“A pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.” – Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance

Of all the realistic playoff contenders in 2019, the one that surprised me the most was the Texas Rangers. I have a feeling the Rangers were equally startled. Without successfully developing a new rotation from within or reaching the point when the wallets would be opened for prime free agent talent, the Rangers spent much of 2019 with realistic Wild Card hopes. Texas played under the .500 mark after the All-Star break and fell safely out of postseason contention, but you can’t say it wasn’t enjoyable.

The Setup

It’s always hard to say goodbye to your greatest victories. The Rangers have a rich and storied history of decent-but-unspectacular success since moving to Texas. Never triumphant as the Washington Senators II: Electric Boogaloo, the team had plenty of interesting eras populated with fascinating seasons, but it took until the 1990s for the team to make the playoffs and nearly another 15 years for the team to start winning there. While I’d be hard-pressed to call the 2010s Rangers a true dynasty, five playoff appearances in seven seasons, including two World Series, is a track record a lot of teams would envy.

But anything that can’t last forever won’t. The team’s core faded or departed, and by the time their most recent winning season rolled around in 2016, the Rangers were mainly running on the fumes of past squads. Not helping matters were two giant financial gambles meant to forestall the decline that I argued were monumental blunders: swapping Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder and signing Shin-Soo Choo to a seven-year, $130 million contract.

The team avoided doing the full slash-and-burn rebuild, hoping instead that a few of the youngish players such as Joey Gallo and Rougned Odor were part of the foundation for the next contending Texas team. Developing a new rotation was slower progress, and the veteran fill-ins meant to eat innings mostly bombed in 2018. Ten pitchers started at least five games for the 2018 Rangers, but only three returned to the team in 2019: Mike Minor, Ariel Jurado, and Yohander Méndez. Jurickson Profar was shipped out to enhance minor league depth. Otherwise, the team’s most significant offseason move was a three-year, $30 million contract with Lance Lynn; Shelby Miller’s one-year deal was of the lottery ticket variety. Bringing in Lynn was an interesting FIP vs. ERA gamble, for while Lynn added a run in ERA from 2017 to 2018, he also subtracted a run in FIP.

The Projection

At the start of the season, ZiPS was quite pessimistic about Texas’ chances of cobbling together an adequate rotation. At 68-94, ZiPS gave the Rangers the second-worst chances of making the playoffs in the American League, only barely escaping the rounding-to-zero humiliation of the Baltimore Orioles. While there was a very good argument to be made that the Rangers had more going for them than the AL Central also-rans, they also played in a significantly tougher division.

ZiPS expected little from the pitching staff after league-average Mike Minor/Lance Lynn projections, and while the offensive projections were slightly less bleak, only Joey Gallo was forecast to eclipse the two-win mark. Even the team’s younger hitters, like Rougned Odor and Nomar Mazara, had serious concerns that held down the projections. When would Odor stop going into half-season slumps? How do you shape Mazara’s raw power into a more refined version?

Better seasons were on the menu — a large market team with a new park would be unlikely to cry poor — but the computer did not see one of those as coming in 2019.

The Results

The Rangers didn’t burst out of the gate in 2019, but they played far better baseball than I expected. I was quite harsh about the team keeping Hunter Pence on the roster over Willie Calhoun, but Pence had a lot more baseball remaining than I expected and hit .294/.353/.608 before a groin injury sidelined him in mid-June. Minor and Lynn weren’t just adequate, but elevated the rotation to near-adequacy in the first half of the season, combining for 232 innings with a 3.22 ERA. Minor made the All-Star Game for the first time in his career, and Lynn spent much of the season leading the American League in FIP.

One of the best bits of news for the Rangers was Joey Gallo finally breaking out. It may seem odd to talk about a player with two 40-homer seasons as a disappointment, but Gallo’s low batting averages — even by 2010s standards — suppressed his on-base and slugging percentages enough to make it a stretch to call him a star. While you didn’t see it in his pure strikeout rate, Gallo knocked a whole quarter off of his out-of-zone swing percentage in 2019. That resulted in him getting far more non-homer hits than usual, enough to add 50 points to his batting average. Gallo’s not a speed demon, but he’s not Albert Pujols-slow either, and combined with his raw power, ZiPS was always befuddled why his career BABIP lingered stubbornly around the .250 mark. It will be hard to maintain the .368 BABIP he posted this year, but I think Gallo’s a more well-rounded hitter than he used to be.

