Maybe a hat would tickle the fancy of your giftee? But with so many different hats to choose from, where do you even begin? Sure you could just get a hat sporting the logo of their preferred tea…boooooooring. Instead, you should get them this Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs cap. Sporting a strip of bacon, this hat is a statement piece. People love bacon and if you wear a hat with bacon on it, people will love you too. That’s just how the transitive property of bacon love works.

You can gift this beautiful hat for just $18! The pictured hat is available here.

What if your hat-loving homie is a vegetarian? Perhaps they are little down on bacon ever since the World Health Organization declared that it causes cancer. Why not turn them on to the Hartford Yard Goats with one of these sharp lids? With a new team name as of just this year, these are some of the coolest lids on the market!

For just $28, you can watch the recipient’s eyes light up! The cap also comes in camo, if you’re into that kind of thing. Get it here.

Do you find that you don’t actually like the person for whom you’re purchasing this present? Maybe, in the office Secret Santa, you drew that really annoying guy at work who’s always telling you about his fantasy team. If so, nothing says ‘Screw you!’ quite like a Lansing Lugnut cap.

This gem can be found at the Lansing Lugnuts online team shop for the absurdly reasonable price of $26.00 Get it here.

Obviously, not everyone loves hats. They can mess up your hair and frankly, some folks just look silly in them. For those folks, look no further than a Biloxi Shuckers ‘Shuck Yeah!’ tee.

This edgy tee with a fun play on words will only set you back $21.99 over at the team’s online store.

Does the recipient in question appreciate art? If so, you will not believe what’s in store for you! Take a gander over at www.baseballcardvandals.com, where your favorite player’s cards have been defiled to great effect. Beau and Bryan Abbott truly do great work over there. Here’s Willie Randolph riding a Dolphin.

Does your friend or family member like bat flips? How about ugly sweaters and bad puns? If you answered yes to any of the above, the folks over at freshbrewedtees.com have a whole line of puntastic ugly sweaters out that should suit your needs perfectly. From Joey Flippin’ Bats to Merry Kipnis, there are almost too many great options to choose from.

More often than not, previously worn clothes cost a good deal less than their unworn counterparts. MLB doesn’t seem to agree with this trend, and has marked up the prices on a great number of jerseys just because the previous owner ‘wore it during a game.’ Maybe, however, your giftee wants to feel closer to their favorite player by wearing their clothes. And maybe, their favorite player is the stunning Colby Rasmus. Over at MLB auctions, Rasmus’ game used jersey is up for grabs and the bidding has only reached the low $200s. Not only did Rasmus wear this jersey, but teammate Mike Fiers threw a no hitter when it was worn. Who knows, maybe if your friend or family member wears this jersey, it will bring YOU lots of BABIP luck.

While you’re over there, check out their plethora of stadium dirts!

There are a few last items we’d be remiss to exclude:

-The Baseball Reference Play Index is every baseball fan’s favorite toy. Remember to use the promo code BP to get a discounted price of $30 on an annual subscription!

-The Hardball Times Annual is chock full of great pieces by some of the best minds in baseball writing.

-The highly anticipated book The Only Rule Is It Has to Work. While unfortunately, the book won’t be ready for the holiday season, we can say with great certainty that this piece of work will be worth the wait.

-Banished to the Pen’s own newly available merchandise. This is the freshest baseball merchandise on the web. Be one of the first to get your hands on it!

Happy Holidays!

The post The Alternative Gift Guide for the Baseball Lover appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

A quick recap of how this works for the new reader. For each of the sets of predictions and projections that featured in our preseason analysis, the mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) has been calculated. MAE is the average difference between the predicted total and the actual, while RMSE is the square root of the average of the squares of all the differences. RMSE gives greater weight to large errors because they are squared, so if you think bigger misses should be punished more heavily, this is the more relevant number.

Read the preseason piece for a full breakdown of where all the competitors stood in March, but if you want to get right to the results, here’s a quick reminder of who’s competing for the title:

The Contenders

PECOTA (PEC): The Baseball Prospectus projected win totals based on their in-house projection system.

FanGraphs (FG): The FanGraphs Depth Charts projected totals, which are a combination of the Steamer and ZiPS projection systems, with an additional playing time adjustment applied by FanGraphs staff.

Davenport (Dav): Totals based on Clay Davenport’s projection system, with Clay’s own playing time estimates.

FiveThirtyEight (538): Site projections from FiveThirtyEight.com, based on their Elo rating system.

Banished to the Pen writers (BttP): Predictions from each of our writers from our season preview series.

Effectively Wild guests (EW): Predictions from each of Effectively Wild‘s team preview podcast guests. All of these were very helpfully compiled by Paul McCord (@BravesStats on Twitter) on this spreadsheet, thus saving me the job.

Bat Flips & Nerds (BFN): Predictions from the annual roundtable podcast game that I carry out with the Bat Flips & Nerds crew.

Composite (Comp): The average of the four projection systems plus the BttP/EW predictions, with the latter sets adjusted down to add up to 2430 wins so they are not given extra weight.

Public (Pub): The average of all responses to a preseason poll in which I asked people to predict win totals for every team.

The Results

An unusually large split between the MAE and RMSE outcomes at the top, where Davenport pipped the BttP writers to the MAE crown but slid all the way down to sixth in the RMSE reckoning. Davenport nailed the Astros’ win total and missed eight more teams by just a single win, but was undone relative to the competition in RMSE with huge misses on the Padres (+20), the Nationals (+21) and the Diamondbacks (+28). That left our writers here at BttP as the RMSE champions over FanGraphs. That was thanks in no small part to James Cardis and Jameson Weiss, for their optimism on the White Sox and Red Sox respectively, and pessimists Nick Strangis and Ahaan Rungta, who didn’t like the Diamondbacks and Twins as much as everyone else (not that they predicted the disaster seasons, but those misses cost BttP less than any other set).

It was a solid year for the public predictions, which beat all the projection sets but FanGraphs in RMSE to finish fourth. As usual, we had some truly dreadful predictions within that, including several that featured a RMSE of more than 14 wins. Offsetting those was the outstanding work of Ash Taylor and Conor Kelly, who both beat even the BttP set by recording RMSE marks below 11, with Ash’s 10.965 leading the way. The secret appeared to be truly incredible pessimism about Arizona, as Ash crushed everyone else by predicting that the Diamondbacks would win a mere 54 games. Considering almost everyone else went at least 20 games overboard, it made a huge difference. Credit also to George Martin of @AstrosFansUK, who recorded an excellent MAE of 8.467 to lead the way there. The full results can be seen here.

At the bottom it was an unmitigated disaster for PECOTA, which followed up last year’s first-place finish with a no-doubt last place in both categories by a huge margin. While a lot of Atlanta fans got mad about their preseason 80-82 projection, that wasn’t the reason for the demise nearly as much as some Central misses, notably under-selling the Cardinals and White Sox by 12 wins each when no other set was even into the double digits. Everyone missed on the Giants by a record-breaking amount, but PECOTA was tied for the most at 33 wins below San Francisco’s actual total. Perhaps most inexcusably, PECOTA was too optimistic on the Orioles, projecting them 16 wins higher than their eventual 52-110 record.

This year was just plain hard to predict overall – the hardest I have on record, in fact. The biggest errors I have seen doing this in previous years were back in 2018, when the winning set recorded a 9.3 RMSE and the worst was at 10.7 – a number that would have easily taken the overall win this year. The Giants played a big part in that, but so did NL West rivals San Diego and Arizona, and Washington, Minnesota and Seattle, all teams that had an average miss of over 15 wins. The ‘easiest’ teams to predict this year were the Royals, Phillies and A’s, who had an average miss of just 2.05, 2.28 and 3.04 wins respectively. No-one whiffed on Kansas City’s total by more than four wins.

Irrational credit, as always, to those spot-on predictions: PECOTA on Pittsburgh; FanGraphs on Atlanta; Davenport on Houston; 538 on Kansas City; and Effectively Wild guest Will Leitch on St. Louis. The Composite set, as always, performed quite well, finishing third in both categories and nailing Philadelphia, Atlanta and Kansas City, so I guess credit goes to me for bothering to average the projections.

Below is a table showing all of the predictions and projections relative to the actual win total, shaded in red according to the size of the error.

Ranks

One way we can mitigate those colossal misses is to look at how good the projections were at predicting the final standings order.

It’s no surprise that BttP came out on top, but the size of the victory on both counts is impressive. The RMSE change is a little friendlier to Davenport than it was in the raw win total department. It also pushed the Composite set over FanGraphs for second place. It was less kind to 538 and it wasn’t a very good year generally for the podcast prognosticators, as both us idiots at Bat Flips and Nerds and the Effectively Wild guests were well off the pace. PECOTA was already too far behind for the rank analysis to do any more than close the gap a little.

This wasn’t as difficult a year to predict the rankings as 2017, when the winner still missed by an average of 8.67 places. Many of the expected hard-to-predict teams from the win totals show up again here, although the Diamondbacks’ terrible season is significantly mitigated by this way of evaluating the season. The predictions and projections were collectively the closest on the Orioles and Marlins, since everyone projected them to be extremely bad and slightly less bad, and the Dodgers, since everyone predicted them to be in first place. The average error on all three was a nice neat one.

Here’s the same shaded table of differences for the ranks:

And that’s a wrap on 2021. Join me again when the 2022 season is about to start – hopefully for a full 162-game set and with no delays.

The post Evaluating the 2021 Predictions & Projections appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

Once again, I will state the fundamental projection caveat: using a single number to represent thousands of projection runs is a gross oversimplification of a very complex process, which projects a vast range of outcomes. Projection systems do not hate your team, or care about them at all. Somewhere out there, there is probably a simulated projection universe in which your team is first, and another where your hated, annoyingly good divisional rival is last (unless you’re a Dodgers or Rockies fan, as my Baseball Prospectus colleague Rob Mains recently outlined). The point is, the projections are much better at seeing all the possible outcomes than we are. Simple projected standings just have to be reductive to fit into a neat standings table, as do I for this exercise.

Before the breakdown, here’s the annual reminder of what this feature is about for the new reader. I compile the win total predictions and projections from a number of sources, compare the range of different outcomes they provide, and return at the end of the season to find out which was the best set of win totals, or perhaps more accurately, the least wrong.

This is done using the mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE). MAE is the average difference between the predicted total and the actual, while RMSE is the square root of the average of the squares of all the differences. RMSE gives greater weight to large errors because they are squared, so if you think bigger misses should be punished more heavily, this is the more relevant number. Below is a recap of the contenders and the abbreviations I’ll use in the various tables. You can find out how they fared last season in detail here.

The Contenders

PECOTA (PEC): The Baseball Prospectus projected win totals based on their in-house projection system.

FanGraphs (FG): The FanGraphs Depth Charts projected totals, which are a combination of the Steamer and ZiPS projection systems, with an additional playing time adjustment applied by FanGraphs staff.

Davenport (Dav): Totals based on Clay Davenport’s projection system, with Clay’s own playing time estimates.

FiveThirtyEight (538): Site projections from FiveThirtyEight.com, based on their Elo rating system.

Banished to the Pen writers (BttP): Predictions from each of our writers from our season preview series.

Effectively Wild guests (EW): Predictions from each of Effectively Wild‘s team preview podcast guests. All of these were very helpfully compiled by Paul McCord (@BravesStats on Twitter) on this spreadsheet, thus saving me the job.

Bat Flips & Nerds (BFN): Predictions from the annual roundtable podcast game that I carry out with the Bat Flips & Nerds crew.

Composite (Comp): The average of the four projection systems plus the BttP/EW predictions, with the latter sets adjusted down to add up to 2430 wins so they are not given extra weight.

Public (Pub): The average of all responses to a preseason poll in which I asked people to predict win totals for every team.

Level of Optimism

Before we delve into the specific predictions, I always take a look at how far the humans were from the actual possible total of 2430 wins (projection systems care not for your concepts of optimism or pessimism, and are always at or very close to 2430). This is appropriately titled ‘Level of Optimism’ because we are, collectively, always more optimistic than that.

The Effectively Wild guests topped the optimism charts once again. While not quite so enthusiastic as some previous years, they still came in at a collective 2489 wins, 59 over the possible total. That could have been even higher were it not for the very final prediction of the series also being the lowest win total of any set included, Joe Trezza’s 51-win Orioles prediction.

BttP’s writers were fairly restrained this year, essentially averaging one win per team on the optimism front by clocking in at 2457. The Public set is a little skewed in this light because I gave them the opportunity to ensure their wins added up to 2430, should they so choose. Not everyone took this opportunity, but many did, keeping them much closer to the 2430 mark at just 2432 wins on average. Among those who did not endeavour to stick to the amount of possible wins, there was still a very wide range, from 2341 on the low end to the peak of optimism at 2497.

On a team basis, the highest prediction was 110 for the Dodgers, from two separate people. I thought that a 45-win season for the Pirates would be as low as we got, until someone turned in 33 wins for the Rockies. A mistake, surely? No, Alex Dorman, the predictor in question, had a total of 2430 wins, so that appears to be a genuine prediction that the Rockies will lose 129 games. I was going to avoid bashing Colorado too much today but it seems that the predictions are doing it for me.

Time to move on to the definitive version(s) of the divisional standings. Tables are sortable; choose your own adventure.

Divisional Standings

NL East

The New York-Atlanta showdown is tipped in the Mets’ favour by PECOTA, which resolutely refuses to believe in Atlanta’s pitching. That hands the Mets a narrow edge overall, an assessment all of the other projections agree with. There is strong agreement from all concerned that the Mets are around a 90-win team, which is probably a red flag. The human prognosticators do not agree that it’s New York’s to lose, with three of four preferring the reigning divisional champs. The Nationals have the edge in the battle for third place over Philadelphia but aren’t given much of a chance to reach the top two. The Public are in on the Marlins, to the extent that 77 wins is “in”. In this case, it’s a distinct outlier.

NL Central

Something for the Cubs’ bulletin board: nowhere are they first, whether projection or human prediction. That even extended to the individual Public submissions, where not a single respondent put Chicago in first place, although they missed by a win on several occasions. Nonetheless, they’re well within touching distance because the only 90-win prediction in this entire division came from Will Leitch on the Cardinals Effectively Wild preview. The Brewers are given the edge by all the projection systems and Bat Flips & Nerds, it’s a tie here at BttP, and the Public prefer the Arenado-fuelled Cardinals. The Reds are the most boring team this year as far as disagreement goes, with a standard deviation of 1.5 wins. The Pirates are bad, but EW guest Jason Mackey provides the optimism at 72 wins.

NL West

No bold Padres-over-Dodgers predictions here. It’s tough when everyone pegs the Dodgers for a triple-digit win season. The closest the Padres get is within four wins, but they look an absolute lock for the first wild card spot if they can live up to these expectations and Los Angeles cannot afford a stumble. The projections slightly favour Arizona for third place, with FanGraphs the dissenting opinion, but the humans are unanimously on board with Farhan Zaidi’s Giants squad. The Rockies are a bad baseball team in a division with two elite teams. If they’re lucky, they might not lose 100 games.

AL East

It might be a competitive division but there’s also not much disagreement over the top four teams in terms of range. The Yankees are comfortably first in every set, while the Blue Jays and Rays are set for an exciting race for second, if these are anything to go by. Four sets favour the Rays, three take Toronto, and Davenport suggests a dead heat. FanGraphs has arguably the wildest take here, putting Boston over Tampa Bay.  Much like the Pirates, the Orioles are a source of ‘disagreement’ over whether they’ll be bad or horrifyingly bad. There’s a range of 17 wins, from Joe Trezza’s miserable 51-win prediction on EW to PECOTA’s comparatively sunny 68-win season. Last place is last place.

AL Central

Minnesota pips the White Sox to the division overall, but there are some dissenting opinions from Davenport and BttP’s James Cardis, who put the Pale Hose first. Chicago have the widest range here overall, while Cleveland and the Tigers tie for the narrowest. PECOTA is out on an island with Cleveland in a clear second place. FanGraphs is much more convinced by this division’s competitiveness than PECOTA, with the former rating both the Royals and Tigers higher than any other set.

AL West

The Astros might not be the formidable juggernaut of two or three seasons ago but they’re still the divisional favourites. It’s not a clean sweep, though: Alex Coffey put the A’s over the top with 92 wins on EW, while some idiots over at Bat Flips & Nerds handed the division to the Angels. The Public are also very split on this one, with just four wins separating Houston in first from Los Angeles in third. Everyone essentially agrees that the Mariners are a mid-70s win team, and all but Levi Weaver placed the Rangers firmly in the basement.

Overall Standings

Finally, here’s a visual representation of the spread of the predictions and projections for all 30 teams, a colour-coded table of the win totals, and a sortable full standings table that also features the standard deviations and the Composite set. I’ll be back at the end of the regular season to crown this year’s prediction and projection champion. Enjoy the season, everyone!

The post Analysing the 2021 Predictions & Projections appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

Standings by win total prediction

Arizona Diamondbacks

By Nick Strangis

60-word Takeaway from 2020

The D-Backs’ 25-35 finish in 2020 snapped a three-year streak above .500. Their offense combined for just an 88 wRC+ and finished in the bottom third of all MLB teams in OBP, SLG, and ISO. The pitching staff did its part to ensure the team finished in the basement – they were second to last in FIP (5.00).

Below is a chart created by Erik Berg which illustrates the team’s collective failings – things got so bad at one point that the chart gave up on figuring out how many games the D-Backs fell behind the Dodgers.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

Rarely is it a good sign when a team’s best player (in a sense) wears a different uniform. The Diamondbacks technically still owe the Astros $10MM toward Zack Greinke’s salary this season, more than they will pay any player other than Madison Bumgarner. 

The front office bolstered the bench and bullpen this off-season with a slew of veteran signings. Joakim Soria and Tyler Clippard joined the bullpen and Asdrubal Cabrera adds 14 years of service time to the bench.

This looks like another transitional year. Pitchers Zac Gallen, Clippard, and right fielder Kole Calhoun could all start the season on the IL, opening the door for the backlog of potential young and affordable high-ish floor players on the DBacks’ bench and in their upper minors. The list includes catcher/outfielder Daulton Varsho, first baseman/corner outfielder Pavin Smith, infielders Josh Rojas and Andy Young, and pitchers Corbin Martin and Taylor Widener. Meanwhile, D-Backs fans will find the teams’ best prospects at least a year away. Top-100 prospects like outfielders Kristian Robinson, Corbin Carroll, and Alek Thomas should start the season in Double-A Amarillo or lower.

Win prediction: 71-91

Song to Represent the Team: Starting Over by Chris Stapleton

Colorado Rockies

By Ben Carter

60-word Takeaway from 2020

It almost defies belief that the Colorado Rockies started the 2020 season 11-3, good enough for the best record in baseball on August 8th. From that point on, their season spiralled out of control to the tune of a 15-31 record, the worst in baseball over that stretch, culminating in the offseason departure of franchise icon Nolan Arenado.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

What is the plan here? Is there a plan here? Will there ever be a plan here? The Colorado Rockies face questions of an existential nature heading into 2021, staring down the barrel of a painful and significant rebuild.

Regrettably, the front office operates outside of the parameters of what we might reasonably consider ‘reality’, and despite dumping franchise icon Nolan Arenado and spending a grand total of zero dollars in free agency, continue to insist that they expect the club to compete this season.

And so it is that despite projection systems forecasting one of the worst records in baseball, a half-baked roster will have the unenviable task of attempting to prove everyone wrong as the Rockies hurtle towards a jarring nadir.

From Trevor Story to Austin Gomber, there are storylines that contain enough intrigue to warrant monitoring but the Rockies feel as far away today from that elusive first division title as at any point in their meandering history.

Win prediction: 58-104

Song to Represent the Team: Mad World by Tears For Fears

Los Angeles Dodgers

By Darius Austin

60-word Takeaway from 2020

They finally got there. Eight divisional titles in a row, a combined 714-481 regular season record, and the World Series made its way back to Los Angeles after seven frustrating postseason failures. Mookie Betts proved to be the catalyst for the undisputed best team in baseball, who survived a scare against Atlanta to outlast the Rays and win it all.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

The Dodgers might be better-placed to mount a World Series defense than any team since the feat was last achieved, by the 1998-2000 Yankees. Justin Turner re-signed, largely preserving a lineup that features two former MVPs and a potential 2021 candidate, if Corey Seager keeps hitting as he did from the moment the 2020 season started right on through to earning NLCS and World Series MVP honours.

Their already ludicrous rotation was lengthened by the addition of Trevor Bauer on a three-year, record-high AAV deal. Whether his actions off the field, or his suspicious rise in spin rates, will make them regret it remains to be seen, but if they get Cy Young form over 30 starts, the Dodgers might improve on last year.

That’s a scary prospect for a team on a 116-win pace in the abbreviated season. The Padres at least offer some credible divisional competition. Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that the Dodgers are the team to beat.

