After a whirlwind 24-hour period in which the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer all announced suspensions of their regular season games in the wake of local restrictions on the size of mass gatherings as a means of slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus, Major League Baseball has followed suit. Following a conference call involving commissioner Rob Manfred and the 30 team owners, the league has shut down its spring training schedules in both Arizona and Florida and will delay the start of the regular season, which was scheduled to begin on March 26, by at least two weeks.

Here’s the statement from MLB:

This is the first time since 1995 that the start of the season has been delayed; that year, following the resolution of the strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series, the schedule was shortened to 144 games. MLB’s two-week assessment should be taken with a grain of salt given the fluidity of the situation; just two days ago, the aforementioned leagues banded together to issue a joint statement regarding the closure of locker rooms and clubhouses to the media, a comparatively minor deviation from business as usual. The situation escalated rapidly on Wednesday, as the World Health Organization officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic and a top U.S. health official (Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) recommended against the assembly of large crowds for sporting events. It took around two hours between the revelation that an NBA player (Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert) had tested positive and the league’s decision to suspend play due to the need to quarantine players or advise those who had been exposed to Gobert to self-quarantine. The NBA reportedly told teams on Thursday that its suspension would last for a minimum of 30 days.

Via the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, the expectation is that MLB teams will ask players to remain at spring sites, where they have access to team medical personnel and can continue to work out; however, players can go as they please. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters that players will be allowed to continue training at their Camelback Ranch facility but that the pace of workouts would be dialed back, and players could go home if they choose. The Brewers are hosting optional workouts for players on Friday and Monday but not over the weekend, and there will be no media availability until Monday. Meanwhile, the Yankees’ current plan is to remain in Tampa, and potentially play intra-squad or simulated games, though that may also change.

Schedule-wise, while nothing official has been announced, The Athletic’s Zach Buchanan reported via Twitter, “Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall said the idea now is to pick up the season at whatever point on the schedule play resumes. If only a short time has been missed, MLB could add those games on the back end.” Such a situation would be similar to how MLB handled the 2001 season following September 11, when a week’s worth of games was postponed and then made up after the previously scheduled end of the regular season, such that all teams except the Yankees and Red Sox completed 162-game schedules.

Such policies have not been announced officially, however, and a host of other unanswered questions involving salaries for major and minor leaguers (none of whom get paid during spring training, except per diem meal money), and service time, also loom. Per the Associated Press’ Ronald Blum:

If regular-season games are lost this year, MLB could attempt to reduce salaries by citing paragraph 11 of the Uniform Player’s Contract, which covers national emergencies. The announcement Thursday said the decision was made “due to the national emergency created by the coronavirus pandemic.”

“This contract is subject to federal or state legislation, regulations, executive or other official orders or other governmental action, now or hereafter in effect respecting military, naval, air or other governmental service, which may directly or indirectly affect the player, club or the league,” every Uniform Player’s Contract states.

The provision also states the agreement is “subject also to the right of the commissioner to suspend the operation of this contract during any national emergency during which Major League Baseball is not played.”

Ugh. Obviously, this is sad news for the sport we love and the season we’re hotly anticipating, but those concerns are secondary in the face of a public health crisis during which schools and other institutions have been closed and people have become sick or died; the worldwide confirmed case count as of Wednesday is upwards of 127,000 as of Wednesday, and the death toll is approaching 5,000. We can hope that the games return to us in short order, but right now, nobody really knows what’s in store.

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On Wednesday, the dominoes began falling across the landscape of US sports with respect to the spread of the novel coronavirus. A day that included the World Health Organization officially declaring the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, and a top U.S. health official telling a Congressional committee, “Bottom line, it’s going to get worse,” saw leagues and organizations take unprecedented steps in order to comply with governmental restrictions on large gatherings. Such social distancing measures have been proven to slow the spread of a virus — to “flatten the curve” in order to avoid overwhelming health care systems and force grim decisions on triage — that has shown a 33% daily rise in the cumulative number of cases, and that may ultimately infect 70 million to 150 million people in the U.S. alone, one for which a vaccine is at least a year away.

Where on Tuesday Major League Baseball’s closure of locker rooms and clubhouses went into effect, by late Wednesday that measure and the concerns that surrounded it looked like small potatoes compared to the NCAA’s announcement that its signature basketball tournament would proceed without spectators, and the NBA’s indefinite suspension of its season following a player testing positive for the virus. While MLB began addressing its most acute situations in Seattle and San Francisco on Wednesday due to decisions made by local authorities, it’s now quite apparent that the league will soon need to move beyond piecemeal solutions and be forced to make a choice between delaying its March 26 Opening Day or playing games behind closed doors. Reporters such as ESPN’s Jeff Passan and MLB Network’s Jon Heyman have suggested that spring training could soon be suspended.

[UPDATE: Via Passan, MLB is expected to suspend spring training after a conference call among owners on Thursday afternoon, and the league “likely will delay the beginning of the regular season as well.” Passan quoted Dodgers pitcher David Price, “”It’s gotta happen. This is so much bigger than sports. I’ve got two kids.”]

