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 »

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.

https://twitter.com/sung_minkim/status/1145702070646800385

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!
Read the rest of this entry »

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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