It wasn’t too long ago — just shy of two years, in fact — that Tyler White appeared to have found his spot in the majors, emerging as the hottest hitter on a 103-win juggernaut Astros team. Now, the 29-year-old first baseman is heading to the Korea Baseball Organization to join the SK Wyverns, a decision that makes sense given that he both couldn’t find space in any team’s 60-player pool and that there’s no minor league season. In joining the struggling Wyverns, he’ll be bucking a league-wide trend, as theirs will be the only lineup featuring two foreign-born players.

The current iteration of the KBO roster rules allows teams to carry three foreign-born players, a maximum of two of whom can be pitchers; prior to 2014, the maximum was two. This year, every team in the league has gone with two foreign-born pitchers and one hitter, with the Wyverns using Nick Kingham 킹엄 and Ricardo Pinto 핀토 in their rotation and Jamie Romak 로맥 as their first baseman. As I noted on May 22, however, Kingham made just two starts before suffering an elbow injury of an unspecified nature (getting to the bottom of KBO injuries is a challenge). While initial reports suggested that he might miss only a couple of starts, he didn’t even return to playing catch until late June, and on July 2, the team waived him, opening up a spot for another foreign-born player.

The recent history of lineups with two foreign-born players is a short one. Last year, the Samsung Lions featured Darin Ruf 러프 as their regular first baseman and occasional designated hitter, with outfielder Mac Williamson 윌리엄슨 joining the team in midseason. Because of a rule in place at the time, the team was only allowed to use only two foreign-born players in a game, so one of them had to sit whenever Deck McGuire 맥과이어 or Ben Lively 라이블리 (who replaced McGuire shortly after Williamson arrived) started. Read the rest of this entry »

As we are at the time of year when we’d have our traditional All-Star festivities, this week’s FanGraphs Live! stream, featuring Eric Longenhagen, Ben Clemens, Paul Sporer and Dan Szymborski, will livecast baseball’s Futures Game. Started in 1999, the game initially featured 50 minor league players in a US vs. World format, which was later changed to American League vs. National League prospects in 2019. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, we concluded our review of the outfield with Jay Jaffe’s look at right fielders. Now we wrap up the position players with designated hitter.

It’s hardly a secret that the era of the dedicated slugger at designated hitter is over. The hulking, positionless behemoth that so many think of hasn’t been the norm at the position for years. The “new-school” model is a whirring mass of position players getting rest while still playing. A second baseman here, a left fielder there, sprinkle in a dash of good-hitting catcher on an off day, and bam, you’ve got a modern DH.

The top of our list, however, shows the inadequacy of that DH model. That’s something that many AL teams do these days, and it’s something that most every NL team will do this year without the benefit of a roster built around the position. But the teams that get the most value out of designated hitter aren’t doing it in parts. They’re tabbing single players — in many cases players who could play the field if necessary, but not always — and giving them the lion’s share of the at-bats. Yordan Alvarez, J.D. Martinez, Nelson Cruz — give me any of them over the best time-share DH situation in the league, the Cubs and their Kyle Schwarber and Friends model.

There are still many ways to build a DH. You can feed many mouths, or let the big dog eat. And there’s no real need to stand out at the position to be a great team; the Astros have Alvarez, but that’s a happy accident of his development, not a long-term plan on their part. Think of DH as a fancy dessert after a great meal; a standout one sticks in your mind, but it’s certainly not integral to the experience. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a question that you, the fan, might have in a few weeks: My team is 4-8. Is it time to get worried? In a regular 162-game season, that’s not exactly a puzzle: nope! Things are fine, my friend. Sip a frozen drink, or crack open a bag of chips, or whatever it is that you do to relax. Maybe watch a baseball game!

In a 60-game season, things will feel more consequential. That’s convenient, because they’ll also be more consequential. There’s a saying that you can’t make the playoffs in your first month, but you can miss them. This year, that’s out the window. Start out 9-3, and you’re feeling pretty good. Start 3-9, and it’s time to start booking remote cabins for your October socially-distanced vacation.

I wanted to be a little more quantitative than “it’s important to start well.” My first thought was: let’s fire up the Playoff Odds Calculator (an arcane table in David Appelman’s basement that spits out the odds of each team making the playoffs after he mutters some incantations) and give a team a hot start to see what it does to their odds. After that, we can fire up the ZiPS-ulator (a sentient robot living in Dan Szymborski’s attic) and compare.

