The clock is ticking on Major League Baseball’s return to play, at least under a proposed timeline that would allow for a three-week spring training in June, an Opening Day in early July, and an 82-game schedule that follows the rough outline of the typical baseball calendar, with the bulk (if not the entirety) of the postseason in October. Over the past couple of weeks, the league and the players have attempted to find common ground with respect to both health and safety issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the financial ones, the latter with considerably more acrimony — so much so that the threat of no baseball in 2020 still looms, even after the owners made a formal proposal to the union on Tuesday calling for the game’s highest-paid players to bear a disproportionate burden of the financial hit.

Via USA Today’s Bob Nightengale:

The plan, three people with knowledge of the proposal told USA TODAY Sports, does not include the same 50-50 revenue-sharing split the owners agreed on two weeks ago that was never submitted to the union…

The proposal instead includes a sliding scale of compensation, guaranteeing players a percentage of their salary during different intervals of the season, while also including a larger share of postseason money. The players earning the highest salaries would be taking the biggest cuts, while those earning the least amount of money would receive most of their guaranteed salaries, with the union determining the exact percentage splits.

Via the New York Post’s Joel Sherman:

One person who had been briefed on the proposal said the expectation is that players due to make $1 million or less in 2020 would be made close to whole on a prorated basis for games played. Thus, if someone were making the MLB 2020 minimum of $563,500 and 82 regular season games (almost exactly half a season) were played, they would receive roughly half their pay, about $282,000.

But players at the top of the pay chain such as Gerrit Cole and Mike Trout would get less. If that were in the 50 percent range — as an example — then Cole, who was due $36 million, this year would receive half of about the $18 million he would be due for half a season or roughly $9 million.

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Below is my first mock draft of the year, a mock I’ll link to (along with The Board) at the top of and along with each subsequent iteration, as this one lays a foundation of context that I reserve the right to refer back to.

Teams are largely in the final stages of board building right now. National cross checkers are convening electronically; the last of the staff positional group discussions are wrapping up. How accurate can a mock be at this point? If you’d like to use mock accuracy as a proxy for how things will evolve over the next two weeks, take a look at the first complete round one mock Kiley McDaniel and I did last year and compare it to the one we did the day of the draft. You can see the initial mock has players in the right general range, while the final one is more precise. That’s how readers should think about what they’re about to read.

Of course, things are likely to be harder to predict than usual this year. A monkey wrench the size of the planet itself has been thrown into the cogs of the draft process. The draft’s reduced length, signing bonus limitations on players signed after the five rounds, the bonus deferral guidelines, minor league baseball’s imminent contraction, the asymmetry of prospect-to-prospect playing time this spring, the increased involvement from pro departments and otherwise uninvolved executives who had nothing else to do, the relative ease with which pitchers can upload opinion-changing video during the shutdown compared to hitters, the way teams’ cash flow issues might impact strategy, the way each player’s family’s financial situation may have recently changed and altered their signability, and how a college’s scholarship shortage might make players more or less inclined to return to school or matriculate, not to mention how all of those things (I’m sure I’ve missed some) interact with player, agent, and team incentives, make this year’s draft very unpredictable.

In broad strokes, teams seem more inclined to minimize risk this year. For instance, there are teams that do not have some higher profile high school players on their boards because they didn’t see them this spring. Prospects who were only scoutable for a brief window in March, never began play at all, or were in a crowded region and so were an opportunity-cost casualty, are at risk of not being on a team’s board here and there and sliding. There might be a couple of cases where someone slips past where they’re signable.

In my opinion, this is cowardly. Teams have had plenty of looks at Mick Abel, Ed Howard, Freddy Zamora, Austin Hendrick, and most all of the other names who I’ve heard might slip or become unsignable because of this apprehension. Even Nick Bitsko, who teams have the least history with because of when he reclassified, was widely seen last fall (he was awesome) and by about a third of teams in the bullpen this spring — he clearly belongs near the top of the high school arms in this draft.

I agree that a seven month layoff for high school prospects (that’s how long it’s been for guys who played in Jupiter last October) is not ideal, but neither is a three-month layoff for literally everyone else. Some teams seem more inclined to buy into some of the pop-up college arms who made four good starts in February and March rather than cold weather high schoolers who have a multi-year pedigree of performance. Was anyone really going to learn anything new about Ed Howard’s feel to hit by watching him crush bad Midwest varsity pitching? I don’t think so. On to the mock. Read the rest of this entry »

Amid the difficulties that need to be hammered out before a theoretical 2020 season gets going, probably the easiest to sort out is the universal DH. Baseball has been inching closer to this outcome — which I’ve felt was inevitable as soon as daily interleague play became a thing — for a while now, and instituting it for an oddball 2020 season is probably the least controversial decision to make. But while it registers as easy when compared to the other issues facing players and league decision makers, for projections, it opens up a whole new can of worms.

