At first you might think baseball is the safest place to be right now. The game is defined by distance: The 90 feet of chalk to first base, the fluctuating placement of an Atlantic League pitchers mound, the 500 feet between Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a poorly located fastball.

On the field, everybody’s standing far more than six feet apart. But inevitably, distance closes as players congregate at home after a dinger or outfielders perform a choreographed jumping move following a win. Or, most obviously problematic, fans cluster together in the heat of summer, soaking in fluids, inhaling each other’s breath, and scraping against each other’s knees as they make their way to their seats, stepping in puddles of spilled beer and peeled-off band-aids. Really, it’s kind of surprising baseball wasn’t the epicenter of a global pandemic rather than a victim of its cultural impact.

Humans are drawn to each other. Not always, and not everybody, but before, during, and at the end of the game, we come together to celebrate or commiserate or get on the subway. In times like these, in which the future of baseball is left ambiguous given the alarming and very real nature of a planet-wide crisis, it becomes clear that on occasion, distance can be the best thing for us.

As common a tactic as the mound visit is, not having one can be just as valuable. Baseball is full of pitchers who understood the value of distance, and their instinct to maintain it has allowed them to find great success. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things you have to get used to when you work with projections is being wrong. Like, All. Of. The. Time. While I’d like to believe that the projections are accurate and it’s just real life that mucked things up, that isn’t quite how they work. There are always events you didn’t see coming, assumptions you made erroneously, and just plain old irreducible error, all of which are going to thwart you.

On a basic level, you’re supposed to be wrong. Imagine a world in which you knew, for an exact fact, that every team was a coin flip to win every game. With this perfect knowledge, you’d still expect nearly a quarter of the league to win either 73 games or fewer, or 89 games or more, through nothing but luck. For the math-inclined, this is a hypergeometric distribution, not a binomial one; the coin flips are not independent because the win totals will still add up to 2,430 and one team’s win invariably is another team’s loss. Here’s a quick table for some of the win totals, showing the probability of a team winning exactly X games and how many of the teams you’d expect to have won up to X games:

As an example, you’d expect 3.4% of those coin flip teams to win exactly 74 games, with 15% of all teams winning up to 74 games.

But we don’t have anywhere near perfect knowledge about how good a team will be. We’re not even in the same zip code as “near perfect”; we just hope to be on the right continent. As a result, our error bars are going to be significantly larger than even the rather erroneous results you still get with omniscient projections. Read the rest of this entry »

Jarred Kelenic is No. 11 on our 2020 Top 100 Prospects list, and his bat is the main reason why. As Eric Longenhagen wrote in the 20-year-old outfielder’s scouting profile, “[H]e’s been one of the — if not the — best hitters his age from the time scouts began to see him.” The New York Mets selected Kelenic sixth overall in the 2018 draft out of a Waukesha, Wisconsin high school, then shipped him to the Seattle Mariners in the seven-player mega-deal headlined by Robinson Cano.

Kelenic possesses marquee potential. In 500 plate appearances last year, split between three levels, he slashed a healthy .291/.364/.540, with 23 home runs. Moreover, Kelenic spent the final three weeks in Double-A, a heady accomplishment for a prep-draftee playing in his first full professional season.

I caught up to the fast-tracking youngster two weekends ago as he was taking part in big-league camp. Our conversation began with one of my favorite ice-breaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or more of a science?

“I think it’s an art,” answered Kellenic. “It’s something that’s developed over time. Kind of like a painting. It takes time to get all of the detail. Hitting is the same way.”

Kelenic credits much of his development to his father, Tom, and to a former minor-league catcher who throws him batting practice back home in Wisconsin. The latter owns STIKS Academy and Sports Training, and according to Kelenic, Sean Smith knows his swing just as well as he does.

Longenhagen called Kelenic’s left-handed stroke “short to the ball,” and the player himself had much the same description when asked to describe his M.O. at the dish. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about advice for working from home, Chris Sale’s Tommy John surgery, concerns about pitcher health in a shortened season, the possibility of playing more doubleheaders when baseball comes back, how late would be too late for the season to start, the overuse, injury, and treatment of pitcher Wes Ferrell, how COVID-19 could affect MLB service time, rewatching old games and FOX Sports Detroit re-airing 2019 Tigers games, and baseball coming back in Japan and South Korea, then (39:58) talk to former minor league pitcher-turned-attorney Garrett Broshuis about the ongoing legal fight for improved pay for minor leaguers, how the pandemic has impacted minor leaguers, grassroots efforts to support temporarily unemployed players, the effect of public pressure on teams and MLB, the potential for a future minor league union, and his new organization, Advocates for Minor Leaguers (plus a postscript on two sets of same-named players).

