Earlier today, Paul Sporer took you through baseball’s 16th-to-30th ranked rotations. Now, we get to the good stuff.

What is a starting pitcher? While baseball’s rules have been relatively stable throughout the game’s history, being a starter in 2020 means something very different than it did in 1870, 1920, or even 1970. A starting pitcher in the 1800s was frequently the pitcher in any given game. When Hall of Fame pitcher (and later, Twitter superstar), Old Hoss Radbourn pitched for the 1884 Providence Grays, he started 75 of the team’s 114 games, completing 73 of them.

Being a starter meant something else in the early 20th century. They were still workhorses expected to finish a large percentage of their games, but they were part of a pitching staff, not lone wolves. Jack Chesbro was the last 50-game starter, in 1904. Four-man rotations became the standard and league leaders in games-started ranged from the high 30s to the low 40s. The only exception was one last surge in the early 70s from rubber-armed knuckleballers Wilbur Wood and Phil Niekro. The four-man rotation then became a five-man affair, and it’s now been 33 years since a pitcher started 40 games (Charlie Hough, 1987) and 40 years since one threw 300 innings (Steve Carlton, 1980). Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, noted fast boy Chris Taylor made an out at second base in a Dodgers intrasquad game. That’s hardly news; players run into outs all the time, particularly in games that don’t matter, while they get used to when they should and shouldn’t gamble. There was just one notable thing about this out, however:

#DontRunOnChico

Chris Taylor tried tagging up & got thrown out by the Dodgers' clubbie ?

(via @SportsNetLA)pic.twitter.com/kdei3zYdJl

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) July 12, 2020

That’s right; the fielder on the play wasn’t an active roster Dodger, or a minor leaguer, but clubhouse attendant Francisco “Chico” Herrera. As if that play wasn’t enough — gunning down a runner from deep left field in Dodger Stadium is no joke — he doubled up on impressive plays by doubling Gavin Lux off of first base after a spectacular outfield catch:

Chico does it AGAIN! ? pic.twitter.com/MoFCwQXeKS

— SportsNet LA (@SportsNetLA) July 15, 2020

Chicomania is in full swing in Chavez Ravine. Justin Turner wore a #LetChicoHit t-shirt for batting practice one day, and questions about Chico are a mainstay in Dodgers press conferences at this point. The excitement led play-by-play announcer Joe Davis to ask for a statistical assist:

Just chatted w/ @CespedesBBQ, who posed this question: would the Dodgers make the playoffs w/ Chico in LF? I would love to see an actual analytical breakdown, @fangraphs.

— Joe Davis (@Joe_Davis) July 16, 2020

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we covered the game’s position players as part of our positional power rankings. Now we move to the pitching side, starting with the bottom half (16-30) of the starting rotation rankings.

The latter half of the starter rankings are almost evenly split between the leagues, leaning 8-7 toward the National League. But five of the last seven are from the American League with each division represented at least once, furthering the notion that the AL is a league of haves and have-nots for at least another season. (Of those five, only the Toronto Blue Jays are seen as having an outside chance to compete and that’s due more to their offense than anything else.)

Keep in mind that the short season tightens things up quite a bit, too. Consider last year’s rankings, where the 16th-ranked Reds were projected for 10.6 WAR, three wins clear of the 24th ranked Brewers. This year the Cardinals slot 16th with a 4.7 mark, just 0.7 wins better than the 24th ranked Red Sox. A single over- or underachiever could sway things substantially for their team. Prospects might be the biggest needle-movers if they can secure roles; Mitch Keller (58) and Brady Singer (31) are the only Top 100 arms projected for 30-plus innings, while Matt Manning (28), Spencer Howard (24), Nate Pearson (21), Tarik Skubal (17), Casey Mize (14), and Sixto Sanchez (7) will battle for starts once the season gets underway.

The Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies, and Diamondbacks are seen as playoff dark horses (or frontrunners in some cases) based on their rosters as a whole, but if you had to select a rotation in the 21-30 range that could lead its team into a postseason berth, which one would you pick? Focus solely on the staff, avoid citing Trout & Co. or the Baby Blue Jays overcoming their rotation deficiencies, and let me know your favorite in the comments! Read the rest of this entry »

Brent Strom had a better playing career than he likes to give himself credit for. His numbers are admittedly nondescript, but he did toss 501 big-league innings and throw 16 complete games, three of which were shutouts. Pitching for the New York Mets, Cleveland Indians, and San Diego Padres, the now-71-year-old southpaw logged a respectable 3.95 ERA over parts of five seasons.

My invitation to revisit his MLB debut — with the Mets on July 31, 1972 — yielded both entertaining anecdotes and a healthy dose of self-deprecation. Now in his seventh season as the pitching coach for the Houston Astros, Strom is equal parts gruff and engaging as a storyteller.

