Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about umpire crew chiefs getting microphones for the 2020 season, the Reds signing Nick Castellanos and the small gaps between the top four teams in the NL Central, the Diamondbacks trading for Starling Marte and whether the Dodgers can be beaten in the NL West, and MLB getting sued over sign stealing, and then Sam makes the case for Andy Pettitte as a deserving Hall of Famer, prompting a discussion of the most challenging era in which to develop pitchers and how we assess players’ Cooperstown qualifications.

Audio intro: Soul Position, "Mic Control"
Audio outro: The Cranberries, "Desperate Andy"

Link to Sam on balks
Link to Craig Edwards on the Castellanos signing
Link to story about sign stealing and fantasy baseball
Link to SI story on sign-stealing lawsuits
Link to Ben on Reds scouting reports
Link to Jay Jaffe’s latest breakdown of Pettitte’s Hall of Fame case
Link to Sam on Colon and the Hall of Fame
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Nicholas Castellanos is not the last domino to fall in free agency, but he’s pretty close to the end of the line. After Josh Donaldson signed with the Twins and Marcell Ozuna settled for a one-year deal with the Braves, Castellanos was the next logical domino. And while the Cincinnati Reds appeared to have their outfield slots spoken for after signing Shogo Akiyama, theirs was also an outfield brimming with question marks regarding health, playing time, and performance. The Reds needed to go further to solidify their plan to compete in 2020. The result is a four-year deal worth $64 million with an opt-out after the first and second year, with C. Trent Rosencrans, Ken Rosenthal, Jon Heyman, and Jeff Passan reporting the various details.

It’s been a few months, but the contract is fairly close to the four-year, $56 million deal the crowd and Kiley McDaniel predicted as part of our Top 50 Free Agents list. Yasiel Puig and Brock Holt are the only remaining unsigned players on the entire list. The opt-outs do add value to Castellanos’ contract, but this contract is paying for a relatively optimistic view of Castellanos to begin with. The contract comes in sharp contrast to the one-year deal that Marcell Ozuna just signed, particularly given the opt-out. Ozuna is just one year older than Castellanos, but given the limited number of suitors for corner outfielders, one team having a strong, negative impression of Ozuna, or a potentially positive view of Castellanos, could have had a significant affect on the negotiations. That Ozuna came burdened with a qualifying offer and its attendant draft pick penalty might have been just enough to separate the two players; the pick the Braves surrendered was a late-third-rounder due to signing Will Smith earlier in free agency. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, transaction news comes in a torrent. Check Twitter at the right time, and you’ll see four or five reporters confirming that X signed a new contract or Y traded Z to the Dodgers; generally Ken Rosenthal or Jeff Passan will have the news first, or tip their caps to the reporter who did.

In other instances, the news comes as a trickle, as is the case with Steven Souza Jr. Last Friday, Rosenthal reported that the Cubs had agreed to a contract with Souza, and followed that with another tweet indicating that the parties had agreed to a big league deal. As of press time, the details of the contract are still unknown and it appears that Souza needs to complete a physical before anything becomes official. We’ll update this post when we can confirm the particulars.

But this is one of those deals where the financials are secondary, and you just feel good for the player. Souza, you’ll recall, was badly injured in a freak accident during the penultimate game of Arizona’s Cactus League campaign last year. As he came around to score a run in the fourth inning, his foot slipped on home plate. He hyperextended his knee and in the ensuing tumble, tore his ACL, LCL, and posterior lateral capsule, and also suffered a partial tear in his posterior cruciate ligament. Needless to say, his season was over.

It was a blow for the Diamondbacks, who were thin in the outfield at the time, but even worse for Souza, who has constantly battled injuries throughout his career. In just the last five years, he’s suffered a broken hand, a labrum tear in his hip that required surgery, and a nagging pectoral injury that limited his production even when healthy enough to suit up.

It was the pectoral that dogged him throughout 2018, a disappointing follow-up campaign to what had looked like a breakout season. In 2017, finally healthy after hip surgery, Souza put up the best numbers of his career. He hit .239/.351/.459 with 30 homers in Tampa, good for a 121 wRC+ and nearly 4 WAR. The pectoral injury limited him to just 72 games in 2018 though, and his production cratered. He hit just five homers and his wRC+ fell to the mid-80s.

Between the knee injury last spring and Souza’s sub-replacement level production in 2018, a big league deal this winter was no foregone conclusion. As a power hitter with good (but not great) on-base skills and limited defensive value, he has the kind of profile that has struggled to find traction on the free agent market in recent years. He’s also three years and a serious knee surgery removed from his last productive campaign. Now on the wrong side of 30, he seemed like the kind of player more likely to get a minor league offer with an invitation to spring training than a major league contract.

