Injuries, trades, and ineffectiveness — it’s time to reconstruct a roster on FanGraphs Live. Read the rest of this entry »

For all of the dysfunction that Major League Baseball has offered thus far in the 2020 season, some players are firing on all cylinders, from first-month flashes in the pan (Donovan Solano is hitting .457/.474/.657, Hanser Alberto .429/.459/.686) to familiar faces. Few of the latter are doing so to a greater degree than Aaron Judge. The Yankees right fielder, who has missed a good chunk of the past two seasons due to injuries — and might have missed half of this one if not for the delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic — has hit an major league-high six home runs, all of them in a streak of five straight games from July 29 through August 2. That streak came to an end on Monday, as he had to “settle” for a 2-for-4 performance in the Yankees’ 6-3 win over the Phillies, their eighth in nine games.

The last two of Judge’s home runs came on Sunday night at Yankee Stadium against the Red Sox and were timely, to say the least. His towering three-run shot to left field off of Matt Hall erased a 2-0 deficit in the second inning, while his two-run homer to left center off Matthew Barnes broke a 7-7 tie with two outs in the eighth inning, providing the margin of victory:

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With every passing day and new positive COVID-19 test, the 2020 MLB season looks shakier and shakier. Already, the league has seen team-wide outbreaks among the Marlins and the Cardinals, forcing both squads to quarantine for days and creating huge holes in the already compressed schedule. Those absences have had a domino effect on the rest of baseball, resulting in other teams that are otherwise COVID-free being forced to put their seasons on hold or rejigger their schedules on the fly. Running through it all is a seeming reluctance on the part of MLB to shut things down or exercise control even as the problem escalates, as well as reports that players aren’t sticking closely enough to the health and safety protocols governing the sport’s return.

The situations in Miami and St. Louis have wreaked havoc on major league baseball, and it’s an open question as to whether the season can survive another team going down — or, at this point, whether it’s safe to play baseball in the middle of a pandemic. So what could Rob Manfred and the league have done differently, and what can they be doing now to try to solve the problem? On Monday, I reached out to Dr. Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University, to get his thoughts on what’s gone wrong in MLB, and if it’s possible — or even wise — for baseball to continue in 2020.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity and length.

Jon Tayler: So what’s the situation as it currently exists?

Zachary Binney: We’ve seen two massive outbreaks on two different teams, the Marlins and the Cardinals, that are not related. The question that MLB is facing right now is whether this is going to keep happening, or is there something you can do to change it?

I got asked this morning, what would you be advising Rob Manfred right now? My answer is that I’d tell him to take a deep breath, look in the mirror, and ask and answer honestly, are things going to change? Is there something we can do to avoid the Marlins and the Cardinals happening over and over and over again? And I think that really depends on the exact circumstances around these outbreaks. One is a fluke, two is a pattern, right? You can’t just say this is only the Marlins, everybody else is being good. That excuse is out the window.

So how did this outbreak happen? Did it happen from what epidemiologists call a point-source exposure, meaning there was some risky behavior from a large number of players or staff, like they went out to a bar or a nightclub and everybody got exposed there, and then there was spread in the clubhouse? Or was there one case introduced that then spread around the clubhouse? If that’s the case, was that because MLB’s protocols were insufficient, or because they weren’t being followed? Were guys not wearing masks? Were they spending too much time indoors in large groups and not distancing? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Shohei Ohtani’s arm injury and his short- and long-term prospects as a two-way player, Mike Soroka and the ongoing pitcher-injury epidemic, the latest positive tests and player opt outs, Tigers reliever Tyler Alexander’s record-setting nine consecutive strikeouts, Clayton Kershaw’s comeback and other heartening news, MLB’s uptick in TV ratings, the strangeness of the standings, how long the regular season would have to last for MLB to give a green light to the playoffs, and robot umps coming to the KBO Futures League. Then (37:34) they talk to Senior Director of Seattle Mariners Productions Ben Mertens about how the Mariners manage fake crowd noise at T-Mobile Park, balancing boos and cheers, taunting opponents, the level of noise the players prefer, the construction of cardboard cutouts, the ballpark uncanny valley effect, and more.

