Corbin Burnes is now out for the year in our OOTP simulation. Josh Lindblom 린드블럼 won’t be back until August. Should we go big in the trade market? Cobble together a rotation out of spare parts in Triple-A? The world is our oyster, so long as the world mostly consists of mediocre pitching. Read the rest of this entry »
This series is careening headlong towards a conclusion. The Giants are in the building, winning World Series in droves. The Rangers are around, with Ron Washington telling players about the difficulty of playing defense, and also batting whoever he wants wherever he wants. And the decisions — well, they’re still baffling. But enough exposition. Let’s get right to it.
Ah, yes, the inevitable-in-hindsight even-year Giants. It’s easy to think of these teams in retrospect as scrappy overachievers. But they had an excellent lineup — leadoff hitter Andres Torres had a career year (125 wRC+, 6.3 WAR) and led off, and six other above-average hitters followed him, in roughly comprehensible order. The team finished sixth in baseball in non-pitcher wRC+; they were a legit offense.
The Rangers were a different story. Elvis Andrus had his worst offensive year — and led off. Michael Young, already on the decline, batted second. Mitch Moreland strangely batted behind Bengie Molina in Game 1 — against right-handed Tim Lincecum. Texas might have had the better names, but the Giants had the better offense in 2010.
In Game 1, it showed. There weren’t any interesting decisions to make, because the Giants hung seven runs on Rangers ace Cliff Lee and another four on the bullpen. Bruce Bochy mixed and matched a total of six relievers, but the game never got too close for comfort. Game 2 was more of the same — Mitch Moreland batted behind a defense-first catcher (Matt Treanor this time) and the Giants obliterated the Texas bullpen en route to a 9-0 pasting. Read the rest of this entry »
While we can hope there’s a 2020 season that provides both quality baseball and sufficient safety protocols for players, team personnel, and those who work in the game’s orbit, a lot of things have to come together to make such a season happen. A number of COVID-19-related health concerns and continued issues between labor and ownership could cause the season to stall before it ever starts.
In a very real sense, if this happens, everybody loses. But in a baseball sense, the consequences of a lost 2020 season won’t weigh equally on every team. While we maintain the fiction that every team enters the season with a real chance to win the World Series, our story’s ending is more like that of one of those German fairy tales; even if Ron Gardenhire is unlikely to be eaten by a wolf, the Detroit Tigers were always long shots to go 70-92.
Teams had different ideas about what they wanted to accomplish in 2020, and for some teams, this season was more crucial for their long-term goals — in one way or another — than it was for others.
Many analysts, myself included, have bemoaned the lack of ambition many teams have displayed the last few offseasons, with winning clubs seemingly most concerned with not paying luxury tax penalties or spinning tales of financial hardship too fanciful even for the Brothers Grimm. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Meg Rowley banter about MLB’s proposed in-game distancing measures and what degree of difference from the norm would prevent the game from still looking like baseball, then draft and discuss their favorite highly specific ways in which to follow a baseball game, whether in person or from afar.
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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.
On Saturday, Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic obtained a lengthy document that meticulously outlines the health and safety measures MLB considers key to holding a 2020 season. Those protocols cover everything from how the game will be played on the field to what the behavior of players and essential team employees should look like away from the ballpark, and serve as yet another glimpse into just how physically and mentally challenging it will be to play baseball in the middle of a global pandemic.
One can read the details of the proposal as a bulleted list in Rosenthal and Drellich’s report, or absorb them in the day-in-the-life example Jeff Passan worked out at ESPN. Both reports paint an image of baseball in 2020 in which the reminders of what’s currently happening in the world are constant, unrelenting, and bleak. During games, non-playing personnel must wear masks in the dugout and may be relegated to the stadium seats, where they must sit at least four seats apart from and two rows behind each other. Once a baseball has been put in play and touched by multiple players, it’ll be tossed aside and replaced with a new one. Between pitches, players are encouraged to be as distanced from one another as possible. Read the rest of this entry »
Though he played regularly for only 10 of the 19 seasons he spent in the majors, Bob Watson left his mark on the field as a two-time All-Star and an exceptional hitter whose numbers were suppressed by the pitcher-friendly Astrodome, not unlike former teammate Jimmy Wynn, who died on March 26. Off the field, Watson left an even bigger imprint. When he was hired to serve as the general manager of the Astros, he was just the second African American in the game’s history to fulfill that role. He lasted two seasons at that post before accepting that same title with the Yankees, though the job turned out to be much different in the orbit of owner George Steinbrenner and a dysfunctional front office. Nonetheless, when the Yankees won the World Series in 1996, Watson became the first African American GM to oversee a championship team. He later had a role in assembling the rosters of two Olympic medal-winning USA teams and spent nine years as a vice president for Major League Baseball.
Watson, who battled health issues on and off since being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1994, died on Thursday at the age of 74 following a long battle with kidney disease.
Though known as “Bull” for his sturdy physique (often cited as 6-foot-2 in the 205-217 pound range during his playing days but listed at a more modest six feet and 201 pounds via Baseball-Reference) and his strength, Watson was “a gentle giant… an incredibly kind person, and a mentor” according to Brian Cashman, who served as the Yankees’ assistant general manager under Watson and then succeeded him upon Watson’s resignation in February, 1998.
