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Last week, the consequences of Houston’s sign-stealing scandal became clear after commissioner Rob Manfred announced the results of MLB’s investigation into the team’s “banging scheme” and use of replay review to electronically steal signs. By the end of the week, Houston’s field manager and general manager had been fired, and the collateral damage from that investigation led to two more managerial dismissals around the league. While the league-administered discipline for non-Houston personnel is still pending, everyone named in the report has been fired.

Now that Houston has been punished, Manfred will turn his attention to the Red Sox, who are under investigation for illegally using the replay room in their own sign-stealing system. Boston’s scheme wasn’t nearly as elaborate as the one used in Houston. Per a report from Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich in The Athletic:

Three people who were with the Red Sox during their 108-win 2018 season told The Athletic that during that regular season, at least some players visited the video replay room during games to learn the sign sequence opponents were using. The replay room is just steps from the home dugout at Fenway Park, through the same doors that lead to the batting cage. Every team’s replay staff travels to road games, making the system viable in other parks as well… The Red Sox’s system was possible only when a runner was on second base, or sometimes even on first base. Nonetheless, a team that is able to discern that information live, during a game, and relay it to base runners has a distinct advantage. A runner at second base can stare in at a flurry of catcher’s signs and know which one matters, then inform the hitter accordingly.

Rather than a using a trash can, the Red Sox decoded signs sequences in the video replay room and conveyed that information to the dugout. Once everyone knew the sign sequence, any runner on second base could communicate the signs to the batter via subtle movements or gestures.

The Red Sox will almost certainly face some sort of discipline, especially since they’re repeat offenders: In September 2017, both the Red Sox and Yankees received what now looks like a slap on the wrist for using electronic means to steal signs — on that occasion, using smart watches to communicate between members of the coaching staff and club personnel. Alex Cora obviously wasn’t part of the organization the first time the Red Sox were caught, but he was likely involved this time around. Cora and the Red Sox have already “mutually agreed to part ways,” but that won’t stop MLB from handing down some sort of suspension on top of the penalties it levies on the team.

From an on-field perspective, the limitations of the Red Sox system are immediately apparent. The system only works if there’s a runner on base to see the signs the catchers puts down. The threat of runners stealing signs from second base has always been a part of game — it’s the reason a different sign sequence is used once a runner reaches base — but decoding the sequence using video replay cuts out that gamesmanship.

As I was with the Astros, I was interested in seeing if we could decipher just how much the Red Sox benefited from their own sign-stealing system.

Back in November, I estimated the Astros cumulatively gained around five wins from their banging scheme. Would Boston’s less sophisticated system result in a similar cumulative benefit or would the constraints of requiring a runner to be on second base limit the net effect? The answer might seem obvious, but based on the reports, the Red Sox were able to use their system both at home and on the road, while the Astros were limited to using their cameras at home. That alone increases the sample size for the Red Sox to about half of the total pitches the Astros saw at home in 2017.

A simple look at the Red Sox’s wOBA with a runner on second reveals a big jump in performance in 2018:

At the surface-level, something seems amiss. The team’s improvement probably isn’t related to an upgraded roster, as it could have been with the Astros in 2017. Of the 11 batters who accumulated more than 200 plate appearances with the 2017 Red Sox, eight were back in 2018.

When we look at Boston’s plate discipline metrics with a runner on second, things look a bit murky:

As a team, with a man on second, the Red Sox chased pitches out of the zone far less often than in years prior but that didn’t necessarily translate to fewer swings and misses. And their contact rate on pitches in the zone actually fell from 2017 to 2018.

With that high-level look not very conclusive, let’s dive into the pitch-level data. As a refresher, I’m calculating run values for every pitch thrown using RE288 — the run expectancy based on the 24 base-out states and the 12 plate count states. When we filter and aggregate those run values, we can get a sense of how a team performed in particular situations, say, when a runner is on second base and they might be relaying the incoming pitch to the batter. To account for the different sample sizes, I scaled the run values to standardize the values per 100 pitches.

In 2018, the Red Sox saw a huge boost in performance when facing offspeed pitches with a runner on second base when compared to 2017, particularly when they swung at those pitches. They also saw a big improvement when swinging at fastballs. They saw smaller benefits when taking those two pitch types. It’s interesting that they didn’t see any improvement against breaking balls, though their improvement against the two other pitch types more than compensated.

What does the data show when we compare their 2018 performance with runners on second to their performance when there were runners on first or third but not on second?

