Yesterday, Jay Jaffe and Ben Clemens wrapped up the infield with analysis of the game’s catchers and shortstops. Today, we shift to the outfield. First up? Kevin Goldstein takes a look at baseball’s left fielders.

When Meg Rowley handed out the assignments for Positional Power Rankings a couple of weeks ago, I was happy to see I’d gotten left fielders. “Great, I get to write about the boppers,” I said to nobody in particular. Then I put together my 30 blurbs and was left wondering, where have all the boppers gone? Scroll down these rankings and look at the primary player listed for each team. How many of these guys actually scare you when they step in the box? Five? I’ll accept an answer up to six. That’s 20% at the most, and for an offensively-oriented position, that just doesn’t feel right. Before we got out of the top 10, we’re already talking about platoon players and guys who just got non-tendered. There’s plenty of offense in baseball, but it sure isn’t in left field.

Instead, the position is something of an island of misfit toys: Players with some offensive pluses who can’t defend and are therefore put at the least-demanding position. Declining veterans. Guys getting a second chance or who are close to running out of chances. It’s become a bit of a dumping ground on big-league rosters, and perhaps the prolonged indecision surrounding whether we’d see a universal designated hitter in 2021 played a role in how we ended up here, but it’s a surprising dearth of talent nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Isiah Kiner-Falefa being mad at Meg (sort of), a billboard in Boston about Mookie Betts, MLB’s renewed attempts to crack down on foreign-substance use, and what an NHL referee oopsie says about umpire makeup calls and automated strike zones, then answer listener emails about whether the season preview podcast series influences their appraisals of teams, how baseball would be different if it weren’t different at all, the definition of a “Chicago,” exploits associated with certain teams, training geese to distract defenders, and the most disruptive form of wildlife to have on the field.

Audio intro: No Doubt, "Magic’s in the Makeup"
Audio outro: This is the Kit, "Greasy Goose"

Link to Kiner-Falefa tweet
Link to shortstop positional power rankings
Link to article on Kiner-Falefa’s positions
Link to story about Betts billboard
Link to report about foreign-substance memo
Link to Evan Drellich on the memo
Link to Ben on foreign substances
Link to foreign substances EW episode
Link to NHL ref hot mic comment
Link to NHL statement about ref
Link to article about NHL ref
Link to FiveThirtyEight study on NHL penalties
Link to article on umpires and close pitch calls
Link to another article on umps and close calls
Link to Russell Eassom on umps and calls by count
Link to Guy Molyneux on umps and calls by count
Link to John Walsh on umps and calls by count
Link to Steve Treder on strikeouts over time
Link to story on 2014 transfer rule kerfuffle
Link to SABR on the “Chicago”
Link to video of goose on the field
Link to Sam on the skunk in the outfield
Link to RJ McDaniel on the angry goose

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On Monday, the Blue Jays announced that Kirby Yates had been diagnosed with a strained flexor in his throwing elbow. A day later, that injury turned into something far more serious, as the righty will need Tommy John surgery (the second of his career) to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament. Signed to a one-year, $5.5 million deal earlier this offseason, it’s likely he’ll never pitch an inning in a Blue Jays jersey.

Elbow issues have derailed a promising late-career upswing for Yates. Between 2018 and ’19, he was arguably the best reliever in baseball, worth a league-leading 5.2 WAR and with 53 saves to his name as the Padres’ closer. But bone chips in his elbow limited him to just 4 1/3 innings in 2020, and his age — he turns 34 in just a few days — combined with the uncertainty surrounding his health likely led to the below-market deal he signed with Toronto. That elbow reportedly sunk a potential deal with the Braves earlier in the offseason, and his physical with the Jays showed more damage than expected, costing him more money.

Yates’ potential ability to anchor the bullpen was enticing enough for Toronto to take the risk that his elbow could hold up for the whole season. Instead, he didn’t last through spring training, and now the Blue Jays have to figure out how to organize the back end of their bullpen. They already had a number of strong options for high-leverage work; the trick will be determining the best way to cover up the gaping hole in the ninth inning.

Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, Jay Jaffe surveyed the league’s catchers. Now, Ben Clemens offers an assessment of the game’s shortstops.

Shortstop is the position where power rankings feel most unfair. It’s absolutely loaded with talent, to the point where the 26th-ranked Athletics have the same WAR projection at shortstop (1.5 WAR) as the 15th-ranked Dodgers do in left field. It’s crowded at the top — Fernando Tatis Jr. is a phenomenal headliner, and you wouldn’t be wrong to call any of the top 10 players at the position a star.

You might wonder whether the depth of the position makes each individual shortstop less valuable. After all, it’s less valuable to upgrade from 1.5 to 4.5 WAR than it is to upgrade from 0 to 4.5. You’d be wrong, though. The high defensive demands on the position mean that displaced shortstops can handle second base or center field — they can handle third as well, but third base is similarly deep with athletic hitters. Additionally, every team wants more shortstops, so acquiring a new shortstop allows you to trade your old one — sometimes in the same transaction, as we saw when the Mets traded Amed Rosario and Andrés Giménez for Francisco Lindor this offseason. So if your team is low on these power rankings, don’t fret. Or, well, do fret, but it’s not the shortstop’s fault. Teams put a lot of their best players at short, which makes it a difficult place to measure up. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Jay Jaffe wrote about the rumors that the Nationals were considering a contract extension for wünderkind Juan Soto, the team’s first step toward keeping him in town for the majority of his career. Though just 22 years old and four years away from free agency, Soto receiving an extension in the $400 million range would hardly be premature. Projection systems — which by their nature are supposed to be dispassionate and shoot for the middle — see him as having a no-doubt Hall of Fame career.

Yet if you’re a Nationals fan, you have cause to be suspicious that an extension gets done. You’ve seen your super-talented homegrown players leave unceremoniously in free agency as soon as they could, and while Soto has a more favorable outlook than Bryce Harper or Anthony Rendon did, you don’t want to see these negotiations drag out any longer than they have to.

It would be enough if Washington had just one young player’s future to stew upon this spring, but in fact, there are two. As Soto has been fielding questions about a possible extension in spring training, so too has shortstop Trea Turner, who at 27 is much closer to free agency; he’s set to hit the market after the 2022 season. That makes any extension decision that much more urgent. Turner knows it, and he’s been open about wanting to get an agreement done. From the Washington Post’s Barry Svrluga:

“I would love to play here my entire career,” Turner said Tuesday. “I’ve said it in the past. I’ve always liked it here, and don’t think the grass is greener on the other side. … I love it here. I love the atmosphere and the ballclub that [General Manager Mike] Rizzo and the coaching staff has put together every single year. We’ll see. I think those talks have happened in the past, and hopefully they’ll happen in the future.”

The Nationals’ position is a tricky one. Turner’s free agency would come two years before Soto’s, but the latter’s contract may still be the most important one, as it will be the larger of the two and must fit within Washington’s payroll. But retaining Turner in 2023 and beyond won’t come cheap. One of the top prospects in baseball when he debuted in 2015, he has slowly but surely started living up to that billing, turning into one of the league’s best shortstops over the last three seasons.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, RJ McDaniel and Jason Martinez examined the league’s second and third basemen. Today, we wrap up the infield positions, starting with catcher.

It’s all in the framing. The baseball industry’s ability to quantify catchers’ skill at converting borderline pitches into strikes has had a noticeable effect on the player pool, weeding out good-hit, bad-defense backstops — where have you gone, Ryan Doumit? — while lowering the bar for what constitutes acceptable offense. The short season, with its small samples, was particularly weird in this regard, as Jeff Mathis, the majors’ worst hitter over the past decade or so, outhit eight catchers who had at least 60 PA.