Win prediction: 102-60

Song to Represent the Team: We Are The Champions by Queen

San Diego Padres

By Darius Austin

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Four grand slams in four games. The Padres repeatedly and emphatically announced that they were ready to contend in 2020, but nothing underlined that point like their record-breaking feat against the hapless Rangers in mid-August. Their season ended with an anticlimactic sweep by the eventual World Series champions. The Dodgers may find this team more challenging to eliminate next time.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

As if 2020 wasn’t enough to establish the Padres as contenders,  A.J. Preller engaged in a trademark offseason of blockbuster moves. They traded for not one but two aces, landing Yu Darvish and Blake Snell to bolster a previously inexperienced rotation. 

Joe Musgrove became the third addition to this now-stacked rotation, one that can now afford to take things slow with Dinelson Lamet and will barely notice the TJ-induced absence of Mike Clevinger. MacKenzie Gore waits in the wings, depth that almost matches their divisional rival’s. 

The offense got help too, with KBO star Ha-seong Kim signing a four-year deal and Jurickson Profar returning to add even more versatility. With breakout star Jake Cronenworth in the fold, the Padres have flexibility that again is reminiscent of the Dodgers. 

Oh, and there’s the small matter of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado, two superstars who should remain in San Diego until the end of their careers. This might just be the year.

Win prediction: 96-66

Song to Represent the Team: Slam by Onyx

San Francisco Giants

By Mike Carlucci

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Gabe Kapler’s first year as manager for the Giants came during the weirdness of 2020 and they still almost had a .500 record over 60 games. Hunter Pence played his final season. Justin Smoak was the DH. Yup, the Universal DH was only last year! This isn’t even year magic, it’s Kapler power. How’d that roster win almost half it’s games? Magic.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

Entering 2021 and the Giants lose the DH, lose the unbalanced schedule that kept them on the West Coast, and have to face two powerhouses in the division: the Dodgers and Padres. While the Giants fade away, the Padres are ascendant. While the Dodgers changed a corrupt owner into one that invests in the team the Giants…continue to slowly, partially rebuild.

The rotation has names like Johnny Cueto, Alex Wood, Anthony DeSclafani, Kevin Gausman, and Aaron Sanchez. This is not a great list in 2021. It probably won’t even hold its own. But there’s a glimmer of five-inning starts there if guys stay healthy. Maybe even more.

Buster Posey is still behind the plate, so that’s a plus for mentoring. Evan Longoria’s in a years-long decline but he did have a good season as recently as 2018. It’s gonna be a long year.

The Posey/Sandoval/Crawford/Panik core is gone or past its prime for those still around. Tim Lincecum and Madison Bumgarner are memories. When the Giants are good again, they’ll have a young core. They know what they want, it just hasn’t happened yet.

Win prediction: 75-87

Song to Represent the Team: Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (get it, Yaz?)

The post 2021 Season Preview Series: NL West appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

Standings by win total prediction

Houston Astros

By Ben Carter

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Boo! Boooo! The Astros entered 2020 as the pantomime villain after trash-can gate and for a while seemed to be getting their comeuppance. Injuries and underperformance meant they stuttered to a 29-31 regular season record. But the postseason Astros proved both durable and effective, with a bevy of talented pitchers carrying them to a fourth consecutive Championship Series.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

End of an era? It’s tempting to look at the impending departures of Carlos Correa, Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke and Lance McCullers Jr.and conclude that 2021 represents some Last Dance-esque re-run for one of the American League’s most dominant teams.

On the pitching side certainly there must be some concerns. The Spring Training injury to Framber Valdez was enough to spook GM James Click into the signing of Jake Odorizzi and plenty rests on the shoulders of Greinke to lead what looks likely to be an inexperienced staff once again.

But the Astros continue to field a relentlessly talented roster, stacked with MVP candidates from Alex Bregman to Yordan Alvarez and overflowing with talented young pitchers like Cristian Javier and Luis Garcia.

I wanted so badly to hate this team after trash-can gate but all I ended 2020 with was a begrudging admiration for how good they continue to be. I don’t expect that to change much in 2021.

Win prediction: 91-71

Song to Represent the Team: Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

Los Angeles Angels

By Brandon Lee

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Coming back from a year off pitching, many were imagining how impactful a 1-WAR week from Shohei Ohtani could be even once over the course of a 60 game season…but alas, 2021 wasn’t kind to the Angels, and was especially cruel to Shohei Ohtani. Despite adding Anthony Rendon, not even expanded playoffs could get the Angels back to October.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

No team is closer to .500 all time (right now, anyway) than the Los Angeles Angels: at 4,735 – 4,753 before Opening Day, they could get to exactly .500 with a 90-72 record this season. In recent history the Angels have been in the neighborhood of .500 for long stretches, and despite a pandemic-shortened season with expanded playoffs they ended 2020 further away from .500 than when they started the season.

Baseball Prospectus says that they would need to reach their 70th percentile outcome in order to win exactly 90 games, which is not impossible but would require the starting rotation to hold it together in a way that hasn’t happened in the decade (!) since Mike Trout’s debut. Newly acquired pitchers in 2021 bring similar “maybe if…” hopes that the Halos have relied on for years, making 90 wins feel like a smidge out of reach. But with Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and Anthony Rendon, this team will at least be watchable. 

Win prediction: 81-81

Song to Represent the Team: Everything Is Average Nowadays by The Kaiser Chiefs

Oakland Athletics

By Nathan White

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Oakland once again moneyed its ball, which won’t change until something something new stadium. If they have a chance, they’ll try within their means. In 2020 that meant adding smart deadline pickups Mike Minor and Tommy La Stella on the way to the second-best AL record (36-24) and division title but losing the ALDS 3-1 to wildcard limp-in Houston (29-31).

162-word 2021 Season Preview

The A’s kept payroll comfortably in the bottom third by not bringing back six free agents (headlined by Liam Hendriks and Marcus Semien) who got a combined $122.5M on the open market. They did bring in Sergio Romo, Trevor Rosenthal and Mitch Moreland on one-year deals, and traded for Elvis Andrus, owed less over two years than the $18M Semien got for one from Toronto.

Last season’s innings leader Chris Bassitt probably isn’t 2.29ERA/3.59FIP/1.16WHIP good, but you don’t have to squint too hard to see an exciting rotation: A healthy Sean Manaea, with a step from Jesus Luzardo, and A.J. Puk waiting in the wings. And, yes, Spring Training stats are meaningless BUT Daulton Jefferies might be good too. Sean Murphy is emerging as a young star at catcher. Andrus can match or better Semien at short, Matt Olson should bounce back, the bullpen has been reasonably restocked, and they’ve shown if they’re in the mix they will add pieces. Money. Ball.

Win prediction: 89-73

Song to Represent the Team: C.R.E.A.M. by the Wu-Tang Clan

Seattle Mariners

By Simon Gutierrez

60-word Takeaway from 2020

In a year that saw baseball somehow prevail in the grip of a global pandemic, the 2020 Mariners quietly overachieved. Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projection system predicted the team of misfit toys would win just 22 games and finish dead last in the A.L. West.  They bested that total by five games and finished, quite surprisingly, in third place, buoyed by the unexpected emergence of post-hype prospect Kyle Lewis and steps forward by pitchers Marco Gonzales and Justus Sheffield.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

The biggest reasons to be excited about the 2021 Mariners won’t be in the Opening Day lineup, or even in the ballpark. Top prospect Jarred Kelenic spent Spring Training launching baseballs into the stratosphere, but figures to be yet another victim of blatant service time manipulation, delaying his inevitable ascendance to the Seattle outfield.  Kelenic boasts a .290/.366/.516 slash line in his minor league career, is a consensus top-5 MLB prospect, and looks to be not only major-league ready, but likely a fixture in the Mariners lineup for years to come.

Close behind him is fellow phenom Julio Rodriguez, who has likewise been blasting baseballs out of Spring Training ballparks, and starting pitcher Logan Gilbert, who has the frame and repertoire of a top-of-the-rotation starter.  In the meantime, new arrival Ty France and a resurrected Mitch Haniger will provide some additional pop in the Seattle lineup, with prodigal son James Paxton bolstering a decent starting rotation.

Win prediction: 78-84

Song to Represent the Team: The New OK by Drive-By Truckers

Texas Rangers

By Mike Carlucci

60-word Takeaway from 2020

What can you say about the Texas Rangers in 2020? What should have been an unveiling of a new stadium was instead a last-place finish in a season without fans. Except for a few playoff games held in their new home, that didn’t feature the Rangers. It’s just odd. Weird. It’s another strange fact that will come up in trivia contests for years to come. Which stadium was empty for its first game? The 2020 Rangers.

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The Rangers open a season without Elvis Andrus for the first time since 2008. Traded to the Oakland A’s and still just 32 somehow, his departure sunsets the Rangers that were in the World Series. The Rangers of Josh Hamilton, Michael Young, and Ian Kinsler. They’ve added Brock Holt! o/ for some fan favorite potential. They added one of the Lowe’s from Tampa Bay, Nate Lowe. And slugger Joey Gallo remains. As does mysterious and disappointing Rougned Odor. Isiah Kiner-Falefa takes over shortstop from the aforementioned Elvis and has big shoes to fill.

A new-look rotation has some familiar veteran names: Kyle Gibson, Mike Foltynewicz, and Jordan Lyles. But also an addition from Japan: Kohei Arihara, and the main return in the Lance Lynn trade, Dane Dunning.

Adding Khris Davis, the one from Oakland, to a lineup with Joey Gallo? That’s a lot of homers and strikeouts.

What does all of this do? It allows the Rangers to field a full team. How does it stack up against the Astros, Angels, and A’s? Probably 70 wins, give or take.

Win prediction: 70-92

Song to Represent the Team: Rock Star by Nickelback (for the Brock Star)

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Standings by win total prediction

Chicago Cubs

By Ben Bailey

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Once again, the Cubs sputtered in the playoffs, overmatched by an overachieving Marlins team. They managed to score just one run in the series. Winning the division and not having any player contract COVID were both great achievements in a hard year, but the way the season ended raised questions about the Cubs that only the coming season can answer.

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The Cubs once again find themselves in a weird place. Early in the offseason, it looked like they were entering a rebuild. Had they not traded Yu Darvish under mandate to cut payroll, they would project around three wins better according to FanGraphs, enough to put them atop an admittedly weak division by a fraction of a win. Instead, ownership insisted on a payroll cut, and the easiest salary to move was that of the club’s best pitcher.

For the past several years the pitching has seemed like the issue entering the season, but the offense is what has sunk the Cubs down the stretch, despite boasting names like Bryant, Rizzo, and Báez. Although the team will have one of the softest-tossing rotations of the last decade, there’s potential for them to outperform projections due to the Cubs’ promising pitching infrastructure. For it to matter, though, the team’s stars have to perform. If they don’t, it will be an interesting trade deadline.

Win prediction: 84-78

Song to Represent the Team: Tentative Decisions by Talking Heads

Cincinnati Reds

By Marina Bostelman

60-word Takeaway from 2020

The Reds’ splurges in free agency last winter were rewarded with a pandemic that slashed the season to 60 games and prevented fans from enjoying the experience in person. The pitching, anchored by Cy Young winner Trevor Bauer, was excellent, but the offense struggled and fell short of expectations. They snuck into the playoffs as the seventh seed, but did not advance.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

The Reds want to contend, but they’re entering the season with major personnel losses after a cost-cutting offseason. There’s still lots to like about the pitching. Sonny Gray and Luis Castillo can hang with any team’s top two starters, and the bullpen has plenty of hard-throwing arms–the 2020 Statcast pages of Lucas Sims and Tejay Antone are the definition of the eyeballs-looking emoji.

To get anywhere, though, the offense needs to perform. Nick Castellanos could be in line for a bounceback. Prospects Jonathan India and Tyler Stephenson might provide a boost–if they adjust to the majors. Nick Senzel has to stay on the field. And speaking of injuries, the Reds have had a lot of them in Arizona.

The good news is that the NL Central doesn’t have a clear favorite, and they absolutely have enough talent that things could break their way. If they struggle out of the gate with key players on the IL and an ineffective patched-together defense, the team and its fans could be in for a long year.

Win prediction: 80-82

Song to Represent the Team: Everybody Hurts by REM

Milwaukee Brewers

By Dan Freedman

60-word Takeaway from 2020

The Brewers became the first National League team to make the playoffs with a losing record. It showed: they were swept in the Wild Card Series by the Dodgers.

Christian Yelich had his lowest OPS since 2015, down 314 points from 2019. Beyond Yelich, the only position players with an OPS+ above 100 (i.e., above average) who played more than half of the Brewers’ 60 games were Ryan Braun (101) and Jedd Gyorko (121) – neither is on the team for 2021.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes anchor a pitching staff that should be among the best in the relatively weak NL Central. Josh Hader and Devin Williams are two of the best relievers in all of MLB. But the other starters and the rest of the pen are question marks.

The outfield is chock full – with three everyday regulars before they added Gold Glover Jackie Bradley, Jr. Second base was solidified with the addition of Kolten Wong. Orlando Arcia seems to have earned the everyday shortstop role. Keston Hiura will aim to bounce back to his 2019 form, when he had a .938 OPS and a 138 OPS+.

It looks to be a battle between the Brewers and the Cardinals for the NL Central crown, with the Cubs refusing to spend money, the Reds missing their window with Trevor Bauer, and the Pirates trying to get relegated to Triple-A.

Perhaps if they are in contention, Braun will come out of “retirement” to boost the team into the playoffs for the fourth straight season.

Win prediction: 88-74

Song to Represent the Team: If I Had a Hammer by Trini Lopez

Pittsburgh Pirates

By Dan Freedman

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Sure, it was a shortened season. But a .317 winning percentage, the worst in nearly seventy years, is still embarrassing.

If you count pre-2021 in the 2020 analysis, the Pirates basically threw in the Terrible Towel. They traded Starling Marte (Arizona), Jarrod Dyson (White Sox), Josh Bell (Nationals), Joe Musgrove (San Diego), and Jameson Taillon (Yankees). Chris Archer and Trevor Williams left as free agents.

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Message to the fans: Check back in 2023.

PNC Park is reason enough to come watch the Pirates (it is in the Top-3 of all big league ballparks). But if you need another excuse, check out the hot corner. That is where Ke’Bryan Hayes hangs out, playing Nolan Arenado-like defense and flat-out raking. He is the future of the club.

Mitch Keller and Stephen Brault are potential bright spots in the rotation. Gregory Polanco can still swing it a bit in right field. But all eyes will be on the June draft, where the Buccos pick first. Kumar Rocker? Jack Leiter? Jaden Hill? Can one of these starters be a franchise-changer? Only time will tell.

The second-year team of Derek Shelton and Ben Cherington have their work cut out for them in what stands to be a relatively weak NL Central. But no one in Western Pennsylvania is making any plans to watch Pirates baseball in October. By then, they will be lamenting 39-year old Ben Roethlisberger.

Win prediction: 58-104

Song to Represent the Team: Headed for the Future by Neil Diamond

St. Louis Cardinals

By Alex Crisafulli

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Trying to analyze a 58-game season – which included a two-week work stoppage in the middle due to a COVID outbreak – isn’t easy. Still, it’s probably safe to say the St. Louis Cardinals were their perpetual “pretty decent” selves in 2020, but whether they did enough this winter to move the needle past that remains to be seen.

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The day I celebrated my 42nd birthday, the Cardinals did a swell thing and acquired Nolan Arenado. So first, thank you, favorite baseball team. It didn’t go unnoticed. But second, this was the kind of trade that felt so lopsided you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guys the Cardinals sent to Colorado. They did nothing wrong but will continue to be maligned because their names somehow made the Rockies inept brass say, “Fine.” It’s unfair.

Nevertheless, the addition of Arenado can’t be overstated. He’s the anchor to what might be the best infield defense in the National League, even after the departure of Kolten Wong, and he has a bat that will preferably push a player like Paul DeJong to a spot more fitting to his profile (90 percent of DeJong’s PA in 2020 were at the second, fourth, or fifth spot in the lineup).

Does adding Arenado make up for a starting rotation that looks shakier by the day? Seems unlikely. But the rest of the NL Central is staunchly mediocre so c’est la vie.

Win prediction: 88-74

Song to Represent the Team: Thick As Thieves by The Menzingers

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Standings by win total prediction

Chicago White Sox

By James Cardis

60-word Takeaway from 2020

For the first time since 2008, the White Sox made the playoffs. That they did so under unusual circumstances is no small feat. Luis Robert’s struggles were exaggerated, and thankfully so too was the concern around Garrett Crochet’s ALDS Game 3 shutdown. The White Sox are set to make a deeper playoff push as ballparks welcome fans back into seats.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

The White Sox doubled down on their bullpen advantage by signing Liam Hendriks, by far the best available reliever on the market. They also added Lance Lynn, the only pitcher in Major League Baseball’s pandemic-shortened season to throw 80+ innings with a plus K/9. Valid questions surround the team’s pitching depth. Tim Anderson continues to prove he’s a generational talent — any regression has to figure in the discernment he’s developed in his approach. Adam Eaton may not be fans’ favorite candidate to return, but in four seasons away from the Sox he averaged a .279/.365/.419 line and won a World Series. PECOTA is bearish, while FanGraphs has the team projected for a tie with the Twins. An inordinate amount of value hinges upon Andrew Vaughn’s performance, but by all accounts he’s a professional hitter. I like their chances to win over 90 games and establish themselves as the team to beat for years to come in the AL Central.

Win prediction: 92-70

Song to Represent the Team: What’s Next by Drake

Cleveland Baseball Team

By Marina Bostelman

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Their ace won a Cy Young, Jose Ramirez was an AL MVP finalist, the roster construction was obscenely top-heavy, a rookie starting pitcher arose seemingly out of nowhere, the outfield was literally the second worst in major league history, the lineup couldn’t hit its way out of a paper bag, and they still made the postseason. In short, it was the most Cleveland season ever.

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Cleveland has established stars in Shane Bieber and Ramirez, the lowest payroll in the American League, and a whole bunch of question marks. The team is trying to transition from one contention window to the next, but most of the high-end prospects expected to anchor the next window aren’t ready yet.

For 2021, they have a core of veterans who should keep the team from crashing. Almost everyone else still has something to prove. Zach Plesac, Aaron Civale, and Triston McKenzie are major leaguers, but are they great, okay, or something in-between? There’s more mystery surrounding a collection of position players from Bobby Bradley to Bradley Zimmer, yet to establish themselves due to injuries, ineffectiveness, or lack of opportunity.

Even if there aren’t any stars among those unknown quantities, some should be the kind of role players who round out a contending roster. A 162-game tryout for the future of the organization isn’t as fun as a postseason race, but it’s still compelling — and if a few of those mystery players turn out to be hidden gems, they could end up playing baseball in October anyway.

Win prediction: 84-78

Song to Represent the Team: (It’s Gonna Be) Okay by The Piano Guys. The title is both a reassuring sentiment for anyone who is sad about A Certain Shortstop and my guess at what the team’s record is going to look like. Besides, I like to be hopeful. Hope to see you at the ballpark this summer.

Detroit Tigers

By Dan Freedman

60-word Takeaway from 2020

If ever a team needed to flush a season, it would be the 2020 Tigers. The beloved “Mr. Tiger,” Al Kaline, died in April; the team had the third-worst record in MLB (23-35) and the worst team ERA (6.37); and manager Ron Gardenhire retired two weeks before the end of the campaign. But Tyler Alexander did strike out nine consecutive Reds to tie an MLB record for relievers, so that was nice.

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All we have for the 2021 Tigers are questions:

Will fans boo A.J. Hinch when he steps out of the dugout? If they do, will it affect the young players on the squad?

Will Miguel Cabrera reach 3,000 hits (he needs 134) and/or 500 home runs (he needs 13)? Will he stay on the field long enough to even make this interesting?

Will Spencer Torkelson (#3 on MLB’s Prospect Rankings) get called up and make an impact on the club?

The same question applies to Riley Greene (#21).

Will Casey Mize live up to the hype and bounce back from a subpar seven game 2020 audition?

Will Michael Fulmer return to his 2016 and 2017 form and be a potential ace?

Will Matthew Boyd return to his 2018 and 2019 form and help anchor the rotation?

Will Jonathan Schoop continue his career resurgence on his fourth team in five years?

All interesting questions, but it won’t matter. Absent collapses by the entire division, this looks like a last place finish in the AL Central.

Win prediction: 68-94

Song to Represent the Team: The Future’s So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades) by Timbuk 3

Kansas City Royals

By Darius Austin

60-word Takeaway from 2020

A late season surge saved the Royals from having a truly dreadful record. On September 7th they had lost twice as many games as they’d won, sitting last in the AL. A 12-6 finish raised them all the way up to mediocre. They did get some promising glimpses of the future, plus a truly extraordinary 37 games from Salvador Perez.