Almost across the board, the Red Sox performed much better when there was a runner on second. And the biggest difference in performance was swinging at offspeed pitches like we saw above. In Rosenthal and Drellich’s initial report about the Red Sox sign-stealing scheme, there was some speculation that the signs could be stolen by a runner on first base. If that’s true, it doesn’t necessarily show up in the data. They clearly saw a benefit when there was specifically a runner on second.

Finally, let’s add their performance when the bases are empty to our analysis.

It’s clear that the Red Sox hit much better when there was a runner on second base. They simply crushed offspeed pitches and saw smaller benefits when facing breaking balls and fastballs. The obvious implication is that the team gained an advantage when a runner on second was able to relay the incoming pitch to the batter. When we compare their aggregate run values from 2017 to 2018, I estimate they gained a total cumulative value around five wins — the same estimated benefit the Astros saw with their sign-stealing scheme in 2017. And of course, that doesn’t completely account for the effects that are difficult to quantify, such as the cumulative benefit of requiring opposing pitchers to throw more pitches as hitters lay off of offspeed deliveries designed to entice a swing and a miss.

This isn’t the space to analyze how individual batters benefited from the system, particularly since no players were directly named in the report from Rosenthal and Drellich. I’d expect we’d see similar results to the Astros data though — marginal benefits for most individuals that add up to significant gains for the team. I was surprised to find that the total cumulative effect for Boston was on par with what I estimated for the Astros. It seemed like the limitations of Boston’s system would have resulted in a smaller effect. Perhaps the familiarity of receiving intel from a runner on second allowed Red Sox batters to effectively act on that information when presented; maybe it was hard for hitters to process information from a clanging trash can in the short time before they had to face an incoming pitch.

It appears that both sign-stealing ploys were similarly effective, which makes it’s clear that MLB needs to find a way to prevent teams from implementing these kind of schemes moving forward. Houston’s harsh punishment and the pending discipline for the Red Sox is one step, but the league needs to take more effective preventative measures. Further regulating who is allowed to use the replay room seems like a quick and simple fix that could be instituted as soon as this season. But as long as teams are looking for any and every small advantage and win-at-all-costs attitudes are promoted within organizational cultures, another controversy of this magnitude seems likely to happen again. Rather than react to that new disruption, MLB needs to be forward thinking, particularly as new technology affects how the game is viewed and played.

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 Minnesota Twins.

Batters

In my opinion, closing the deal with Josh Donaldson salvaged the Twins’ offseason. The team didn’t make any big moves last winter, disappointingly starting 2019 with a lower payroll than in 2018, but it did make several lower-key additions. With the Indians engaged in crippling levels of inaction, the Twins were able to “steal a march” on Cleveland and surprise them from behind. Minnesota had a quieter winter in the early going of this year and my worry — from their point of view that is — was that the Twins might enabling the White Sox to do to them in 2020 what they did to Cleveland in 2019.

Adding Donaldson, and moving Miguel Sanó to first, closes up the final hole in the starting lineup. Now, the Twins lineup resembles a classic Cardinals lineup, in the very best sense. There are no superstars — not even Donaldson — but the lineup is stacked, with every single starter projected to be at least league average. And there might be some upside remaining in Byron Buxton and Sanó. Like the best St. Louis teams, ZiPS sees the Twins as having ample backup plans at most positions, with Willians Astudillo, Marwin Gonzalez, Alex Avila, and even Jake Cave and Tomás Telis/Ryan Jeffers as more-than-capable fill-ins.

I’m very happy to see that ZiPS, like Steamer, has become a true disciple of Luis Arraez. His 2019 projection of .268/.309/.354 was more than respectable for a player who only had a couple months of Double-A experience and who was on the edges of prospect status. Arraez blew through that quickly, hitting .344/.409/.401 in the minors and .334/.399/.439 in 92 major league games. And remember, the offensive explosion in the minors was home run related, something that didn’t much benefit Arraez, who had all of six professional homers when the Twins called him up (and none in 2019). I didn’t have an American League Rookie of the Year vote, but Arraez would have been either second or third on my ballot. I’m know it’s likely that ZiPS is projecting Arraez to lead the league in batting average, but so be it; I don’t put my thumb on the scale.

Pitchers

While I love the Donaldson signing, I would much rather have seen them sign the Josh Donaldson of pitching. The top of the rotation is solid, with José Berríos and Jake Odorizzi, and Rich Hill and Homer Bailey aren’t bad pickups, especially as the team waits for Michael Pineada to come back from suspension, but there are too many interesting question marks behind Berríos and Odorizzi. That’s a more palatable situation for a rebuilding team than a contending one. The Twins are still one, possibly two pitchers away from me feeling comfortable with their roster. The rotation is unlikely to be a disaster because they also project to have a lot of reasonable back-end options, but the whole complexion of this group changes with Zack Wheeler or Hyun-Jin Ryu in there.