Instead, he’s found the perfect fit with the Cubs, a team that has otherwise almost gone out of its way to avoid the free agent market. Souza’s contract is only the second major league deal they’ve offered this winter (provided that you can’t Ryan Tepera’s split contract as a big league deal), a period in which they’ve neither tried to boost their squad nor traded the kind of impact talent that would help kickstart a rebuild. As Chicago prepares to take one more shot with the remaining core from their 2016 championship team, Souza’s arrival could help paper over some of the cracks in the club’s outfield.

While nothing about Souza’s signing inherently prevents the Cubs from landing a bigger fish, Chicago’s behavior this winter suggests they’re not interested in that kind of deal (and with the news today that Nicholas Castellanos is taking his talents to Cincinnati, there aren’t a lot of big fish left). If this concludes their offseason investment in the outfield, Souza will slot in as one of the club’s two reserves. The Cubs don’t necessarily have an automatic starter at any one outfield position: Jason Heyward, Ian Happ, Albert Almora Jr., and Kyle Schwarber saw quite a bit of time in various spots, and Kris Bryant played some in right and left field as well. Souza has primarily played right field throughout his career, and he figures to spell Schwarber and perhaps Heyward in the corners on days the Cubs face a lefty.

Should that prove the case, Souza’s signing ought to make the Cubs lineup a bit better. He actually doesn’t have particularly large platoon splits: He’s notched a 101 wRC+ against righties in his career and has been only modestly better against lefties (108 wRC+), mostly thanks to a slightly higher batting average and a better walk rate when he has the platoon advantage. But while Souza can hit against everyone, Heyward and Schwarber have really struggled against southpaws:

Provided that Souza’s knee is healthy enough to play the outfield regularly and in some approximation of his previous form, he should be an upgrade on days the Cubs face a lefty and a useful bat off the bench when he’s not starting. In an era of three-man benches, this kind of player feels like a long lost luxury, though the bat-first extra outfielder will likely become more common with 26-man rosters and a new rule that requires teams to field at least 13 position players. If healthy, he should fill the role capably.

A strong offseason could have made Chicago the favorites in a tight but mediocre NL Central; instead, the club’s self-imposed austerity has helped keep the race wide open. For a relatively small transaction, the Souza deal says quite a bit about how the Cubs view themselves. Signing Souza at all demonstrates that the organization is willing to make improvements around the edges of a team that should win 80+ games and compete for a spot in the playoffs again. But the lack of bigger moves indicates that management is ready to pivot if the Cubs stumble out of the gate; Souza’s signing only corroborates that course.

Derek Jeter and Larry Walker have punched their tickets to Cooperstown, and this year’s Hall of Fame election is in the books, but before the circus leaves town, it’s time engage in my seventh annual attempt to gaze into the crystal ball to see what the next five elections will hold. As I note annually, this exercise requires some amount of imagination and speculation, and while it’s grounded in my research into the candidates and the history and mechanics of the voting, the changes to the process that have occurred during the time I’ve been conducting this exercise raise the question of how valuable that history is from a prognostication standpoint. It’s tough to get a fix on the horizon when the earth keeps shaking.

Make no mistake: when it comes to the BBWAA’s voting patterns and process over the past seven years, the earth has moved. The writers’ streak of electing multiple candidates for seven consecutive years is unprecedented, as is the surge of 22 honorees in that span. We’ve had three quartets elected over the past six years, compared to two (plus the original quintet) over the previous 78 years. All of this has happened amid changes to both the terrain and the rules. A logjam of qualified candidates unprecedented in modern voting history contributed to the Hall unilaterally truncating candidacies from 15 years to 10 via a 2014 rule change, less to clean up the ballots than to move the intractable debate over PED-related candidates out of the spotlight. With the BBWAA’s subsequent proposals to adjust the longstanding 10-slot rule and to publish every ballot both rejected by the Hall’s board of directors, voters have responded by setting and breaking records for slots used per ballot, percentage of ballots filled to the max, percentage of ballots revealed to the public either before or after the election, and the highest share of the votes for a given candidate. It’s been a wild ride. Read the rest of this entry »

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to my first chat since the end of the Hall of Fame cycle. I’m running a few minutes behind, but hang tight and I’ll be along to tackle some questions shortly.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: In the meantime, feel free to poke your nose into my five-year outlook for the BBWAA ballot, which just went live a short time ago: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/big-battles-looming-the-next-five-years-of…

12:10

Jay Jaffe: OK back

12:14

Jay Jaffe: Assuming you’re talking about the death of Kobe Bryant, obviously, it’s tragic and shocking not just that he died but that his daughter was among the other eight who died too. I think my view of Bryant lagged far behind that of the general public because I stopped following the NBA closely when the Stockton/Malone Jazz dismantled (I grew up in Salt Lake City), and that was around the time of his sexual assault trial; to me, he was just a young, irresponsible punk who had game. I’ve never been comfortable with how the legal stuff played out, and I don’t think it should be kept under erasure, but I guess he grew into quite the beloved athlete. I mostly missed that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Building a competitive roster requires a lot of things from a major league club. Often it requires that the team spend a substantial amount of money, make smart trades, and draft well. But it also requires a decent bit of good luck when it comes to minor transactions. Ask a fan of the 2019 Yankees how they think the team might have fared without Mike Tauchman, Gio Urshela, and Cameron Maybin — three players acquired after the 2018 All-Star break for virtually nothing. There is, of course, skill involved in knowing which players to target in those low-risk moves and which tweaks to make to turn them from fringe 25-man players into legitimate starters. But there is a certain degree of guesswork, educated or not, involved in every step of that process. The odds of one of these small-scale pickups evolving into much of anything are always low, which is why teams make lots of them every winter.