Audio intro: Budgie, "Forearm Smash"
Audio interstitial: Death Cab for Cutie, "Fake Frowns"
Audio outro: Ernest Tubb, "I’m With a Crowd but So Alone"

Link to Ben on injured pitchers
Link to Tony Wolfe on Alexander
Link to article about TV ratings
Link to article about KBO robot umps
Link to Mariners Seat Fleet
Link to article on MLB’s cheering app

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To the surprise of no one, COVID-19 continues to affect the baseball season. Plans have changed and re-changed as two teams have seen clusters of positive tests. While this news is, as always, subject to change, here’s our most recent update.

The Marlins In Purgatory

As of now, the Marlins are scheduled for a Tuesday game in Baltimore. There is, as yet, no information on which players will be available, but the Marlins are behaving as if they’ll need some new blood: they’ve acquired Justin Shafer, Josh Smith, Mike Morin, and Richard Bleier in the last week, and signed Logan Forsythe. Given that the league’s testing protocol requires two negative tests more than 24 hours apart before a player can return to the field, they may need even more reinforcements on the hitting side as well.

The Marlins players who tested positive for COVID-19 took the bus back to Miami. That group comprises 18 players, which left 12 of the initial 30-man roster in Philadelphia awaiting their next move — minus Isan Díaz, who opted out of the season over the weekend. Those 11, plus the four new pitchers, will join players from the 60-man player pool to form what passes for a major league roster and play against the Orioles.

The long-term effects of the last week’s postponements will be harder to plan. The Marlins have played only three games this year, which leaves them with a lot of ground to make up. They were originally scheduled to play Philadelphia in Miami this week before the Orioles and Yankees played an impromptu series to minimize cancelations. At some point, the team will be more or less back to its initial form, and they’ll have a lot of games to play. Read the rest of this entry »

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As the 2020 baseball season seemed to teeter on the brink of collapse this weekend in light of the news of an outbreak on the Cardinals, the comments of commissioner Rob Manfred, and the inactivity of six teams, four players — three of them former All-Stars — opted out of the 2020 season: Brewers center fielder Lorenzo Cain, Mets outfielder Yoenis Céspedes, Marlins second baseman Isan Díaz, and free agent lefty Francisco Liriano. None of them are known to be in high-risk groups themselves, meaning that they’ll forfeit the remainder of their salaries. The departure of Cain is likely the most impactful from a competitive standpoint, and that of Díaz the most understandable given his proximity to the largest outbreak to date. All of those were overshadowed by the drama surrounding Céspedes and the Mets, who together turned the announcement of an opt-out decision into a bizarre spectacle that unfolded over the course of a few hours on Sunday afternoon.

We’ll get to Céspedes, but first is Cain. Although he had played just five games this season, the 34-year-old two-time All-Star was off to a promising start, going 6-for-18 with a double and three walks. A speedy, savvy baserunner, he pulled off an entertaining escape from a rundown against the Cubs on July 25, a clip that made the rounds:

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It’s the beginning of August, and one only one pitcher is on pace for a 6 WAR season. In a normal year, that would be disappointing; there are usually something like four or five of them. In this short year, on the other hand, it’s downright amazing, and I don’t know a better way to say it than that: right now, Shane Bieber is downright amazing.

Through two starts, Bieber is putting up numbers like peak Craig Kimbrel, only he’s doing it as a starter. You’ve seen individual games like this before, so the numbers might not sound completely wild to you, but they’re wild. A 54% strikeout rate and 2% walk rate, a 0 ERA, a -0.36 FIP; that’s all obviously excellent in an abstract sense. To truly understand it, however, you have to take a closer look at Bieber’s stuff. He’s absolutely bullied his way through two straight dominant performances, and there’s no better way to do it than to take a trip through his overpowering secondary stuff. Watch hitters flail, and you can get a better sense of how thoroughly masterful Bieber has been this year.