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That surge clearly reinforced Kansas City’s faith in their franchise catcher, who inked an $82 million extension last week. Perez will be charged with shepherding well-regarded prospects like Brady Singer and Kris Bubic through this season and beyond.

He’s far from the sole veteran presence, because the Royals appear to believe they can compete in 2021. They made moves more characteristic of a contender adding to an established core, signing Carlos Santana, Mike Minor and Greg Holland to address first base and add stability to the inexperienced staff. They bet on a resurgence from Andrew Benintendi, shipping out Franchy Cordero and Khalil Lee for the former Red Sox outfielder.

The issue is that the Royals don’t have that established core beyond the likes of Perez and Whit Merrifield. Adalberto Mondesi is thrilling but wildly inconsistent. Hunter Dozier fell back to league-average. An awful lot of bounce-backs and breakouts need to happen simultaneously to get this team to where they believe they are.

Win prediction: 75-87

Song to Represent the Team: Time to Pretend by MGMT

Minnesota Twins

By Ahaan Rungta

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Previously known for an electric lineup, the Minnesota Twins instead rode a mega-breakout from AL Cy Young runner-up Kenta Maeda and had bullpen studs step up to post the second-best fWAR among pitching staffs. Minnesota held a competitive division to win the Central by 1 game but extended their postseason losing streak to 18, the longest in North American sports.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

Minnesota led the way with surprising offseason moves by non-tendering their former MVP vote-getter Eddie Rosario and later watching him sign with their division rival Cleveland. They also lost pitching depth in Rich Hill and Jake Odorizzi but inserted veteran J.A. Happ in free agency.

The biggest upwards storyline for the Twins is the development of their young talent, both in the bullpen and on offense. In 2020, their #2 prospect OF/1B Alex Kirilloff became the first MLB player to make his debut starting in the postseason. Their #3 prospect OF Trevor Larnach currently resides in AA but is projected to make his arrival to the big leagues in 2021. Even infielders Nick Gordon and Travis Blankenhorn could make an impact as early as this season. What the Twins need to have a chance at repeating as division champions is a leadership role out of new closer Alex Colomé and an explosion from their #2 starter with Cy Young potential, José Berríos.

Win prediction: 84-78

Song to Represent the Team: Breakout by Swing Out Sister

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Standings by win total prediction

Atlanta Braves

By Bryan Thomas

60-word Takeaway from 2020

In 2020 the Atlanta Braves led all of Major League Baseball in hits (556), doubles (130), total bases (1,001), RBI (338), OBP (.349), and OPS (.832), yet all of those statistics were enough to give them a National League runner-up t-shirt after blowing a 3-1 series lead over the eventual World Series champion Dodgers. The Braves offense is legit and here to stay. The NL East is on notice.

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Atlanta was able to re-sign Marcell Ozuna to help anchor their powerful offense, but their biggest off-season signing is being overshadowed by multiple rivals out of the NL West. Charlie Morton joins the Braves rotation and is quietly being overlooked because of big name signings in Los Angeles and San Diego. The Atlanta starters can hold their own, though, make no mistake about it. Mike Soroka is returning from injury and Max Fried finished 5th in NL Cy Young voting in 2020 with a 1.089 WHIP.

Despite all the noise made by their young stars such as Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, and Ronald Acuna Jr. (a player so good I named my fantasy team after him), they are the quiet third child, watching as their two older siblings fight over their parents’ love; just planning their moves and perfecting their time to strike unnoticed, while their own division rivals have made more headlines this offseason with splashy signings. But there’s little doubt, the Atlanta Braves are the team to beat in the National League East, whether you can hear them over the crowded National League or not.

Win prediction: 96-66

Song to Represent the Team: This Time Around – Randy Rogers Band

Miami Marlins

By Darius Austin

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Miami’s team-wide COVID outbreak threatened to derail the entire season before it started and left them scrambling to field a team. A mish-mash of waiver claims and rookies filled in for a squad that allowed 41 more runs than they scored. Despite all that, the Marlins posted their first winning record since 2009 and won a playoff series. 2020, man.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

The Marlins headlined their offseason with a long-overdue moment: the hiring of Kim Ng as their general manager. Although the rest of their moves were considerably less significant (Anthony Bass, anyone?), dare we say that the Marlins look…fun?

The long history of failure combined with shocking fire sales after strong seasons creates a degree of hesitancy that is probably unwarranted. After all, they do not owe anyone a great deal of money, either this year or beyond. Their midseason trade for Starling Marte gave this team a true headline star (sorry, Brian Anderson). Sixto Sanchez will be pumping 100-plus on the mound while Sandy Alcantara, Pablo Lopez and Elieser Hernandez are among the promising mid-20s arms with more projection left.

From the electric Jazz Chisholm – likely to be generating highlight reel content at some point this year – to the deep farm system beyond him, the Marlins look well-placed to be both entertaining in the short term and competitive in the future.

Win prediction: 71-91

Song to Represent the Team: Run the World (Girls) by Beyonce

New York Mets

By Andrew Calagna

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Not a whole lot broke right for the Mets in 2020. Injuries decimated the starting rotation and an inability to hit with runners in scoring position limited an otherwise potent offense. There were highlights: Dom Smith emerged as an offensive force, while Jacob deGrom solidified his position as the best pitcher in baseball. The sorely-needed upgrades didn’t arrive…until now.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

The Mets went into the offseason with new ownership and a new outlook on building a winning franchise, although they got off to an inauspicious start with Jared Porter’s hiring and rapid dismissal following a sexual harassment scandal. 

Unlike the Wilpons of the past, Steve Cohen addressed the need to spend money to fill the gaps in a competitive roster, adding the final touches to an established core.  The front office went out and did just that and then some. 

Marcus Stroman accepted his qualifying offer to begin the Mets’ offseason. A flurry of additions followed: James McCann, Trevor May, Taijuan Walker, Jonathan Villar, Albert Almora and Kevin Pillar. There was also the small matter of trading for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco.

They have added both star power and depth, genuinely looking like a team that can not only compete for a division title but make a deep playoff run. For once, it’s hard not to feel optimistic about the Mets. 

Win prediction: 92-70

Song to Represent the Team: Celebration by Kool and the Gang

Philadelphia Phillies

By Daniel R. Epstein

60-word Takeaway from 2020

What do you do when your best wasn’t good enough — didn’t even come close? How do you pick up the shattered pieces of your soul, knowing the plan wasn’t derailed by some external force, but your own failing? How do you solve the problem when the problem is you? Where do you go from there? How do you move on?

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When you’re a baseball team, you don’t have the luxury of wallowing in self-pity — especially in Philadelphia, where disgruntled fans tend to throw things. You have to hold onto what works and flip over everything else. The upshot is a Phillies team that looks similar on the field to the 2020 version.

Their biggest offseason moves were re-signing J.T. Realmuto and Didi Gregorius. They churned last year’s Bullpen From Hell into something that’s hopefully mediocre. Truly, the biggest difference in these Phillies is the front office. Yes, Sam Fuld is the GM, but Dave Dombrowski is pulling the strings. Dombo’s penchant for emptying the farm system for win-now MLB contributors paid dividends with the Marlins, Tigers, and Red Sox.

Besides, he’s not exactly starting from scratch — any exec would be thrilled to fill in a roster behind Bryce Harper, Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, and of course Realmuto — but until he waves his magic wand, this will remain a very average team.

Win prediction: 81-81

Song to Represent the Team: Average Man by Reel Big Fish

Washington Nationals

By Brandon Lee

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Following a strong 2019 in Washington, Patrick Corbin saw some regression in both traditional and advanced metrics. A career-high .362 BABIP led to a league-leading 85 hits allowed, and a drop in strikeout rate didn’t help either – perhaps the result of a drop in fastball velocity in a pandemic season. Still, watch for a bounce back a bit in 2021.

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There are three defining moments of a sports championship where the team and fans collectively celebrate: the win, the parade, and the banner raise.

The win is when It Happens, a shared moment where everyone can say exactly where they were when It Happened.

The parade is the drunken celebration later that week — a local holiday with day drinking, blocked-off streets, and at least one buzzed player doing a swear live on local TV.

Then there’s the banner raise at the first home game of the next season, when the Flag that Flies Forever is raised for the first time. But if a banner is raised in an empty stadium, is it really raised?

Nothing went right for the Nationals in 2020 outside Juan Soto, Trea Turner, and Max Scherzer. Perhaps starting fresh, with one-quarter of Nationals Park full of fans, will allow the team the belated victory lap that they deserve, even if more of the 2019 team has since departed.

Win prediction: 81-81

Song to Represent the Team: Baby We’ll Be Fine by The National

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Standings by win total prediction

Baltimore Orioles

By Christopher Baber

60-word Takeaway from 2020

2020 was supposed to be about player development. With the minor league season canceled, it was mostly a lost year for prospects. The O’s got to see what guys like Keegan Akin and Dean Kremer could offer. Jose Iglesias, Hanser Alberto, and Ryan Mountcastle sure could hit though! I am glad that they are back for next year! Mountcastle is at least back for next year.

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If you squint and forget that it is 2021, you might be excited to see Felix Hernandez and Matt Harvey pitching this spring for the O’s. Then you remember that it is 2021 and it makes you sad.

You will be happy to see Trey Mancini, who received a standing ovation during his first spring training at-bat, is back after missing all of 2020 recovering from colon cancer. Mickey Jannis and his knuckleball should also make you happy. I have no clue if he will actually pitch for the Orioles this year, but I can watch his six-second clip a million times.

The O’s have a shiny new infield too with Mancini at first, Sanchez at second, Galvis at short, and new addition Maikel Franco at third. This season is all about identifying players that will be on the next winning team. But none of that matters, because gone is Gary Thorne. Seriously MASN, y’all couldn’t bring back Thorne? Like for real though! WTF? 

Win prediction: 64-98

A Song to Represent the Team: I am going to have to go with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, Pt. 1-4. It’s cheating because it’s four songs. It’s an intentionally terrible album, and the Orioles are intentionally terrible.

Boston Red Sox

By Jamieson Weiss

60-word Takeaway from 2020

2020 was, one hopes, rock bottom for the Boston Red Sox. (By my count, the third rock bottom of the last decade, after 2012 and 2014.) In the wake of the Mookie Betts trade and Chris Sale’s Tommy John surgery, the team’s incredible lack of depth was exposed even more than expected. The fact that the season was only 60 games was almost a godsend. 

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The 2021 (and beyond) Red Sox have two saving graces: first, they did, in fact, get under the competitive balance tax threshold – accepting that that is a thing they should get credit for (it’s not!), they nailed it; second, Sox chief Chaim Bloom got to work. One quarter of their top 20 (and top 40) prospects per SoxProspects.com were acquired by Bloom, as he has consistently managed to turn water into … slightly better tasting water, and they’ll have the fourth overall pick this coming June. 

They don’t have the sort of farm system that once produced Bogaerts, Betts, Devers, Bradley, Moncada, and Benintendi within a few years, but it’s a start, and they still have the financial resources to make a splash on the free agent market when the time comes. 

I don’t expect the 2021 Red Sox to do much better than .500 and an outside shot at a wild card spot, but this team should, at the very least, be watchable. 

Win prediction: 86-76

Song to Represent the Team: In honor of Alex Cora’s return, Welcome Back by Mase.

New York Yankees

By Andrew Calagna

60-word Takeaway from 2020

The Yankees were clearly the most talented team in the AL going into 2020. Sometimes, talent isn’t enough. Injuries and underperformance produced a 33-27 record, with their playoff berth saved by the hastily-revamped format. A lack of bullpen depth and lineup diversity led to their ALDS exit, leaving us wondering if this core will ever reach the World Series.

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The Yankees offseason was lifeless until January when DJ LeMahieu re-signed. Brian Cashman then quickly addressed their rotation departures of Tanaka, Paxton & Happ with high ceiling, low floor additions of Corey Kluber and Jameson Taillon. Adam Ottavino was traded to the Red Sox in a eyebrow-raising salary dump. They used that payroll space to add Justin Wilson & Darren O’Day and re-sign Brett Gardner.

Despite the activity, the Yankees are clearly treating the luxury tax as a mandate. This is the second time in the last four years that a team with championship aspirations has cut more than 50 million in payroll from year to year. If things break right in terms of injuries (a big IF you have watched this team from 2018-2020) and performance, the Yankees can potentially be the best team in baseball. They should have enough depth to weather any storm but at some point you’d like to see a healthy squad put it together over a full 162.

Win prediction: 99-63

Song to Represent the Team: Winning Ugly by The Rolling Stones

Tampa Bay Rays

By Jamieson Weiss

60-word Takeaway from 2020

In 2008, an upstart and overachieving Tampa Bay Rays team made the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. The dynasty that some predicted never really materialized, though, as the team failed to make it past the ALDS in each of their next four playoffs appearances. Until last year.

2020’s goofy season saw Tampa post the best record in the AL en route to another surprise World Series appearance and a similarly crushing loss.

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The 2021 Rays will be defined by two questions: is Randy Arozarena for real? and, can their pitching hold up over 162 games sans Blake Snell?

Arozarena was good in the regular season, posting a .281/.382/.452 slash line in 23 games, but he was transcendent in the playoffs, hitting .377/.442/.831 in 20 games. Most projections have him not even living up to his 2020 regular season numbers, but if Arozarena is even close to the 176 wRC+ he posted during the shortened campaign, the Rays will have unexpectedly found themselves one of the game’s best outfielders (which they’ll need, as only four of their nine starters posted an OPS+ above 100 last season).

On the mound, even without their former ace, the Rays possess a rather high-variance starting rotation, with frontline starters Tyler Glasnow and Ryan Yarbrough ahead of reclamation projects Chris Archer, Rich Hill, Michael Wacha, and Collin McHugh, plus breakout candidates Josh Fleming, Luis Patiño, and Brent Honeywell. A suitable microcosm for this team as a whole, nearly everyone on this roster could boom like Randy – or bust.

Win prediction: 86-76

Song to Represent the Team

The song that best represents the defending AL champion Tampa Bay Rays (they hope, at least) has to be Bad Boys for Life, the theme song of the city’s newest local champion, Tom Brady.

Toronto Blue Jays 

By Bryan Thomas

60-word Takeaway from 2020

Despite playing even their home games “on the road,” the Blue Jays were able to make the playoffs for the first time since 2016 under the revised and expanded playoff format for 2020. Their rising crop of stars were able to weather the ever-changing storm and show that, despite their age, they were ready to challenge the behemoths of the AL East.

162-word 2021 Season Preview

For the second consecutive year, the Toronto Blue Jays will start the season playing their home games “on the road.” Last year, they hurried to ready their minor league facility in Buffalo, NY. This season they will open at TD Ballpark in Dunedin, FL, home of another of their minor league teams. Changes like this could throw a wrench in the plans of most teams, but with a similar situation last season, the Blue Jays should be unfazed.

They spent money this off-season (a rarity) to lure George Springer away from the Astros. The return of Robbie Ray from injury and addition of Nate Pearson to the roster (if he can stay healthy) should round out an impressive squad for their 2021 campaign. Their biggest competition would appear to be the vaunted Yankees, but the Jays were able to split the season series last year including an impressive 5-2 record at home.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.may be the most recognizable name amongst the Jays’ loaded young infield, but he may be the least recognizable face after dropping 42 lbs. over the winter. Despite that, the addition of Marcus Semien to play second base will likely force Cavan Biggio to find a new home at third and permanently move Vlad Jr. to first. No matter how they line them up, the Blue Jays are gunning for the AL East crown.

Win prediction: 88-74

Song to Represent the Team: Tonight We Ride – Micky and the Motorcars

The post 2021 Season Preview Series: AL East appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

You can also follow along with the Effectively Wild podcast at FanGraphs as they cover two teams per episode.

And you can look back to see how we fared along with EW and other more advanced projection systems with our 2020 evaluation.

1. Mon, March 22: AL East
2. Tue, March 23: NL East
3. Thu, March 25: AL Central
4. Fri, March 26: NL Central
5. Mon, March 29: AL West
6. Tue, March 30: NL West

The post Season Preview Series 2021 Index appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

Normally, this exercise would be conducted following a number of preseason tasks, including a public poll of win totals and a preseason post covering all the predictions and projections that are involved. With all the disruption and confusion, including whether we would even get a baseball season, none of those tasks were carried out this year. I didn’t even know if I would do this evaluation post, but as all the good people involved in predictions and projections still made them, it seemed only fair that I reveal how wildly wrong everyone was.

That does, however, mean that this is not going to be quite the same as usual. For starters, I don’t have a Public projection set; unfortunate, given that the crowd was not only wise but also victorious last year. I also don’t have the Davenport projections included this year, as I didn’t get the usual snapshot right before the season started, so it wouldn’t be fair to compare those I do have available.

To underscore the profoundly disjointed nature of this season, the Effectively Wild predictions were not all made over the same period. There were 22 predictions spread over 11 pods recorded in February and March, back in that strange time when people were gearing up for a 162-game season. The remaining eight – the Tigers, Yankees, Rays, Orioles, Astros, Mariners, Marlins and Dodgers – weren’t made until July. I had to adjust those original 22 predictions down for a 60-game season, and we should bear in mind that most were made without any knowledge of the altered schedule, COVID-related absences, or more familiar injury issues. I also had to adjust the Giants prediction for both EW and BttP, as Grant Brisbee (in mid-March) and Patty Gallinger O’Connor (in July) both assumed a season that would not last the advertised length. While Grant gave a win-loss record that could be adjusted based on winning percentage. Patty guessed that the Giants would win five games before the season was cancelled. In the absence of knowing how many they would lose, I simply made them a .500 team.

I’ll also note that in the shortest MLB season of all time, this exercise is even more subject to the vagaries of random chance. Making predictions at the best of times is fraught with peril. Doing so for barely a third of a standard season with multiple additional complications for estimating talent – like opt-outs and positive tests – adds layers of difficulty that we could do without. I’ll still consider whether this season was ‘harder’ to predict than normal, but add a few extra grains of salt to any conclusions you might draw.

A quick recap of how this works for the new reader. For each of the sets of predictions and projections, the mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) has been calculated. MAE is the average difference between the predicted total and the actual, while RMSE is the square root of the average of the squares of all the differences. RMSE gives greater weight to large errors because they are squared, so if you think bigger misses should be punished more heavily, this is the more relevant number.

Here’s a breakdown of who’s competing for the title:

The Contenders

PECOTA (PEC): The Baseball Prospectus projected win totals based on their in-house projection system.

FanGraphs (FG): The FanGraphs Depth Charts projected totals, which are a combination of the Steamer and ZiPS projection systems, with an additional playing time adjustment applied by FanGraphs staff.

FiveThirtyEight (538): Site projections from FiveThirtyEight.com, based on their Elo rating system.

Banished to the Pen writers (BttP): Predictions from each of our writers from our season preview series.

Effectively Wild guests (EW): Predictions from each of Effectively Wild‘s team preview podcast guests.

Composite (Comp): The average of the five projection/prediction sets above, with the BttP/EW sets adjusted down to add up to 900 wins so they are not given extra weight.

Bat Flips & Nerds (BFN): Predictions from the annual roundtable podcast game that I carry out with the Bat Flips & Nerds crew.

The Results

A tie at the top between PECOTA and the EW guests, shocking in the latter case given the above context. However, it should be noted that these differences are incredibly small. In an absolute sense, five wins separated first place from sixth. To pick a team with some dissent as an example, it’s the difference between being very optimistic about the Astros and just moderately so.

PECOTA stood alone in the RMSE competition, winning for the second time in three years. The Composite set is essentially guaranteed to fare well in these comparisons but it got particularly close to winning. It’s not as easy to make direct comparisons in terms of raw wins here because it depends where the misses are. Nonetheless, if PECOTA had one more big miss, like 34 instead of 33 for the Nationals, for instance, the Composite set would have won here.

The battle for third was taken extremely narrowly by 538 over FanGraphs, after their tie in MAE. Again, a single win in the right place would have made the difference here. The same goes for the EW guests and the BFN team. There’s no doubt about which predictions were worst: our previewers here at BttP. Like the EW guests, they don’t get together to agree upon the predictions, so these can be illogically optimistic. Unlike the EW guests, they were so far off that when it came to MAE, we would have done just as well by predicting 30 wins for every team. That’s the most basic bar to clear; mercifully we did manage that in RMSE.

Level of optimism is something I normally cover in the preseason edition, so let’s take a quick look here. BttP over-predicted the total possible number of wins – 900 – by 48, while EW topped that by 33. That continues our unbroken trend of human predictions being overly optimistic, a tendency we appear collectively unable to escape. (The BFN prediction game not only involves group consultation but also forces us to make all the wins add up to the correct total, so this pitfall is avoided.)

