Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the baffling trade rumors swirling around Mookie Betts, Francisco Lindor, and Kris Bryant, try to discern why they would be on the block, discuss how the likelihood of the top-rated team winning the World Series compares to the likelihood of the best team taking the title in other sports, and then conduct their fifth annual free-agent-contract over/under draft.

Audio intro: Ben Kweller, "Free"
Audio outro: The Only Ones, "You’ve Got to Pay"

Link to Rob Arthur on ticket prices and attendance
Link to Neil Paine on “paper champions”
Link to study on how often the best team wins
Link to blog post about how often the best team wins
Link to FanGraphs top 50 free agents
Link to MLB Trade Rumors top 50 free agents
Link to EW competitions and drafts
Link to order The MVP Machine

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MLB front offices often spend a lot of energy trying to make their rosters younger. There are a number of obvious benefits to this — young players are cheap, especially before they reach arbitration status, and as Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer detailed back in August, they are also historically good. Trying to get younger is a strategy that’s easy to sell a fan base on, and yet during last month’s World Series, older players were the ones who often found themselves at the center of the attention. Sure, Washington’s preternaturally gifted Juan Soto took October by storm while turning just 21 years old during the World Series, but mostly it was guys like Howie Kendrick (36), Kurt Suzuki (36), and Ryan Zimmerman (35) catching headlines throughout the postseason. Veteran pitchers like Fernando Rodney (42), Anibal Sanchez (35) and Max Scherzer (35) were playing big roles for the championship-winning Nationals, while Justin Verlander (36) and Zack Greinke (36) each made two World Series starts for the runner-up Astros.

The idea of older players being the driving force behind these title contenders didn’t simply arise from a few random flashes of brilliance in October. According to ESPN, Washington reached the postseason with MLB’s oldest active roster. In fact, each of the five oldest teams in baseball reached the postseason, along with seven of the top eight. Some places show slightly different figures for average team age, but regardless of where you look, the top of the list always features a long list of teams who won a lot of games in 2019.

The easy headline here is that baseball’s best teams were also its oldest. But teams like the Nationals and Astros didn’t just have a bunch of old guys on their team — they had a bunch of very good old guys. The Yankees did too, and so did the Dodgers. After a long offseason that saw the majority of teams seemingly turn their noses up at veteran talent, older players produced as much value this season as they have for years. The difference was, in 2019, it was only a few teams reaping the benefits. Read the rest of this entry »

The Houston Astros, who made it to the World Series thanks at least in part to a bullpen that led the majors in xFIP (4.06) and placed second in ERA (3.75) during the regular season (the unit’s 11th place-FIP was still good, if a bit more pedestrian), saw four of its relief arms enter free agency last month: Will Harris, Collin McHugh (who threw innings as both a starter and reliever this season), Joe Smith, and Héctor Rondón. Here’s how those four stacked up in 2019:

Between them, the Astros’ four free agent relievers threw a little more than 32% of Houston’s 555 relief innings in 2019, and about 35% of their right-handed innings (505). That’s because Houston got an astonishingly small number of relief innings out of lefties in 2019: 49 and a third — the fifth-lowest such total in a decade — 35 of which came from Framber Valdez, who pitched only three times after September 1.

That imbalanced composition made Houston’s 2019 ‘pen unusually reliant on right-handers with a demonstrated history of getting left-handed hitters out. Lefties still aren’t close to the majority of all batters faced league-wide, of course, but they are 40% of the total, and so it behooves teams to have a plan for when they step into the box. The Astros did: Five Houston relievers — Ryan Pressly, Roberto Osuna, Cy Sneed, McHugh, and Harris — were better at retiring lefties than righties in 2019, when the league’s average tendency for relievers was the opposite:

The Astros’ top offseason priority should probably be their starting rotation, with Gerrit Cole seemingly extremely likely to depart (though Jim Crane is making noises about taking a run at him). They’ll also need to replace Robinson Chirinos and Martín Maldonado at catcher, where Yasmani Grandal may make sense. But the chart above suggests that retaining Harris and McHugh, at least, should be a priority for Houston as well. Letting Rondón and Smith walk will leave about 85 innings and Smith’s strong performance to replace, of course, but this year’s relatively strong relief market (10 relievers are projected for at least half a win, including Harris and McHugh) means there’s ample opportunity to do so if Houston is willing to spend a little money.