Texas lingered around .500 for most of the summer, but that success was shallow and predicated on riding the bullpen and a small number of elite performances. The non-Lynn and Minor parts of the rotation contributed an abysmal 6.63 ERA. The offense’s 94 wRC+ was largely Gallo-driven, and when he broke the hamate bone in his wrist in July, ending his season with a .253/.389/.598 line, Texas’s offense collapsed; the Rangers put up an 80 wRC+ in the second half, which led only the Detroit Tigers.

Still in contention at the trade deadline, the organization faced a difficult question. Throwing in the towel when your playoff chances are more than theoretical is a tough decision, and if the Rangers were going to stay in the race, they’d have to figure out how to replace Gallo’s bat. The team decided — rightly, in my opinion — not to become buyers, but consistent with their skinny-rebuild, didn’t dump everyone with value. Their one big deadline trade, picking up Kolby Allard from the Braves for reliever Chris Martin, was one that would have been hard for any team to pass up. Likely getting unimpressive offers for Mike Minor in light of the weak return for Marcus Stroman, the Rangers kept the rest of the team together and played out the string.

What Comes Next?

As pleasant as it was to play meaningful baseball in 2019, the Rangers didn’t answer many questions. Picking up Nick Solak was a coup, but Rougned Odor was still undependable, Nomar Mozara’s breakout continued to elude him, and Delino DeShields lost 30 points of OBP over the summer. Elvis Andrus’s .242/.283/.322 second half again raises questions as to whether his 2016-2017 “comeback” was temporary. José Leclerc recovered from his early-season struggles, but I’d be lying if I said I was as high on him entering 2020 as I was in 2019.

I hate to say it about a team that decided not to go the full-tank route, but I feel that 2019’s success will be hard to build on in 2020. You can’t expect Lynn and Minor to match their 2019s, and given their ages and contract situations, winter trades are likely still in the club’s interest. A Calhoun-DeShields-Gallo outfield ought to be fine, but I don’t share that optimism with the non-Solak parts of the infield.

Looking at THE BOARD does not fill me with optimism either. The farm system boasts far more quantity than quality as it currently stands. The team has a whopping 44 prospects with a projected 40-grade or higher, but only a single 50. And that 50, Solak, is already accounted for above. ZiPS only shows significantly more promising results in Leody Taveras. There are no pitching prospects in the top 100 (and nobody I’d quibble with Eric and Kiley over) and few signs of a long-term first baseman or catcher.

The team has money to spend and could theoretically land Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon and Yasmani Grandal, should the mood strike them. The problem is that I’m no longer sure that would be quite enough. Some of their lesser prospects will work out, but when sorting through that many maybes, you need time and a lot of roster space.

I’m not as down on the team’s future as this may make me sound, but I’m very down on its turnaround happening as quickly as 2019’s record suggests.

The Absitively, Posilutely, Way-Too-Early ZiPS Projection – Lance Lynn

I liked the Lance Lynn signing and you can’t claim Texas didn’t win this one. While ZiPS never got too excited about Lynn in 2019, I think a lot of that was due to the nature of the in-season model being simpler than the season-to-season model. Lynn had the best fastball velocity of his career in 2019, a relevant stat for a player whose repertoire largely consists of three fastball variants. His two-seamer/sinker has always been the weakest of the three, with batters hitting nearly .300 against it over Lynn’s career. Lynn dialed back the use of the pitch in 2019, relying more on his bog-standard fastball and cutter. The extra velocity on the regular fastball — Lynn could push it to the high 90s at times — gave him some separation from the cutter. Lynn even added a bit of velocity to his vertically oriented curveball, enough to fool pitch algorithms into sometimes thinking it was a splitter.

The computer’s buying it. Meeting this projection actually makes Lynn one of the most valuable veteran pitchers potentially available this offseason. While I’m not sure whether the team will actually go that route, I think Lynn showed enough to net a package I wouldn’t have thought possible for him a few years ago.

In 2012, Stephen Strasburg didn’t pitch for Washington in the postseason after being shut down due to injury concerns. He did make his playoff debut in 2014, and in one start gave up two runs in five innings while striking out just two with a walk and a hit-by-pitch. It wasn’t a great start to his postseason career, but since that outing, Strasburg has been incredible. He made two starts against the Cubs in the NLDS in 2017. He went seven innings in the first one, striking out 10 and walking just one while giving up two unearned runs in a loss. In an elimination game later that series, Strasburg again went seven innings, this time striking out 12 against two walk and no runs in a Nationals victory. That 2017 NLDS gave everyone a taste of what Strasburg could do in the playoffs, and this year, he’s putting together one of the greatest postseason runs of all time with a chance to keep the Nationals title hopes alive tonight.