If we pro-rate those numbers out to a 162-game schedule, totalling 2430 wins, both sets of predictions would break the all-time high of 2511 wins predicted. The EW guests come out at 2519, while BttP hit a whopping 2560, an incredible 130 wins over the possible total. They predicted six 100-plus win teams on a pro-rated basis. It’s extremely unlikely that would have happened if they were making typical 162-game predictions. This no doubt accounts for some of the inaccuracy: if we just take the adjusted set used for the Composite projection, it improves BttP by almost 0.4 wins in RMSE. That’s still last, but a much closer last. We can at least put some of this excess down to the unfamiliarity with making 60-game predictions. People might not intuitively think of 33 wins being the same as 90.

That’s less of an excuse for the EW guests, most of whom made their predictions before we could even contemplate a 60-game season. As the series moved towards the extremes, starting from the teams projected at .500 and moving out towards each end, those featured in July were either expected to be very good or very bad, and the guests were largely right. The problem was in February and March, when all but three of the 22 teams were predicted to be .500 or better, the most egregious being the Pirates and Rangers. None of the other sets were that optimistic on what turned out to be two of the worst teams in the league.

With the short schedule, the raw misses were not as big and there were a lot more close predictions than normal. BttP’s Matthew Kilmartin, the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Susan Slusser, and the BFN crew all correctly picked the 36-win A’s. We also nailed the Twins and Rockies on the BFN pod, while two other EW guests were spot on, both writers from The Athletic: Aaron Gleeman (also Minnesota); and Alec Lewis (Royals). The Reds were the easiest team to pick this year with an average miss of just 1.3 wins, while the sub-.500 Astros threw everyone off with an average miss of 7.4 wins.

Can we really determine if this season was more difficult to predict? If we assume that these win percentages had continued over a 162-game season and multiply our numbers by 2.7 (162/60), the answer is yes. We have never seen an MAE in the double-digits in the past six years, and all of these results would pass that. The RMSE marks rise into the 12-14 range, again wildly unprecedented. Typically they are around 9-10, and we’ve even seen low-7s in 2016, one of the more ‘predictable’ seasons in recent memory.

Of course, it’s very unlikely that the season would have panned out exactly this way with a full schedule. For example, the Marlins had a 26-34 Pythagorean record, allowing 41 more runs than they scored. Over a full season, they’d have needed to be much luckier to stay above .500. This method treats them as an 84-win team.

Here’s the full list of how each set compared to the actual win totals, with deeper red indicating bigger misses:

If wins are a tricky measure to deal with in the abbreviated season, what about how our contenders fared when it came to predicting the overall standings?

Ranks

The Composite takes the MAE victory, by a single rank from the BFN set (which wasn’t included in the Composite). When it came to the rest of the sets, it wasn’t all that close: 538 was 14 behind in third. The Composite perfectly blended opinions to identify six teams in their correct spots. PECOTA slipped the furthest from its win total ranking with some optimism on the Reds and pessimism about the Giants, although it was saved slightly by being rosiest on the Marlins.

It was a resounding success for the BFN method when it came to RMSE. There, the Composite was beaten comfortably into second. The EW guests really suffered, slipping into last place primarily because of those Rangers and Pirates predictions. FanGraphs also fared poorly, missing eight different teams by at least 12 spots in the rankings. It did, however, get much closer to the Padres than any other set, rating them as the seventh-best team in the preseason.

Unlike the win totals, we can draw a direct comparison here to previous seasons. It so happens that 2019 was very predictable in the context of the overall standings, so this season’s results were comfortably worse. The worst set had a RMSE of 6.44, and 538 had an excellent 4.88 mark to lead the pack. BFN would have finished a mediocre sixth in 2018 as well. However, this year was not as hard to predict by this measure as 2017, our most difficult year in the six years I have been tracking this. The best RMSE on a rank basis that year was the Composite at 8.67, far behind our last-placed finisher in 2020.

Here’s the same comparison table but for the final ranks instead of win totals:

And that concludes our journey through predictions and projections for another year. Let’s hope that 2021 is a little less tumultuous, and we can go back to being wrong under much more conventional circumstances.

The post Evaluating the 2020 Predictions & Projections appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

The Astros have lost their GM, manager, and Gerrit Cole, but they still have a potential best-team-in-baseball core. The A’s will push them every step of the way. They’re not the only hopefuls. Los Angeles added Rendon to Trout and Ohtani while Kluber will strengthen the Texas rotation. Seattle might finish in the basement but the prospect hype is justified. – Darius Austin

The Astros Are Great Because the World Is Unfair
By Dan Epstein

The Astros are a bunch of smelly jerks who cheat and win a lot, and win a lot because they cheat. Okay, that’s not true. Some of them are good people and almost all of them are great players. Come to think of it, that’s probably the reason why they win a lot. They’ll continue winning a lot in 2020, as they train a lot and for training pain they could check indoor flower here for this purpose.

Now playing: The Shields – You Cheated, You Lied

Win total prediction: 41

False Hope, Perhaps
By Matthew Kilmartin

For the A’s to make it to the playoffs this year, they’re going to have to realize it’s the end of the season already and not have their traditionally slow start. Khris Davis will have to produce his .247 average, and the Matts will need to produce too. Health will determine how well the pitching rotation turns out to be.

Now playing: TOOL – Invincible

Win total prediction: 36

Can 2020 Be More Than Just the “Penultimate Pujols” Season?
By Ken Maeda

Trout’s a dad in early August. Jo Adell’s maybe not up till September. Smooth Simmons and surprising La Stella could split in November. Big bat Rendon plays third. David Fletcher plays everywhere. Ohtani pitches Sundays. Ohtani hits Tuesdays-Fridays. Injury-prone starter Andrew Heaney hopes to stay up front. Griffin Canning’s up and coming. Team figures to again just be “all right.”

Now playing: Jimmy Eat World- The Middle

Angels win prediction: 32 wins

Cool Stadium, Hot Pitchers
By Emily Thompson

The Rangers have Kluber, Minor, Lynn, and a new air-conditioned stadium. They won’t face Houston until day 40. Texas should get a good start, but ten games versus the Astros in September will be brutal. Globe Life Field announced that it will host its first fan-attended game next April. Until then, its partially subterranean VIP suites will have to wait.

Now playing: Metric – Stadium Love

Rangers win total prediction: 28

A Strategic Reset (coughTEARDOWNcough)
By Simon Gutierrez

I remember a simpler time, when the biggest news about the Mariners’ 2020 season was Mitch Haniger’s grotesque testicle injury. Yeah, you read that right. Did you forget, too? Well, poor Mitch still isn’t playing baseball, but the Mariners are! No, they’re not going to win much, but Jarred Kelenic and Kyle Lewis have apparently been scalding the ball and there might be something to dream on at least.

Now playing: Bouncing Souls – Kid

Mariners win total prediction: 25

NATIONAL LEAGUE WEST

The NL West is where the opt-out action is, with Posey, Price, and Desmond all opting out this season. Mookie and the Dodgers’ depth still look like the favorites here, but don’t sleep on the Padres arriving sooner than we thought, or the Diamondbacks successfully retooling on the fly. As for the Giants and Rockies, well…it could get ugly. – Brandon Lee

* – before the season is called off

Place Your (Mookie) Betts
By Mike Carlucci

I’m not just writing Mookie Betts thirty times, although the thought did cross my mind. Where do the Dodgers stand? Well, they added Betts, traded Alex Verdugo, had David Price opt out, and get a short season of Kershaw. Is this Kershaw without a leash? That could be big. This team is smart and ruthless: Dodgers 40-20 and World Series.

Now playing: Mighty, Mighty Bosstones – The Impression That I Get

Dodgers win total prediction: 40

Be Like Mike (Stay Home)
By Nick Strangis

Mike Leake decided that his life, and that of his family, friends, and potential strangers was not worth the $5.5M. We find it reassuring that some players put a high price on health and wish Leake luck in the future. According to MLB.com depth charts, Merrill Kelly is slated to take the fifth rotation spot at this moment.

Now playing: Be Like Mike (Gatorade commercial)

Diamondbacks win total prediction: 33

Padres Down, but Back in Brown
By Dan McMenamin

The Padres brought back the brown unis for 2020. They dug their usual hole into last place in the NL West in 2019. But down in the brown dirt is the rumbling of hot talent lava, a collection of good young players, maybe even a few great ones. Who knows how high it’ll erupt? Or COVID cancels everything. We’ll see!

Now playing: Thin Lizzy – The Boys are Back in Town

Padres win total prediction: 33

Rockies on the Rocks
By Dan Freedman

Ian Desmond leaves more money on the table – this time it’s $5.5 million. Matt Kemp, 1.7 bWAR (total) over the past seven seasons, is being given another chance. Daniel Bard, he of one major league inning since 2012, is being given another chance. Sam Hilliard may hit some bombs. Brendan Rodgers may flash some leather. Eat the Rocky Mountain Po’boy.

Now playing: Bob Seger – Get Out of Denver

Rockies win total prediction: 28 wins

2020 Don’t Stay
By Patty Gallinger O’Connor

60 games you say? No way.

“Sports are the reward for a functional society,” Sean Doolittle.

Dysfunction erupts.

Buster opts out.

Cardboard fans wear masks.

Take a knee. Tragedy.

Welcome in the brothers MLB

Build the missing ballparks.

So much strife. Next year’s strike.

Mama says

It’s gonna be alright.

But only if you

Take up the fight.

Revolution.

Now playing: The Beatles – Revolution

Giants win total prediction: 5

2020 Season Preview Series Index

The post 60 Words for 60 Games: AL & NL West appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

There are good teams in Minnesota and Cleveland. There are bad teams in Detroit and Kansas City. The White Sox are the one in the middle. A “wild card” both in terms of how they could make the playoffs this year AND how they could completely throw off the AL Central if their young bats put it together all summer. – Brandon Lee

Standings by win total prediction

Sure, Yasmani Grandal Will Be Good, Too
By James Cardis

The White Sox should finish in playoff contention. Luis Robert will be fun to watch, and could contend for Rookie of Baseball’s Strangest Year. What does it mean to win under these circumstances? Will the accompanying asterisk be italicized or in bold? Each day that passes it becomes increasingly difficult to care what occurs on the field. Go White Sox.

Now playing: The Clean – Anything Could Happen

White Sox win total prediction: 40

Things Happen for a Reason, Except When They Don’t
By Lee Pietruszewski

This is typical. We’ve waited since about 2009 for a strong Twins team. We got one that won 101 games last season, and the current roster might be the best on-paper team they’ve had. And instead of a season of fun, we got pandemic and long-overdue social upheaval. Call me selfish, but I am pessimistic. Less than twenty games played.

Now playing: Richie Valens – La Bamba

Twins win total prediction: 39 wins

Power Surge Strikes at Progressive Field
By Marina Bostelman

Some unlikely bats have been making noise in Cleveland’s summer camp: long-injured outfielder Bradley Zimmer and prospect Daniel Johnson are blasting dingers left, right, and center, while rookie utilityman Yu Chang might be Babe Ruth, apparently. The odds are long, but could a has-been and a couple of never-will-be’s become the lineup depth that has eluded the Tribe for years?

Now playing: Panic! At the Disco: High Hopes

Cleveland win total prediction: 32

The Tigers Are Almost Not Embarrassing
By Mark Sands

The Tigers could have a top 10 pitching staff. Don’t laugh! Last year, they were 16th in starting pitcher fWAR. Boyd, Turnbull, and Norris are a solid 2-4 even on a good team. Michael Fulmer is back after injury and they have three near-ready top prospects in Manning, Mize, and Skubal. Alas, the hitting will once again be borderline dreadful.

Now playing: Tomorrow from Annie the musical

Tigers win total prediction: 26

The Worst of Times and the Worst of Times
By Nathan Valentine

Rejoice, Royals fans, the balm of baseball returns to soothe our troubled hearts. Will they be good? No! Fun? Not really! Storylines? New manager! There might be a trade! What is the coolest thing that could happen? The club goes utterly gonzo and just plays their talented young prospects for the second half of the season, that would be interesting!

Now playing: Robbie Fulks – Rock bottom, pop. 1

Royals win total prediction: 22

NATIONAL LEAGUE CENTRAL

It’s a great season to be a Reds fan. Or a Cardinals fan. Or a Brewers, Cubs, or…even a Pirates fan? The Central is up for grabs with all five teams clustered together, and a shortened season means a sprint to the finish line. The team with the best health, or the biggest surprise contributor, will win this division. – Brandon Lee

Standings by win total prediction

Play Ball, I Guess
By Alex Crisafulli

Two reasons why this season matters:

1) If the Cubs finish 32-28, crash the playoffs, and then win the World Series – thereby salvaging their competitive window – I will be furious.

2) The only thing worse than winning a World Series after this 60-game farce is not winning a World Series after this 60-game farce.

So screw it, go Cardinals.

Now playing: Ween – Bananas and Blow

Cardinals win total prediction: 33

What Will the Mad Stein-entist Brew Up in the Pen?
By Ross Bukouricz

Brewers manager Craig Counsell has always been one to aggressively use the bullpen. With a short season, the return of former closer Corey Knebel, and the full time DH in the National League so he does not have to worry about pinch hitting, does he take this to an extreme to squeeze every ounce of value out his pitching staff?

Now playing: The Beastie Boys – The Sounds of Science

Brewers win total prediction: 33

Let’s Play 60
By Ben Bailey

It’ll mostly come down to pitching. Hendricks gets the Opening Day start. Darvish invented a new pitch. Quintana will be delayed. Could this be Bryant’s last dance? How will the Pitch Lab hold up? How will the crosstown games affect both teams? David Ross is up to the task thus far. No positive tests yet; hopefully it stays that way.

Now playing: The Modern Lovers – Astral Plane

Cubs win total prediction: 32

2020 Could Be on the Money
By Mark Norton

The Reds spent money. 2020 really is weird. In this ‘tournament’ season, it may pay off. Good pitching features a strong rotation and a deep pen to keep the ball *in* the Great American Smallpark; plenty of Ks offset a subpar defense. They’ll go as far as their bats – especially the imported ones – take them. PECOTA projects them in first!

Now playing: O’Jays – For the Love of Money

Reds win total prediction: 32

60 Games to Plunder a Wild Card

By Lief Skodnick

Sixty games is a sprint, a chance to beat out a metaphorical throw by a deep-in-the-hole shortstop for a chance to play in October. Chris Archer would’ve been a big help, but he’s hurt. Beyond Joe Musgove, there’s not much starting depth. Maybe they’ll get hot and grab a wild card spot. In a full season, there’d be no chance.

Now playing: Herb Alpert – Rise

Pirates win total prediction: 24

The post 60 Words for 60 Games: AL & NL Central appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

The A.L. East asks the question: What do you get when you combine one recent champion (Red Sox), the best regular season team of the last decade (Yankees), a perennial close-but-not-quite contender (Rays), a team that won’t even be playing in its home country (Blue Jays), and one of the worst teams in baseball history (Orioles). – Jamieson Weiss

Standings by win total prediction

A Sentence at a Time
By Andrew Calagna

The Yankees need to stay healthy in 2020. They were not healthy in 2019, but exceeded expectations due to unexpected contributions. Gerrit Cole is really good at throwing a baseball. Gleyber Torres is really good at hitting a baseball too. The bullpen is still a huge weapon and should give them an advantage. This team can win the World Series.

Now playing: Mr. Mister – Broken Wings

Yankees win total prediction: 38

Mask Up and Flip the Bat
By Jeremy Ashton

How far the Tampa Bay Rays go in 2020 will depend heavily on their starting rotation, but the fun part of watching this team in this weirdest of seasons will be Ji-Man Choi. This video sums it up perfectly — he plays with joy, and he’s a walking advertisement for the safety protocols that Floridians should be practicing right now.

Now playing: The Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go

Rays win total prediction: 32

Dark Days for the Red Sox: Can Financial Flexibility Pitch?
By Jamieson Weiss

The Red Sox traded their best home-grown talent since Carl Yastrzemski and lost their top pitcher to history’s most predictable Tommy John. They’re embarking on a 60-game version of a 3-0, get-me-over-fastball, and the PawSox won’t get to send off McCoy Stadium properly in its final year. Everything’s falling apart.

On the plus side: Rafael Devers is still massively fun.

Now playing: The Jackson Five – I Want You Back

Red Sox win total prediction: 27

Brought to You by the Letter “B”
By Darius Austin

The brand-new bizarre bombshell in a baffling 2020: the banished Blue Jays. Barred from baseball in Canada to block the bug, Bo Bichette, Biggio and baby Vlad will bring their bats to a back-up ballpark. The best bet is brought by the Bisons, a brief bound beyond the border. Bye-bye Toronto; bonjour Baltimore, Boston and the Bronx Bombers in Buffalo.

Now playing: Garfunkel & Oates – Pretty in Buffalo

Blue Jays win total prediction: 24

Baltimore Won’t Lose 100 Games!
By Chris Baber

The Orioles haven’t played meaningful baseball since 2017, and it’ll be difficult to watch them this season without thinking of Trey Mancini and his fight against stage 3 colon cancer. Trey is the best player left on this team, and we’re looking forward to seeing him in 2021. His home runs, awkward throws, and smile will be missed this season.

Now playing: Cher – If I Could Turn Back Time

Orioles win total prediction: 21

NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST

The Washington Nationals won the World Series for the first time in their history, lost their best position player for the second straight offseason, and, despite having a few solid replacement options for him, could find themselves finishing third or fourth. Atlanta, the Mets, and the Phillies all have a shot at dethroning the Nats. The Marlins? Not so much. – Jamieson Weiss

Standings by win total prediction

The Baby Braves (but Slightly Older)
By Matt Mudd

Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, and Mike Soroka boast a historic combination of youth and production. All named All-Stars at age 21, Albies and Acuña already Silver Sluggers, and Soroka finishing 6th in Cy Young voting last year, they have proven experts at making a lot of noise in a short amount of time. 60 games won’t be a problem.

Now playing: George Michael – Faith

Atlanta win total prediction: 39

Random Game Generator
By Kyle Godown

The Phillies were always going to be one of the toughest teams to predict in 2020, shortened season or not. This collection of players has shown the type of volatility that will make a 60-game season so fascinating. Their season could rise as high as Bryce Harper’s 2015 MVP season or as low and Rhys Hoskins’ second half of 2019.

Now playing: The Hold Steady – Constructive Summer

Phillies win total prediction: 36

The Washington Nationals: Basking in the Afterglow
By Mick Reinhard

Washington should have one goal this year. No, it is not to amplify the muted victory lap for its World Series win last October. It’s not even to repeat as champions in the sprint known as the 2020 season. Instead, it’s to protect 21-year-old wunderkind Juan Soto at all costs from injury and coronavirus. Juan – your body bubble awaits you.

Now playing: Bruce Springsteen – Protection

Nationals win total prediction: 34

The 2020 New York Mets, to the Tune of “Meet the Mets!”
By Michael Conte

Pete got fat,

Yo can bat!

Díaz can’t be bad as all that?

Ramos left his kids and wife,

Noah’s elbow went under the knife!

Jacob deGrom might three-peat for a Cy Young; McNeil hitting .400, that’d be fun!

Here comes Steve C!

Will the GM throw a chair?

As long as they stay COVID free, then we! Don’t! Care!

Now playing: Yo La Tengo – Meet The Mets

Mets win total prediction: 33

Quantity Over Quality
By Jonathan Jacoby

The Marlins are the only team predicted to have their average attendance increase this season. The modified schedule hurts the Marlins. The young, deep pitching staff will help. With Jonathan Villar and Jon Berti, maybe they will become “The Flying Fish”, stealing and going for the extra base. If they can’t play winning baseball, might as well play exciting baseball.

Now playing: Barnes & Barnes – Fish Heads

Marlins win total prediction: 25

The post 60 Words for 60 Games: AL & NL East appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

I tracked the results in a spreadsheet which is the point of reference for this recap. Excerpts are included below, but it’s available in its entirety in a Google doc. A tab includes links to each poll’s thread in the Faceboook group.

The Key: Each round, I colored the eliminated team red and the runner-up yellow. The theory is that the runner-up is the team likeliest to be voted out the following round (though it doesn’t always work out like that).

In column B, the first team from each division eliminated is colored red, and the last from each division is green. In the bottom line, I marked vote totals that were relatively low (<350) red, and the highest (>450) green. (Totals ranged from 300 to 613, FYI.) Deposit on this site and be ale to gamble for your favorite player and be able to win incredible money prizes.

Each team’s total votes against are tallied, and average per round is calculated. Highest average per round (>39) is colored red, lowest average per round (<19) is colored green. Sort of redundant, but I also calculated percentage of votes against. That is, total number of votes divided by total potential votes. It tracks the averages per round, with >9% being high (red) and <5% being low (green).

I had hoped that by tracking number of votes I could develop a hierarchy less subject to the whims and strategy of the daily Survivor challenge. I ranked them in the final column. I think it works for the teams with more votes against, but vote totals overwhelm the fundamentals as we get into the later rounds. It’s probably less fair to our champion and runner-up than the daily voting.

