Episode 873

Fresh off the conclusion of the 2019 season, FanGraphs’ Lead Prospect Analyst Eric Longenhagen joins the program to discuss a few moments of potentially questionable decision-making during the World Series, some Umpiring Choices during that same Fall Classic, and our experience of robo-umps in the Arizona Fall League and a few prospects who stood out there, as well as the merits of the word “spooktacular.”

A word of warning for those listeners with tender ears: This episode does contain three swears. Those swears are not the fault of Dylan Higgins, who is away, but are instead the fault of the host, who got flummoxed by the prospect of editing them out. Generous listeners who are not undone by those bad words might describe the episode as “loose.” Those with a vendetta against the host might instead assert that said host sounds tired. Both camps might be correct.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour and 13 min play time.)

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After 11 offseasons of organizing and updating the depth charts at Roster Resource (formerly known as MLBDepthCharts), this will be my first at FanGraphs. In case you’re not familiar with how I cover the offseason, here’s a rundown of how the depth charts and payroll pages work.

These features are now in offseason mode, meaning that all free agents have been removed from their 2019 teams and a projected Opening Day 26-man roster is displayed. As roster moves occur and news is reported, these projections will be updated almost immediately and announced on my Twitter account.

If you find yourself scratching your head about a particular projection — the World Champion Nationals, for example, begin with Jake Noll and Wilmer Difo as their starting first and second baseman, respectively — it’s very likely because you’ve discovered a team need. If you disagree with a projection, we might just have differing opinions. It’s also possible that I’m overlooking something and would greatly appreciate hearing your opinion on the matter. Twitter is the easiest way to make a suggestion or report an error.

It’s important to note that these are Opening Day roster projections. Once we incorporate 2020 stats projections in the depth charts, you will notice that certain players listed in the Minor League section are expected to play an integral role for the upcoming season.

Since offseason moves do not become official right away, I use my best judgement to decide when a free agent signing or trade will be reflected on the site. There have been a few occasions over the years when I have had to “undo” a reported move (i.e. Dexter Fowler agreed to a contract with the Orioles on February 23, 2016 before re-signing with Cubs on February 25, 2016 ). For the most part, a roster move will be reflected on a depth chart once enough credible reporters have confirmed it to consider it a done deal.

Options remaining, major league service time, and Rule 5 eligibility have all been updated through the 2019 season. These are unofficial and based on my own count. Certain players can be granted a fourth option, which is usually not widely reported.

If a player has “R5” in the “Options or R5 status” column, they are eligible for next month’s Rule 5 draft. Players not on the 40-man roster who show that they have options remaining because of previous major league experience are also eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Teams have until November 20 to add players to their 40-man roster, which would protect those players who are eligible from the Rule 5 draft.

Below the 26-man roster projection is the “Minor Leaguers You Should Know” section, sorted by primary position. The purpose of this section is to identify players who are moving up the ladder toward the major leagues. Once I determine that a player is no longer making progress, I remove them from the list. Here is an overview of the criteria I use to determine whether a players is notable enough to be included.

Players are automatically included if they meet any of the following criteria:

• On the 40-man roster
• Non-Roster Invitee (not on 40-man roster; invited to major league camp during 2020 Spring Training)
• Invited to the 2019 Arizona Fall League (while AFL participants are not always top prospects, players chosen by their organization are typically in the upper minors and expected to reach the majors within a year or two).
• Top 30 prospect in the organization, per the most recent rankings from FanGraphs
• Drafted in the first 10 rounds of 2019 Amateur Draft

Players are also included if they’ve met some combination of the following criteria:

• Productive 2019 season:
• Typically a .700+ OPS or better for position players; could be slightly lower for catchers, second basemen, shortstops and center fielders if speed, on-base ability, and/or defense are strong attributes.
• Typically a sub-4.00 ERA with average BB/9 rate (4.0 and under) and above-average K/9 rate (8.0 and over), with the caveat that relievers in the low minors must do significantly better to be recognized.
• If a player did not meet the criteria based on statistical production, other factors such as ceiling, position, age, and level are taken into account.

Payroll pages are explained in depth here. During the offseason, the salary breakdown for a new contract is spread evenly as an “estimated salary” until official numbers are reported. Estimated salaries are displayed in italics. Projected salaries for arbitration-eligible players, courtesy of MLB Trade Rumors, are displayed in italics with a light green background.