Audio intro: Mapache, "Life on Fire"
Audio interstitial: Margo Price, "Pay Gap"
Audio outro: Smoke N Bones, "Nobody Knows"

Link to latest FG COVID-19 roundup
Link to Eno on injury spikes
Link to Pages From Baseball’s Past
Link to Wes Ferrell story
Link to article about MLB and ballpark workers
Link to article about lost service time
Link to story about re-airing Tigers games
Link to info on MLB games on YouTube
Link to FG games to rewatch, Part 1
Link to FG games to rewatch, Part 2
Link to article about doubleheaders
Link to article about baseball in Japan and South Korea
Link to Advocates for Minor Leaguers site
Link to Advocates for Minor Leaguers press release
Link to MLB press release about minor league pay
Link to ESPN article on minor league pay
Link to NYT article on Advocates for Minor Leaguers
Link to LAT article on Advocates for Minor Leaguers
Link to Adopt a Minor Leaguer
Link to More Than Baseball
Link to story on the two Mike Smiths
Link to order The MVP Machine

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A day after the Boston Globe reported that Chris Sale had resumed throwing following a shutdown, and two weeks after he was diagnosed with a flexor tendon strain but no new damage to his ulnar collateral ligament, the Red Sox have announced that he’ll undergo Tommy John surgery. The going-on-31-year-old lefty joins the Yankees’ Luis Severino on the short list of star pitchers who will miss all of the 2020 season — however long it may be — following UCL reconstruction, and the Astros’ Justin Verlander among players whose decisions to undergo surgery make more sense in light of the delayed opening to the season.

As I detailed three weeks ago, Sale made just 25 starts amid an uneven season last year; he was fantastic in May and June (2.78 ERA, 1.98 FIP in 71.1 innings) but bad or worse on either side of that stretch before being shut down on August 13 due to elbow inflammation. Though he set career worsts in ERA (4.40) and home run rate (1.47 per nine) — both more than double his 2018 rates — his strikeout rate still ranked second in the majors among pitchers with at least 140 innings, his 29.6% K-BB% fourth, and his 75 FIP- 14th. His 3.6 WAR, despite being his lowest mark since 2011, was more than respectable. That said, Statcast data showed that he had the largest year-to-year dropoff in four-seam fastball velocity of any pitcher from 2018 to ’19, 1.8 mph (from 95.2 mph to 93.4), and the second-largest increase in exit velocity, 3.4 mph (from 84.7 to 87.0).

While Sale paid a visit to Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion last August, he avoided surgery, though he did receive a platelet-rich plasma injection. Although many within the industry have been predicting that the wiry lefty would someday blow out his elbow given his violent delivery — you can find armchair pitching coaches calling him “a ticking time bomb” as far back as 2012, if not earlier — there was no public indication at the time that his injection or his injury were related to his ulnar collateral ligament. This spring, the Red Sox continued to give reassurances that his elbow was fine, even as Sale began spring training behind schedule due to a bout of pneumonia. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

With work in so many industries disrupted by COVID-19 and the efforts to limit its spread, many individuals have felt the financial pressure of work stoppages or even layoffs. Those in the baseball haven’t been immune to this pressure. Earlier this week, Major League Baseball and all 30 clubs agreed to relief for the seasonal ballpark employees that have been left jobless with the delayed start to the season, pledging $1 million per team. Yesterday, after a loud and persistent public outcry, we finally saw the financial situation of the league’s minor league players addressed, if only temporarily.