As noted previously, such measures are hardly the biggest sacrifice to be made at a time when schools and other institutions are being closed and people are becoming sick or even dying amid an epidemic whose worldwide confirmed case count is upwards of 127,000 as of Wednesday, and whose death toll is approaching 5,000. Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday was not the first time that COVID-19 cracked the headlines, but it was the day the disease made its most significant impact yet on American culture. Early that morning, Washington governor Jay Inslee banned gatherings of more than 250 people in the state’s three most affected counties, urging citizens to practice social distancing in an effort to limit the virus’ spread and, by extension, all but ensuring that the Seattle Mariners season opener will not be played as scheduled. By day’s end, the federal government had implemented significant travel restrictions, Tom Hanks tested positive for COVID-19, the NCAA announced plans to restrict attendance at its events, and the NBA suspended its season. Finally, belatedly, the novel coronavirus hit the sports world.

COVID-19 is a deadly disease. The latest estimates project that more than 120,000 people have contracted the virus, and that nearly 4,500 of those infected have died. For a variety of reasons, we don’t know what the precise fatality rate is, but the World Health Organization recently trotted out 3-4% as a crude mortality ratio estimate. That’s a very high number, particularly considering how easily this coronavirus spreads. The virus is transmitted by fluid-to-fluid contact, and it’s a resilient bug, capable of living on metal surfaces — the kinds we touch on buses and in elevators and stadium handrails — for hours, or possibly days. Worse, people who do have it are contagious for long periods of time, and have ample opportunity to pass it off even after they’ve started feeling better.

Sporting events are prime places for the virus to thrive. Because the disease gives some carriers very mild symptoms, you can bet that plenty of sick people will shrug off what they perceive as a routine cold to support their team in person. Once at the game, they’ll eat, drink, shout, and share space with thousands of other people. In these dense quarters, COVID-19 will inevitably spread. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Welcome to SzymChat where the only thing contagious is friendship! And maybe chickenpox.

12:01

Dan Szymborski: No

12:01

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t even DONE anything yet.

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Logan Gilbert has all the makings of a quality big-league starter. Drafted 14th overall by the Seattle Mariners in 2018, the 22-year-old right-hander pairs plus stuff with a classic pitcher’s build. Moreover, he’s studious about his craft. The Stetson University product has embraced technology since signing — this per a Mariners executive I spoke to — and he’s using it to better understand, and help fine-tune, his arsenal.

Gilbert debuted professionally last season and went on to excel at three levels. Topping out at Double-A Arkansas, the 6-foot-6, 225-pound hurler logged a 2.13 ERA with 165 strikeouts in 135 innings. Displaying good command, he issued just 33 free passes.

Gilbert — No. 45 on our 2020 Top 100 Prospects list — discussed his four-pitch mix, as well as the extension and ride that help his heater play up, late last week.

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David Laurila: To start, can you give a self-scouting report?

Logan Gilbert: “I try to get ahead with the fastball. Everything for me is getting into good counts, because of how that plays better. I’ve seen the averages — how they change based on the counts — so I go right at guys. But I can also land a curveball, which for me is a big, slow curveball. I also have a harder slider that I used for strikeouts a lot last year; I used it for put-aways. I’ll also mix in a changeup. That’s kind of a fourth pitch, kind of a weak-contact pitch to give lefties a different look.”

Laurila: I understand that your velocity was down for a period of time at Stetson.

Gilbert: “It went down a little my junior year [2018], but last year it was pretty good for the most part. This spring it’s been pretty good again. Last game I was sitting around 94 [mph] for my two innings. In college, I was around 90, so it’s come back up.”

Laurila: Is velocity important to you? Read the rest of this entry »

For someone who has spent his life in Ohio and West Virginia, I have a surprising number of friends who are fans of the Baltimore Orioles. Those friends have spent a large portion of their baseball-attentive lives waiting for the team’s catcher of the future. Toward the end of the 2000s, that seemed to be Matt Wieters, the fifth overall pick in the 2007 Draft and Baseball Prospectus’ No. 1 prospect in baseball before he debuted in 2009. After Wieters briefly lived up to his lofty expectations in 2011-12, fans waited for him to reach those heights again. Now, with the Orioles in the middle of another rebuilding cycle, the future of the organization rests on the shoulders of another catcher, Adley Rutschman, the first overall pick in 2019 and the No. 5 prospect in the game, according to Eric Longenhagen’s rankings.

Those are the most high-profile examples, but another top catching prospect existed between those two, and is entering an important season in his big league development. It wasn’t long ago that Chance Sisco, a second-round pick by the organization in 2013, was rising quickly through the system and turning into one of the best catching prospects in the game. Before the 2017 season, he was the top prospect in the organization and a consensus Top 100 prospect around baseball. That year, he was usually the only Orioles player ranked in the Top 100, a signal of how much he stood out in an otherwise listless farm system. That would be an acceptable development if the big league roster were teeming with youth and recently-graduated prospects, but instead, the club was anchored by aging veterans such as Chris Davis, Mark Trumbo, Adam Jones, and J.J. Hardy, and on the cusp of its first losing season in six years. It was time for the team to start thinking about its future, and that future started with Sisco.