We’ll be adding 2020 projections to the depth charts in the near future. Feel free to let us know what other information you’d like see while viewing the depth charts in the comments below.

Do you think the end of the baseball season results in a nice vacation for front offices? Poppycock! Horsefeathers! Archaic 19th Century Declaration of Shock! Hundreds of players will be able to offer their services on the open market after the post-postseason quiet period ends in a few days. With those free agency entrants comes a significant decision for teams: whether to extend qualifying offers to their departing free agents. And unlike paying your water, electric, or taco bill, it’s an actual choice that has to be made.

For those who don’t have the qualifying offer rules committed to memory, a refresher is in order. If a free agent spent the entire season on one team’s roster and has never before received a qualifying offer, his team can choose to extend to him a qualifying offer in order to receive draft pick compensation should he elect to sign with another team.

If a team makes a free agent a qualifying offer and received revenue sharing, they get a pick after the first round of the draft if the player is guaranteed at least $50 million by his new team. If they did not receive revenue sharing, their comp picks comes after the second round. If the team did not receive revenue sharing and did not exceed the luxury tax, they get a post-round two pick no matter the free agent’s new contract. The increasingly rare number of teams that exceed the soft salary cap luxury tax threshold pick after round four.

The qualifying offer is a one-year deal equivalent to the average of the salary of the top 125 highest-paid players in baseball. For the first time ever, the qualifying offer went down this year as owners realize that not paying for stuff is a lot more fun than paying for stuff, even if it doesn’t always result in winning baseball games.

The decision to make a free agent a qualifying offer has real consequences for players and teams, sometimes disastrous ones. The Cleveland Indians let Michael Brantley walk scot-free after the 2018 season, unwilling to risk “having to” sign a player coming off a 3.5 WAR season to a reasonably priced one-year contract. Brantley was worth 4.2 WAR in 2019; the Indians were patching holes in their outfield the entire season. Cleveland finished three games behind the Wild Card road team, the Tampa Bay Rays, so you can do the math there. Read the rest of this entry »

The list of baseball’s winningest teams is one that any franchise would want to be on, but if we take that list and remove the World Series champions, it becomes something of a bummer. Everyone remembers the 2001 Mariners more for what they didn’t do than what they did. It’s not clear how history will remember the 2019 Astros. It seems likely this club will simply get tossed in with the 2017 team that did win it all, taking some of the sting away from not being able to claim a second championship this season. Though perhaps difficult for Houston and its fans right now, we should remember just how great this team was. There’s a reason the Astros’ World Series odds were so high for so long, and it’s because they put together a roster that, over the course of the regular season and much of the postseason, was a lot better than everyone else.

The table below feels almost obligatory, but here’s a list of the teams to win least 105 games, with how their seasons finished:

Read the rest of this entry »

The offseason is almost upon us, which is sad, so we’re hosting a reader event at SubCulture in New York City on Thursday, November 21 to help get through the long winter months. The evening will feature drinks, plenty of time for mingling, and a fun slate of not one, not two, but three panels staffed by FanGraphs writers and our friends from around the game, plus audience Q&A.

The panel lineups are below. Ringer staff writer and Effectively Wild co-host Ben Lindbergh and I will emcee the proceedings to make sure no one misbehaves too badly. And while we hope you’ll join us live, if you can’t, don’t fret. The panel program will be released as an episode of Effectively Wild.

Major League Update
Jay Jaffe and The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler and Marc Carig.

Baseball by the Numbers
Craig Edwards and MLB.com’s Mike Petriello

UMP: The Untitled McDongenhagen Panel
Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel

Doors open at 7 PM; the event will kick off at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $35. FanGraphs members will receive $10 off each ticket purchased — a coupon will be automatically applied if you are logged in when you purchase.

Tickets can be purchased here.

We hope to see you there!

Event Details
Thursday, November 21
SubCulture New York, 45 Bleecker Street, New York, NY
Doors open at 7 PM
Program begins at 7:30 PM

The event is all-ages, though children under 8 years of age are not allowed in the venue.