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A great big thank you to Jonathan, for posting these polls and tallying each day’s results. I truly appreciated his commentary as the game unfolded. And thanks to Ken Maeda, who helped me to get this data and recap posted, and for doing the mascot picture that illustrates it. I merely put together the spreadsheet, which was mostly for my own entertainment. Now that you have the data, here’s a series of recaps by round, as I try to add a little context and hopefully enhance your appreciation for the contest.

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30. Yankees: The Yankees were voted out in round 1. They’re MLB’s perennial bad guy team, having won (by far) the most World Series and the most games. They’ve crushed the hopes and dreams of most other American League fan bases, and have defeated several National League team in many World Series. They’re in the biggest market, and many feel that they often poach the best players via free agency rather than develop internal talent (although they do that too). Even when they rebuild they have a respectable season. Everyone who roots for another team hates them (unless they’re the kind of fan who backs a winner for winning’s sake).

29. Astros: Some recency bias here, and maybe in a few seasons they’ll somewhat transcend their current scandals. If this contest had been held before last season — before the cheating/bang scandal was unearthed, and before the Osuna trade controversy escalated with Brandon Taubman and the Astros’ malevolent (and then head-smackingly tone-deaf and clumsy) attempt to thwart consequences for it, I think they might’ve even been a consensus favorite, probably beating the Rangers and maybe the Angels in AL West esteem. But for right now they’re among the most hated teams. You could see it coming in round 1, as they had the second-highest votes against.

28. Cardinals: The vibe is different — middle market, midwest city in decline — but the Cardinals are the Yankees of the NL simply by virtue of having the most World Series titles in their league. And their marketing effort as “the best fans in Baseball,” bragging dominance of the NL-Central, “the Cardinals Way” — their fans may love this stuff but for everyone else it’s grating. It’s like they want to be perceived as a perennial scrappy underdog, but it’s incongruous with being the dominant team in the NL. They can’t have it both ways. We could see this one coming in votes earlier, when they drew a lot of votes in round 1 and were runner-up in round 2.

27. Red Sox: Back before the 21st century, the Boston Red Sox were sympathetic, having not won a World Series in nearly 100 years and having to deal with the villainous Yankees regularly. They cast themselves as the “Rebel Alliance” while the Yankees embraced the role of Evil Empire. Seattle sports fans had a natural affinity for the Boston teams, as the Red Sox battled the Yankees, the Boston Celtics regularly played the hated LA Lakers in the NBA Finals, and the New England Patriots hadn’t yet won a championship. After the 2004 World Series, I think national affection for the team increased. But as the decade unfolded, Boston won championships in every major sport and became less sympathetic, and they became regular World Series winners. Fans of other teams — I’m a Mariners fan — got tired of seeing a sea of red Red Sox jerseys at our home games. We all got tired of Tom Brady winning Super Bowl after Super Bowl. The Red Sox have become part of a free agent-buying, big-money “evil empire” of its own. And that makes them early-round losers in this contest. The team’s path toward elimination began in round 1  among the top vote-getters, and were runner-up by a large margin in round 3.

26. Cubs and 25. Dodgers: I think we can call rounds 5 and 6 a tie. Voting against these teams was close in every round until the Cubs were eliminated. The Dodgers had slightly more votes (and were runner-up) in round 4, and then the Cubs lost in round 5 by only 10 votes. Both represent big cities and huge markets, and have relatively limitless resources — an enviable position that attracts enemies. The first six teams represent something of a “tier,” drawing votes against from the very beginning.

24. Phillies: Opposition to this team started coalescing in round 5, where they drew the third-highest number of votes against. They were runner-up in round 6, and eliminated in round 7. This team represents a big market that competes against several big city fan bases regularly and therefore has lots of natural enemies.

23. Indians: Back in the 1980s, this was one of the least successful franchises in MLB. I remember seeing an episode of Family Ties where young Jennifer tells big brother Alex she’s headed to the Seattle-Cleveland game, and Alex says “Clash of the Titans.” A few years later, the Major League film series featured this team partly because it was understood to be hapless. A few years after that, the Indians became a good team and have been consistently respectable ever since. And recency bias works against them — they’ve been the dominant team in the AL Central for the past few seasons. I would guess if this poll were done after 2010 or 2012, a division rival might’ve been a bigger target. Also working against the team is the team name, mascot, and Chief Wahoo logo, which draw perennial criticism. Opposition against the team kicked in in earnest in the round 6 vote; it was a close runner-up in round 7 and lost fairly closely in round 8.

22. Braves: The team name and Tomahawk logo/”chop” worked against this team and it was runner-up to the Indians in round 8. They’re also a major rival to fans of the other NL East teams. Their loss in round 9 wasn’t particularly close, so these three might be another “tier” of disliked teams.

21. Marlins: Eliminated out of nowhere this round in a fairly tight competition with Giants and Mets. Going into this round, we expected the Giants to go, as they’d had a surge in votes against in round 8, and were runner-up in rounds 9 and 10. Miami hadn’t attracted a large number of votes in any previous round, they were just suddenly out of contention with this vote. That makes me see this elimination as an anomaly — maybe the Marlins drew votes early and the fans of other teams piled on to protect their own voting interest. There is some animosity towards this team’s ownership (mostly past owners). Their fans are long-suffering, but the team has also managed to win two World Series in a relatively short span of existence, so that tempers sympathy somewhat. I’d guess in a contest stripped of anomaly, the team would be in the middle of teams eliminated, maybe 15th or 16th, not top 10.

20. Giants: This was a close vote with the Mets, but the momentum had been building against the Giants longer with a spike in votes against in round 8. The Giants represent a large market with plenty of money, have a major historic rival with a large fan base in the Dodgers, and have won several World Series recently, and are appropriately unsympathetic.

19. Mets: This team started attracting more than average votes against in round 7, and steadily gained votes each round until eliminated. The less storied, poorer team that represents New York City is still a huge-market team that should have the among the largest payrolls (if ownership wasn’t so awful). I also think other NL East teams’ fans were voting in a semi-coordinated groupthink way to eliminate rivals. Still, the poll was close, as runner-up Texas survived by a handful of votes.

18. Nationals: Totally blindsided this round, as this team hadn’t ever drawn enough votes in previous rounds to suspect elimination was imminent. This was as close as it gets — the Brewers survived by a single vote, 104-103. I suspect that divisional rivals again drove this spike. Washington was the least-disliked team in the NL East, and would’ve made the top ten if percentages of the total vote are a meaningful metric. I don’t think winning the 2019 World Series hurt, because it was against an obvious villain in the Astros.

17.  Rangers: Vote total jumped against the Rangers in round 10, then they were nearly eliminated in round 12, then pressure eased up with the Nationals-Brewers competition in round 13. But with the Nationals out, attention whipped back to eliminate this team in a not-very-close loss. I can’t explain it; this team is simply disliked roughly in sync with the round it was eliminated, but maybe would have gone a round or two later in an anomaly-free contest.

16. Pirates: Going into this round, you might have guessed that the Brewers were next to go, but they narrowly survived as the crowd turned against the Pirates. Momentum had been turning against them starting with round 12, but there were plenty of other teams drawing votes. This one was a surprise in a close vote. I’d guess that with the NL East eliminated, Cardinal/Cub fans started picking off the other rivals.

15. Brewers: Their time finally comes, but the runner-up Orioles are reasonably close.

14. Royals: Another surprise. The Royals were almost completely under the radar until this round, though they drew a lot of votes against in round 15. It’s not a total blow-out, so maybe things went against them early in the voting and non-fans of the team piled on to save their favorites.

13. Orioles: Close vote with the White Sox nearly going instead. The tide turned against the Orioles in round 14 and they’d been runner up in the previous two.

12. White Sox: The runner-up in round 18 goes this round, and it’s a blow-out, no one else is close. That makes this the last team in a “tier” that extends ten rounds, from Marlins to White Sox.

11. Reds: The least-disliked team in the NL Central is the Reds, who didn’t draw serious attention until round 17, then hung with a pack of teams that outlasted them for a few before getting hit hard and eliminated here. The vote is close with the Tigers this round, but it’s the Reds’ time to go.

10. Diamondbacks: Kicks off a couple of rounds where the Angels are flirting with elimination.

9. Tigers: It seemed like things were turning against the Angels but they squeaked past this round with the Tigers taking the hit.

8. Angels: Goodwill towards Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, among other factors, keep the team alive deep into the game, and they outlast every other huge-city/major-market team (NY, LA, Chicago…). The runner-up Blue Jays have managed to avoid scrutiny thus far and last a few more rounds, but are in danger from here out.

7. Rockies: Things turn suddenly against the Rockies, who haven’t been all that close to elimination until recently and didn’t seem to be in too much danger.

6. Rays: Bloody close battle between the remaining AL East teams for Effectively Wild favorite. The Rays get the boot by only two measly votes, without much indication they were under threat.

5. Blue Jays: The favorite team in the AL East goes here in a total blow-out, and I think this is a good place to call a tier: Reds-to-Blue Jays.

4. Twins: The favorite team in the AL Central outlasted the Tigers by several rounds. Runner-up Mariners weren’t all that close behind.

3. Padres: The favorite team in the NL West is eliminated here. Runner-up Athletics are a distant second.

The Championship Round: This time the vote was flipped, and votes were cast for the team that participants wanted to win, and the winner was: The Oakland Athletics!

To make things work with my spreadsheet format, I simply applied votes for the Athletics to the Mariners (as votes against) and vice-versa. The A’s were triumphant.

Runner-up – Mariners: I have a theory that sympathy for a rival only goes so far. You don’t mind them because they aren’t threatening; they’ve never factored into one of your favorite team’s truly demoralizing defeats. Maybe they beat a hated rival one day when you were paying attention and earned some goodwill with you. But ultimately you prefer another team, and they’re a rival capable of handing you a bad day or week or season. And maybe it’s worse when they’re a rival you take for granted as a weaker team. They have no business being threatening in any way. Maybe you met a fan of their team, and they don’t experience your favorite team as a team whose victories are to be celebrated — your favorite team probably gave them a bad day, or week or season at some point in its storied past.

So, it is with the Seattle Mariners. They’re a sympathetic team, by virtue of never having accomplished something every other team in MLB has accomplished — playing in a World Series — but you don’t want to lose to them, even if it’s just a popularity contest. It’s better to lose to a team that does have some accomplishments.

The Champion – A’s: The Oakland Athletics are quite sympathetic. A relatively poor team. Playing in one of the league’s dumpiest stadiums. Surviving in the shadow of the region’s more popular and successful team — literal Giants. They were the subject of Moneyball, a book (and later movie) that appeals strongly to the people voting in this contest. It may be the reason they became interested in baseball analytics in the first place. It was published in 2003 — 17 years ago. And the team itself does have great historic accomplishments: only the A’s and the Yankees have won at least three consecutive World Series.

So, there you have it: the Oakland Athletics — the least disliked team in baseball according to fans of Effectively Wild. Congratulations!

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2019 League Rankings

By Andrew Ingrelli

A song to play while reading about the Brewers: “MAY FAILURE BE YOUR NOOSE” by Lingua Ignota

“In Stearns we trust” has become a bit of a mantra in Brewers nation since David Stearns took the reigns from then-general manager Doug Melvin in 2015. The immensely talented Harvard graduate has effectively spun straw into gold ever since, exceeding most expectations year-after-year since taking over. He’s shown a knack for squeezing maximum value from every roster spot, leaning into the benefits of roster flexibility on both sides of the ball. Considering the Brewers are coming off consecutive seasons where they’ve played more than 162 games, it’s safe to say that his organizational philosophy works.

That recent success has hinged on unbelievable September runs in back-to-back seasons, going 19-7 in 2018 and 20-7 in 2019. These ridiculous results came in no small part due to the increased flexibility that expanded September rosters afford, especially when it comes to the additional out-getters at manager Craig Counsell’s disposal. Recent MLB rule changes aimed at speeding up the pace of play seem specifically targeted at teams like the Milwaukee Brewers, as there’s little doubt that they would have failed to make both miraculous September runs had the rules been in place prior to the 2020 season.

With those rule changes in mind, David Stearns went to work in a busy off-season that saw 13 players from the previous year leave the organization. The starting rotation was in dire need of attention, and the losses of Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas left glaring holes in the lineup that needed to be filled. Swinging a trade for now-injured Luis Urias and Eric Lauer for Zach Davies was an attempt to address the hole at the hot corner while holding steady on the pitching side of things. Omar Narváez was acquired from the Mariners two weeks later and should provide enough offensive output to replace what was lost from the departure of Grandal. Due to their apparent lack of need in the outfield, the free-agent acquisition of Avisaíl García came as a bit of a surprise to most who follow the team.

The rest of the roster was filled out with an underwhelming cast of characters, including but not limited to Justin Smoak, Eric Sogard, Ryon Healy, and Brett Anderson. The current squad should maintain levels of positional flexibility that Stearns and Counsell enjoyed during the 2019 season. Steamer Projections at FanGraphs ultimately grade the 2020 version of the roster as a slight improvement over the 2019 roster while maintaining payroll flexibility going into the 2020 season.

Unfortunately, as Rob Arthur pointed out in a recent Baseball Prospectus piece, payroll flexibility is a lie. In short, “when teams trim their budgets, they don’t respond by spending more later.” The findings of his piece are particularly concerning considering that most believe the window to win for the Brewers is now, while the MVP-caliber Christian Yelich is still on the roster at an affordable rate. Projected payroll going into the 2020 season has dropped to $92,941,666 from its 2019 level of $123,430,400. This is all happening as millionaire owner Mark Attanasio is crying poor to the media this spring. As Dayn Perry of CBS points out, small-market excuses for not spending don’t hold up. If David Stearns is truly a miracle worker, none of this will matter to the rabid Milwaukee fan base. If not, may failure be your noose.

How will the Brewers define success in 2020?

It really depends on who you ask. Ownership seems content with appearing competitive enough to sell tickets and merchandise in order to turn a healthy profit. Most Brewers fans see the Christian Yelich era as the best opportunity for the team to finally make it to the Fall Classic for the first time since 1982. Failing to do so after consecutive postseason appearances will more than likely be seen as a failure by the majority of the fan base.

The most “Effectively Wild” player on the Brewers: Josh Lindblom

Hoping to strike gold with another KBO breakout in the same way he did with fan-favorite Eric Thames, Stearns signed righty starter Josh Lindblom to a three-year deal at a reasonable rate. The 32-year-old reinvented himself overseas, winning consecutive Choi Dong-Won Awards while maintaining ERAs under 3.00 across both seasons. He was also the league MVP in 2019. It’ll be interesting to see whether his wild levels of success will carry over to his time with the Brewers organization or if he’ll just end up being an effectively useless, albeit low-risk signing. Should the Brewers desire to enjoy any real level of success in the 2020 season, however, they’re certainly banking on the former rather than the latter.

If the Milwaukee Brewers were an ice cream flavor, what flavor would they be?

While it may not be widely known that it even exists, beer-flavored ice cream would be the obvious choice for the Brewers. Better yet, make that beer-flavored frozen custard.

One Miller Park food item that is a must-try: Pete’s Pops

Assuming they’ll still be available in the 2020 season, Pete’s Pops get my wholehearted endorsement. The company started as a fun idea from a “chill pop dude” who just wanted to sell interesting ice pops out of a pushcart during Milwaukee summers. The homegrown brand has flourished since its humble beginnings, and now includes a number of street carts roaming the city, a permanent production facility, and a Miller Park concessions debut in 2019. They specialize in crafting a variety of bold, unique, and delicious flavor combinations you wouldn’t immediately expect to find in an ice pop.

Win total prediction: 84

by Lee Pietruszewski

A song for the Twins: Rage Against the Machine — Bombtrack. This was played over the PA in Target Field after every home run last season (there were 307 of them hit by this team), which means it played 137 times last season. There will be more this season, Cruz willing.

Rocco Baldelli was covered in this space last season, and his contribution should not be understated. The youngest manager to win Manager of the Year is now long in the tooth at 39, and despite the loss of revered hitting coach James Rowson to the Miami Marlins, Baldelli’s collaboration with Derek Falvey and Thad Levine in filling the coaching ranks has been impressive in a small sample. It seems like the new, big test comes now as to whether they were skilled or lucky in their first attempt. Wes Johnson remains the pitching coach, and in his second year, fans are looking for his staff to make a leap and prove that the league’s hesitance in hiring college coaches is like all “common sense”: mostly confirmation bias about our personal beliefs.

Meanwhile, Miguel Sano is freshly-extended and newly-positioned, moved from third base to first on defense to make space for Josh Donaldson, who was — in what was probably a shock to the majority of embittered Twins fans — signed to a four-year free-agent contract to play in Minnesota on January 14, 2020. While he mashes — like, MVP-level hitting — when he does play, Sano has dealt with injuries for portions of the past two seasons, along with a very ugly sexual-assault accusation by a freelance photographer following a team event last winter. He has largely skirted accountability for that event, described by many in the larger organization as something they had expected at some point, given his behavior in the minors. He is a tough player for some fans to cheer for in light of this, but apparently the best one can hope for is that he has learned and will remain on notice.

Josh Donaldson has made his reputation in camp so far as a veteran leader and resource for younger players and prospects alike. There are many reports to be found of him leading a clutch of players around the batting cage and to the data-tracking technology nearby and back again, talking the whole way about hitting and its small details. He is following in the large footsteps of Nelson Cruz last season, who came in and reportedly led the young team with a light touch in the clubhouse and dugout — between naps in his clubhouse nap room, that is. His 41 home runs were a sight to see on a team that had spent decades coaching players to go the other way and swing for location, not distance. This writer saw a three–game stretch at Target Field in early August 2019 against the Royals wherein Cruz almost literally made the difference; across the three-game series, Cruz drove in ten runs — including three dongs on three hits on August 3 — and the Twins’ total margin of victory across those three games was eleven runs. His contributions are both tangible and intangible according to teammates, and watching him hit in person prompts a rare feeling of complete wonder.

There will also be pitching that happens. You betcha. Kenta Maeda is the closest thing to the “impact pitching” Falvene (Falvey and Levine) perhaps foolishly claimed they would bring this offseason, but there seems to be cause for optimism when it comes to him. Meanwhile, one can hope that Jose Berrios can be as good in the second half as he has been the first halves of the past few seasons, and Jake Odorizzi is playing for his next contract again this season. His all-star play last season is desperately needed. The bullpen was supposedly very good last season, but that is small comfort when fans saw the Yankees wreck it in the divisional round, so here’s hoping it repeats in an extended form this season.

What is success for the Twins this season?

Beat the Yankees. There is nothing without that. The snakebite that the Evil Empire has struck on the Twins’ ankle is the barrier to a sense of triumph. Even a 101-win season — one shy of a franchise record — with an all-time MLB team home run record was covered with the shade of yet another quick playoff exit at the hands of the most irritating franchise in sports. The Yankees have beaten the Twins in playoff games for twelve contests in a row, and have the fun side of a 16-2 (.889 winning percentage) record in playoff games against the Twins. The dread of a first-round series against New York lives a healthy life in the back of any Twins fan’s head, and the inevitable feeling of bitter tears is one that Rocco Baldelli is tasked with clearing.

Beyond that, there are multiple reports that Baldelli’s opening speech to the team this spring training insisted that the World Series — and a win there — was the goal for the team. It’s easy to dismiss that as the same thing that any manager should be telling their players, but the incredible success the team had in 2019 is the supporting evidence, and the World Series is a fair expectation with the kind of lineup they sport this season. Is pitching still required, or can they just skip that part?

Which Twins player will get a mention on “Effectively Wild” this season?

It will be Byron Buxton’s year. He will be the hitter he was during the first half of 2019…and the second half of 2018…and in AA. He got on base at a .314 average and his OPS was .827 in 87 games of the 2019 season, and was leading the league in doubles when he injured his shoulder making another superhuman defensive play. The talk around camp is that he is ready to be kinder to his body on defense, which is a bummer for highlight junkies, but will make him into the most valuable player on the field in any given game. He is the only player this writer has ever seen manufacture a run completely on his own: BB, SB, SB, R scored beating the throw on a hard grounder to short in one inning. It was unreal.

What flavor ice cream are the Twins?

A root-beer float is the correct answer here, even though it’s not a singular flavor. Harmon Killebrew’s “Killer Brew” Root Beer is the spiciest root beer around, and combining it with some solid, local Kemp’s vanilla is a taste sensation you will not soon forget.

The vanilla ice cream is an appropriate flavor to honor noted milk-lover Joe Mauer, so one can honor two of the greatest-ever Twins in one food item that is more seasoned than either of the people being honored. They’re both great, and they’re both very well-behaved, but they are not exciting, so combine their two food choices and experience the most complex palate stimulation that either of them could imagine.

What is one food item from Target Field that you MUST try?