It’s not clear that the Astros will in fact spend — our RosterResource payroll page for Houston estimates the Astros 2020 payroll at $221 million with their luxury tax payroll estimate higher, and both are in excess of the initial $208 million luxury tax threshold. But if they do choose to spend, and in particular spend on their bullpen, they’ll have a number of intriguing options to choose between. Chris Martin, lately of the Braves, has the height the Astros like in their pitchers (he’s 6-foot-8), was significantly better against lefties than righties last year (allowing a .239 wOBA against them, versus .318 to righties), and has above-average spin on his fastball. Sounds like a Houston reliever to me. Robbie Erlin, Jake Diekman, and Will Smith could also be intriguing for different reasons (fastball spin rate, lefty splits, and overall competence respectively), but if I were Houston I’d feel pretty satisfied with an offseason that included signing Martin and retaining Harris and McHugh.

Despite getting beaten on a good pitch in the World Series, Harris will likely command a hefty premium this offseason as a number of contending teams seek bullpen help and take note of his sterling performance for the Astros over the last half-decade. The median crowd estimate you gave for his services was two years at $7 million a year — Kiley predicted two years at $10 million a year, which I think is somewhat more likely — but at either price, I think the Astros would be silly to let him walk, particularly given Rondón, Smith, and McHugh’s concurrent free agencies.

Like Aroldis Chapman, who just extended his time with the Yankees, Harris is well into his 30s and lost a mile per hour or so on his fastball and curveball in 2019. Those factors will probably keep the offers mostly to two years, as you projected, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the winning team ends up being the one that guarantees a third year. If that is the case, his new team should take comfort in the fact that Harris, like Chapman, adjusted to his declining velocity this season by increasing the rate at which he threw his breaking ball (in Harris’ case, that curve), and found success throwing that pitch out of the zone for strike three, or to steal a strike on the second pitch of a sequence, as we can see in this chart from Baseball Savant (cutters are in brown, curves in blue):

Bullpens aren’t everything, of course, but they’re of outsized importance in the postseason, where the Astros’ poor relief performances played a major part in their loss to the Nationals. As Houston stares down the decisions in front of them this offseason — the pursuit of Cole probably foremost among them — they’d do well to set a little bit of money aside for two of the players who helped carry them as far as they got last year, and perhaps a little bit more for one or two who can help them do more of what they did so well in 2019.

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. It is adapted from a longer version included in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Lou Whitaker made baseball look easy. No less a writer than Roger Angell marveled over his “ball-bearing smoothness afield and remarkable hand-speed at bat.” But to some, the ease with which the game came to the Tigers’ longtime second baseman suggested that he lacked effort, hard work, or passion for the game, and it didn’t help that Whitaker wasn’t one for self-promotion. He let his performance do the talking, and for the better part of his 19 seasons in the majors, that performance spoke volumes. A top-of-the-lineup spark plug and an outstanding defender, he paired with Alan Trammell to form the longest-running double-play combination in history. He earned All-Star honors five times and won three Gold Gloves along the way, solid totals that nonetheless undersell his contributions.