There’s a problem with that plan, though: it depends on the messy vagaries of our estimation of a team’s strength. A 4-8 start is less painful for the Dodgers than the Diamondbacks because we think the Dodgers are better. The same goes, to a varying extent, for every team in baseball. The schedule matters, but so do our idiosyncratic views on team talent.

Instead, I wanted to create a true neutral scenario, one that you can apply in a general way without specifically digging into what we think of your team. I built a bubble baseball universe that consists of only a single five-team division. Each team has the exact same talent level, and there’s no home field advantage. That means that a 162-game season would, on average, look like this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday saw us examine left and center field. Today, we bring the outfield review to a close with a look at right field.

“History” is almost certainly too strong a word for something that’s only been tracked for a limited amount of time and that can so easily slip below the radar, but last year, for the first time during the stretch covered by our splits (2002 onward), right fielders provided more offense than any other position. Both they and first basemen collectively finished in a virtual tie for the positional lead in wRC+ at 108, but a closer look shows that right fielders produced 210.6 batting runs, compared to 209.4 for first basemen. That’s a difference that the slightest tweak in park factors might change, but it’s worth noting nonetheless, particularly after right fielders finished just 4.7 runs behind first basemen in 2018; the gap had been over 100 runs — still just a few per team per season — in favor of the first basemen in each of the previous four seasons.

Driving that 2019 performance were the NL’s top two MVP contenders, winner Cody Bellinger and runner-up (and 2018 winner) Christian Yelich, with 2018 AL winner Mookie Betts third, but here’s the thing: those guys are on the move. Bellinger, who started 102 times in right field, 28 at first base, and 21 in center, enters this shortened season as the Dodgers’ regular at the last of those positions, having demonstrated the athleticism to handle the job, at least on a part-time basis. Oh, and there’s also the matter of his having Betts as his new outfield neighbor thanks to that February blockbuster. As for Yelich, who made 121 starts in right field before his season ended on September 10 due to a fractured right kneecap, he’s back in left field, where he spent most of 2014-16 and much of ’18, and where his defensive metrics have generally been the strongest. Newcomer Avisaíl García will play right.

Of course, there’s plenty of talent at the position beyond the MVP winners. Aaron Judge hits the ball harder than anyone in the game; his problem has been injuries, not performance. Ronald Acuña Jr., who’s on the top tier when it comes to the game’s most electrifying players, is slated to play mostly in right field after spending most of his 2018 and ’19 seasons in left and center. Michael Conforto, miscast in center, has taken to right, Max Kepler has come into his own, Joey Gallo showed signs of breaking out before getting hurt, and Bryce Harper is still a force. Further down the list are late bloomers like Hunter Dozier (another relative newcomer to the position), Brian Goodwin, and Michael Yastrzemski; former top prospects hoping to turn things around such as Nomar Mazara and Gregory Polanco (a 2018 breakout set back by injuries last year); and onetime first-rounders looking for that first sustained taste of success in the majors, such as Kyle Lewis, DJ Stewart, and Lewis Brinson. And hopefully, Jo Adell will debut this year. It’s a group as worth watching as any position. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I conclude my series discussing each team’s 60-man player pool with a focus on prospects. Previous installments of these rundowns, including potentially relevant context for discussion, can be found here:

AL East and Intro
NL East
AL Central
NL Central
NL West

Updating Previously-Covered Teams

A few teams have made significant player pool additions that merit discussion before I get to the AL West. Boston added Tanner Houck, Bryan Mata, Jay Groome, Jarren Duran and Jeter Downs to their pool. The Sox need to make 40-man decisions on all three of the pitchers on that list this offseason. Houck (who might debut this year) and Mata are virtual locks to be added to the 40, while Groome still hasn’t thrown very much as a pro and is far less certain. The good news for Boston (and the bad news for the scouting industry) is that even if Groome looks great, there’s no way for other teams’ scouts to know since they have no access to Sox camp. It’d take a rebuilding team with 40-man space for a developmental dart throw, led by decision-makers previously enamored with Groome (which might be tough to find since prospective Rule 5 picks are evaluated by pro departments, which haven’t seen much of him) to even consider taking someone like that and stuffing them on next year’s active roster. Downs and Duran have 2021 roster timelines.

