If the 2020 season does happen — and right now, that’s an open question — it will be without Chris Archer. The Pirates announced on Wednesday that the 31-year-old righty underwent surgery to correct for thoracic outlet syndrome, ruling him out for whatever transpires this season, and perhaps ending his time in Pittsburgh given his contract situation. Given the track record of pitchers who have undergone the procedure, we can only hope that this doesn’t mark the end of the two-time All-Star’s run as an effective pitcher.

As I’ve written before, thoracic outlet syndrome is caused by a compression of the nerves and/or blood vessels somewhere between the neck and the armpit. Symptoms commonly include numbness or tingling in the fingers and hands, or fatigue or weakness that doesn’t go away with physical therapy and rest. Pitchers tend to be particularly vulnerable to TOS because of their repetitive overhand movements and the way their arm muscles build up. The condition is generally remedied by the removal of a cervical rib and two small scalene muscles.

Archer, whom the Pirates acquired from the Rays on July 31, 2018 in exchange for outfielder Austin Meadows and pitchers Tyler Glasnow and Shane Baz (the latter as a player to be named later) — a steal of a deal for Tampa Bay, the way things have gone — endured the worst season of his eight-year career in 2019. Though he struck out a respectable 27.2% of hitters faced, his walk and home run rates jumped significantly from their 2018 levels, the former from 7.7% to 10.5%, the latter from 1.15 per nine to 1.88. Both of those were career highs, as were his 5.19 ERA and 5.02 FIP, which were respectively 20% and 13% worse than league average. Per Pitch Info, his average four-seam fastball velocity fell a full tick from 2018 (95.3 mph to 94.3 mph) and was down 1.5 mph relative to ’17 and 1.9 mph relative to ’15. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in the week, there seemed to be a growing sense of optimism regarding a potential deal between the players and team owners to get the baseball season started. MLB’s initial proposal may have been met with near-universal criticism, but the MLBPA’s response of a 114-game schedule, while obviously proposing significantly more games, left considerable room for negotiation. Just a day later, Jeff Passan reported that the owners were considering responding with a 50-game schedule played at the pro-rated salaries agreed to in March. The two sides were still far apart, but the players seemed willing to compromise on the playoff structure and deferrals, with the owners giving up a renegotiation of pro-rated pay; everyone seemed well on their way to somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-season’s worth of games.

Sadly, the owners never made such an offer. Indeed, they have since rejected the union’s proposal, reportedly with no intention of countering per Ken Rosenthal, who broke the news. The step back from ownership makes it difficult to determine where the parties stand on a potential 2020 season. While MLB didn’t formally propose a 50-game season, it’s apparently still a consideration for the league, as well as a negotiating tactic to get the player’s to play more games for less money per game. As Rosenthal and Evan Drellich noted in their piece on the subject for The Athletic:

Though the language in the March agreement between the parties is subject to interpretation, [MLB] believes the wording enables commissioner Rob Manfred to determine the length of the season as long as the league pays the players the prorated salaries outlined by the deal.

According to the agreement, it is up to MLB to propose season length:

using best efforts to play as many games as possible, while taking into account player safety and health, rescheduling needs, competitive considerations, stadium availability, and the economic feasibility of various alternatives.

Read the rest of this entry »

It stands as a threat rather than an official proposal — heaven forbid the owners actually engage the players directly instead of attempting to negotiate through the media — but MLB’s latest thought balloon regarding a 2020 season centers around a 50-game schedule. In the wake of the players’ formal proposal that they receive the full prorated share of their salaries for a 114-game season that would begin on June 30 and end on October 31 (with a postseason to follow in November), the owners have let it be known that they’re not enthusiastic about that idea. Per ESPN, The Athletic, and other outlets, they’ve discussed a 50-game slate as a last-resort option.

The wee season would begin in July, and for it, the players would receive the full prorated share of their salaries, though those would amount to just 30.8% of their full-season salaries. Here it’s worth noting that the 50-game schedule is the same distance from the central 82-game proposal as the 114-game one is; if the two sides were to meet exactly in the middle, we’d be back at the number that’s been floating around since the owners voted to propose a 50-50 revenue split on May 11.