Born on April 10, 1946 in Los Angeles to parents who separated before his birth, Watson was raised by his grandparents, Henry and Olsie Stewart, in the city’s South Central neighborhood. He starred as a catcher at John C. Fremont High School, playing on a team that won the 1963 Los Angeles city championship alongside future major league outfielders Willie Crawford and Bobby Tolan. After graduating, he attended Los Angeles Harbor College, and signed with the Astros on January 31, 1965, just over four months ahead of the first amateur draft. He received a $3,200 signing bonus. Read the rest of this entry »
On Sunday, Christian Yelich powered the virtual Brewers to an emphatic 9-3 victory over Trevor Bauer and the Reds. It was part of a week long five-homer outburst, the driving force behind a .303/.361/.818 slash line. And it brought Yelich to 2.9 WAR on the season, the third-best tally in the majors. In other words, Yelich is picking up right where he left off in 2019.
So, too, are the Brewers. That rout was part of a 3-1 series victory over the Reds. The other series of the week was a 2-1 triumph over the Cubs. Together, they left us eight games over .500 and in first place by four games in the NL Central. Perhaps most impressively, the team’s run differential is now positive despite a 25-run loss earlier in the year.
But the good times weren’t universal. In Thursday’s contest against the Reds, starter Corbin Burnes felt a twinge in his shoulder as he pitched in the third inning. He left the game and immediately returned to Milwaukee for an MRI, which revealed severe shoulder inflammation. Within a day, team doctors ruled him out for the remainder of the season — he’ll hopefully be ready for rehab over the winter and pitch the entire 2021 season, but 2020 is out of the question at this point.
The pitching casualties are starting to pile up. Burnes joins Josh Lindblom 린드블럼 and Alex Claudio on the out-for-quite-a-while list — Lindblom will be able to begin rehab assignments in late July, while Claudio is out for the year. Brett Anderson is, for the moment, healthy, but he’s already hit the IL twice this year with forearm stiffness and a hamstring strain. There’s no guarantee he’ll be able to keep it together the rest of the season. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, MLB presented documents to the player’s union regarding the financial implications of playing the 2020 season without fans. In an exclusive report, the Associated Press has revealed a considerable amount of the contents of those disclosures. The main takeaways are in the title — “MLB projects $640K per game loss with no fans” — and the third paragraph, which reads:
Teams say the proposed method of salvaging a season delayed by the coronavirus pandemic would still cause a $4 billion loss and would give major league players 89% of revenue.
That $4 billion figure was echoed by Commissioner Rob Manfred on CNN on Friday, except that he indicated in that interview those would be the losses if no season is played. Given that these documents are an attempt to convince the MLPBA to take less money and to put public opinion on the side of the owners against the players, it is fair to take these figures with a bit of a grain of salt. Let’s try to work through the numbers and answer some of the questions raised by the information in the presentation as reported in the AP piece.
First, the big question.
No. At least, they won’t if games are played. There’s a graph in the AP piece that shows team-by-team losses from an 82-game schedule played with no fans in the stands. The losses range from $312 million for the Yankees down to $84 million for the Tigers. The total losses come to around $4.4 billion, an average of $147 million per team and a median of $135 million. But this figure is misleading as it does not include MLB’s estimate of central revenues, which amount to $1.35 billion. Even taking MLB at its word, the losses immediately move down to $3 billion.
And depending on how revenues and costs are interpreted, the losses might be considerably lighter. First, there’s the issue of amateur spending. In the March agreement, the players agreed to let the owners defer about $425 million in spending to future years, but that $425 million is still included in the loss figure for this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, I explored how each of the National League Cy Young winners of the 1980s were acquired. Six came to their teams in trade, while two were acquired through the amateur draft and one had his contract purchased from the Mexican League. Highlighting the American League list is a 19th overall draft pick, a 19th round draft pick, and two players who are probably better known for their post-playing careers than they were for their time as big league pitchers. Here’s a look back at how the AL Cy Young winners of the 1980s were acquired.
| Rank | Name | Team | Age | How Acquired | W | L | IP | ERA | FIP | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CY | Steve Stone | BAL | 32 | Free Agent (CHW) Nov’78 | 25 | 7 | 250.2 | 3.23 | 3.99 | 2.9 |
| 2nd | Mike Norris | OAK | 25 | Drafted 1st Rd (24) ’73 | 22 | 9 | 284.1 | 2.53 | 3.25 | 6.0 |
| Rank | Name | Team | Age | How Acquired | W | Sv | IP | ERA | FIP | WAR |
| 3rd | Rich Gossage | NYY | 28 | Free Agent (PIT) Nov’77 | 6 | 33 | 99.0 | 2.27 | 2.48 | 3.2 |
Eight years into his big league career, Steve Stone had played on just two winning teams. As a rookie in 1971, he made 19 starts for a first place Giants team with four future Hall of Famers on the roster. Six years later, he was a 15-game winner for a third place White Sox team that came won 90 games. The following season, they lost 90. A 31-year-old free agent entering the 1978-79 offseason, Stone had plenty of suitors. Playing for a winning ball club was certainly a top priority, which made his decision to sign a four-year, $760,000 contract with the Baltimore Orioles an unsurprising one. Read the rest of this entry »