The Mets also put several more pitching prospects in their pool: Thomas Szapucki, Jordan Humphreys, Franklyn Kilomé, and Matt Blackham. Szapucki, Humphreys and Kilomé are all TJ survivors who are on the 40-man and thus are a good bet to debut at some point this summer, potentially up for good in September. Blackham wasn’t on the Mets prospect list but sat 93-95 and touched 97 last year, and has 30-grade command. The Mets campsite hitters remain packed with veteran utility types more so than prospects.

I’ve mentioned a of couple teams as having a puncher’s chance to compete for postseason berths, in part because they’re in position to get unexpected, unusually strong performance from their bullpens. The White Sox late player pool additions — oft-injured Jacob Lindgren, Ryan Burr, former top 100 prospect Zack Burdi, new draft pick Garrett Crochet, and 2019 breakout guy Jonathan Stiever — are all candidates to pop and contribute to such a cause this year. Chicago also added Blake Rutherford, Luis Gonzalez and Micker Adolfo to their pool. I have low-end platoon grades on Rutherford (who might belong in a low-ball/high-ball platoon rather than a left/right one) and Gonzalez at this point, while it’s clear the org prioritized experimenting with Yermin Mercedes over just DH’ing Adolfo during camp, which I think is instructive for how they should be ordered on the club’s prospect list. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, Ben Clemens assessed left field. Now Craig Edwards examines the position the best player in baseball calls home.

Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. Mike Trout plays center field. Ergo, Mike Trout is the best center fielder in baseball. After Trout, we have another genuine star in Cody Bellinger, a very good player in George Springer, and then a whole lot of maybes. There’s a lot of youth and athleticism here, as one might expect from a position that requires covering a lot of ground, but there aren’t a lot of guarantees when it comes to production. Byron Buxton, Ramón Laureano, and Luis Robert are all in the top 10. So are Lorenzo Cain and Aaron Hicks, both coming off down years. While we could see some breakouts, the projections are fairly conservative, only anticipating three teams above 1.5 WAR, which would be a four-win campaign in a full season. Read the rest of this entry »

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Hello friends! And enemies! (We don’t have any kind of wall that would distinguish between the two)

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Gentrification continues. The trendy bars have pushed away a lot of the old historic businesses.

12:05

Dan Szymborski: (Sorry, Austin Meadows always sounds like an obnoxious trendy city neighborhood)

12:06

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t heard much about what was going on with him.

12:07

Dan Szymborski: I wonder if he’d do what I’d do if I was an MLB player? I’d probably use this opportunity to get a vacation right up until opening day by being vaguel absent! Maybe cough a few times

Read the rest of this entry »

When you’re watching a baseball game, there are few things as nerve-wracking as seeing your favorite team’s pitcher consistently fall behind hitters. You know intuitively that the better the count is for the hitter, the better chance there is he’ll see a pitch he can slug. Broadcasters often love to talk about first-pitch strikes and their importance in both “setting the tone” of an at-bat and keeping pitch counts low. These are all valid notions — in 2019, the league-wide wOBA when the pitcher was behind in the count was .432. When the pitcher was ahead or the count was even, that mark was .269. That’s about the same difference as there was between Mike Trout and Orlando Arcia, the worst qualified hitter of last season.

Nearly everyone who threw at least 1,500 pitches in 2019 performed worse when behind in the count, with the exception of Tigers starter Jordan Zimmermann, who was just bad regardless of the situation. But just because someone falls behind in the count doesn’t mean he’s a lost cause. Even when at a disadvantage, some pitchers hold their own just fine. Here were the 10 best pitchers when throwing from behind last season.

By and large, that’s a list of good pitchers. However, there is an outlier here in Gio González. Not because he isn’t a good pitcher, mind you. The veteran lefty, who signed with the White Sox over the winter, held a 3.50 ERA (79 ERA-) and 4.04 FIP (90 FIP-) over 87.1 innings with Milwaukee last season. He doesn’t stand out because of a lack of skill level. He stands out because of how often he’s behind compared to the other pitchers on this list. Read the rest of this entry »