As Dan Szymborski illustrated in his latest round of ZiPS projections, a lot of strange stuff can happen in just 50 games, including a 28.1% chance of the Dodgers — projected as the best team in baseball over a full 162 games back in March — missing the playoffs and a 0.6% chance of the Marlins winning the World Series. “At 50 games, the ability to meaningfully differentiate between the great and the good, the mediocre and the bad, starts to fade significantly,” wrote Szymborski. “There’s a one-in-five chance that the winner of the World Series will be a team believed to be .500 or worse.” Read the rest of this entry »

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

Big Leaguers Step Up on Minor League Pay

Late last week, the Nationals announced that they would be lowering their minor league stipend from $400 to $300 per week. The move drew immediate criticism from minor leaguers, and from those on the big league club as well. Within hours, Nats major leaguers had pledged to make up the difference to those affected, as Sean Doolittle announced.

The optics, and indeed the factual basis, of these two countervailing reactions were terrible for the club. A $100 cut is necessarily a far bigger deal for a minor leaguer than the major league team as a whole, and the players’ instant support of their minor league teammates led to a public relations backlash against the team. Read the rest of this entry »

Chi Sung Pil was born in Korea around 1900. His mother, Sun Sin So Kim, was a longstanding Presbyterian missionary. Sometime around 1909, Kim’s husband died. Thanks to the efforts of Christian missionaries in Honolulu, who assisted Korean Christian widows and divorcees in relocating to the United States, Kim moved to Hawai’i shortly thereafter, bringing young Chi Sung with her. Kim continued her missionary work with the other devout Korean immigrants she met, and soon remarried within the thriving community, having two more children.

In Roberta Chang and Wayne Patterson’s The Koreans in Hawai’i: A Pictorial History, 1903-2003, a photo from 1920 shows Kim and the family she built in Hawai’i. The photo is taken against an elegant forested backdrop, and both parents and children are dressed to the nines: mother and daughter in light dresses, father and son in suits — the son, Harry Kim, sporting a jaunty polka-dot button-up and bow-tie. Chi Sung, who would then have been around 20, is not pictured.

Only a few years later, Chi Sung’s photograph would be featured in newspapers across the country. There is one in particular that kept cropping up: an action shot, with Chi Sung’s left arm raised high behind his head, his right arm extended outward and down — the classic, instantly recognizable pose of the submariner. In the Los Angeles Times on April 5, 1923, this photo appeared alongside other images of other people making world news that day — Haran Elkuta, leading a revolution in Albania; a group of Hawai’ian legislators; the U.S.S Pennsylvania at sea.

The caption box beside Chi Sung’s picture reads: “Only Korean ball player is demon pitcher! Chi Sung Pil, now attending the University of Oregon, plans to organize a team of Koreans to tour the Orient.” Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been considerable movement from both the players and the owners since our last round of polling. For the first time, May will no longer be an option for the season start date. Thanks again for taking the time to answer these questions, and help us understand your perspective on a potential 2020 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in this interminable offseason, I set out to find the best bunters of 2019. Why? Partially it’s because with no major league games, digging through old ones is an acceptable substitute. Partially it’s because it highlights some interesting and undervalued skills. And partially it’s because I love a good bunt for a hit.

There was one disappointing problem with the 2019 bunts, however: none of them were that momentous. The best bunt of 2019 was worth .326 WPA; in other words, the batting team’s odds of winning the game went up by 32.6 percentage points. That’s a big play, but it’s only the 12th-most valuable bunt in the last 10 years.