Whitaker retired one year before Trammell did, and thus reached the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot a year earlier. Shockingly, a player hailed as a potential Hall of Famer during his career received just 2.9% in 2001, which ruled him out from further consideration by the writers and prevented his inclusion on Veterans Committee or Expansion Era Committee ballots during the remaining 14 years that he could have been on the writers’ ballot. Trammell wasn’t elected by the BBWAA either, but after spending 15 years on the ballot, he and longtime Tigers teammate Jack Morris were tabbed by the Modern Baseball Era Committee in 2018, the first living ex-players elected to the Hall by any small-committee process since 2001. Their eligibility raised Whitaker’s profile, and this year, for the first time, he’s on a committee ballot as well. That doesn’t guarantee his election, but based upon the weight of his accomplishments, the honor is long overdue.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ll learn more about what the 30 teams have in store for the offseason in the coming days. Not in any great detail (and some subterfuge is inevitable), but with varying degrees of forthcomingness, information will indeed be shared. The GM meetings begin tomorrow, in Scottsdale, with media sessions scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Will your favorite team actively pursue a trade for Mookie Betts? Do they have their eyes trained, and checkbooks already open, on free agents such as Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon… or perhaps Andrew Cashner or Jordy Mercer? Answers to those kinds of questions are reliably vague at best, but inquiries of a different ilk often elicit thoughtful responses.

I got a head start on the executive-Q&A front during last month’s NLCS. Eschewing anything roster-related — not the right time and place — I asked St. Louis Cardinals Vice President/General Manager Michael Girsch if he and his front office cohorts had anything cooking behind the scenes. His answer reflected just how much the game continues to evolve.

“We’re kind of reorganizing our baseball development group a little bit,” said Girsch. “The amount of data keeps increasing exponentially. It’s gone from your basic back of a baseball card, 10 or 15 years ago, to TrackMan, to StatCast, and beyond. The infrastructure that worked at one point doesn’t work anymore. When I started, everything was in Excel, on my laptop. That became nonviable pretty quickly, and now we’re moving beyond the servers we have, to other issues.”

Is keeping up more a matter of adding staff, or streamlining the process already in place? Girsch’s response reflected the fact that bigger fish — relative to the here and now — still needed to be fried. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s return from vacation and Meg and Sam’s episodes in his absence, former Angels minor leaguer Mike Fish (not to be confused with Mike Trout), and a roundup of recent news, including Stephen Strasburg opting out, J.D. Martinez not opting out, Mookie Betts trade rumors, robot umps coming to the minor leagues, new old Hall of Fame candidates, and comments by Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos that kicked off a collusion conversation. Then (39:11) they talk to 98-year-old Eddie Robinson, the second-oldest living former major leaguer, about finding time to play baseball during the Great Depression and his 65-year career in pro ball, including making the majors in 1942, serving in the Navy during World War II, winning the 1948 World Series in Cleveland, playing against Jackie Robinson, with Satchel Paige, and on the great Yankees teams of the mid-1950s, his friendships with Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, and other greats, lending Babe Ruth a bat, getting involved with the early Players Association, working for larger-than-life owners, and hiring the first sabermetrician.

Audio intro: Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs, "Return"
Audio interstitial: Small Faces, "Eddie’s Dreaming"
Audio outro: The Crystals, "I Love You Eddie"

Link to Baseball-Reference page for Mike Fish
Link to college player page for Mike Fish
Link to Rob Arthur on robot umps
Link to Eddie’s SABR bio
Link to Eddie and his wife at the 2016 World Series
Link to Eddie and his wife in 1955
Link to 2016 article about Eddie and Bobby Brown
Link to photo of Eddie in 1947
Link to famous 1948 Babe Ruth bat photo
Link to alternate Babe bat photo with Eddie in background
Link to 1948 Cleveland infield (Eddie third from left)
Link to Eddie celebrating the 1948 win with Bob Lemon and Joe Gordon
Link to Eddie with Ken Keltner and Gordon
Link to Eddie with Minnie Miñoso
Link to Eddie at the 1953 ASG, flanked by Lemon and Mickey Mantle
Link to Eddie with Moose Skowron, Hank Bauer, and Yogi Berra
Link to Eddie in 2019
Link to Eddie’s autobiography
Link to order The MVP Machine

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At this time last year, the Cleveland Indians were coming off a disappointing exit from the playoffs after getting swept by the Astros in the Division Series. Michael Brantley was on his way out the door as a free agent, soon to join the team that had ousted him from the playoffs in October. His departure left a gaping hole on Cleveland’s roster with no obvious internal replacements. Signing a free-agent outfielder seemed like an obvious need, but no significant move came. The Indians entered the season with the outfield trio of Jake Bauers, Leonys Martín, and the husk of Carlos González. Reinforcements arrived as the season wore on; Yasiel Puig came over in a trade with Cincinnati, and Cleveland’s 12th-ranked prospect Oscar Mercado made his major league debut.