The bullpen looks a lot like the offense in that there’s nobody really dominant apart from Taylor Rogers, but it’s not really weak anywhere either. ZiPS likes a lot of the team’s Triple-A bound relievers, with pitchers like Ryne Harper, Danny Coulombe, Andrew Vasquez, Blaine Hardy, and Cody Stashak all having the potential to add real value to the parent club if needed.

Prospects

While ZiPS still sees Royce Lewis ending up with more career WAR than Nick Gordon, that gap is much narrower than scouts’ perceptions of the two middle infielders would suggest. ZiPS thinks Lewis has a lot more upside than Gordon, but also a fairly large chance of being a total bust; ZiPS translates his 2019 minor league performance at .193/.234/.305, coming off a .228/.276/.339 translation in 2018. ZiPS thinks Gordon is a safer bet, but doesn’t see a great deal of upside, pegging him basically as a one-win starter for most of his career. Given where the Twins are right now, if they can land a real difference-maker on the mound with a package centered around Lewis or Alex Kirilloff, I would pull that trigger in an instant.

ZiPS is more optimistic about the pitching prospects. Both Brusdar Graterol and Lewis Thorpe received projections suggesting they could pitch right now in the majors without the least bit of embarrassment, forming part of the Twins’ ample supply of third-through-fifth starters. And if you’re looking for some interesting names of the fringe prospect variety, ZiPS gives a better than 50/50 shot that either Griffin Jax or Bailey Ober have at least one league-average season as a starter in the majors. Now, I’d be skeptical of Ober until he passes the Triple-A test — he looks like an NBA power forward with a fastball that’s maybe better than Jered Weaver’s — but I like giving players who don’t fit the mold but play well every opportunity to pass or fail on merit.

One pedantic note for 2020: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth charts playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2020 due to injury, and players who were released in 2019. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in June to form a ska-cowpunk Luxembourgian bubblegum pop-death metal band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article.

As I was browsing through Baseball Twitter a few days ago (terrible habit, I suggest you avoid it), I came across an interesting question:

Which player would you rather have at the plate in a bottom of the 9th bases loaded 2 outs down by 1 situation?
Player A
136 wRC+ 7% BB rate .191 ISO
Player B
161 wRC+ 14.7% BB rate .267 ISO
Player C
174 wRC+ 18.7% BB rate .343 ISO

— Max Greenfield (@GreenfieldMax18) January 21, 2020

My brain loves puzzles and answering questions, so I decided to vote. The obvious choice is Player C. He’s the best hitter, and I want my best hitter in the most important situations. The point of the exercise has to be to dunk on fans who think Player A is clutch, right?

Well, essentially yes. The players in this question are 2019 DJ LeMahieu, 2014 Giancarlo Stanton, and 2017 Aaron Judge. Yankees fans were really into LeMahieu in 2019, to the point of advocating for him as MVP, and while he was certainly a good hitter, he’s not Aaron Judge.

But don’t stop the analysis there, because something important is missing. Picking the best hitter is easy — as long as you define best correctly. For example, ISO shouldn’t enter into your decision at all. With the bases loaded and two outs, there’s not much difference between a single and a home run, and there’s definitely no difference between a double and a home run. Power stats aren’t relevant here. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller do a brief, spoiler-free followup on their Knives Out banter from the previous episode, then break down the elections of Derek Jeter and Larry Walker to the Hall of Fame, touching on the contrast between their voting trajectories, how and why Walker made it, the lone Jeter ballot holdout, the next sabermetric Cooperstown Cause célèbre, Scott Rolen vs. Omar Vizquel, the next few Hall of Fame ballots, and more. Then they banter about the Braves signing Marcell Ozuna and answer listener emails about the possibility of a player blackmailing a cheating team, whether sign stealing is more powerful than PEDs, when baseball becomes “history,” and why politicians so often bring up baseball, plus a Stat Blast about the Rockies’ pre-Walker Hall of Fame shutout.

Audio intro: The Spinanes, "Fame and Fortune"
Audio outro: Silver Jews, "Pet Politics"

Link to Hall of Fame voting results
Link to Baumann on Jeter and Walker
Link to Stark on the Hall of Fame results
Link to Ben Clemens on the Ozuna signing
Link to Jay Jaffe on the sign-stealing and PED scandals
Link to Ben on the statistical effects of steroids
Link to story on when history ends
Link to Bryan Curtis on baseball metaphors in politics
Link to order The MVP Machine

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For an unprecedented seventh year in a row, and as part of a still record-setting surge, the BBWAA elected multiple candidates to the Hall of Fame with the 2020 ballot. Derek Jeter and Larry Walker had very different playing careers and voting paths, but both gained entry via results that carried a fair bit of drama into Tuesday evening’s announcement, as the questions of whether the former would join former teammate Mariano Rivera as the second unanimous selection in as many years, and of whether the latter would end up on the right side of 75%, were both up in the air.