MLB Announces a League-Wide Initiative to Support Minor League Players

After a handful of teams announced earlier in the week that they would continue to pay their spring training per diems, the policy was officially adopted as a league-wide, temporary solution for all minor league players:

A league-wide initiative has been announced for Minor League players to receive compensation between now and the scheduled start of the Minor League season. @MLB will continue to work with all 30 Clubs on the development of an industry-wide plan for compensation beyond 4/8. pic.twitter.com/Ck8Lv9uuzp

— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) March 19, 2020

Every team will provide each minor league player a lump sum equal to the allowances that would have been paid until the beginning of the minor league season on April 8. There are a few exceptions, and no solution has been announced for how to handle compensation between April 9 and the beginning of the upcoming season, whenever that might be. MLB and the teams are still working on a long-term plan. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we introduced a few of our favorite games to rewatch, all of which shared a postseason theme. Today, we highlight six regular season contests, including a no-hitter, a perfect game, and a few more that either meant something special to the writer, or presented feats too intriguing to ignore. Enjoy, and be well. – Meg Rowley

Roy Halladay’s Perfect Game, May 29, 2010
One of the biggest influences in my life is my late grandfather, Pop-Pop. He had been a devout Phillies fan since 1950, and during the team’s late-2000s glory, I was lucky to share many joyous moments with him, including a championship in 2008.

I remember talking on the phone with Pop-Pop in 2009, when the Phillies had just traded for Cliff Lee. While he was certainly excited for another elite pitcher to aid in the postseason run, he felt that Philly had missed out on someone even better: Halladay. So when the Phillies ended up acquiring him that winter, my first move was to call my grandfather. My second was to order Halladay’s jersey.

In no time, the right-hander was my favorite baseball player. I tried to emulate his windup when pitching, wore his jersey every day he started, and begged my parents to let me stay past up past my bedtime when he was in the midst of one of his nine complete games in 2010.

I’ll never forget May 29. Naturally, I had donned Halladay’s jersey, and even oddly received a comment on it while my family was out shopping. “Are you a Phillies fan?” I was asked by a man trying to sell us furniture. “I love Roy Halladay. Nice jersey.”

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the joys of baseball, and sports in general, is that the narrative arc of the game isn’t preordained. You can’t know when the most important pitch of the game will be before the game starts. This isn’t a TV procedural, where nothing decisive can happen in the first 20 minutes. The visiting team might go up 3-0 in the first inning and never relinquish the lead, or they might rally furiously from down five only to lose in the bottom of the ninth.

Even though the most exciting pitch of the game isn’t a given, one thing more or less is: the first pitch of a game won’t be the most exciting one. That’s partially due to the rules of baseball — no one is on base, and most at-bats take more than one pitch — but the first pitch is unique in its own way. For one, no one swings. Combining the first pitches thrown by each starter in a game, batters swing at 23% of offerings, significantly lower than the 29% overall swing rate on 0-0 counts.

Secondly, it’s almost always a fastball. Sam Miller delved into the thinking behind game-opening fastballs, and pretty much everything from his piece still holds. Pitchers throw fastballs because batters don’t swing, and batters don’t swing because they already don’t swing much on 0-0, and particularly so when they haven’t seen the pitcher throw anything yet.

But batters aren’t static opponents. In 2010, they swung at 25.1% of 0-0 pitches. In 2019, that number was a meaty 29.4%. Strikeouts are rising, pitchers are fastball-happy on 0-0 counts, and batters increasingly can’t afford to hang around waiting for something to hit given the decline in overall fastball usage. Read the rest of this entry »

“Chaos, absolute chaos.”

That was the only way one agent was able to describe the current situation going on in professional baseball. Meanwhile, multiple minor-league players bleakly described their situation as being “an afterthought” — this after being sent home with no information on what their timeline for return might be, and whether they would be paid.

As Major League Baseball attempts to deal with the fallout from cancelling spring training, and the delay of the start of the season due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, players across all levels are feeling the pain, as questions continue to mount. When will their next paycheck come? From where? What preparation needs to be taken for the delayed start of the season?

The recurring theme during conversations I’ve had with players across all levels of professional baseball — from the majors down to rookie ball — is the stark contrast between the amount of information being given to major league and 40-man roster players versus that being provided to minor leaguers. As one minor league player put it, “Minor league guys don’t know anything until it comes out on Twitter.”

Once the season was officially suspended by Major League Baseball, each club had different ways of dealing with their rostered versus non-rostered players. Across the league, players on the 40-man have been given three options: First, to stay at the complex and continue to receive their $1,100 weekly spring training stipend paid by the club, and retain access to the facility with minimal staff present; second, go to the club’s home city and continue to train at the ballpark, again with minimal staff, and receive their stipend of $1,100 per week paid by MLBPA; and third, return home and receive their weekly $1,100, also paid for by the union. Read the rest of this entry »