Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller talk to Brad Balukjian, author of brand-new baseball book The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife, about the long road (figuratively and literally) that led to the book, how he decided to try to track down the players from an old pack of baseball cards, his favorite encounter with one of the pack’s former major leaguers, and what he learned about life from his journey, then try to predict which active major leaguers are most likely to end up in various post-playing professions. Lastly (49:06), Ben talks to Rob Taylor, senior acquisitions editor at the University of Nebraska Press (which published The Wax Pack), about how UNP became a baseball publishing powerhouse, the economics of baseball books, and how to get a baseball book deal.

Audio intro: The Baseball Project, "The Baseball Card Song"
Audio interstitial: Ezra Furman, "Good Book"
Audio outro: Moe, "Nebraska"

Link to The Wax Pack website
Link to The Wax Pack book listing
Link to Pandemic Baseball Book Club
Link to Vogelbach article
Link to Suter video
Link to Suter post
Link to Brewers Dumb and Dumber parody
Link to UNP baseball book sale page
Link to UNP history page
Link to UNP proposal format
Link to NYT article about UNP
Link to order The MVP Machine

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This is the latest installment of a daily series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Hello everyone, and thank you for continuing to read these daily updates. This is the final day of March (or so I’m told!), the month in which everything plunged from its typical state of unrest into a total global nightmare, and we aren’t yet close to a point when these updates can relay good news. The total number of COVID-19 cases worldwide will eclipse 800,000 today, with the United States housing more than 160,000; more than 3,000 Americans are now dead from the virus. Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. all issued stay-at-home orders on Monday, with some of those expected to last into at least June.

As has been the case for weeks, there remain many more questions than answers with regards to what the coming months will look like, and they are very, very tough questions. We’ll get into a couple of those below, as well as a major news development from the NCAA. But first, if you’re able to and haven’t yet, please consider supporting FanGraphs with a membership today.

NCAA Grants Extra Year of Eligibility to Division I Spring Athletes

On Monday, the NCAA’s Division I Council granted an extra year of eligibility to spring athletes whose seasons were lost due to COVID-19 cancellations. Divisions II and III, as well as NAIA, had already taken similar steps, but because of the financial implications of such an action for Division I, it was previously unclear if this measure would be adopted at the highest level. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Matt Bowman, Chaz Roe, and Justus Sheffield — on how they learned and developed their sliders and cutters.

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Matt Bowman, Cincinnati Reds

“With the unfortunate news of Roy Halladay [in November 2017] came the story of Mariano Rivera teaching him the cutter. I watched the interviews they did about how they threw it, and what their cues are. Halladay had that ball where he drew the outline of where his fingers should be. I literally gripped it the same way.

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Today we’re celebrating a first for FanGraphs: a live video stream!

Things have changed since FanGraphs’ founding 15 years ago. Nowadays, there are entire streaming platforms dedicated to communities of people who watch other people play games.

As an experiment (and to help fill the time until baseball comes back), we’re hosting a virtual Opening Day game, with the Mets and Nationals opener livecast by Paul Sporer, Ben Clemens, and Dan Szymborski using MLB The Show 20 on Playstation 4. So come hang out with us and watch the closest thing to a real game available!

To watch the game and listen to our live chat, you need nothing but your browser and our website. If you have a Twitch.tv account (free), you’ll also be able to join in the chat, just like in the ones we hold weekly.

Let us know what you think, and which other games you’d like to see streamed live!

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I asked our readers to answer a few questions about what they think this season of baseball might look like. While none of us actually know when or even if the season will be played, your answers provide a window into your expectations and also show how optimistic (or pessimistic) you are about there being more live baseball in 2020 as COVID-19 continues to affect all of our lives.

We received more than 1,000 responses for every question with the first one being the most basic:

A pretty clear majority believes there will be some from of major league baseball this season, though more than a quarter of readers thought the season would simply be wiped out.

Next, I asked how many regular season games would be played this year:

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s becoming clear that leaving your jacket behind was a mistake.

The sun has been giving this mid-March day a Fourth of July tint all afternoon, and you’ve been waiting all winter to brave the outdoors free from layers. That sun was still out when you got to the ballpark just before 5 pm, and the air felt mild, so you left your jacket in the car. You should have known better. The high school baseball game you’re watching probably wasn’t going to end until 7:30, when the sun was nearly gone — along with whatever lies it promised you about warmth.

Now, that 7:30 final out is beginning to feel wildly optimistic. One of the starting pitchers had trouble throwing strikes in the first inning, needing 33 pitches to get through it, according to your count. The second inning is shaping up to be even worse. The same pitcher hit the first batter, and has walked three more to force home a run.

Really, it isn’t his fault. He isn’t going to pitch in the majors, or even in college. He isn’t a baseball player at all, really. He’s just playing the part, like so many other kids you’ve seen, happy for any chance to be outside with his friends.

And it isn’t going well. One of the few strikes he’s thrown this inning got laced to left field for a base hit, scoring two more runs. Now the coach is going to the mound, but his options are limited. He doesn’t have many pitchers on this year’s small roster, and tomorrow his team has a doubleheader scheduled. He really needed tonight’s starter to go deep into the game. But he’s already thrown 55 pitches, and made only three outs. The coach attempts to level with the 16-year-old standing in front of him, pats him on the shoulder, and returns to the dugout. Read the rest of this entry »

Pinch hitting is hard. Baseball is a rhythm game, and pinch hitters are denied any semblance of routine. They’re on the bench, swinging a bat back and forth to get the blood pumping in their arms, and then just like that, they’re in the game. They might have been daydreaming about what they plan on ordering from room service, and here’s Jacob deGrom throwing 92 mph sliders. Good luck!

That’s the classical conception of a pinch hitter, and it explains why Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin found a significant pinch hitting penalty in The Book. They found a 24-point wOBA penalty for pinch hitters, which is a large cost. That’s roughly equivalent to the platoon advantage a lefty gets when facing a right-handed pitcher.

That’s a pretty striking difference. When your team gets a lefty batter up against a righty pitcher in a big spot, it feels great. Imagine that pitcher being replaced by a left-hander. Feels pretty awful, right? That’s the same swing in effectiveness you get when a batter pinch hits rather than batting regularly.

You don’t always hear about this effect on broadcasts, because there are other decisions that go into pinch hitting. You’re getting a diminished version of whichever hitter you select, but other advantages can still tip the scales in a batter’s favor. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Meg Rowley begin by discussing the financial impact that the pandemic and the postponement of the baseball season have had on FanGraphs and requesting reader/listener assistance. Then Ben and Sam review some of the worst mistakes managers made in World Series games of the 1980s and mull over why managerial mistakes are so frustrating, how teams’ tactical decisions have improved over time, and how much managers of earlier eras cost their teams.

Audio intro: Gillian Welch, "Hard Times"
Audio outro: The Tragically Hip, "Membership"

Link to FanGraphs announcement
Link to FanGraphs membership page
Link to Ringer article about FanGraphs
Link to post on socially distanced baseball
Link to Ben on bad dugout decisions
Link to Ben on second-guessing managers
Link to order The MVP Machine

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 Sponsor Us on Patreon
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 Twitter Account
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 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

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