Earlier this week, 32-year-old Brewers righty Josh Lindblom 린드블럼 spoke to me about the winding path of his career in MLB and the Korea Baseball Organization. Drafted by the Dodgers in the second round in 2008 out of Purdue, he spent parts of four seasons (2011-14) in the majors with four different teams before joining the KBO’s Lotte Giants, with whom he spent 2 1/2 seasons as a starter, interrupted only by a half-season stint in the Pirates’ organization. Returning to South Korea with the powerhouse Doosan Bears, and armed with a wider repertoire and some insights gained via analytics, he won the Choi Dong-won Award, as the circuit’s top pitcher, in both 2018 and ’19, and took home MVP honors in the latter season while helping the Bears win the Korean Series.

Lindblom parlayed his success abroad into a three-year, $9.125 million-plus-incentives deal to start for the Brewers, and while his official return to MLB is on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, his insights into his own career and his time in the KBO are most welcome. This is a lightly edited transcript of the second half of our conversation. For the purposes of clarity and familiarity, I have used the English naming order, placing Korean surnames last instead of first.

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Jay Jaffe: With your back and forth between MLB and the KBO, you’ve obviously seen a lot of evolution in this, but how would you say the KBO’s use of analytics and technology compares to Major League Baseball? Read the rest of this entry »

While many have moved on to a potential renegotiated deal between the players and owners to get the season underway, MLB’s decision to stage a five-round amateur draft shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. On Friday, Jeff Passan and Kiley McDaniel broke the news that this year’s June draft will last just five rounds. The news wasn’t a total surprise given that when the players and owners negotiated back in March, the sides agreed that the draft would be at least five rounds, but would be considerably shortened. However, given the relatively low present and future cost of having even five more rounds, it’s something of a surprise that the owners refused to put down the half a million dollars per team in 2020, with a quarter million dollars more in bonuses payable in 2021 and 2022.

The agreement in March specified that the draft would stick to 2019 slot amounts, saving owners a little over $8 million from what was in the CBA. In addition, teams would have to pay just $100,000 of player’s bonuses now, with the rest of the payments split between 2021 and 2022. In 2020, that means owners will spend around $15 million in signing bonuses, a $300 million reduction from a year ago. Coupled with the delayed international signing date, the owners are seeing $400 million in 2020 savings, with roughly $80 million of those savings permanent. Last year, teams spent $50 million more than their allotted amount on bonuses for players after the 10th round, which won’t happen this year. There’s also $30 million allotted for rounds six through 10, which also won’t happen this year. According to Passan, that decision didn’t sit well with front offices:

There remains a significant divide within the team side on the draft. A majority of front offices were pushing for a longer draft, recognizing the value reaped even in later rounds can be immense. Pushback to keep the draft as short as possible from some owners was strong.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 8, 2020

Given the $100,000 limit on bonuses to be paid this year, owners opted not to spend half a million per team right now and $1 million spread over the next three years to prevent 150 talented amateurs from turning pro. Teams can sign players after the draft, but undrafted free agents are limited to $20,000 bonuses. The types of players drafted before the 10th round are not the types who agree to $20,000 bonuses unless teams are shifting around money to give other players larger bonuses. The players who would have received decent bonuses in these rounds are now going to stay in school for another year or in the case of high school players, go to college or junior college in the hopes of being drafted in future years. There’s an argument to be made that all of these players will eventually get drafted, so it doesn’t make much of a difference for teams. That argument is not strong. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to get an idea of how high the bar is to become a Hall of Fame pitcher, consider that only two of the 17 Cy Young winners from the 1980s have been inducted. One, Steve Carlton, is a four-time winner whose career spanned three decades. The other, Rollie Fingers, was one of the better relievers in the game throughout his 16-year career.

Those not in the Hall of Fame had a shorter span of greatness, even if only one year. Temporarily unlocking that Cy Young ability can come down to a change of scenery, a strong supporting cast, or working with a new pitching instructor. In other words, being in the right place at the right time. Here’s a look back at how the NL Cy Young winners of the 1980s were acquired.

At the time, St. Louis Cardinals lefty Steve Carlton and Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Rick Wise were in very similar situations. Both were All-Stars in their mid-20s who wanted to be paid a higher salary than their respective teams were offering for the 1972 season. Players didn’t yet enjoy a right to free agency. If a player held out for his preferred salary, he might find himself sitting out part of the season, or on the trading block; very rarely did teams submit to a player’s salary demands. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday afternoon’s FanGraphs Live stream features happier days for the OOTP Brewers. The offense has woken up — at least a little bit. The pitching has stabilized for now. Freddy Peralta is hitting bombs. Let’s keep the magic going!
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Rafael Devers was an absolute stud last year. He amassed more than 700 plate appearances, the first full season of his career, and put up career highs in pretty much everything. Each of the three slash stats, ISO, wRC+, WAR, defensive value, baserunning runs — seriously, pretty much everything. But I’m not here to talk about that today; we get it, Rafael Devers is great. Instead, let’s talk about another career high: eight times caught stealing.