The Philadelphia Phillies have already tried spending money and making smart trades. Last winter, they signed two starting outfielders and traded for a starting shortstop, a starting catcher, and a bullpen anchor. The math of their offseason worked out in theory — the players they lost amassed 5.3 WAR in 2018, and the players they picked up were worth 19.2 WAR. That windfall of talent boosted their record all the way from 80-82 to… 81-81. They’ve continued to be aggressive this winter, signing right-hander Zack Wheeler to the offseason’s fourth-largest free agent contract and adding the top shortstop on the market, Didi Gregorius, on a one-year deal. This week, however, they tried something else — looking to get lucky. They reached into the bucket of free agents and grabbed a handful of players in their mid-30s, who were once solid major leaguers but were struggling to find work. On Tuesday they signed Bud Norris and Drew Storen. On Wednesday, they added Francisco Liriano and Neil Walker. All four were signed to minor league deals. Read the rest of this entry »

Last February, shortly after the Colorado Rockies agreed to pay Nolan Arenado $260 million to play baseball in Denver through the 2026 season, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale quoted the team’s franchise player as saying “I grew up here in this organization, so it feels like home in a way. I’ve been here since the tide has changed, and that’s a really good feeling.” The meta-story of that signing was that the Rockies had convinced Arenado that they were finally serious about building a contender around him, and it was that assurance (plus, of course, the $260 million) that convinced their generational star to sign his name on the dotted line.

We’re not even a year into that deal, and things have soured at Coors Field. The Rockies finished 2019 71-91, fourth in a soft-besides-the-Dodgers NL West, and until last week, their biggest offseason deal was signing Chris Owings to a minor-league contract. That by itself would probably be enough to alienate Arenado, but a reportedly disastrous offseason meeting between the Rockies star and GM Jeff Bridich led to a public rift that has yet to fully resolve itself. Bridich declined to answer media questions about the Arenado situation (or any other subject) at the team’s Fan Fest last week, and although Arenado worked to tamp down the public aspect of the story last week, it’s clear things aren’t over. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Francisco Giants.

Batters

The Giants’ lineup won’t be mistaken for a great (or even good) one, but it’s not really all that bad. Sure, many of the contributors are on the wrong side of 30 — even last year’s surprise contributor Mike Yastrzemski will turn 30 before the end of the season — but that’s balanced by the fact that the majority underperformed expectations in 2019. That shouldn’t be taken as good news, as players who underperform see their expectations drop, but it’s still a silver lining — the offense probably wasn’t as inept as it appeared last year.

Also of value is the fact that the team’s position players are generally average-or-better defensively. Among them is Buster Posey, who still is a plus despite his offensive decline. ZiPS isn’t projecting a return to prime form with the wood for the backstop, but Posey is one of the better defensive catchers of this generation, and there’s still some value to be had there. I’m both curious and dreading to see how the writers consider and value Posey’s defense when he becomes Hall-eligible; I’m fairly certain I’ll check his box, but it’s hard to say how the other 400 or so votes will go. Read the rest of this entry »

Julio Rodriquez has what it takes to become the face of a franchise. Nineteen years old and seemingly on a fast track to Seattle, the top prospect in the Mariners system possesses more than upper-echelon talent. He’s also blessed with a healthy dose of character and charisma. More on that in a moment.

Rodriguez currently sits 44th on The Board, and there’s a decent chance he’ll climb significantly from that slot in the not-too-distant future. MLB Pipeline has him at No. 18, while Baseball America is even more bullish on the tools Dominican-born outfielder. BA ranks Rodriquez as the eighth-best prospect in the game.

The numbers he put up last year between low-A West Virginia and high-A Modesto are eye-opening. In 367 plate appearances, Rodriguez slashed .326/.390/.540, with a dozen home runs. Keep in mind that he did this as an 18-year-old in his first season stateside. A year earlier, he was a precocious 17 and punishing pitchers in the Dominican Summer League.

Rodriguez is listed at 6’ 4”, 225, and Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto expects his right-handed stroke to propel plenty of baseballs over fences in years to come. Just as importantly, Dipoto sees a well-rounded skill set that is augmented by drive and desire.

“I don’t think he’s even scratched the surface of what he’s capable of from a power perspective,” opined Dipoto. “And he’s committed to improving in the areas you can really control, like defense and base running — the small nuances of the game.”

And then there is the aforementioned character and charisma. Read the rest of this entry »