When ZiPS projects pitchers, it knows the team and (so it believes) the general league structure. Every club plays 162 games, mostly against teams in their own league, and in interleague play in AL parks, the NL uses the DH. Those things have been thrown into disarray by most of the proposed 2020 changes. 82 games instead of 162 is fairly easy to deal with; you just have to realize you’re going to be inaccurate. Swapping out pitchers for designated hitters is a little different.

To get an idea of what offense will look like and who it would affect, which is important for both real life and fantasy purposes, let’s start by looking at non-pitcher offensive numbers for both leagues from 2008-2019:

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2:02	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to the second edition of my chat in this Tuesday time slot, which thankfully is working better than Monday did in these pandemic-ridden times.

2:05

Jay Jaffe: Before I dive in, a bit of housekeeping: I’ve been very focussed on the Korea Baseball Organization lately, and at the end of today’s piece on Doosan Bears hitting machine Jose Miguel Fernandez (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/doosan-bears-fernandez-is-tearing-up-the-k…) I noted that I’ll be a guest on tomorrow’s ESPB KBO broadcast. I’ll be joining a Bears-SK Wyverns game, talking with hots Jon Sciambi and Eduardo Perez at around 7:30 AM ET. It’s my first time being part of a game broadcast, even under theses strange conditions, and it should be a lot of fun. I’ll have an Instagraphs post with further details including re-airing times.

2:07

Jay Jaffe: Hmmmm. I haven’t had a ton of them that particularly stand out. The first, though, was when I got Willie Mays’ autograph, which might have been 1981 or ’82. He was appearing at some grocery store expo at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, one of several players (Don Sutton was also on the list) but the one that I somehow convinced my mom to take me to. I had a 1973 Topps card of Mays as a Met, a hand-me-down from my cousin Allan. We stood in line, and he autographed the card without even making eye contact; he was bored as hell and didn’t care who knew it.

2:08

Jay Jaffe: More fun was my Vin Scully interaction, from 1989 at Vero Beach, which I wrote about as part of a 2016 Sports Illustrated piece (https://www.si.com/mlb/2016/09/30/vin-scully-tribute-dodgers-jay-jaffe). When I was a college freshman, my parents took my brother and me to Dodgertown during my spring break, and I had a chance encounter with the great announcer himself. From the piece

2:10

Jay Jaffe: En route to the concession stand before one ballgame, I crossed paths with Scully himself, decked out in a cream-colored golf sweater. I asked for an autograph, then realized I had just a scrap of paper and no pen. Seeing how flustered I was, he agreed to wait while I fetched one from my mother, who was on her way to the restroom. Somehow, I not only got the pen, but Vin waited in place, and signed what might have been a golf scorecard or a ticket stub. I’ve long since lost that piece of paper—inevitable while moving half a dozen times in four years—and I’ve never gotten to meet Scully again despite being now being armed with a credential. But I’ve never forgotten the man’s small gesture of patience and humanity toward a star-struck 19-year-old.

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Sometimes the math just works out perfectly. Coming into today, our fictional OOTP Brewers have played exactly one third of their season. At 32-22, we’re atop the NL Central by four games, an outcome I would have happily accepted before the season started. Let’s take a look at how we got here before considering our next steps.

First, let’s talk NL Central. The division isn’t the four-way race that many pundits expected before the year began. In fact, the Cardinals have faded more or less completely out of contention:

The true surprise in the division is the Pirates. Keyed by Chris Archer and Joe Musgrove, they’ve allowed the fourth-fewest runs against in the league. On the offensive side, Josh Bell is having a solid year; his 128 wRC+ and 17 home runs pace the team. But despite the hot start, problem spots remain: the team is 11th in the NL in overall wOBA, as well as 11th in FIP. It isn’t hard to imagine the run-scoring numbers moving down to match the peripherals, which would leave the Pirates on the fringes of the playoff chase. Read the rest of this entry »

The defending champion Doosan Bears are merely in third place in the Korea Baseball Organization standings, but through the season’s first three weeks, nobody in the league has been hotter than their designated hitter, Jose Miguel Fernandez 페르난데스. Through Sunday’s games, the 32-year-old Cuban defector is batting .500/.531/.764, leading the league in the first two categories as well as wRC+ (240, via Statiz) and trailing Roberto Ramos 라모스 by a mere three points in slugging percentage. His performance has led the Bears’ powerhouse offense, which alas had trouble papering over the team’s pitching issues.