Strasburg first appeared this postseason in a season-saving relief outing in the Wild Card game in which his three shutout innings kept Washington within range before the offense could make a comeback and advance to the NLDS. Against the Dodgers in the next round, he struck out 10 batters in six innings with no walks and just one run to keep the Nationals from going down 0-2 in the five-game series. Then, in his only blip of the postseason, Strasburg gave up three runs in the first two innings of the deciding game against the Dodgers, but he allowed no runs over the next four as the Nationals won in 10 innings. He shut down the Cardinals with 12 strikeouts and no walks in seven innings in the third contest of a four-game NLCS sweep. Finally, in the second game of the World Series, Strasburg outdueled Justin Verlander and threw 114 pitches in six difficult innings to hold the Astros to two runs. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Michael has previously written at Pitcher List and Baseball Prospectus, as well as his own site, Pitcher Giffer, and serves as the site manager for Bucs Dugout. You may also have seen his nifty pitch GIFs at ESPN. He’ll be contributing to FanGraphs a few times a week. We’re excited to welcome him.

Down two games to one to the Washington Nationals, with their season potentially hanging in the balance, the Houston Astros turned to rookie pitcher Jose Urquidy in Game 4 in an attempt to pull the World Series even. Not much was known or expected from the 24-year-old righty who made his post-All-Star break major league debut in July. To say Urquidy rose to the occasion on Saturday is a bit of an understatement. He kept the Nationals offense in check, throwing five innings with no runs allowed on two hits, no walks, and four strikeouts.

Urquidy spent one month with the team, was sent back down to the minor leagues in August, then returned in September. He continued to strike out hitters at a high rate, minimized his walks, and was able to deflate his ERA by four runs. He made two starts in four appearances, pitching a total of 11 innings, and allowed just one earned run off of four hits and two walks with a 2.76 FIP.

Could Urquidy develop into a front-line starter for the Astros in 2020? It’s possible, but he has an adjustment (or two) that will need to be made if he hopes to maintain his efficiency long term.

Urquidy was a relatively unheralded prospect; he currently sits at 19th in the Astros system on THE BOARD. Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel described him as having plus command, describing him at the time of their report as a “spot-starter type” but also noting there is a “chance that he actually has 7 command and is something more than that.” (That command is especially important given the diversity of arm slots from which he throws his pitches, but more on that in a moment.) With his future value rated at 40, it’s hard to imagine the rookie having the kind of outing he did on Saturday. Sure, you can point to the results of his seven starts and two relief appearances in 2019. During that stretch of 41 innings, Urquidi posted a 3.68 FIP, a 24% strikeout rate, and 4.2% walk rate. While that sounds great, it’s hardly enough data to infer future performance.

Below are the three main pitches Urquidy relies on– the fastball, changeup, and slider. He produces good movement, but notice how the fastball and changeup (sitting in the middle) arm slots are fairly close, but the slider is not:

A more drastic example appears below (with the curveball included):

Allow Brooks Baseball to show how disjointed they actually are, with Urquidy’s regular and postseason release points:

Read the rest of this entry »

Game 4 of the World Series started like gangbusters for the Houston Astros in Washington. A game-opening strikeout by Patrick Corbin against George Springer was followed with four straight singles, producing two runs to give Houston the first lead of the night. Corbin was able to leave the bases loaded in the top of the first to keep his side in the game, but when his pitcher opponent Jose Urquidy took the mound in the bottom half of the inning, he made quick work of the Nationals, inducing two foul pop-ups and stranding Anthony Rendon after his two-out single.

The rest of the game carried on, well, pretty much exactly like that. Each starter traded scoreless innings in the second and third innings, but then the Astros added on with a two-run homer by Robinson Chirinos in the fourth. Washington put up some fight by loading the bases with one out in the bottom of the sixth to bring Juan Soto up representing the tying run, but all Soto could do was bring in a single run with an otherwise harmless groundout. The Astros got their own bases-loaded opportunity the very next inning, and they didn’t miss it, with Alex Bregman crushing a grand slam to put the game out of reach. Houston got a lead early, and aside from a fleeting moment or two, never really seemed in danger of losing it, eventually tacking on enough insurance to make the Nationals’ final few at-bats little more than a formality. Here’s what the win probability chart looked like from that game:

