and players who batted 1.000 in their first and last games, as well as a concluding discussion of the new TNT TV adaptation of EW favorite Snowpiercer.

Audio intro: Field Music, "In Context"
Audio outro: Nick Lowe, "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass"

Link to video of Stanton homer
Link to Sam on umpires’ personal strike zones
Link to Stat Blast song covers thread
Link to Jonathan Crymes’s Stat Blast song cover
Link to Galarraga article
Link to defensive indifference data
Link to defensive indifference article
Link to “good-luck winners” data
Link to “good-luck winners” historical trends
Link to players with perfect debuts and finales
Link to order The MVP Machine

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I’ll level with you. The World Series tactics series has been getting less and less wild as time goes on. That’s not to say it’s getting less and less fun — I’m actually having more fun writing it, because we’ve passed into an era where I remember the games.

It’s a lot more interesting to look for hidden gems when it’s games you’ve already seen, because they’re truly shocking. I’m not surprised that managers were calling for weird bunts in 1990 — the internet barely existed in 1990! A weird bunt or baffling pitching decision is more fun to me in 2005 than 1995, even if there are fewer true howlers. So while these three series might seem dry, remember: these weren’t that long ago! Managers really should have known better.

2007

The Red Sox assembled a lineup that would look right at home in 2020. Two on-base machines, Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, occupied the top two spots, feeding David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and Mike Lowell. The Rockies weren’t quite with the times — they batted Kaz Matsui, one of their worst hitters, second. But the rest of the lineup was stacked, with Matt Holliday and Todd Helton hitting 3-4.

The last act of Rocktober was nasty and short. Did Colorado leave starter Jeff Francis in too long in the first game? Maybe! But he gave up three runs in the first, trusted reliever Franklin Morales gave up seven in the fifth, and the offense only put up a single run. Maybe you can argue with intentionally walking Manny Ramirez (man on second, two outs, down three in the second), but it hardly matters when you lose by 12 runs.

Okay, fine, maybe the intentional walks were bad. In the fourth, still down three runs, the Rockies intentionally walked Mike Lowell — the man they’d walked Ramirez to face earlier in the contest. Jason Varitek doubled in two runs in the next at-bat. The walks didn’t make the difference in the game, and they weren’t even hugely consequential, but don’t intentionally walk people to face other batters you’re willing to intentionally walk! Read the rest of this entry »

Jared Oliva isn’t your ordinary prospect. Unlike most of his peers, he wasn’t the best player on his teams growing up. Nor was he the second-best, or even the third-best. As a matter of fact, he barely got off the bench. The 24-year-old outfielder — No. 9 on our Pittsburgh Pirates Top Prospects list — never started a game in high school.

Bloodlines certainly weren’t the problem; his father and uncle both played professionally. Work ethic and aptitude weren’t issues, either. Oliva was simply a late-bloomer who had the misfortune of playing at a prep powerhouse; his teammates at Valencia High School included Keston Hiura.

A certain amount of envy was inevitable.

“Seeing some of my friends committing to big-time Division-1 schools, I was questioning my [future],” admitted Oliva. “Maybe not questioning — I believed in myself — but you do get a little jealous when you see guys move forward in their baseball careers, and you’re sitting there thinking, ‘That’s what I want to do; how do I do it?’”

Oliva had played some travel ball, but again, he’d been a benchwarmer on his high school squad. It’s understandable that recruiters weren’t clamoring for his services. Recognizing that, Oliva proactively emailed a plethora of programs throughout the country. Only a handful responded, and the messages were uniformly a version of, “Thanks for reaching out, but we’re good with our recruiting class.” Read the rest of this entry »

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.