Supposedly the deep-fried walleye on a stick from the Minnesota State Fair booths at the stadium is the real deal, but this writer does not like fish, so it cannot be discussed either way. It is very Minnesota, though. Personal experience suggests either Pizza Luce in center field or the Hot Indian cart on the third-base line. There is a good chance that your visit to Target Field will be either very hot or colder than you’d like. Summer nights are nice, but Hot Indian makes for a delightful and spicy warm-up, should you need it.

Win total prediction?

96 wins, with some regression and both Cleveland and Chicago likely not being the underachievers they were last year, but the Twins’ improvements in the off-season making a big difference. The Tigers and Royals still suck, though. Also, Carlos Santana should be walked every PA against the Twins this season — just for safety’s sake, ya know. You betcha.

By Michael Conte

A song to play while reading about the Mets: “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine” by Modest Mouse. I cannot wait for a full season of a beaming, hopefully healthy Brandon Nimmo, their likely opening day centerfielder, whose ability to make walks surprisingly entertaining by sprinting at full speed to first base is matched only by his knack for pissing off umpires when refusing to even attempt to dodge the mildest, most easily avoidable contact to get a hit-by-pitch.

Last year, while possessed by some chaotic spirit that understood my undying passion for rookie masher Pete Alonso, I said that if he beat the rookie home run record, I’d get a polar bear tattoo for my first tattoo. Come March 6th, I will have fulfilled my pact with the Arctic animal and Mets first baseman, presumably staving off the polar ice caps melting for a couple generations.

The upshot is that Alonso is still dripping with poise and charisma and will probably hit within 5 home runs of however many Rob Manfred decides will be the upper bound for the 2020 ball, and Mets fans like me will continue to whine about how he doesn’t get enough attention from the rest of the league because he’s not a shortstop or a Yankee or have a famous dad, and he’ll lead what could be the most exciting Mets offense in a decade.

Starting third baseman Jeff McNeil will likely either chase a batting title or decide to be more useful to the team and hit more dingers, and it will be awesome to watch either way. Michael Conforto will likely once again scoot between looking like an MVP hitter and some dude. Wilson Ramos will maybe decide that, actually, hitting the ball in the air and not on the ground is a good thing he should do more. At this point, post-post-hype shortstop Amed Rosario has established a pattern where he will likely start slow and hit ok in the second half. If he can keep his powder dry on the defensive side, like he managed to do in the second half of 2019 with the help of Robinson Canó and the coaching staff, it’ll be fine. And speaking of Canó, if pitchers stop throwing directly at his hands and he ignores old racist New York tabloid columnists whining about him not running hard, he’ll probably hit better than last year (former EW guest Sheryl Ring’s analysis on this subject is not optional).

The relief corps is the biggest question. Seth Lugo’s competence there probably dooms him to remain in the bullpen, but everything else is iffy. Can Edwin Díaz possibly give up as many dingers as last year with a bafflingly good 39% strikeout rate? Can newly svelte Jeurys (my phone always wants to autocorrect his first name, appropriately, to “aneurism”) Familia stave off the walks as well as the pounds? Dellin Betances will definitely have better injury luck with the Mets than the Yankees right? I feel like there’s not a single other team whose bullpen has the potential to be both this good OR this bad simultaneously.

As usual, the Mets will sink or swim with their starters. Jacob deGrom, of course, will probably duke it out with Max Scherzer for the NL Cy Young again, if he can get over the fact that he agitated for and signed an extension right before the free agent market for top-shelf starting pitching went absolutely bananas. Behind him is a damn solid rotation of Marcus Stroman, Noah Syndergaard, and two of the three of Steven Matz, Rick Porcello, and Michael Wacha depending on who’s the least unhealthy and least ineffective.

Of course, any of these pitchers could have their UCL’s pecked out by a flock of seagulls, and unless David Peterson or Thomas Szapucki gets called up and turns out to be the truth, Big Balls Brodie Van Wagenen will then have to gin up another Stroman-type trade with whatever’s left in the farm system or its game over.

Leading this squad is rookie manager Luis Rojas, who worked with many of the players on the major league team as a coach during their time in the minors, and inspires confidence as young, analytically-savvy mind to execute the front office’s blueprint (though honestly if he can just manage to not sound like a moron postgame when an in-game decision doesn’t work out and no one in the clubhouse threatens to assault a reporter, he’ll have already done better than his sadly hapless predecessor Mickey Callaway).

All of this is very exciting, but the real plot twist for this team could come courtesy of real-life feral hog meme Yoenis Céspedes, who, despite coming off a plethora of injuries that have kept him out of spring training games so far, is absolutely hammering the ball in live batting practice against Mets pitchers, so clearly there might still be something there from a guy who’s never hit below a 121 wRC+ with the Mets (and that was his injury-shortened 2018–otherwise it was 132 in 81 games the year prior). While it remains to be seen if he’s even still playable in left field, the idea of potentially the best all-around bat on the team going nuts at the plate in his contract year and powering this squad to a division title has visions of a wild boar tattoo dancing in my head…

How will the Mets define success in 2020?

Nick Skoddy in last year’s preview defined success as an above-.500 finish, and despite missing the playoffs, the Mets still cleared that bar, playing honest-to-god winning baseball with an 86-76 record. That won’t do this year. They might not win a title since they’ll likely need to get through the absolutely stacked Dodgers. But they’re set up to snag at least a Wild Card and have more than a puncher’s chance at the division.

The Mets’ most “Effectively Wild” player: JD Davis

In addition to rocking a 136 wRC+ in a breakout 2019 with no trash can in sight (Effective) and providing some of the team’s most delightful gifs (Wild), the Sun Bear was a member of the 2017 Astros, which will hopefully give Meg another opportunity to giggle at “banging scheme” if he comes up on the pod.

What flavor of ice cream are the Mets: toasted almond

Toasted almond is one of those flavors that seems like it’s gonna be awesome when you’re looking at it and you pull the trigger to get it in your cone/cup/tiny baseball helmet. Call it the “April” of ordering this flavor. Then you actually get it, and realize it’s wildly disappointing, so you have a little then put it down for a bit while you chat with your friends/family and steal bites whatever superior flavors they had. Call this the “May and June” of toasted almond. Then you look down and it’s gotten all melty, and you take a bite and it weirdly tastes better (perhaps because of your lowered expectations), but at that point it’s basically soup so it seems kind of pointless? Call it the “rest of the season.” Anyway, if the Mets can somehow become the version of that flavor that somehow manages to remain solid not soupy all the way through, you will probably not regret ordering them.

Citi Field must-try food item: Arancini Bros. BEYOND Sausage & Peppers Risotto Ball

EY, I’M REFUSING TO FINANCIALLY SUPPORT THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS HERE!

Win total prediction: 90. LFGM, baby.

2020 Win Projection Roundup

Go back to: MIL | MIN | NYM

Season Preview Series Index

The post Season Preview Series 2020, Pt 5: Milwaukee, Minnesota, NY Mets appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

2019 League Rankings

by Daniel R. Epstein

A song for the 2020 Astros: “I Fought the Law,” Bobby Fuller Four

Let’s begin with two heinous deeds: the first too human to be real, the second too inhuman to be fiction. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel Crime and Punishment, Rodion Raskolnikov murders a pawnbroker for her money. He expects to free himself from obligation, but instead becomes consumed with anguish, guilt, and paranoia. His life continues to spiral out of control until he finally confesses his crime.

In November, 2011, former Penn State football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was indicted on 52 counts of child molestation. Amidst the fallout, the football program was penalized 40 scholarships and banned from postseason play for four years (the ban was later commuted to two years). The school embarked on a “Restore the Roar” campaign to immediately fast forward to redemption. They successfully recruited top players on the premise of rebuilding a once great program, never suffered a losing season, and became nationally ranked again as soon as 2016. They finished 2019 ranked #10 in the final polls.

The Houston Astros cheated at baseball. By no means is this scandal anywhere near as despicable as the actions of Raskolnikov and Sandusky, but it is a crime against the sport all the same. The violations themselves are for the commissioner to punish, just as the ones in Crime and Punishment and at Penn State are police matters. At this point, the Astros can only control the fallout.

Rather than sincerely confess their sins and take some responsibility for the way in which they fundamentally altered the history of the game, the Astros have largely chosen the Penn State approach. “I don’t think I should be held responsible,” said owner Jim Crane at his apology press conference.

When other players and executives around MLB expressed their disgust, the Astros doubled down. “We won the games fair and square,” offered Carlos Correa. “We earned that (2017) championship.”

José Altuve appears to have already put the scandal in the rear view mirror. “Believe me, at the end of the year, everything will be fine. We’re going to be in the World Series again.”

Alex Bregman took a different tack, using third person to disassociate himself from the team for which he played 155 games. “The commissioner came out with a report, MLB did their report and the Astros did what they did.”

While other 2017 Astros have shown some greater degree of sincerity (especially the ones who’ve moved on to other teams), most of the biggest names appear false to the point of defiance. How dare we still talk about this! Why isn’t it behind us yet? More than likely, the team already has a bulletin board full of headlines and quotes from around the league for “motivation.” They’re already selling the plucky “us against the world” underdog narrative, and they’re incensed that we haven’t bought it.

What else could they do? This is the dystopian world we inhabit. Why show remorse or responsibility when you can recast yourselves as the lovable antihero? When the person who shouts the loudest overrules morality and logic, what place is there for scruples? We’ve been force-fed so many Disney movie endings and modern fairy tales that we can’t help but swoon over a redemption arc. Does it matter if they skip the step where they actually redeem themselves?

This is a 2020 Astros preview, so here’s what’s going to happen this season: Every time Bregman goes 1-12, every time Altuve strikes out, every time Correa fails to deliver a runner from scoring position, there will be doubt. People will whisper of cheating whenever they fail, and baseball is rife with failure. Would he have hit the ball if he knew what pitch was coming?

Even when they win–and they will win often, possibly even another “piece of metal,”–the fans in the stands, watching on TV, and calling into talk radio will question their legitimacy. Are we SURE they stopped cheating?

No matter what they accomplish on the field this season, they’ll never rid themselves entirely of the haunt of suspicion. Raskolnikov was driven to the brink of madness. What will become of the Astros?

How do the Astros define success in 2020?

The Astros have 311 wins since 2017, and they’re heavy favorites once again. Success is a World Series championship, and nothing less. ESPN will produce a 30 for 30 about how they “banded together when the whole world was against them and overcome adversity.”

Which Astro will get a mention on “Effectively Wild” this season?

The real magic of the Astros isn’t a banging trash can or buzzer on their shoulders; it’s how they pull aces out of thin air, turning disappointing (Gerrit Cole), unheralded (Charlie Morton), or overlooked (Dallas Keuchel) arms into studs. All three of those aces have high-tailed out of town, leaving a few open spots in the rotation. As surely as you can say “abracadabra,” someone new will emerge with a blazing fastball and wipeout secondaries.

They’ve got an endless chain of hankies to pull out of their sleeve, but why not a recycled trick? Josh James Apparated onto the stage with a 102 mph fastball two years ago, forcing his way onto the postseason roster. While he was banished to the pen last season (get it? [ed. note: yes]), he still sawed plenty of volunteers in half, fanning 37.6% of participants. If he can limit free passes, the Astros would love to pull his card out of the deck every fifth day.

What ice cream flavor are the Astros?

Bubblegum–much like electronic sign stealing, it seems like a good idea when you order, but it quickly leaves a bad taste in your mouth and becomes hard to swallow.

What food item do you HAVE to try at Minute Maid Park?

If they don’t serve chicken fingers served in a trash can-shaped bucket, they’re missing a gigantic marketing opportunity. In the meantime, go for the Nolan Ryan Prime Rib Steak Sandwich.

Win total prediction?

98-64. It’s a half step back after losing Gerrit Cole, and the AL West should be a better overall division (except the Mariners obviously), but it’s still plenty of wins to get them comfortably to the top of the division.

By Nathan Valentine

A song for the 2020 Royals: Halsey – Graveyard (My kids love this song and I think it’s appropriate for those who still dare to follow the 2020 Royals)

I had a very Royals childhood. I remember George Brett sliding into dugouts to catch foul balls. Hot days in the GA section getting hosed down by the grounds crew from the bullpen. Bo Jackson knocking homers far into the fountains or scaling the fence for heroic catches. Bret Saberhagen handing off to the Quiz. But there was darkness lurking beneath. The team was not getting better, the ownership was unstable, and that quaint pastoral setting beyond the outfield was actually a busy interstate, with a tendency to send random gunshots toward the stadium. Dark times were ahead, and dark they were. The hope of the Sweeney-Appier years was brief and more trouble ahead. Remember Neifi Perez, franchise savior? And now more gunplay, but with go-go boots.

Then it seemed things were turning better, and then they did, and then two consecutive pennants and finally a World Series championship in 2015. But in the land of the Royals the rot always creeps in. Enter Dayton Moore embarking on a bizarre anti-porn crusade (fitting with the looming FCA headquarters in LF) while simultaneously floating the idea that maybe raping children isn’t exactly a disqualifier to be part of the Royals organization. Also the team got terrible again, seemingly a result of unrealistic expectations of continued contention. Valuable assets were left until the end of their contracts or traded too late for minimal assets (see: Mike Moustakas). Always Royal!

The team will not be good this year. The team will be lucky to be merely bad this year. So where is a fan to find solace in these dark times? Maybe a nice sunny day at the ballpark with a scorecard and some Gates BBQ and just enough Boulevard beer to forget your troubles and sink into the sunlight, the heat, the grass and the bright white unis? In a few special moments, the bat cracks and the glove snaps and the beer is just right and what could be better than this? And who knows, on any given day a bad team can look good — maybe this will be one of those days. Or maybe it won’t.

So you wake the next morning with a headache, groggy and bloated and wondering if it was really a good call to drive home from the ballpark (but there was no other way to get home), and you wonder why you even bother or, for that matter, why you bother going to work every morning, and why your kids seem so distant lately and why you have so many friends who seem so far away and it’s been so long they might not even be actual friends anymore. But the good news is the Royals play again tonight and maybe it will be better this time. Or maybe it won’t. We are the Royals and they are us. Sometimes good, often bad, the glory comes and the glory goes, but we have a nagging feeling we could do a lot better if we wanted to and we could really use some help. Play ball and pass the Kevlar.

How do the 2020 Royals define success?

New manager Mike Matheny is a little more mellow than his reputation and a good mentor for younger players. Whit Merrifield stays good enough to be traded for a real return. Salvador Perez returns to all star form and can be traded for a haul. Junis and Keller look pretty good. Mondesi and Nicky Lopez have strong seasons. Jackson Kowar and Brady Singer and Bobby Witt have good seasons in the minors. Jorge Soler hits a lot of dingers. Sweep the Astros at home and have witty signs about the banging scheme. Alex Gordon has a good enough season to call it a fond farewell but not so good he decides to not retire. Above all, the front office signs on for a full rebuild without ambivalence or half measures. If even half these things happen, the season is a resounding success for the reality-minded.

Which Royals player gets mentioned on “Effectively Wild” this season?

Ryan McBroom: a lefty-throwing, righty-batting, hulking mass of a man who struggled a bit in the bigs last year but has had periods of absolute mashing in the minor leagues. He could be this year’s Eric Thames (circa 2018), an unorthodox/unwanted player starting the season on a tear, leading in multiple statistical categories. He also has great nickname/headline potential. Choose your favorite variation of “How Sweep it Is” or my favorite, “The McBroom of the System.”

What flavor of ice cream are the Royals?

Moose tracks, an explanatory haiku:

Moose would mash taters
The fans in blue would rejoice.
Nevermore. Moose Tracks.

What’s one food item you MUST try at Kaufman Stadium?

Might as well do Gates BBQ. It’s a shadow of actual Gates, which is itself a shadow of the whole KC BBQ scene, but it’s the ballpark so it’ll have to do. And the “How can I help you???” screaming from the kitchen is spot on.

Win total prediction?

69. Who says things can’t be nice? Nice.

by Jon Jacoby

A song for your 2020 Miami Marlins: Defend the Dade – DJ Kahled, Pitbull and Casely. (I have a DJ Kahled Marlins bobblehead.)

The “Effectively Wild” Facebook group had a poll for members’ favorite teams. Guess what: the Marlins finished dead last. They got shut out. Not a single vote. This is a team that has won two World Series titles (but have never won their division) and play in a gem of a stadium. The most famous Marlin is Derek Jeter, who runs the team like he used to field ground balls. (ed. note: Not well)

I thought about writing this essay as a Marlins Fanfic. A giant “What If?”

What if after the 2015 season they didn’t trade Trevor Williams for the rights to a pitching coach they fired two years later? What if they didn’t trade Chris Paddack, only a year after selecting him in the draft, for Fernando Rodney in June 2016? What if, after the Marlins traded Luis Castillo to the Padres as part of a package to get Andrew Cashner, and the Padres traded Castillo BACK to the Marlins three days later, the Marlins decided NOT to trade him again in January for Dan Straily? (Seriously, did Castillo run over Dave Samson’s dog or something?)

The saddest “What If” for the Marlins is of course also from 2016, “What if Jose Fernandez never got on that boat?” I could try and do a whole essay about Fernandez and what he meant to the team, the city and the fans, but it would get very dusty in the room. The most obvious one is: What if, when Jeter and friends bought the team, they were able to keep together the outfield of Christian Yelich, Giancarlo Stanton, and Marcell Ozuna? I wonder if Fernandez was around, would Jeter have sold off the core hitters. I could imagine Fernandez on the mound, the big three in the outfield and hitting bombs. People in the Clevelander Club in Centerfield getting to the park early to watch batting practices and fight for balls while trying not to spill their mojitos. A charismatic, winning Marlins team would have the city buzzing from the clubs of South Beach to the cafes of Little Havana. Fernandez, Stanton, and Yelich would be like baseball’s LeBron, Wade and Bosh. Maybe the team would have even spent money on free-agents, like perhaps Manny Machado who had “Mr. Miami” on his Players’ Weekend jersey.

However, that is not the reality we live in. The Marlins have only finished in the top 25 of attendance once in this millennium and that was their first year in Marlins Park. I was at two games last season and did not see a single fan wearing the jersey or shirsey of a current player. But all is not lost. The players they received in the various rebuilding trades are getting ready to make a difference. Sandy Alcantara (part of the Ozuna trade) looked good last season. He reminds me of Castillo two seasons ago. Isan Diaz (part of the Yelich trade) hit a memorable home run last season and reminds me of Dan Uggla. After looking lost against major league pitching the past two seasons, Lewis Brinson (also acquired via the Yelich trade) has a new approach at the plate and is off to a hot start this spring. Other than Brinson, there is Monte Harrison (Yelich trade) who looks major league ready. To top it off, the pitching staff has a ton of young arms, with Alcantara, Pablo Lopez and Caleb Smith in the majors and Sixto Sanchez, Edward Cabrera, and Braxton Garrett waiting in the wings.

How do the Marlins define success in 2020?

The Marlins win total has dropped in each of the past 3 years. Success is definitely relative for the Marlins. For 2020: Lose fewer than 100 games? That would be a 6-win improvement from last year. PECOTA predicts losing fewer than 90 in sight. Finishing “not last” in the NL East would be a huge accomplishment. Most important: for the Marlins’ season to be seen as a success, they need continued player development. Next year, 2021: they should be fighting to reach .500 maybe tease a wild card run. How about 2022: Playoffs? First division title in team history? Marlins Park becomes the place to see and be seen in October.

Who is one player from the Marlins who will be a topic on “Effectively Wild” this season?

Jazz Chisholm.

1. His name is JAZZ freaking CHISHOLM.
2. He was part of a prospect “Challenge Trade” — the Marlins traded Zac Gallen straight-up for Jazz Chisholm (and Gallen previously came to Miami as part of the Ozuna trade).
3. Last year in AA, Chisholm walked in over 11% of his plate appearances. He had 20 homers and was 16-for-20 in steals. Eric Longhagen ranks Chisholm as the 33rd best prospect in baseball.

While Eric puts Chisholm’s ETA at 2021, there are three contributing factors that could have him up earlier: the Marlins seem set on playing Jonathan Villar everywhere but shortstop; Miguel Rojas is currently the Marlins’ starting shortstop; and the more success Zac Gallen has in Arizona, the more pressure on the Marlins to show that the trade was worth it for them.

The Marlins are ___ flavored ice cream?

Key Lime Pie: tart makes you pucker, but the creaminess and the sweet pieces of graham cracker foretells good times ahead.

What is one food item from Marlins Park that you MUST try?

The Cuban sandwich. Seriously–it has two kinds of pork, pickles, garlic mayo and mustard. It comes with a generous helping of plantain chips on the side (or at least it used to) and wash it down with a Estrella Jalisco tallboy. I’m a sucker for a good cuban sandwich or a roast pork with chicharrones. Marlins Park for a season or two had bacon-wrapped plantains, but I didn’t see them there last year. Also I’m yet to try any of the food from the Jose Andres stands.