After the fourth batter of the night, Washington’s win probability was never higher than 40%. After the sixth inning, it was never better than 15%. All told, it looked like a typical one-sided baseball game. There’s nothing wrong with that on its face, but when stacked up next to the other four games that have taken place in this World Series, there’s been a troubling trend. According to our calculations, the loser of Game 1, Houston, never had better than a 36.5% chance to win that game after the fifth inning. In Game 2, Houston’s odds of winning were below 2% entering the eighth. Washington’s highest odds of winning after the fifth inning of Game 3 were just 24.5%, and its odds of winning Game 5 after the fourth inning were never better than 13.2%. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about audible umpires, Lance Barksdale’s ball/strike calls in World Series Game 5, the Nationals’ offensive outage in Games 3-5, Max Scherzer’s neck spasms, Dave Martinez’s moves, why the series has been somewhat unexciting, the Nationals’ and Astros’ outlooks going into Game 6, the Astros’ retraction of their statement about Stephanie Apstein and Sports Illustrated, and a few hirings across the league, including the Pirates firing GM Neal Huntington and the Red Sox hiring the Rays’ Chaim Bloom as their new chief baseball officer.

Audio intro: The Who, "Run Run Run"
Audio outro: Joel Plaskett, "Run, Run, Run"

Link to Barksdale video
Link to Ben on Game 5
Link to Jim Crane’s retraction
Link to Chaim Bloom’s article archive
Link to order The MVP Machine

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When the Nationals took an early lead in the World Series, there was a popular cry for the team to knock the Astros out while they could. Expend resources you were planning on saving for later in the series, turn Patrick Corbin into a reliever, maybe bring back some starters on short rest: what does it matter if you hurt your chances of winning Game 7, the thinking goes, if Game 7 never happens?

A softer version of this came up as the Cardinals walloped the Braves in Game 5 of the NLDS. The game was already decided. Why not pull Jack Flaherty so that he could pitch Games 1 and 5 of the NLCS rather than Games 3 and 7? It’s not an identical situation, but it relies on the same logic: earlier games happen more often, so get your pitchers into those.

Tomorrow night, there will be yet another version of this discussion. The Astros are a win away from ending the series. If the game goes into extra innings, say, or Justin Verlander gets knocked around but the offense keeps the team in it, would Houston use Zack Greinke in an attempt to end things right then and there? And should they?

While these questions are similar, they’re not identical. Does this reallocation of win probability matter? The answer, as it often is, is “it depends.” I believe the answers to these three questions are “not much,” “not at all,” and “more than you’d think,” respectively, and I’ll attempt to lay out why I think that is the case here.
Read the rest of this entry »

Some change is coming to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Over the last month, the team has fired long-time manager Clint Hurdle and President Frank Coonelly, and today the news came out that GM Neal Huntington is out of a job as well. Owner Bob Nutting is still the one making the calls in Pittsburgh, but the team has hired a new President, with former Pittsburgh Penguins hockey executive Travis Williams taking over the business side of the operation in hopes of duplicating his success with the city’s hockey team. As for Huntington, his departure signals a major change in operations for the Pirates. But a change in operations doesn’t necessarily mean a change in direction, and some skepticism regarding the latter is warranted given the last few decades of Pirates baseball.

Every franchise experiences inflection points, where the team charts a new course in an attempt to move forward. The Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2018; a year later, they fired Dave Dombrowski and brought in Chaim Bloom to help sustain his predecessor’s success while avoiding the failings that precipitated Dombrowski’s departure from Detroit. After sustained failure, the Cubs hired Theo Epstein and the Astros brought in Jeff Luhnow. Both were enlisted to tear down and then rebuild their respective franchises in the hopes of striking out on a new path and contending for the playoffs and championships. It’s not entirely clear that this is what’s happening in Pittsburgh. The club missed its opportunity to capitalize on its three-year playoff run from 2013 to ’15, and faces a future that doesn’t look too different from most of its past. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract-crowdsourcing project this offseason, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2019-20 free-agent market.

Below are ballots for four of this year’s possible free agents — in this case, a group of players who may come to (or return to) Major League Baseball from Japan and Korea.

Shogo Akiyama, the 31-year-old left-handed center fielder who has been playing for the NPB’s Saitama Seibu Lions, was recently confirmed as an international free agent. Japanese outfielder Yoshitomo Tsutsugo, who is 27, will be posted by the Yokohama DeNA BayStars. Left-handed starting pitcher Kim Kwang-Hyun, whose name may be familiar as he was posted in 2014 but was unable to come to terms with the San Diego Padres, has a more complicated case. The 31-year-old has a year remaining on his existing contract. Despite that, there is a chance he will be granted free agency and would not be subject to a posting fee. He may also be posted by his current club. Or he may stay put. He has been scouted by MLB teams, however, and so is included here. Right-handed starter Josh Lindblom, who last played in the States with the Pirates in 2017, has also generated some interest after a strong season with the Doosan Bears.