Cleveland’s outfield is in nearly the same state now as it was in early November last year. Puig is a free agent and they have Bauers, Mercado, and Greg Allen penciled in as their starting outfield trio. Luckily, it looks like Mercado can be a long-term solution in center field.

Originally drafted by the Cardinals as a glove-first shortstop out of high school in the second round of the 2013 draft, Mercado struggled to hit during his first few years as a professional. Over his first four seasons in the minors spanning three different levels, he posted a combined 79 wRC+. The Cardinals shifted him to center field in 2017 and he enjoyed a breakout year at the plate, posting a 114 wRC+ in Double-A. Here’s how Eric Longenhagen described Mercado’s improved approach prior to the 2018 season:

Mercado has embraced his modest, but viable, pull-side pop and his approach is largely geared for contact in that direction. This narrow approach caused his strikeout rate (a career 13% entering the season) to spike, but Mercado is making loud contact for the first time in his career.

Mercado was traded to Cleveland at the deadline in 2018 and made his major league debut in May of this year. Through the ebbs and flows of his rookie campaign, he thrived when he stuck with the pull-heavy approach that got him to the majors.

Beyond his initial success in May and June, Mercado’s wOBA looked intimately tied to his pull rate through the rest of the season. He really struggled in August when his pull rate fell to 32.5%, and he rebounded in September when he started pulling the ball almost half the time. Just look at his splits based on batted ball direction:

It isn’t surprising to see such a productive split when pulling the ball, but Mercado’s batted ball profile almost makes it too easy to understand why he is so successful when doing so. When hitting to the opposite field, his exit velocity plummets to 81 mph while his fly ball rate jumps up to 64%. The result is lazy fly balls to right field that are easily converted to outs. The same problem occurs when he hits the ball up the middle to a less-extreme degree. His bat just doesn’t have enough pop to support elevating the ball so often when he isn’t pulling it too.

With an aggressive, high-contact approach at the plate, he should be able to leverage his elite sprint speed into more hits. But putting that many balls in the air when hitting to the right side really limits his opportunities to utilize his best tools. His 97th percentile sprint speed and his good contact rate seem like a fit for an approach that uses all fields, but his swing is geared towards pulling the ball to left. Perhaps there’s some middle ground between these two, but it might require making some adjustments to his swing.

Defensively, the former shortstop has excelled in the outfield. DRS thought he was the sixth-best center fielder in 2019 with nine runs saved. UZR was a little less impressed with just 2.8 runs saved, and Statcast’s defensive metrics back this up. He was five outs above average and his elite reaction time was the sixth-highest among all outfielders. Additionally, his elite sprint speed definitely helped him cover up some less-than-ideal routes.

Cleveland hasn’t had a regular full-time center fielder since Michael Bourn from 2013-2015. Nine different players have accumulated more than 100 innings in center since 2016. Mercado’s 1.7 WAR was the best mark posted by a Cleveland center fielder since Tyler Naquin’s rookie year in 2016. The Indians have plenty of fringe candidates to fill their outfield, as Allen, Bauers, Jordan Luplow, and Franmil Reyes all profile better as corner outfielders or fourth outfielders. Meanwhile, Naquin and Bradley Zimmer have unanswered health questions that will likely prevent them from taking a full-time job in 2020. Mercado’s defensive chops in center should allow him to provide everyday value and his bat shows enough promise to help him stick long-term. That’s one outfield spot down and two more to fill.

Bryce Harper and Manny Machado were the two best position players in free agency last year and each received contracts of at least $300 million. Anthony Rendon is better than Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. He was better last season and the year before that. Rendon’s 19.9 WAR over the last three years is fourth in baseball and more than any three-season stretch Harper and Machado have ever had. But nobody expects Rendon to get $300 million despite better play due to Rendon’s age. Harper and Machado were entering their age-26 seasons while Rendon will be 30 years old for most of next season. Rendon also doesn’t need to hit $300 million to get a contract just as good as Harper or Machado.