When you’re hitting .500, everything is by definition hot streak, but Fernandez closed the past week in exceptional fashion even as the Bears did not. After going hitless for just the second time all year on May 20 against the NC Dinos, he rebounded to go 3-for-4 with an RBI in a 12-6 loss the next day, then 3-for-4 with a double, a homer, and six RBI in a 12-7 win over the Samsung Lions on Friday. He followed that up with two more multi-hit games against the Lions, first a 4-for-5 performance that included a solo homer (his fourth) in a 10-6 win on Saturday, then a 2-for-4 showing in a 13-0 loss on Sunday. That’s a 12-for-17 spree, and 12 multi-hit games so far this season, including three apiece of the three- and four-hit varieties. Whew.

Known more for his bat-to-ball skills than his raw power, Fernandez has never homered more than 17 times in a season. But thus far in 2020, the lefty swinger — who lists at 5-foot-10, 185-pounds — has been launching some titanic blasts. Here’s his first homer of the year, off the KT Wiz’s Min Kim 김민 on May 10:

Don't know that you guys are keeping track but Jose Miguel Fernandez has another multi-hit game on his hands. Currently 3-3 on the day with this 3 run shot. His 1st HR of 2020. #KBO #DoosanBears pic.twitter.com/1f551qrQgQ

— KBO Collections ? (@kbocollections) May 10, 2020

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Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about viral particles, Mike Trout’s self-identified best at-bat, Carney Lansford’s possible link to Sir Francis Drake, sports card “breakers,” a perplexing story involving Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner, Wilbert Robinson’s five birthdays, why a love of playing baseball often translates to a love of anything connected to baseball, the serendipitous discoveries that come from browsing newspaper archives, and a mysterious 1989 Cy Young vote.

Audio intro: Darlingside, "Best of the Best of Times"
Audio outro: The Birthday Crew, "Happy Birthday Wilbert"

Link to COVID-19 guide
Link to Trout video
Link to BP bobbleheads piece
Link to Emma on “breakers”
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Scott Heineman has become increasingly interested in the mechanics of his swing. That said, the 27-year-old Texas Rangers outfielder isn’t married to the technical aspects of his craft. Nor is his approach what one could call cookie-cutter. That was crystal clear when I asked him the ‘art or science?’ question.

“I’d say hitting is more of an art,” Heineman expressed last Sunday. “I’m going to do what’s most comfortable for me. For instance, I’m not going to go out there and imitate Paul Goldschmidt. That’s what works for him — that stance — but I’ve tried it in the cage and it doesn’t work for me. That said, he does things I really like. I guess I could say I’m an artist painting my own picture, and at the same time looking at all the other pieces in the gallery. I’m seeing how they use colors, and whatnot, and putting parts of that into my own art. That’s what I’m doing with hitting.”

Heineman’s portfolio is somewhat spotty. Pointedly bland in last year’s cup of coffee — a .679 OPS in 85 big-league PAs — he’s otherwise made a good impression down on the farm. Heineman’s right-handed stroke has produced a snappy .303/.378/.475 slash line over four minor-league seasons. Ever the realist, he recognizes that those numbers aren’t going to translate to the big-league level if he doesn’t study the masters. Moreover, Goldschmidt isn’t the only bopper whose palette he’s perused. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a mystifying comment on the back of track star and Oakland A’s designated runner Herb Washington’s 1975 Topps card, the phenomenon of wildly inaccurate appraisals of player value, and the utility of pinch-running specialists. Then (21:48) they talk to ESPN broadcaster Jon “Boog” Sciambi about calling KBO games from home, learning a new league, the perils and pitfalls of remote baseball broadcasting, how calling games in a different time zone has affected his sleep schedule, making international baseball accessible to American fans, how the pandemic may impact the future of broadcasting, and more.

Audio intro: Phish, "Fast Enough for You"
Audio interstitial: Richard Thompson, "Johnny’s Far Away"
Audio outro: James Taylor, "As Easy As Rolling Off a Log"

Link to Washington’s 1975 Topps card
Link to Andrew’s book about baseball in Taiwan
Link to Cardboard Gods entry on Washington’s card
Link to video of Washington pickoff
Link to 12/1/74 article on Washington
Link to 12/27/74 article on Washington
Link to Sam on Hamilton’s value
Link to Travis on Hamilton’s value
Link to Sam on Washington, Hamilton, and Bolt
Link to Ben on Lords of the Realm
Link to KBO on ESPN schedule
Link to photo of Boog’s backdrop
Link to Boog on building a better broadcast
Link to Bryan Curtis on remote broadcasts
Link to info on Project Main St.
Link to donate to Project Main St.
Link to order The MVP Machine

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