Please note, the venue is an easy walk (within two blocks) from the 6 at Bleecker Street, the B/D/F at Broadway-Lafayette, and the N/Q/R/W at Prince.

Gerardo Parra reached base only one time in the World Series, a walk against Josh James in Game 4. It wasn’t a key moment in the series — the Nationals were down 4-0, and while Parra scored, the Nats lost 8-1. When he reached first base, he was downright businesslike:

But businesslike isn’t normally a good description of Parra’s time on the Nationals. He’s widely regarded as a great clubhouse guy, ambushing Stephen Strasburg with hugs and keeping things light over the long grind of a season. He also, you may have heard, uses “Baby Shark” as his walkup music, a song that Nationals fans and players alike have rallied around.

If you’re curious, here’s a handy guide of the hand signals the Nationals make after hits:

Read the rest of this entry »

In an interview that ran here last week, Red Sox Senior Vice President/Assistant General Manager Zack Scott suggested that Dave Dombrowski’s successor will be heavily invested in analytics. That turned out to be an understatement. On Monday, Chaim Bloom — an integral cog in Tampa Bay’s cutting-edge front office since 2005 — was formally introduced as Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer.

If you paid heed to the press conference, you’re aware that “collaborative” was the buzzword of the day. Bloom, principal owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner, and president/CEO Sam Kennedy used the term (and variants thereof) as frequently and purposefully as “Trick or Treat” is heard on Halloween.

Dombrowski didn’t depart Fenway Park in a gorilla costume, as Theo Epstein famously did in 2005, but the reason he’s being replaced isn’t cloaked in mystery. However much the ownership group cares to dance around it, Dombrowski didn’t fully embrace the collaborative process that was deemed necessary to move the team forward, certainly not to the extent they expect Bloom to do so.

Couching his comments with, “I wouldn’t contrast the two,” Henry said from the dais that ownership was “extremely desirous of bringing in someone who would augment and add, as opposed to bringing in someone who might have been an autocrat.” Read the rest of this entry »

It is not an indictment of a pitcher to allow a home run to Anthony Rendon. He hit 34 of those this season, and 104 over the past four seasons combined. It is also no grand failure to walk Juan Soto. The precocious 21-year-old was issued 108 free passes this season, the third-most in the National League. He also hits for quite a bit of power, so sometimes, a pitcher is content watching Soto trot down to first if it doesn’t mean he just yanked a pitch into the seats. When Rendon homered and Soto walked in back-to-back plate appearances in the seventh inning of Game 7 of the World Series on Wednesday, it wasn’t, as Craig Edwards wrote earlier today, a sure sign that Houston starter Zack Greinke had run out of gas. But it was spooky enough to make Astros manager A.J. Hinch reach for his bullpen, bringing in Will Harris to face Howie Kendrick with a 2-1 lead.

By now, you know what happened next. Kendrick poked his bat head through the bottom of the zone and got enough of a Harris fastball to drill the foul pole in right field for a two-run homer. The shot gave the Nationals their first lead of the game, and they never looked back, adding three more runs the rest of the way while their bullpen stymied Houston’s destructive lineup en route to a 6-2 final and their first World Series championship in franchise history. Harris is a very good pitcher, and he made a good pitch — a cutter that was on track to perfectly dot the low and outside corner of the strike zone. But Kendrick came up with the only possible swing that could have done damage against it, and in doing so, delivered a fatal blow to the Astros’ historically great season. It also nullified a performance by Greinke that could have served as the defining moment of his career.

Greinke allowed two runs in six and two-thirds innings on Wednesday, despite allowing just four baserunners. For comparison’s sake, his counterpart, Max Scherzer, allowed the same number of runs in five innings while allowing 11 to take base. Before the two-out homer and walk in the sixth, Greinke had been spectacular. He faced the minimum 12 batters over the first four innings of the game, allowing just one hit — a single by Soto — that was wiped out on a double play. He issued his first walk with one out in the fifth inning against Kendrick, but bounced back from that with two quick outs to end the threat, before throwing another 1-2-3 frame in the next inning. After six scoreless, Greinke had thrown just 66 pitches. While Scherzer labored on the other side, having to gut through each inning after falling behind hitters repeatedly and setting up potentially disastrous situations with men on base, Greinke seemed to be on cruise control. Read the rest of this entry »