Short-season anomalies aside, the change in offensive expectations has been particularly noticeable during the Statcast era. While catchers as a group combined for about a 91 wRC+ from 2008 (the start of the PITCHf/x era) through 2014, that average dropped a full four points from 2015-19 as teams became more focused upon this area, though last year’s 92 WRC+ probably owed to short-season weirdness. As that offensive bar has been lowered, the gap between the majors’ best framer and the worst has shrunk; where it was nearly 98 runs in 2008, and an average of 57 runs from 2009-14, the gap was about 34 runs from 2017-19, and just 9.2 runs last year. Prorating that last figure to 24.8 runs over a full season, here’s the picture:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest spring exploits of Shohei Ohtani, the Royals extending Salvador Perez, rooting against injuries in spring training, and a mysterious former major leaguer known only as “Lewis,” then preview the 2021 Mets (37:09) with Deesha Thosar of the New York Daily News and the 2021 Marlins (1:14:26) with Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald.

Audio intro: Mark Knopfler, "Nobody Does That"
Audio interstitial 1: Radiohead, "Lewis (Mistreated)"
Audio interstitial 2: Queen, "Put Out the Fire"
Audio outro: Feist, "Get it Wrong, Get it Right"

Link to video of Ohtani’s two-way game
Link to Ben Clemens on the Perez extension
Link to Jared Diamond on the Royals’ humane behavior
Link to Rustin Dodd on the Royals’ anti-porn campaign
Link to “Lewis” Wikipedia page
Link to “Lewis” B-Ref page
Link to “Lewis” on the Stathead ERA leaderboard
Link to story about deGrom’s spring speeds
Link to Matt Kelly on deGrom’s velo in 2020
Link to Travis Sawchik on deGrom’s velo in 2020
Link to Deesha on Jared Porter
Link to article on the Mets’ defense
Link to Jordan on Kim Ng
Link to Stephanie Apstein on Kim Ng
Link to Jordan on the Marlins’ pandemic year
Link to story about Marlins security guard
Link to Realmuto cracking the fish tank

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This morning, RJ McDaniel previewed baseball’s second basemen. Now, Jason Martinez turns his attention to the hot corner.

There’s not a lot of certainty in this year’s crop of third basemen. The majority are bounce-back candidates, due to injury, poor performance, or both. Those in their prime and also coming off of a productive and healthy 2020 season can be counted on one hand. And there wasn’t a lot of turn over at the position this offseason, either. One player changed teams via trade, and only a few others are in line for significant playing time after signing with a new team this past winter. There are breakout candidates, prospects on the rise, and veterans who might be reaching the end of the line. All in all, it’s a good mix of current, former, and potential superstars. Read the rest of this entry »

I asked Baltimore Orioles hitting coach Don Long a question on Monday morning, and he responded with a lengthy answer. I wanted to know, relative to years past, how much more frequently players are approaching him with ideas of changing their swing, and what he tends to tell them when that happens.

“Honestly, I’m not a believer in changing swings,” the veteran hitting instructor responded. “I operate under the thought that [for] every hitter, their best swing, they already possess. The thing that gets in the way of them being able to access their best swing, consistently, usually has to do with their thinking, their timing, their position, or their ability to be really good with their eyes.

“You’ve probably heard the old Michelangelo story, right? Supposedly, he carved this statue of David out of this block of granite, and they said, ‘How did you carve such a beautiful statue out of a block of stone?’ He said, ‘I simply chipped away at the stone until the statue revealed itself.’ That’s how I look at a hitter’s swing. You already possess your best swing — it’s already there — so let’s not spend time chasing a good swing, or chasing something that you already know how to do. Let’s chip away at the thing that’s getting in the way of that. And for most guys, the thing that interrupts the physical part of their game is the mental part of the game.

“I can give you an example. I had a guy come to me a couple days ago in the cage with an exasperated, ‘Man, what’s going on? I don’t know what to do.’ I said, ‘Let me ask you a question.’ I picked a ball up out of the basket and said, ‘What’s this pitch going to be?’ He looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you do.’ Read the rest of this entry »