Just three years later, Sisco, now 25, doesn’t inspire the same buzz he once did. Part of that is slow development at the upper levels, which is pretty typical for catchers. Last season was Sisco’s third in a row getting major league experience, but he’s still yet to reach 200 plate appearances in a season at the big league level, with the Orioles shuttling him back and forth from Triple-A. His first extended look at the majors in 2018 was a rough one — in 184 plate appearances, he hit just .181/.288/.269, running a 58 wRC+ and striking out almost 36% of the time. Combined with 38 games in Norfolk that were merely okay, it was the worst season of Sisco’s professional career. Read the rest of this entry »

When I first learned about a mysterious cabal of smart nerds who were analyzing baseball, I took the words I got from them as though passed down from heaven. I read Moneyball, of course. But I also read about DIPS theory, wOBA, and whatever else I could get my hands on. I read The Book so many times I wore it out and had to buy a new copy. It felt like there were cheat codes just under the surface of the sport that someone was highlighting for me.

Many of those lessons from 15 years ago are still kicking around in my head. I’m skeptical of BABIP-driven hitters, perhaps more skeptical than I should be. I dismiss batters with anomalous platoon splits, even if there’s something about them that really does make them unique. And recently I realized that I might be misunderstanding the signaling value of strikeout rate.

Back in the early 2000s, batters who struck out more hit better. That sounds counterintuitive, because strikeouts are bad. It’s actually not that weird though. Barry Bonds struck out more than Ozzie Smith in his career, just to pick two illustrative examples. Bonds isn’t even a great example, because his batting eye was otherworldly. Alex Rodriguez struck out twice as often as Omar Vizquel.

The popular opinion was that strikeouts weren’t really a negative indicator. A strikeout was bad, sure, but it was often a hidden indicator of some positive process under the hood. No one would say that being sore is good for your health, and yet people in great shape are probably sore more often than sedentary types, what with all the exercising. Amount of time spent being sore very likely has a positive correlation with health.
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The 2019 Yankees may have been the best direct-to-video sequel ever. Usually these types of movies are the worst, mainly cheap forgettable cash-ins missing all the actors who were some of the biggest reasons the original was good. At various times, the Yankees lost Luis Severino, Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Didi Gregorius, Dellin Betances, Miguel Andújar, Aaron Hicks, and others. But surprisingly, everything just kinda worked out. DJ LeMahieu earned a place at the back of the MVP ballot, the pitching held together, and the team got tremendous years from Gio Urshela and Mike Tauchman. The Yankees didn’t win the World Series, but they got closer than almost every other team in baseball, light years away from being, say, A Christmas Story 2 starring Daniel Stern, a movie that actually exists for some mysterious reason.

The Yankees survived the injuries, but it certainly wasn’t the desired outcome going into the year. Unfortunately for the Bronx Bombers, history has started repeating itself very quickly, leaving the team with the prospect of entering the 2020 season with a whole new slate of crucial injuries.

At the time of the ZiPS projection post for the Yankees, they were forecast for an obscene 102-103 wins (which would have been the best-ever ZiPS win projection). While this wasn’t with injury-free assumptions — ZiPS was already skeptical about the health of Hicks, Stanton, Severino, and James Paxton — this projection assumed that most of the stars would have healthier seasons. Paxton’s surgery to remove a cyst from his spine and the initial reports of Severino’s forearm soreness reduced these playing time estimates, dropping the Yankees to a “mere” 100 wins in the first public ZiPS run for the year. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in November, I wrote a piece on spin mirroring in which I broke down the phenomenon and its applications, along with theories on its effectiveness. There have been some misconceptions about how spin mirroring actually works. I’m going to attempt to break down how to create “true” (or parallel) spin mirroring, which is based on much more than just opposite spin directions. Spin direction, spin axis, tunneling, and “seeing” spin are all factors that make up this phenomena.

The premise of the strategy is based on a hitter’s potential to recognize spin and the pitcher having the ability to tunnel two pitches, which can create a repelling effect in terms of opposing Magnus force. This juxtaposing effect can create a large spread ratio between the tunnel point and the position of the pitches when they cross home plate. So long as the spin direction contrast is somewhere between 170 and 190-degrees, and their gyro degrees (where the spin axis is pointed in space) are similar, true spin mirroring can be facilitated.

The below example shows how spin direction and the spin axis of two pitches are affected by the contrary Magnus effect (as well as gravity), which creates the appearance of them almost pushing off from each other. There is no additional force from the balls themselves acting on each other; it’s simply how each pitch, individually, responds to this law of physics:

One thing I want to point out as we dive into this is that the Driveline EDGE tool I’ll be using doesn’t account for gravity, drag, or the effect seam orientation might have on ball flight, as well as any park factors like air pressure. These are provided to add visual context to reinforce my statements. That isn’t to say the tool doesn’t have uses otherwise; it relies more on the movement the pitcher is able to generate by himself, which is elaborated on here. Read the rest of this entry »