We now know the answers, of course, and I’ve already delved into the ballot’s big take-home points. What follows here is my look at how each candidate fared, with a few lumped together for obvious reasons. Having written so much about the two honorees, I’m starting at the bottom of the results and working my way to the top, though of course I do hope you stick around to the end, if only to meet Robinson Canoe. Read the rest of this entry »

As the Rangers look to open 2020 in a new ballpark, they set out to build on a surprisingly competent 2019 season by making significant additions. The team was aggressive on the pitching side, quickly adding Kyle Gibson on a potential bargain of a three-year deal for $28 million, then they added Jordan Lyles as a potential starter for reliever money. Next, they traded for a potential ace in Corey Kluber without giving up much in return. Adding that trio to Mike Minor and Lance Lynn, two of the better pitchers in baseball a year ago, means the Rangers should have one of the top 10 rotations in the game with the potential to land in the top five at season’s end.

Unfortunately, the Rangers still look to be one of the 10 worst teams in baseball because they’ve done little to address the position-player side of their team. To illustrate the Rangers’ issues, the table below shows projections by position as well as team rank at that position.

That’s really bad, and as the 2019 column shows, it was really bad a year ago as well. The 2020 projections have the Rangers getting about 11 wins from their entire position player group. That would actually be an improvement over last season when they put up 9.2 WAR the entire season. The Rangers made it into the top 10 last year in two position player groups outside of designated hitter, but in both left field and center field, the team was adequate because Joey Gallo put up good numbers at both positions. Since the season ended, the team has brought in Robinson Chirinos, whose okay projection gets canceled out by Jeff Mathis. The team traded away Nomar Mazara and Delino DeShields, who aren’t big losses from their 2019 production, but expectations for Danny Santana and Willie Calhoun are not high. Todd Frazier was signed in a nice deal to add some production at either first or third base, but even then, the position still ends up below average. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, with baseball’s attention firmly fixed on the fall out from the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, the Twins signed Josh Donaldson to a long-term deal. You’d be forgiven if the signing slipped your mind; there was a lot going on. The Braves, however, are certainly aware that Donaldson is no longer a member of their organization; I’m sure the Nationals (and really, the rest of the NL East) are at least happy to have him out of their division. There’s no denying Donaldson’s impact in 2019 — a 132 wRC+ over 659 PA and 4.9 WAR in 155 games made him one of the best free agent signings of last offseason. And while the Nationals ultimately won the World Series, there’s a more-than-reasonable argument to be made that Donaldson represented the difference in the Braves winning the division crown.

Without Donaldson in the fold, the Braves’ lineup is due to take a step back. Of course, this is still a team flooded with talent; among the six position players to amass at least 400 PA for Atlanta last year, five had a wRC+ above 100. Their offensive output was led by Freddie Freeman (138 wRC+) and certainly more than aided by Ronald Acuña Jr. (126) and Ozzie Albies (117). That trio will be back this year and supplemented by outfielder Marcell Ozuna (110), signed last night, and catcher Travis d’Arnaud, who represents something of a wild card offensively, though he did post a 107 wRC+ during his time in Tampa Bay. But perhaps the Braves’ solution to soften the offensive blow of Donaldson’s departure is the player who spent all of last season next to him in the field: Dansby Swanson. 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 Los Angeles Angels.

Batters

Any lineup with a healthy Mike Trout will be hard-pressed to be terrible, and the Angels are no exception. During his career, Los Angeles has never ranked worse than 20th in position player WAR. Trout once again gets the Mickey Mantle top comp (his comp usually alternates between Mantle and Willie Mays). There are a lot of corner outfielders on Trout’s comp list because you run out of marginally comparable center fielders fairly quickly, another fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Adding Anthony Rendon is a huge deal, giving the team a legitimate superstar to pair with Trout for the time being. Even baking in Trout’s injury risk, ZiPS’ 11.8 combined WAR projection for Troutdon Angels would have ranked 20th among teams in 2019 and 23rd in each of the two prior seasons. Once you have Trout and Rendon, you can build an average-or-slightly-better offense by just finding a horde of below-average players who are legitimate major leaguers to put around them. Read the rest of this entry »