The NBA Plans Its Return

The NBA, like the NHL, is in a bit of a different situation than MLB in that its season was mostly already done before COVID-19 reared its ugly morphology. NBA commissioner Adam Silver reportedly conversed with NBA owners Tuesday, providing an optimistic outlook about the resumption of play, and while the exact numbers have not been released, a confidential survey of NBA players taken by NBPA representatives indicated that there is an overwhelming desire to finish the season. And in an attempt not to force the decision right now, the NBA and NBPA also agreed to extend until September the deadline for the owners to trigger the clause that allows them to suspend the CBA.

Premier League Considers Possibility of Lost Season

The Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, indicated that he has discussed the possibility of being unable to resume the 2020 season with the teams. The UK has given clearance for the league to resume on June 1 and they were previously targeting a return to play on June 8, but the teams put the kibosh on the possibility of playing games on neutral grounds (this kind of thing is a bigger deal in association football than it is in baseball). There’s another significant roadblock in that the players are not yet officially convinced that it’s safe to resume the season.

The NHL Discussing Resumption

The NHL’s Return to Play committee continued talks on Tuesday. One of the undecided questions is what the NHL playoffs will look like, one scenario being a 24-team playoff that eliminates the need to finish the regular season at all. Prominent players such as Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin have previously expressed a preference for going straight to the playoffs.

Arizona Sports Are Go

Arizona governor Doug Ducey announced on Tuesday that major league sports could resume play in the state when the state’s stay-at-home order expires on Friday. Most of the scenarios in which MLB resumes play in 2020 require games to be played in some combination of Arizona, Florida, and Texas, so Arizona giving the green light to the return of professional sports was a necessary part of these plans. This is especially true in light of news that Los Angeles County envisions its stay-at-home orders remaining in effect into August. Los Angeles may not be alone if there are new COVID-19 peaks in communities with major league parks.

While baseball can resume in Arizona, there are still strings attached in that the teams will have to follow CDC safety guidelines, though one would hope that they would do so even if Arizona hadn’t laid it down as a requirement.

MLB/MLBPA Talks Are in Progress

We’ll have a lot more on this, but in any COVID-19 roundup, it can’t be forgotten that MLB started discussions with the MLBPA on the exact steps needed to start the 2020 regular season. One surprise in the first day was that the owners did not broach the topic of the extremely controversial givebacks they want from the players. And if you’re wondering why there’s been such a push from the league to play at least some of the season in teams’ home parks, it comes down, at least in part, to revenue sources that would not be as readily available at the spring training venues.

Mariners Avoid Furloughs

To avoid any cuts and furloughs through October 1, the Mariners are implementing a 20% pay cut on employees making at least $60,000 per year. Employees who would see a dip under $60,000 with a 20% pay cut will not see their salaries drop below that $60,000 line. Some of the top executives, including general manager Jerry Dipoto, are taking unspecified cuts that are greater than 20%. Personally, I’m mildly surprised to discover that Dipoto isn’t paid by the trade.

Not every teams’ staff is so lucky. There are concerns in baseball that teams will use the shutdown as an excuse to permanently slash some costs and one NL executive told ESPN’s Buster Olney that he expected significant upheaval:

“I bet 40% of those let go never get back in baseball again,” an NL official said. “A lot of these guys have been in the game for their whole adult lives, and they’re making pennies. And you’re just going to throw those guys on the street, into this economy?”

Said another team exec: “Baseball will come back, and I bet teams could make up the cost of keeping these people on within four or five years. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that these [teams] need to dump people making $40,000, $50,000. Those savings are not difference-making” within the MLB context.

In what is now the fourth time readers have answered questions regarding their expectations for the season, respondents have bounced back and forth a bit on the central question of whether there will be baseball this year. I’d like to thank our readers for their continued participation, as we again received over 1,000 responses to nearly every question. As for the return of baseball this year, readers were very optimistic this round.

Coming in at nearly 72% of responses, last week elicited the highest percentage of “Yes” votes so far, after a huge drop-off in confidence in the results from a couple weeks ago:

With that optimism comes an increase in those expecting roughly half a season of games, though nearly everyone who expects baseball has given up hope of more than 100 games:

Read the rest of this entry »