Win total prediction: 69 (ed. note: nice)

2020 Win Projection Roundup

Go back to: HOU | KC | MIA

Season Preview Series Index

The post Season Preview Series 2020, Pt 4: Houston, Kansas City, Miami appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

2019 League Rankings

Cincinnati Reds: Akiyama Arrives

by Mark Neuenschwander

A song for the Reds:

“When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always twenty years behind the times.”

The above statement is popularly misattributed to Mark Twain, but certainly holds some truth regardless of its true origin. In 2015, the Miami Marlins signed a 41-year-old Ichiro Suzuki as part of his journey towards 3,000 hits and what ended up being the start of a very protracted farewell tour. That contract made the Marlins the 29th team in MLB to employ a Japanese-born player on its roster. It would take another five years for the last remaining holdout to catch up with the rest of the league.

The Reds signed free agent outfielder Shogo Akiyama to a three-year, $21 million deal in January 2020 as part of their off-season upgrades. There’s nothing particularly damning to the fact that the Reds signed their first Japanese export 25 years after Hideo Nomo crossed the Pacific and completely altered the market from Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). While the team was rather late to allocating dedicated scouting resources to the Pacific Rim, it’s largely been the traditional financial barrier of the posting system that’s left a small-market team like Cincinnati without a player from the Land of the Rising Sun until now. Even if the Reds had interest in meeting a player’s expected salary demands, the silent auction bidding for exclusive negotiating rights was a game best played by franchises with deeper pockets.

Last year, Reds leadoff hitters posted a combined .253/.329/.438 for a team that finished in the bottom quintile of MLB with only 701 runs scored. While a league-average hitting line is generally beneficial to all teams, you’d rather not utilize that production in the lineup spot that gets the most plate appearances throughout the season. In Akiyama, the Reds get a veteran player with a career .301/.376/.454 batting line in the NPB whose on-base ability will provide a solid floor to set the table for their other off-season slugging additions (Mike Moustakas & Nick Castellanos).

Absent the loose demographic similarities, Shogo Akiyama’s role and profile with the Reds in 2020 can be mostly closely linked to another Cincinnati outfielder from the recent past: Shin-Soo Choo. Choo was acquired by the Reds in a three-team deal during the winter of 2012 that also sent current Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer from Arizona to Cleveland. Choo was entering his age 30 season with the defensive profile of an average corner outfielder, but was forced into patrolling centerfield at Great American Ballpark due to team need. As expected, he was below average with the glove at a premium up-the-middle position, but put together a career year at the plate. Batting leadoff, Choo hit .285/.423/.462 and scored 107 runs. Choo’s .423 OBP was good for 2nd-best in the National League that year, trailing only teammate Joey Votto in that category.

Shogo Akiyama turns 32 at the beginning of this season. He has won six Golden Glove awards as a center fielder in Japan, but advancing age and increased playing time for Nick Senzel likely means Akiyama will see time in all three outfield positions. He is slated to be the everyday leadoff hitter and his solid contact skills should translate well from NPB to MLB. If Akiyama can get on base at a rate anywhere near his .376 career average, then the Reds may once again find themselves in a position they haven’t seen since Shin-Soo Choo’s arrival in 2013 — back into October baseball for the playoffs.

What is success for the Reds in 2020?

One of the stronger divisions of the past few years is settling into something resembling parity plus Pirates. Sensing a continuing decline in the 2016 World Series-winning Cubs core and a lack of improvements out of both Milwaukee or St. Louis, Bob Castellini has pushed his chips into the middle of the table (largest ever Reds payroll at over $140 million) for an all-out attempt at reaching October baseball for the first time since 2013. With 90 wins as a likely threshold for an NL Central title, anything short of a Wild Card berth in 2020 will be a disappointment for a city that also had the worst professional soccer and football teams during the 2019 calendar year.

Which Reds player will be a topic on “Effectively Wild” this season?

A Queen City team that features Joey Votto, Trevor Bauer, and Michael Lorenzen is never going to be short of Effectively Wild talking points, even for a podcast that “never talks about the Reds.” But another player emerged last year as much for his personality as his on-field performance: Amir Garrett

The adoption of the three-batter minimum rule is likely to lead to reduced roles for many left-handed relievers in 2020. Not so for Garrett, who remains effective at retiring right-handed batters (.221/.333/.407 allowed in 2019) while acting as a true shut-down option against same-handed hitters (.202/.342/.298). The southpaw saw marked increases in both K% (26.9% → 31.7%) and BB% (9.5% → 14.2%) due to a wholesale change to his pitch mix. Garrett completely eliminated his changeup, switched from a 4-seam fastball to a sinker, and ramped up his slider usage to video game-like levels (33.4% → 57.3%). Getting more out-of-the-zone swings-and-misses and better command on this new weapon will enable Garrett to reach the next level and ensure we’re continued to be entertained by his swashbuckling, pacifism, and any future AND1 Mix Tapes.

If the Reds were an ice cream flavor, what flavor would they be?

Moose Tracks – Sticking to the theme of the Reds scooping up free agents this off-season, it’s only appropriate to get a double dip of the namesake flavor for part of their new double-play combo: Mike Moustakas. The Reds of the past few years have been strikingly similar; a plain, vanilla base that’s resulted in six consecutive losing seasons with just enough fudge and peanut butter cup filling in the form of exciting individual players and personalities (Joey Votto, Billy Hamilton, Johnny Cueto, Aroldis Chapman, Yasiel Puig) to keep fans interested for most of the season. Hopefully the 2020 recipe finds a richer version that doesn’t skimp on the toppings.

What’s one food you MUST try at Great American Ballpark?

Goetta Fry Box – A serving of french fries or tater tots topped with goetta gravy, bacon, shredded cheddar cheese, and green onions. Think deconstructed potato skins with a uniquely Cincinnati twist of goetta breakfast meat topping.

Fun fact: Approximately 99% of the world’s goetta is consumed in the Greater Cincinnati area.

Win Total Prediction

88 Wins.

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Cleveland Indians: Starting Pitcher Devil Magic

by Marina Bostelman

A song for Cleveland: Panic! At the Disco – High Hopes

Had to have high, high hopes for a living
Shooting for the stars when I couldn’t make a killing
Didn’t have a dime but I always had a vision
Always had high, high hopes

I rest my case.

The backstory: After winning three straight division titles, the 2019 Cleveland Indians cut payroll while still trying to contend, but ultimately missed the playoffs despite posting a respectable 93 wins. After that inauspicious end, highlights of the following offseason included trading Corey Kluber for a reliever and a fourth outfielder, fielding trade offers for superstar Francisco Lindor, and adding veterans with question marks on one-year deals to fill roster holes. It was far from an ideal offseason for a contender with a strong core in place and expectations to contend in 2020, and frustration from fans has swirled around the team as Opening Day approaches.

Yet despite the cost-cutting, this is still a good team. Are they Yankees-Astros-Dodgers good? No. Are they still a solid Wild Card contender, even capable of winning the division with a few lucky breaks? Absolutely. They have stars in the lineup in Lindor and Jose Ramirez, potential Cy Young candidates Shane Bieber and Mike Clevinger in the rotation, and a bullpen that’s anchored by closer Brad Hand and newly invigorated with a couple of high-velocity rookies. Whether they end up division champions, wild card holders, or spectators come October is going to depend on the depth behind these stars.

Let’s talk for a moment about that depth–specifically, in the starting rotation. Recently, the Indians have had young starters like Bieber, Aaron Civale, and Zach Plesac rise from near-total obscurity to contribute to the major league team. None of them were top-100 prospects or even prominent figures on organizational prospect lists before their debuts, but the Indians’ system quietly developed these college arms into reliable starting pitchers capable of succeeding in a contender’s rotation. Basically, it’s like Cardinals Devil Magic, but for starters instead of position players.

So, who’s the new pitcher who will step up for the Indians in 2020? I present four candidates for your consideration:

• Triston McKenzie

Stat to Know: 1.00 WHIP with AA Akron in 2018; 0 IP in 2019

McKenzie is a former top-100 prospect who missed all of 2019 due to back injuries. Continued health is a concern, as his frame is something along the lines of “Chris Sale, but on a diet” (6’5’’ and 165 pounds). His skillset, however, is still highly regarded–his fastball and curveball are above average, and he pairs them with good command. He’s likely to start the season in AAA, but if he succeeds and stays healthy, he could earn a call-up to the majors this year.

• Logan Allen

Stat to Know: Once bet John Cena $1 that he would make the major leagues (and won, obviously)

Another former top 100 prospect, Allen made his MLB debut with the Padres last year before being traded to Cleveland in the Trevor Bauer deal. He struggled last year and spent the offseason working on mechanics, but he still has four pitches that look to be average to slightly above average and will almost certainly earn more time in the majors sometime in 2020.

• Scott Moss

Stat to Know: 159 strikeouts in 130.2 innings across AA and AAA in 2019

Also acquired in the Bauer trade, Moss would have led all Indians minor leaguers in strikeouts in 2019 if his pre-trade K’s counted, although they came with an uptick in walks. His strike-throwing did improve somewhat after the trade, and he performed well in a brief call-up to Triple-A at the end of the season. He’s likely to open 2020 there, but if his command improves and he continues to have success against minor league hitters, he could have an impact in the majors down the line.

• Eli Morgan

Stat to Know: Best changeup and best control among Indians prospects, per Baseball America

Morgan is the least advanced player on this list; he started 2019 in High-A but forced a promotion after six lights-out starts. His repertoire might not be sufficient to get outs at higher levels, as his fastball velocity hovers in the high 80s. However, his changeup and control have been consistently excellent, and the organization has a track record of helping pitchers increase velocity in the past. My guess is he starts the season in Double-A, but is one of the first call-ups to Triple-A when the rotation needs reinforcements.

Now, which do you see stepping up in 2020? Of course, knowing the nature of Devil Magic, the correct answer is probably “none of the above,” because it ends up being someone else entirely. In that case, I’ll take Adam Scott, please.

How does Cleveland define success in 2020?

In a successful edition of the 2020 season, the Cleveland Indians are consistently competitive throughout the season, patch up any weak spots (*cough* outfield) at the trade deadline without shipping off Francisco Lindor, and finish the season in possession of a playoff spot. The team is squarely behind the Twins on paper and in the projections, but with steps forward from some of the young pitchers in the organization, strong seasons from the established stars, and better injury luck than last year, they could still contend for the division, although they’re more likely to be in the wild card race. Bonus points if the outfield situation is resolved for the near-term future by the end of the season, because I’m pretty sure it’s been at least five years since that last happened.

Who is one Cleveland player who will be a topic on “Effectively Wild” this season?

Keep an eye on right-handed rookie reliever James Karinchak, who could be in the running for Most (Literally) Effectively Wild Player this year. I might be cheating a bit with this pick, since he earned a mention on the podcast as one of the “Stories We Missed in 2019” thanks to his video game-esque 21.9 strikeouts per nine innings (not a typo) across Double- and Triple-A. After going down with an injury in June, he earned a short call-up to the majors in mid-September, where he succeeded to the tune of 8 strikeouts and 1 walk in 5.1 innings and his fastball averaged 97 miles per hour. His command is definitely suspect, but if he can manage the walks, Karinchak has a chance to become a legitimate high-leverage relief option.

What flavor ice cream is your team?

To me, these Cleveland Indians are a good-quality mint chocolate chip. There’s a little bit of a “been there, done that” element to them, and they might seem uninspiring compared to the flashier Twins and the up-and-coming, free-spending White Sox. However, if you look a little more closely, you see a profile with a proven track record, accentuated with enough freshness to keep things fun and interesting over the course of a long summer, and maybe even surprise you with how good it really can be.

What is one food item at Progressive Field that you MUST try?

The best food item that I ever had at Progressive Field was a dish of pierogi topped with beer cheese, crispy onion pieces, bacon, sour cream, and probably even more toppings that I’m forgetting. Unfortunately, it was an All-Star Game special last year and I don’t think it’s making a reappearance. If it does, though, it’s hands-down my recommendation for a ballpark special with a dash of Cleveland cultural flair.

In lieu of that, I polled some friends and family for their own recommendations, and the response was nearly unanimous: Bertman Original Ballpark Mustard. It’s a spicy brown mustard made by a Cleveland-based company, and it’s been a mainstay at Cleveland professional baseball games for almost a century. It has a bit of a cult following among local fans, and (not unlike the team itself) it’s as cheap financially flexible an option as you can find among expensive ballpark food. It’s available at all the condiment stands in the park, so just buy a hot dog or bratwurst and enjoy!

Win total prediction

88 wins, second place in the AL Central

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Colorado Rockies: Building Not for the Future, Nor for the Now

by Dan Freedman

A song for the Rockies: Neil Diamond – Love on the Rocks

On the last day of the 2018 season, the Rockies beat the Nationals 12-0, tying the Dodgers and forcing a Game 163 to determine the division winner. They lost to the Dodgers the next day, but bounced back to beat the Cubs in 13 innings in the Wild Card game. Some might say that it has been all downhill for the franchise ever since. The Brewers swept the Rocks in the ensuing NLDS; and after starting 2019 with two wins, they went on to lose twelve out of thirteen, en route to a 91-loss season.

In theory (and according to owner Dick Monfort), the future seems bright. We are, of course, just one season removed from the Rockies pushing the Dodgers past the end of the season, and making it to the second round of the playoffs. However, that optimism doesn’t take into consideration this winter of discontent.

It was just about a year ago that the Rockies signed franchise stalwart Nolan Arenado to an eight-year, $260 million contract. But, it was just three months ago that they decided that the remaining seven years and $227.5 million was too much to pay to keep their third baseman. Around the time of baseball’s winter meetings in December, Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich starting seeking suitors for Arenado; he found none.

After two months of shopping Arenado, Bridich pulled him back and declared that all talks were off the table. Unfortunately, that was too little, too late. During the course of this anti-courtship, things were said that could not be unsaid; and Arenado was hurt, offended, and most critically, felt disrespected. As of this writing, after a few weeks of spring training, and after months of rancor, Bridich and Arenado still have not hashed things out. This does not bode to end well.

Arenado has vowed to put it all behind him when he steps on the field, and no one who has watched him play for seven seasons – no one who has seen him as a Rookie of the Year finalist, a seven-time Gold Glover, a five-time All-Star, a five-time Top-10 MVP candidate, with 227 career home runs and a career .897 OPS – should expect anything less than excellence once the campaign begins. Sadly for the fine people of Denver, Bridich elected not to talk to his superstar, or anyone else, this off-season.

A team with All-Stars and Silver Sluggers on the left side of their infield and a slew of homegrown pitching, but who won only 71 games the previous season, theoretically should have tried to fill some holes over the winter. Other than pissing off a player to whom the team owes nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, here is what Bridich did to improve the hapless Rockies:

1. Signed Jose Mujica to a big-league contract even though he has more Tommy John surgeries (1) than big league appearances (0).

2. And then he signed the following former major leaguers to minor league deals:

• Daniel Bard (this would be one of the all-time reclamation projects).
• Drew Butera (10 years, career 51 OPS+)
• Michael Choice (3 years, career 59 OPS+)
• Tim Collins (6 seasons, 1.41 WHIP; 5.1 BB/9)
• Elias Diaz (.250 average and 13 HRs over 5 seasons)
• Mike Gerber (66 career ABs)
• Ubaldo Jimenez (only 1 season out of previous 7 with an ERA under 4.11; hasn’t appeared in the Majors since 2017)
• Chris Owings (7 years, career 71 OPS+)
• Wes Parson (39 big league innings)
• Zac Roscupp (6 seasons, 83 IP, 5.16 ERA)
• Eric Stamets (48 career ABs)
• Kelby Tomlinson (4 seasons, 3 HRs)

In short, this is not a team building for the future, or the now. This is a team that is built for mediocrity. And my guess that is issue #1 for Nolan Arenado. It can be easily understood that trying to compete with the Dodgers in their current form is a fool’s errand. However, the Rockies do have an obligation to their more than 2.5 million fans (as many as 3 million in 2018) to put a competitive product on the field; to try to re-develop a winning culture; to get back to the Blake Street Bombers or the Chuck Nazty Rox. Spending an off-season doing essentially nothing to achieve that goal is an abdication of a public trust. And, if nothing else, Monfort, Bridich, and the rest of the organization should feel ashamed.

Or, viewed through a different lens, Monfort is right: the Rockies will win 94 games and end the Dodgers seven season division title streak and find themselves playing meaningful baseball well into October. Hope, as they say, springs eternal.

How do the Rockies define success in 2020?

There are two ways to define success for the Rockies in 2020:

1. Dick Monfort is right, the team performs like the 2018 squad, and competes for a playoff spot throughout September; or
2. The team implodes early and decisively, and they are able to trade Arenado before the deadline for a package of young, major league-ready pitching.

Who is a player on the Rockies likely to be mentioned on “Effectively Wild” this season?

Sam Hilliard projects to hit twelve home runs this season in just over 200 at bats. He had a 1.006 OPS and a 136 OPS+ last season in 27 games, and may very well displace overpaid and out-of-position Ian Desmond by early June. If the Rockies want to start building for their future (debatable), they should get Hilliard and Brendan Rodgers as many reps as possible this season. Playing in Coors Field could provide a literal launching pad for Hilliard, who was the Rockies 2019 Minor League Player of the Year, with 35 dingers and 29 doubles. If/when he gets the call, and if/when he either cuts down his strikeouts or hones his eye, he will be an OPS monster for years to come.

What ice cream flavor are the Rockies?

Rocky Road seem like the easy and appropriate answer. But vanilla seems like the right answer.

What is one food item at Coors Field that you MUST try?

The Rocky Mountain Po’boy from Rockie Mountain Oysters in Section 137 is a must-try/must-eat at Coors Field. This delicacy comes with garlic cole slaw, green chili ranch, pico de gallo, guacamole, and cojita cheese. But, to be clear, this is not a Big Easy Po’boy. This one, like its concession stand namesake, comes loaded with Rocky Mountain oysters, which, for the uninitiated, are meat balls – also known as prairie oysters – made from bull testicles. They are skinned, deep fried, coated in flour, salt, and pepper, and then (ahem) pounded flat. You cannot get these at Dodger Stadium or Fenway Park. Near as I can tell, they are exclusive to Coors Field.

Win total prediction

75 wins.

 

2020 Win Projection Roundup

	FanGraphs	PECOTA	BTTP
CIN	83	86	88
CLE	85	86	88
COL	76	77	75

 

Go back to: CIN | CLE | COL

Season Preview Series Index

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-3-cin-chi-col/feed/ 0 18609 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-pt-2-bos-chc-chw/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-pt-2-bos-chc-chw/#respond Fri, 06 Mar 2020 12:00:54 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18585 Boston Red Sox - by Jamieson Weiss
Chicago Cubs - by Ben Bailey
Chicago White Sox - by James Cardis

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]]> Boston Red Sox – by Jamieson Weiss
Chicago Cubs – by Ben Bailey
Chicago White Sox – by James Cardis

2019 League Rankings

	Win%	wRC+	Starter FIP-	Reliever FIP-	DRS	UZR
BOS	7	5	5	6	6	10
CHC	8	4	4	8	4	13
CHW	9	10	11	8	11	12

Boston Red Sox: They COULD Make the Playoffs…But They Don’t Deserve It

by Jamieson Weiss

A song for the Red Sox: “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5

Is it about Mookie Betts? Brock Holt? David Price? Yoan Moncada? Unclear!

I have to admit, as much as I want to, I don’t completely buy into the idea that baseball is suddenly, uniquely saddled with an increasingly stingy cabal of owners.

Front offices have always cut corners, they’ve always tanked, they’ve always cried poor, and they’ve always made decisions more based on money than fan happiness. See the Marlins’ many sell-offs or the constant claims that teams like the Royals and Pirates were content to simply trot out mediocre rosters while the revenue sharing cash rolled in. The very point of Moneyball was that the Oakland A’s realized they could pay smart front office employees a small amount of money so they could avoid paying talented baseball players large amounts of money. We were spoiled, in a way, when teams like the Red Sox and Dodgers and Cubs rose up and challenged the Yankees for financial supremacy. (I’m not excusing any of this, I should note, just saying that it’s not a 2020 baseball problem or even a 21st-century baseball problem.) We should deride ownership when they act on their stingiest instincts, but we shouldn’t exactly be surprised about it.

And yet, as a Red Sox fan, I expected cooler heads to prevail. They wouldn’t trade “one year of” Mookie Betts for a few good-not-great prospects and a mediocre outfielder, right? And they certainly wouldn’t toss David Price in the deal, only to still pay for half of his salary. When the original trade broke down, and there were reports – almost definitely planted by the Red Sox front office – that they were waffling in response to public outcry over the original deal – I kept the faith. Mookie would be back, he’d be manning Fenway’s cavernous right field for the rest of his career, and the Red Sox wouldn’t need to use Ryan Weber as their fifth starter. They wouldn’t sell off one of recent baseball history’s most certain can’t-miss players for an obscenely small monetary saving.