In our list of Top 50 Free Agents, both Kiley McDaniel and the crowd expected Rendon would receive right around seven years and $30 million per season. That’s clearly not in the stratosphere of Harper and Machado, but the average annual value is equivalent to Machado’s deal and higher than Harper’s. If we were to look at the present-day value of these contracts with an 8% discount annually, Rendon’s deal is the equivalent of about $233 million spread over 10 years while Harper’s is more like $305 million. To get Rendon equivalent money on a seven-year deal, he would need to receive $270 million distributed evenly over the next seven years. Rendon probably won’t get that, but his value might be pretty close.

Over at MLB.com, Mike Petriello looked at Rendon by age, position, defense, and offensive performance to find similar players. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, we posted a roundup of the top 50 free agents on the market this winter. We’ve already seen a couple of the guys near the top of that list either rework their contract or choose not to opt out, but the rest of the list remains unsigned.

Today we’re taking a look at the plausible landing spots for the top free agents left. A top-six list is a little awkward and perhaps less SEO friendly than a top five, but our fifth- and sixth-place players were projected for the same salary, so we’ve included both here. This post isn’t necessarily a prediction of where certain guys will sign, but rather, it’s a look at which teams should be in the market for these top talents given what we know about their ambitions and financial priorities. Spoiler: You won’t see the Red Sox listed below.

1. Gerrit Cole
Kiley’s estimate: 7 Years, $242 million
Should be interested: Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, Chicago Cubs, Texas Rangers, St. Louis Cardinals, honestly the whole league
Perfect fit: Los Angeles Angels

Cole may not capture the Cy Young this year, but after a dominating October in which his very presence loomed as the most significant storyline in each series Houston played, the consensus is that he’s the best pitcher in baseball. We haven’t seen that kind of arm hit the free agent market since CC Sabathia after the 2008 season. There isn’t a club in baseball that wouldn’t benefit from Cole’s services, even at the imposing price he’ll command. At the very least, every nominal contender in baseball should be evaluating what they can do to bring the big right-hander to their city.

His list of serious suitors figures to be quite smaller than that, and most of them are out west. The Dodgers make plenty of sense. Despite seven straight NL West titles, the club hasn’t won a championship with this core, and subpar starting pitching in the playoffs has been a big reason why they’ve fallen short. Is there a player better positioned to fill that gap than Cole? Read the rest of this entry »

In the second of a six-part series — you can see the AL East here — I’ll be highlighting each team’s most notable free agents and how it could fill the resulting void on the roster. A player’s rank on our recently released Top 50 Free Agents list, along with Kiley McDaniel’s contract estimates from that exercise, are listed where relevant. In some cases, the team already has a capable replacement ready to step in. In others, it’s clear the team will either attempt to re-sign their player or look to the trade or free agent markets for help. The remaining cases are somewhere in between, with in-house candidates who might be the answer, but aren’t such obvious everyday players to keep the team from shopping around for better options.

Here’s a look at the American League Central.

Chicago White Sox | Depth Chart | Payroll

Jose Abreu, 1B/DH
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 44
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 1 year, $11M

Andrew Vaughn, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2019 amateur draft and the White Sox’s first baseman of the future, isn’t likely to need much time down on the farm. But it’s rare that any prospect, even one as advanced at the plate as the 21-year-old Vaughn, doesn’t spend at least one full season in the minors. Therefore, the White Sox will require a stopgap at first base in 2020 and have already taken a necessary step to keeping Abreu around for at least one more season.

The 32-year-old was tendered a qualifying offer, which will hurt his value if he wants to test the free agent waters. He could just settle for the one-year, $17.8 million contract or work out a long-term deal that would ensure he’s around to mentor the next wave of prospects, which could include Vaughn, second baseman Nick Madrigal, and outfielders Luis Robert and Luis Alexander Basabe, all who could arrive during the next two seasons. Read the rest of this entry »