In 2018 and 2019, Bieber’s calling card was his wipeout slider. He threw it 23% of the time in 2018 and 26% of the time in 2019, and hitters simply couldn’t do anything with it. They whiffed on roughly 43% of their swings against the pitch in both years, often looking foolish:

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Since he was drafted in the second round in 2015, Tigers left-hander Tyler Alexander barely needs two hands to count the number of times he’s struck out nine batters in a game. There was the first time, on April 23, 2016, when he was in High-A. There were two other nine-strikeout performances in 2017, and two more in the minors in 2019, along with one occasion in the majors in just his third big league appearance. That’s six instances of at least nine strikeouts in 126 career appearances as a pro, each one coming in a game he started.

On Sunday, Alexander struck out nine batters in a row. Not over the course of six or seven innings — just one right after another. Entering as a reliever in the third inning of the first game of Detroit’s doubleheader against the Reds, Alexander set the record for consecutive strikeouts in a relief appearance, and tied the American League record for consecutive strikeouts by any pitcher. And a two-strike fastball that drilled Mike Moustakas on his left arm is all that stopped Alexander from tying Tom Seaver for MLB’s all-time record. Actually, because he struck out Eugenio Suárez immediately after plunking Moustakas, that stray heater is all that stopped Alexander from having the longest strikeout streak in baseball history.

By any definition, it will go down as one of the most dominant relief appearances of the season. Of the 55 pitches Alexander threw on Sunday, 16 were called strikes, while 22 induced swings. Of those 22 swings, 11 were whiffs, and none resulted in a ball put in play. For 3.2 innings, Alexander was untouchable. That’s unquestionably a great day for him, and to a lesser extent, it’s also a good day for every other pitcher in baseball, because Alexander’s performance shows this is probably something any pitcher in baseball could achieve.

This isn’t to take anything away from Alexander. Every pitcher on earth would love to simply strike out every hitter he faces without ever allowing the ball to be put in play — that doesn’t mean anyone ever actually accomplishes it. It’s one thing to try to strike out nine guys in a row, and another to actually do it. In order to close that gap, one would think a pitcher would need to be working with some truly elite, lights-out stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a fan of the Chicago Cubs, it would not be surprising if you describe your feelings about Tyler Chatwood as some kind of frustrated exasperation. Able to survive in the mile-high environment of Coors Field despite occasionally spotty control and an inability to punch out batters, the Cubs expected that Chatwood would do even better in the friendly confines of Wrigley; the days when the wind is blowing out in Chicago weren’t supposed to be much of a problem for a pitcher who largely avoided giving up big home run totals in Colorado. On that assumption, the Cubs signed Chatwood to a three-year, $38 million contract before the 2018 season.

Suffice it to say, 2018 did not go as anyone predicted or hoped, except maybe Cardinals fans. Chatwood’s season started deceptively well, with a 2.83 ERA in April, but 22 walks in 28 2/3 innings suggested trouble. After throwing seven shutout innings against the Brewers on April 29 of that year, he went three months without a single quality start and walked at least two batters in every game. The team’s acquisition of Cole Hamels resulted in Chatwood’s exile to the bullpen, where he was little-used until injuring his hip in an emergency start as a replacement for Mike Montgomery. A non-factor in the pennant race that September, Chatwood’s 103 2/3 innings of work for the season was still enough time to amass a league-leading 95 walks.

2019 went better, but Chatwood’s role was mostly that of a fill-in starter and low-leverage reliever and mop-up guy. His 4.28 FIP in relief didn’t send a tingle down anyone’s spine, and his decision to largely abandon his secondary stuff didn’t seem like a likely ticket back to the rotation. However in the second half, he did tinker with his cutter’s grip after recognizing an issue with the pitch, which he had largely moved away from in 2019:

https://twitter.com/MLBastian/status/1289773139409297408

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