That sounds bad, right off the jump. Eight times? The rule of thumb with stolen bases is a 75% success rate; succeed any less often, and you’re costing your team value. Take a look at the caught stealing leaderboard, and you can see that most baserunners implicitly get this tradeoff:

Going 50% on your attempts clearly isn’t that. Take a look at this one, from a May 8 game against the Orioles:

Read the rest of this entry »

With so much attention focused upon the Korea Baseball Organization right now, it’s helpful to find points of reference, not only players from major league organizations who have gone over to South Korea to escape the Quad A life of bouncing up and down between the minors and majors but also those who have rejoined MLB. One who has done so while upgrading the quality of his baseball life is Josh Lindblom 린드블럼. A 2008 second-round pick by the Dodgers out of Purdue University, the 6-foot-4, 240-pound righty spent parts of four seasons in the majors (2011-14) with four different teams, albeit with diminishing returns. Twice he was traded for former All-Stars, namely Shane Victorino (in a Dodgers-Phillies deal) and Michael Young (in a Phillies-Rangers swap).

After the 2014 season, Lindblom signed with the KBO’s Lotte Giants, and quickly found a level of success that had eluded him stateside. He went 13-10 with a 3.56 ERA (142 ERA+) and 6.5 WAR in 2015 (advanced stats via Statiz), and while he wasn’t as strong in ’16 (10-13, 5.29 ERA, 99 ERA+, 2.7 WAR), he returned to the States on a minor-league deal with the Pirates. Unfortunately, he scuffled during a brief major league stint, and was released in mid-July. He returned to the Lotte Giants on a midseason deal, and helped the team to its first playoff appearance since 2012 by going 5-3, with a 3.72 ERA (136 ERA+) and 2.3 WAR in 72 innings.

From there, Lindblom landed a one-year, $1.45 million deal with the Doosan Bears and emerged as one of the top pitchers in the entire KBO, going 15-4 with league bests in ERA (2.88), ERA+ (175), and WAR (6.8). After re-signing for $1.77 million for 2019, he followed that up with a similarly outstanding campaign, going 20-3, with a 2.59 ERA (164 ERA+) and 6.9 WAR. The Bears, who finished second in 2018 and lost the Korean Series to the SK Wyverns, won it all in ’19, and Lindblom was voted the league’s MVP; in both years, he won the circuit’s Choi Dong-won Award, as the KBO’s top pitcher. Now 32 years old, he parlayed his success abroad into a three-year, $9.125 million-plus-incentives deal to start for the Brewers — the kind of security he’s never had before. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about an anecdote in David Halberstam’s book The Teammates about prescient Cardinals pitcher Harry Brecheen, the uproar when players were first prevented from leaving their gloves on the field, and the 20th anniversary of Glenallen Hill’s rooftop home run, then revisit Michael Jordan’s motivations for playing baseball and discuss the etymology and application of the term “eyewash” inside and outside of baseball (plus a remembrance of the late Jerry Stiller and a salute to the alternately underrated and overrated Ken Phelps).

Audio intro: Carole King, "Up on the Roof"
Audio outro: The Ramones, "Garden of Serenity"

Link to The Teammates
Link to article about gloves on the field
Link to Pages from Baseball’s Past
Link to video of Hill’s homer
Link to article about Hill’s homer
Link to Verducci on Jordan
Link to R.J. on Jordan
Link to eyewash article
Link to Seinfeld scene
Link to article about Phelps
Link to article about the Phelps All-Stars
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Six months ago, few people likely loved the status quo more than MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and the group of owners who employ him. Having just completed the third year of a five-year Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players, baseball revenues continued to soar, with estimated profits during those years totaling $3.57 billion even before accounting for the $2 billion windfall from the BAMTech sale to Disney. Players saw their share of revenues shrink over those three years due to stagnant payrolls, and hoped for an opportunity to negotiate a better deal after the 2021 season. After years of huge profits under the current CBA, MLB owners are faced with the threat of potential losses, and according to reports from Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal, and Joel Sherman, the owners appear set to ask the players to subsidize those losses.

According to Rosenthal’s report, MLB wants to introduce revenue sharing for 2020 only:

Because games, at least initially, will be played without fans, the players would be asked to accept a further reduction in pay, most likely by agreeing to a set percentage of revenues for this season only.

The idea behind such a plan, from the league’s perspective, would be to protect the players and owners against the economic uncertainty created by the virus.

The players agreed in March to prorate their salaries in a shortened season. Those salaries cover the regular season only, while postseason shares are based upon gate receipts. If the players agreed to a set percentage of revenue, they also would share any additional national TV money generated during the postseason.

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