Against the Montreal Expos on that particular night, Strom was stellar. He allowed just two hits and a pair of runs — only one of them earned —over six-and-two thirds innings. Strom fanned seven, and despite departing with a lead settled for a non-decision.

His high school coach was on hand to see it.

“Bernie Flaherty, who is since deceased, had promised that if I made it to the big leagues he would be there for my first game,” Strom told me. “He flew from San Diego to New York to watch me pitch against the Expos that night, which was pretty cool. At least I didn’t disappoint him that game.”

Another notable from back home was there as well, and unlike Flaherty he wasn’t watching from the stands. He was calling balls and strikes. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mariners prospect Julio Rodriguez’s broken wrist, Meg’s all-time most disappointing Mariners, the Rays’ five-man infield, listener responses to two emails from the previous episode, and news about Freddie Freeman and Yasiel Puig, then complete the 2020 season preview series by (16:23) previewing the 2020 Los Angeles Dodgers with The Athletic’s Pedro Moura, and the 2020 Baltimore Orioles (53:26) with MLB.com’s Joe Trezza.

Audio intro: The Replacements, "The Last"
Audio interstitial 1: Haim, "Los Angeles"
Audio interstitial 2: Blur, "This is a Low"
Audio outro: RJD2 (Feat. Blueprint), "Final Frontier"

Link to story about the Rays’ five-man infield
Link to listener Austin’s boost zone graphic
Link to Ben on Dave Roberts in 2019
Link to Pedro on Pollock and COVID-19
Link to Pedro on the legend of Chico
Link to FanGraphs post on Orioles fan event
Link to Ben on MLB’s 2020 strikeout rate
Link to Ben on sabermetrics in the 60-game season
Link to The MVP Machine with Orioles afterword

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It wasn’t too long ago — just shy of two years, in fact — that Tyler White appeared to have found his spot in the majors, emerging as the hottest hitter on a 103-win juggernaut Astros team. Now, the 29-year-old first baseman is heading to the Korea Baseball Organization to join the SK Wyverns, a decision that makes sense given that he both couldn’t find space in any team’s 60-player pool and that there’s no minor league season. In joining the struggling Wyverns, he’ll be bucking a league-wide trend, as theirs will be the only lineup featuring two foreign-born players.

The current iteration of the KBO roster rules allows teams to carry three foreign-born players, a maximum of two of whom can be pitchers; prior to 2014, the maximum was two. This year, every team in the league has gone with two foreign-born pitchers and one hitter, with the Wyverns using Nick Kingham 킹엄 and Ricardo Pinto 핀토 in their rotation and Jamie Romak 로맥 as their first baseman. As I noted on May 22, however, Kingham made just two starts before suffering an elbow injury of an unspecified nature (getting to the bottom of KBO injuries is a challenge). While initial reports suggested that he might miss only a couple of starts, he didn’t even return to playing catch until late June, and on July 2, the team waived him, opening up a spot for another foreign-born player.

The recent history of lineups with two foreign-born players is a short one. Last year, the Samsung Lions featured Darin Ruf 러프 as their regular first baseman and occasional designated hitter, with outfielder Mac Williamson 윌리엄슨 joining the team in midseason. Because of a rule in place at the time, the team was only allowed to use only two foreign-born players in a game, so one of them had to sit whenever Deck McGuire 맥과이어 or Ben Lively 라이블리 (who replaced McGuire shortly after Williamson arrived) started. Read the rest of this entry »

As we are at the time of year when we’d have our traditional All-Star festivities, this week’s FanGraphs Live! stream, featuring Eric Longenhagen, Ben Clemens, Paul Sporer and Dan Szymborski, will livecast baseball’s Futures Game. Started in 1999, the game initially featured 50 minor league players in a US vs. World format, which was later changed to American League vs. National League prospects in 2019. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, we concluded our review of the outfield with Jay Jaffe’s look at right fielders. Now we wrap up the position players with designated hitter.

It’s hardly a secret that the era of the dedicated slugger at designated hitter is over. The hulking, positionless behemoth that so many think of hasn’t been the norm at the position for years. The “new-school” model is a whirring mass of position players getting rest while still playing. A second baseman here, a left fielder there, sprinkle in a dash of good-hitting catcher on an off day, and bam, you’ve got a modern DH.

The top of our list, however, shows the inadequacy of that DH model. That’s something that many AL teams do these days, and it’s something that most every NL team will do this year without the benefit of a roster built around the position. But the teams that get the most value out of designated hitter aren’t doing it in parts. They’re tabbing single players — in many cases players who could play the field if necessary, but not always — and giving them the lion’s share of the at-bats. Yordan Alvarez, J.D. Martinez, Nelson Cruz — give me any of them over the best time-share DH situation in the league, the Cubs and their Kyle Schwarber and Friends model.