How does a bunt improve one team’s odds of winning by 32.6%? Like this:

So yes, a bunt needs some help from the opposing team to be worth so much. There’s no way around that; a bunt gets the defense involved in the play, so the best ones are going to involve a combination of good bunting and bad fielding. The most valuable bunts swing entire games — in this game, both runners scored and the Phillies won 6-5. Again, that’s not even one of the top 10 biggest bunts. Read the rest of this entry »

As first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan in the latest episode of “Let’s Negotiate Through the Media,” MLB ownership will reportedly issue a counter-counter-proposal to the MLBPA’s counter-proposal of a 112-game season with the prorated salaries previously agreed upon in March. This time, rather than the weird pay-scaling or completely dead-on-arrival revenue sharing schemes, the owners proposed a 50-game season, played at the players’ prorated salaries.

The owners didn’t explain how they got to a 50-game season, but it coincidentally averages with the players’ 114-game proposal to come out exactly to the 82-game season that was originally proposed. While a season shorter than 82 games might not be the same bright shade of red flag the we’re-partners-but-only-when-times-are-bad revenue sharing proposal was, there’s a general belief that the players aren’t interested in assuming the risks of playing during a pandemic if they’re not even getting half-season of games in. One priority for the owners is finishing the postseason before a possible second wave of COVID-19 cases hits in order to safe guard lucrative playoff TV contracts — money, it should be noted, that wasn’t fully accounted for when the league claimed $640,000 per game losses in a presentation to the players. Read the rest of this entry »

While the NC Dinos bolted from the gate by winning 17 of their first 20 games — the best start in the history of the Korea Baseball Organization — the LG Twins have been the league’s hottest team of late. After starting the season 2-4, the Twins have won 14 of 18; through Tuesday, they stood just two games behind the Dinos (18-6). This run has been largely powered by first baseman Roberto Ramos 라모스, who recently homered four times in five games, and leads the league with 10 dingers overall.

Ramos, a 25-year-old lefty swinger who spent 2014-19 in the Rockies chain, began his latest jag with a walk-off grand slam against the KT Wiz’s Min Kim 김민 김민 on May 24, turning a 7-5 deficit into a 9-7 win :

LG's Roberto Ramos wins the game with a walk-off grand slam in the 9th against KT.

?SBS Sports with the call pic.twitter.com/EgcdYeTWFQ

— Dan Kurtz (@MyKBO) May 24, 2020

Two days later, in a 3-0 shutout win over the Hanhwa Eagles, he put the Twins on the board first with a solo shot off reliever Yi-hwan Kim 김이환:

https://twitter.com/AlexMicheletti/status/1265315036630827009

Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob Cruz played with some great hitters from 1996-2005. Teammates bookending his career included Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr., and in between he shared the field with stalwarts such as Manny Ramirez and Larry Walker. Ever studious, the Arizona State University learned from them all.

Cruz’s now teaches hitting. He’s done so for the past decade, beginning with a six-season stint in the Arizona Diamondbacks system, followed by two seasons — the second of them as a minor-league hitting coordinator — with the Chicago Cubs. Cruz then spent 2019 as the assistant hitting coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates, which is the role he now has in Milwaukee. This past November, the Brewers brought Cruz on board to work alongside hitting coach Andy Haines.

In the 27th installment of our “Talks Hitting” series, Cruz addresses his philosophies, as well as Bonds and some of the players he’s worked with in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.

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David Laurila: Has hitting changed much since your playing days?

Jacob Cruz: “Hitting has really changed. When I started coaching [in 2011], a lot of the terminology was different. It was Dusty Baker talking about ‘step on ice,’ ‘squish the bug,’ and ‘make sure you hit your back with the bat on your followthrough.’ That’s not the terminology that’s being used today, and a lot of it has to do with the tech side of it. We’ve grown. We now know how to measure things, whereas before hitting was more of a guess.

“The players have changed as well. They don’t expect you to give your opinion; they want facts. It’s now ‘Show me the data on why I need to make this change.’ As a coach, that means making sure you’re an expert on every facet of hitting, which includes the technology and the analytics. Everything you can possibly be asked, you want to be able answer. There is a lot of information out there, from the K-Vest to Ground Force data to the bat sensors. All of those are pieces of the puzzle.”

Laurila: You used the term ‘stepping on ice.’ I’m not familiar with that. Read the rest of this entry »