There are still many ways to build a DH. You can feed many mouths, or let the big dog eat. And there’s no real need to stand out at the position to be a great team; the Astros have Alvarez, but that’s a happy accident of his development, not a long-term plan on their part. Think of DH as a fancy dessert after a great meal; a standout one sticks in your mind, but it’s certainly not integral to the experience. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a question that you, the fan, might have in a few weeks: My team is 4-8. Is it time to get worried? In a regular 162-game season, that’s not exactly a puzzle: nope! Things are fine, my friend. Sip a frozen drink, or crack open a bag of chips, or whatever it is that you do to relax. Maybe watch a baseball game!

In a 60-game season, things will feel more consequential. That’s convenient, because they’ll also be more consequential. There’s a saying that you can’t make the playoffs in your first month, but you can miss them. This year, that’s out the window. Start out 9-3, and you’re feeling pretty good. Start 3-9, and it’s time to start booking remote cabins for your October socially-distanced vacation.

I wanted to be a little more quantitative than “it’s important to start well.” My first thought was: let’s fire up the Playoff Odds Calculator (an arcane table in David Appelman’s basement that spits out the odds of each team making the playoffs after he mutters some incantations) and give a team a hot start to see what it does to their odds. After that, we can fire up the ZiPS-ulator (a sentient robot living in Dan Szymborski’s attic) and compare.

There’s a problem with that plan, though: it depends on the messy vagaries of our estimation of a team’s strength. A 4-8 start is less painful for the Dodgers than the Diamondbacks because we think the Dodgers are better. The same goes, to a varying extent, for every team in baseball. The schedule matters, but so do our idiosyncratic views on team talent.

Instead, I wanted to create a true neutral scenario, one that you can apply in a general way without specifically digging into what we think of your team. I built a bubble baseball universe that consists of only a single five-team division. Each team has the exact same talent level, and there’s no home field advantage. That means that a 162-game season would, on average, look like this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday saw us examine left and center field. Today, we bring the outfield review to a close with a look at right field.

“History” is almost certainly too strong a word for something that’s only been tracked for a limited amount of time and that can so easily slip below the radar, but last year, for the first time during the stretch covered by our splits (2002 onward), right fielders provided more offense than any other position. Both they and first basemen collectively finished in a virtual tie for the positional lead in wRC+ at 108, but a closer look shows that right fielders produced 210.6 batting runs, compared to 209.4 for first basemen. That’s a difference that the slightest tweak in park factors might change, but it’s worth noting nonetheless, particularly after right fielders finished just 4.7 runs behind first basemen in 2018; the gap had been over 100 runs — still just a few per team per season — in favor of the first basemen in each of the previous four seasons.

Driving that 2019 performance were the NL’s top two MVP contenders, winner Cody Bellinger and runner-up (and 2018 winner) Christian Yelich, with 2018 AL winner Mookie Betts third, but here’s the thing: those guys are on the move. Bellinger, who started 102 times in right field, 28 at first base, and 21 in center, enters this shortened season as the Dodgers’ regular at the last of those positions, having demonstrated the athleticism to handle the job, at least on a part-time basis. Oh, and there’s also the matter of his having Betts as his new outfield neighbor thanks to that February blockbuster. As for Yelich, who made 121 starts in right field before his season ended on September 10 due to a fractured right kneecap, he’s back in left field, where he spent most of 2014-16 and much of ’18, and where his defensive metrics have generally been the strongest. Newcomer Avisaíl García will play right.

Of course, there’s plenty of talent at the position beyond the MVP winners. Aaron Judge hits the ball harder than anyone in the game; his problem has been injuries, not performance. Ronald Acuña Jr., who’s on the top tier when it comes to the game’s most electrifying players, is slated to play mostly in right field after spending most of his 2018 and ’19 seasons in left and center. Michael Conforto, miscast in center, has taken to right, Max Kepler has come into his own, Joey Gallo showed signs of breaking out before getting hurt, and Bryce Harper is still a force. Further down the list are late bloomers like Hunter Dozier (another relative newcomer to the position), Brian Goodwin, and Michael Yastrzemski; former top prospects hoping to turn things around such as Nomar Mazara and Gregory Polanco (a 2018 breakout set back by injuries last year); and onetime first-rounders looking for that first sustained taste of success in the majors, such as Kyle Lewis, DJ Stewart, and Lewis Brinson. And hopefully, Jo Adell will debut this year. It’s a group as worth watching as any position. Read the rest of this entry »