But they did. Betts is a Dodger, Alex Verdugo and his broken back are in Boston, and their rotation is flimsier than John Henry’s cries of poverty. It never made sense given the team’s near-infinite war chest, it still doesn’t make sense (those “bad” Sale and Eovaldi deals were fine then and they’re fine now), and I hate how good Mookie looks in Dodger blue. The team has spent weeks trying to sell the public on the deal, and for some fans, the pipe dream that they could sign him in free agency has taken hold. Remember when that worked with Jon Lester?

No, Mookie’s gone, and what could have been a few more years of an open championship window is almost certainly now slammed shut. They still don’t have a long-term option at first base, their once-deep outfield now seems flimsy, and their fifth starter’s fastball is slower than yours and mine. Dave Dombrowski is gone but they still don’t have a bullpen.

Could they pull it together and scrape out a playoff berth? Sure. But they don’t deserve to.

How do the Red Sox define success in 2020?

Growing up a Red Sox fan in the 2000s, it felt like they were always the Wild Card team. Looking it up in 2020, that was a surprisingly accurate memory: the Red Sox won the Wild Card in 1998, ‘99, 2003, ‘04, ‘05, ‘08, and ‘09. But since Major League Baseball expanded the playoffs to five teams per league, the Sox haven’t made the Wild Card once. Now, with MLB threatening to expand the playoffs again and an AL East title likely out of reach, it would be fun to see a scrappy, underdog Red Sox team be the last one in and finally have to pay for all of their mid-2000s playoff series wins over the A’s and Angels and their fans could take a shot with online betting sites because of their success. ziarulargesul.ro break down the best bonus pariuri per top-ranked esports betting site, and you can find full reviews of each sportsbook by clicking the provided links.

Who is one Red Sox player who will be a topic on Effectively Wild this season?

We need to talk about Jeter. The elder Jeter – newly minted Hall of Famer, constant tormenter of the Red Sox – haunts my dreams. I hate his stupid face, his stupid flip play and stupid 3000th hit home run and stupid diving into the stands catch and stupid Jeffrey Maier.

But have you seen his namesake? His smile is as sweet as his swing, and his glove is silky smooth. He seems like a nice kid, and would look great in an infield alongside Bogaerts and Devers. Trading away the Red Sox’ best position player since Ted Williams for a kid named after their bitter rival’s most recent superstar? It’s the ultimate troll. But as much as I want to, I can’t hate the kid.

He just better not try any jump throws.

What flavor ice cream are the Red Sox?

Sometimes on cooking shows or at absurdly fancy restaurants, you’ll see ice cream covered with gold leaf, which is the most pointless “food” in the world. It’s shiny and absurdly expensive, but it’s completely tasteless. It’s fancy for the sake of being fancy; expensive for the sake of being expensive.

Just like the Red Sox. Despite trading away Mookie Betts and half of David Price for greed and spite (and a few prospects), the Red Sox will still run one of baseball’s highest payrolls. In addition to all of their active players, they’re also paying Dustin Pedroia over $13 million, (which, frustratingly, could be a bargain if he were still playing), Pablo Sandoval $5 million, Rusney Castillo $14 million, and – I didn’t know this until just now – Manny Ramirez $2 million. If you add that to the $16 million they still owe David Price, that’s more money they’re giving to players who won’t be wearing a Red Sox uniform this season than the Pirates, Marlins, and Orioles are giving to their entire rosters.

It’s not that they it’s disappointing that they decided to pinch pennies, it’s that they’re so goddamn bad at something so pointless. Just like gold leaf-adorned ice cream.

What is one food item from Fenway Park that you MUST try?

On game day, the Red Sox close off Lansdowne street, which sits just over the back of the Green Monster. On the centerfield side of Gate C, near the Game Day Ticket Sales window, is a sausage cart.

The cart is manned by two middle-aged men with Disney cartoon-style proportions: you talk to the hefty, bumbling, chain-smoking cashier, whose only tender is a mammoth wad of cash; then you grab your sandwich from the shorter, thinner … chef?

You’ll order the sausage sandwich with peppers and onions, because that’s all they sell, you’re hungry, and they’re half the price of what you can get inside the park. It’s also the greatest sausage sandwich with peppers and onions you’ll ever eat.

Win total prediction

Though I think there’s some chance that the 2020 Red Sox could finagle themselves into a Wild Card berth, there’s almost no chance that they challenge the Yankees atop the division. Despite my low opinion of the Rays, even they seem out of range. I’m picking the Sox for a repeat 84 wins.

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Chicago Cubs: Not the Trajectory You Were Looking For

by Ben Bailey

A song for the Cubs: “Back and Forth” by The Dismemberment Plan

This wasn’t the trajectory this Cubs team was supposed to follow. The team came out of the rebuild ahead of schedule in 2015, and, of course, won it all in 2016. The Cubs were on the precipice of becoming a dynasty. Then, due to a slow start in 2017, the team had to make up ground in the second half, and were steamrolled by the Dodgers after narrowly defeating the Nationals in a memorable Game Five. In 2018, the Cubs won 95 games, but that only earned them a one-game playoff for the division title and a ticket to the Wild Card game, which they lost in extra innings.

The offseason after that early exit began with Theo Epstein proclaiming the offense broke, and was marred by moral and public relations blunders. Despite the general sense of restlessness surrounding the team, the Cubs signed only one position player to a major-league contract (Daniel Descalso, who was the least valuable position player on the team in 2019 by fWAR). While the team managed to battle back from an uncharacteristically rough start, a surprise Craig Kimbrel signing move wasn’t enough to put the Cubs over the edge. They finished third in the division and missed the playoffs after a September collapse precipitated by injuries to several star players.

If you look only at results (making the NLCS twice, winning a World Series, and reaching the playoffs four seasons in a row) there’s little to complain about. Looking at the seasons in order, though, the Cubs have gotten worse results each year since they won the World Series. So, after last season, the team hired a new manager, replaced much of their coaching staff, and restructured their front office.

The winds of change didn’t make it to the major league roster, though. After yet another consecutive end-of-season press conference expressing disappointment and a desire to improve the team, the Cubs signed only two players to guaranteed major-league contracts: $1M to Steven Souza Jr. and $850K to Jeremy Jeffress. The main storylines of the offseason were the launch of the team’s new cable television network (which many fans remain unable to access) and whether they would trade their best player to save money and shake up the roster.

Come spring, the core of the team remains intact, for better and for worse. The team has staked their season on rookie manager David Ross’ ability to get more out of the players and their new and improved player development system. It’s a risky strategy.

The 2020 Cubs could still be a great team, but the reason fans are upset, and what may ultimately sink their season, is the large amount of risk and variance in this roster. Sure, Ian Happ could emerge as an above-average center fielder, the Kyle Schwarber breakout could have finally arrived at the end of last season, Jason Heyward could hit well enough outside of the leadoff spot to make up for his slowly declining defense, and Nico Hoerner could be the high-contact bat the Cubs have been looking for and provide plus defense at second. Willson Contreras’ framing could improve, Yu Darvish could repeat his second half to become a legitimate Cy Young contender, Tyler Chatwood could finally harness his stuff as a starter, the Pitch Lab could transform anonymous relievers into dominant set-up men, and Craig Kimbrel could regain his velocity and control after a normal spring training. All of these things are possible, but the likelihood of several of them happening at the same time is slim.

What if David Ross has more of a tactical learning curve than we expect? What if a member of the rotation regresses or gets injured? What if Javier Báez suffers another injury, forcing Nico Hoerner to rush his development?

As we’ve seen the last few seasons, what makes the best teams great isn’t just that they have great players, it’s that they have great options to back them up. When people thought the Cubs would be a dynasty, this was what set them apart, like the Dodgers of the past several years. The frustrating part for fans is that, yes, the upside to this group of players is clear, but the downside is too, and the spending hasn’t been there to shore up the depth. The Cubs didn’t need to sign Anthony Rendon, but they could have used someone like Eric Sogard or César Hernández.

Could this team win the World Series? Yes. Could they be sellers at the trade deadline? I think it’s more likely. Big market teams like the Cubs shouldn’t have to roll the dice, but due to a confluence of circumstances, they’re going to in 2020. Here’s hoping it works.

How do the Cubs define success in 2020?

Many would be satisfied with winning the division and playing a full round in the playoffs. Some may accept nothing less than another World Series appearance, but while any team can beat any other in a playoff series, it was difficult enough to imagine the Cubs beating the Dodgers before they traded for Mookie Betts. Especially in Ross’ first season as manager, and after two years of earlier exits, playing in the NLDS would be a success and a step in the right direction.

However, there’s another, more divisive way to define success for the Cubs: falling out of the division race before the trade deadline. This would allow the front office to shop Bryant, Schwarber, Quintana, Chatwood, Kimbrel, and any of the utility players they brought in on short-term deals. Trading these players would also get them under the lowest luxury tax threshold, something they tried to do all winter. Whether this constitutes success is debatable, but ownership would prefer it to another September collapse.

Who is one Cub who will be a topic on “Effectively Wild” this season?

This has to be Yu Darvish. There are many reasons to love Darvish, from his dizzying array of pitches (including a knuckle-curve that he picked up from Craig Kimbrel) to his Twitter account, but it’s easy to forget the rough start to his time in Chicago. His 2018 was marred by injury and he didn’t pitch particularly well when he was on the field. Despite increased confidence going into 2019, Darvish started the season with an unsustainably high walk rate. Then, in the second half, he struck out 118 batters and walked only seven. As Darvish’s results improved, his personality came out more in interviews and on social media, completing his transformation into a fan-favorite entering 2020. The one knock on his second-half performance was a high home-run rate, but the Cubs will take his 2.37 FIP any day. Darvish is one of the most fun pitchers to watch in the game, and I can’t wait to see what he does this season.

If the Cubs were ice cream, what flavor would they be?

Rocky Road–it’s a potentially ominous portent of the season ahead.

What is one food item at Wrigley Field that you MUST try?

I don’t have a strong opinion on this, but if you haven’t had it elsewhere, it’s worth trying the Impossible Burger at Wrigley.

Win total prediction

86 wins.

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Chicago White Sox: Baseball’s Rainbow Cone

by James Cardis

A song for the White Sox: Purple Mountains – That’s Just the Way That I Feel

The White Sox made the first big splash of the 2019 offseason, signing catcher Yasmani Grandal to the biggest contract in franchise history. Despite the superlative nature of the deal, Grandal’s 4-year, $73 million signing rates as fairly modest, historically: Joe Mauer, Mike Piazza, Yadier Molina, Buster Posey, and Russell Martin rank as the top five catcher signings in baseball history. For fans of a traditionally frugal team, Grandal’s swift signing served to counter some of the bitterness left behind by the team’s mishandling of the prior offseason.

So what are the White Sox getting in their new catcher? As Ben Clemens noted in his analysis of the deal for FanGraphs, Yasmani Grandal might be the best catcher in baseball, full-stop. With his bat alone, Grandal should have an immediate impact on the team. The 2019 White Sox ranked dead last by Wins Above Replacement at the designated hitter position in the lineup, divvying plate appearances between 14 players not named Yonder Alonso (-0.9 WAR). At the catcher position, James McCann and Wellington Castillo performed admirably, ranking a collective 8th in the league by WAR (2.9). Adding Grandal’s offense to the mix—along with less-heralded signing Edwin Encarnacion, a veteran slugger entering his age 37 season—figures to improve both measures for the 2020 White Sox.

Defensively, Yasmani Grandal brings a talent for framing (i.e. catching pitches in favorable position from the umpire’s point of view) that is as outstanding as Wellington Castillo’s was poor. For comparison’s sake, Jeff Mathis has been a framing-first, bat-deficient catcher his entire career, and Castillo, the White Sox previous starting catcher, now a non-roster invitee to Nationals camp, was his inverse (notoriously so). Grandal combines these skills—the ability to gift pitchers with borderline strike calls and an excellent approach at the plate—to the tune of a projected 4.8 wins at FanGraphs.

Adding arguably the best catcher in baseball alone won’t be enough, however, to vault the White Sox into playoff contention. The White Sox continued to be active in the off-season free agent market, adding veteran depth to the team’s rotation and bullpen with Dallas Keuchel and Steve Cishek, but whiffed on the heavily rumored signing of Zack Wheeler, who projects to contribute more to the Phillies than Keuchel and Cishek combined. After locking in sure-thing power hitter Eloy Jimenez to a contract extension in 2019, the team worked out a long-term deal with Luis Robert before his big league debut as well. Yoan Moncada broke out in his age 24 year in 2019, delivering at last on the hype of his minor league track record with a top-15 finish in all of baseball ranked by WRC+. Tim Anderson posted an eye-popping .335 batting average, best in baseball for 2019, during a campaign in which he also became one of the sport’s most electric personalities. Newly acquired outfielder Nomar Mazara figures to be another post-hype project for the White Sox, with room to grow into the disciplined power-hitting profile scouts described eight years ago when he was only a 16-year old Texas Rangers signee.

Behind Lucas Giolito, the pitching staff remains a mystery, with both Carlos Rodon and Michael Kopech slated to return from Tommy John surgery. The 2019 staff compiled the second highest strikeout total in franchise history, a fact that would be more remarkable if the league as a whole weren’t setting consecutive annual benchmarks for strikeout totals. Objectively speaking there’s not a lot to like here, but Aaron Bummer, recently signed to a five-year deal, could prove novel if he keeps forcing hitters into grounders on 3 out of every 4 batted balls.

Success for the 2020 White Sox is a playoff berth. Question marks abound regarding how they achieve it. Whether the team’s first playoff appearance in 12 years comes in the Wild Card or as an outright division winner depends on outcomes for some of its more pronounced variables. Can the rotation overcome its projected mediocrity? Which Nomar Mazara did the White Sox welcome into the clubhouse, the slugging prospect or the average major leaguer? Is Luis Robert the real deal, or will his Steamer-projected 111 wRC+ be more realistic? And what to make of division rival Twins and Indians?

Betting markets have the White Sox pegged at 84-85 wins, but I’m an optimist. If everything breaks the right way for the White Sox they’ll be well on their way to 93 wins, enough to clinch the division and put this newly renovated team to its first playoff test.

This team’s most Effectively Wild player will be Tim Anderson. He’s the embodiment of MLB’s “Let The Kids Play” campaign: young, talented, outspoken, and sincere. He’s not favored to repeat .335 but I’m going to go out on a limb and say not only that he can, but also that he will, and that it’ll be one of the highlights of the South Side’s best season in over a decade when he does.

Compared to the other ballpark in Chicago, Guaranteed Rate Field (I’m still calling it “The Joan”) has always had the superior food scene, full of authentic local flavors and tasty, affordable options. If you’re looking for something to go along with your DIPA from the Craft Kave, try the elotes, a delicious boat of corn off-the-cob smothered in cotija cheese, crema, lime juice, and cayenne, available at lower and upper concourse food stands and perfect for summertime snacking.

Because the editor asked: The Original Rainbow Cone® may not be the official ice cream of the Chicago White Sox, but it might as well be. This south suburban institution deep in the heart of Sox territory serves up its namesake cone, a heaping helping of five different scoops that includes a flavor aspirationally named Palmer House. Off-kilter traditions are a signature of the second city’s second team, and this cone has just enough chips in its broad shoulders to match the team it’s being arbitrarily dedicated to in this space.

2020 Win Projection Roundup

	FanGraphs	PECOTA	BTTP
BOS	87	85	84
CHC	85	85	86
CHW	82	82	93

Go back to: BOS | CHC | CHW

Season Preview Series Index

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-pt-2-bos-chc-chw/feed/ 0 18585 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-1-ari-atl-bal/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-1-ari-atl-bal/#respond Wed, 04 Mar 2020 17:00:41 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18553 Arizona Diamondbacks - by Nick Strangis
Atlanta Braves - by Matt Mudd
Baltimore Orioles - by Chris Baber

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]]> Arizona Diamondbacks – by Nick Strangis
Atlanta Braves – by Matt Mudd
Baltimore Orioles – by Chris Baber

 

2019 League Rankings

	Win%	wRC+	Starter FIP-	Reliever FIP-	DRS	UZR
ARI	7	7	7	7	3	2
ATL	2	4	6	8	12	7
BAL	14	15	15	15	14	10

 

The 2020 Arizona Diamondbacks: A Team We Do Not Hate

by Nick Strangis

 

A Review of a Preview

It used to bother me when sites posted projections or predictions but never returned to deliver a debriefing on the accuracy or outcomes related to the predictions. On that note, here are this writer’s comments on the 2019 Arizona Diamondbacks from last year’s preview [please mentally play a “rewind” sound clip here].

Win total prediction: 80

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What is the Diamondbacks’ most recent accomplishment?

Successfully traded one the greatest homegrown players in franchise history for 2 former top 100 prospects (catcher Carson Kelly and pitcher Luke Weaver) and an infielder with MLB upside (Andy Young).

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How will the Diamondbacks define success in 2019?

Finish above .500. Steps forward for young players like Lamb, Marte, and Kelly.

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The Diamondbacks’ most “Effectively Wild” player: Ketel Marte

 

If you read last year’s D-backs preview, you got a good return on your investment: the team eclipsed even my sunny 80-win projection, by five. Kelly and Weaver made a strong impression in their first season with the club (a 106 wRC+ for Kelly and a 3.07 FIP for Weaver), and Ketel Marte broke out like a samurai cutting his way out of a wet paper bag (7.1 WAR). In addition, Arizona kicked off a whole new Zack Greinke trade tree by sending the potential Hall of Fame pitcher to Houston for two solid pitching prospects (J.B. Bukauskas and Corbin Martin), a first base prospect with tremendous power upside (Seth Beer), and multi-position backup who posted a 137 wRC+ in AAA (Josh Rojas).

 

Why We Used to Hate the Diamondbacks

Four years ago, Dave Cameron published “Why We Hate the Diamondbacks,” a breakdown of the reasons FanGraphs projected the Diamondbacks to win far fewer games than Dave Stewart, then the D-backs’ general manager, predicted. I didn’t need Cameron to remind me of all the ways I hated the Diamondbacks: I knew I hated them before I signed up to write their season preview on this site in 2015.

Kendrick (right) with one of baseball fans’ other favorite people

My hatred for the Diamondbacks went back to at least June of 2012, when Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick publicly lashed out at Justin Upton and Stephen Drew. While it turned out Drew was heading into an early decline, Upton was only 24 and playing for a fraction of the $22 MM the Tigers handed him in free agency in 2016. Later that year, Kevin Towers compared Didi Gregorius to Derek Jeter after trading Trevor Bauer to Cleveland in a move that saw Shin-Soo Choo move to Cincinnati. At the time of the trade, Gregorius was a rangy shortstop with a pitiful bat – exactly the opposite skill set that defined Jeter for most of his career.

Choo posted 6.1 WAR in one season with the Reds while Bauer pitched his way to 17.1 WAR over roughly six and a half years in Cleveland. Gregorius, on the other hand, managed to eke out 2.5 WAR over two seasons with the Diamondbacks only to be traded to the Yankees for Robbie Ray after the season. (Towers had the last last laugh considering Gregorius replaced Jeter as the starting shortstop for the Yankees).

Gregorius hit for an 88 OPS+ for the Dbacks and a 100 OPS+ for the Yankees

Towers continued to amputate the Diamondbacks at the knees by trading slick fielding on-base machine Adam Eaton for one-trick pony Mark Trumbo. After Kendrick and team CEO Derrick had enough and fired Towers, the team hired a front office tandem of Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart and embarked on the “Reign of Error,” as Keith Law later dubbed it.

I hated the Arizona Diamondbacks so much that, by early 2015, it seemed like the only choice left was to lean into the chaos that surrounded the team. By the end of the La Russa/Stewart era, the team had generated enough material to fuel their own Effectively Wild spin-off podcast: they failed to understand the rules of both international free agency and trades, gave away the team’s 2013 first round pick, gave away Will Harris, and topped it all off by giving away the farm for Shelby Miller.

While I was a thousand miles away, not-so silently judging the Diamondbacks’ front office, something else happened in Arizona. As Dave Cameron elegantly stated in his blog post “The Humanity of Being Irrational”:

“The connection that most fans have to the game is not based on their front offices making as many efficient choices as possible, but instead, the enjoyment they get out of rooting for their favorite players and seeing them succeed.”

Diamondbacks fans never abandoned a team led by one of the league’s best hitters and, with the signing of Zack Greinke before 2016, one of the game’s best pitchers. The team’s average attendance actually increased from 2014-2015, and never fell out of the twenty-to-twenty first range from 2015-17 and then jumped to sixteenth in 2018, the season after the they won 93 games. Speaking of irrational, the Diamondbacks’ attendance jumped again last season, a season that followed the trade of the face of the franchise as well as its latest future Hall of Fame pitcher.

Six Diamondbacks players are home, again, in Arizona

Which brings us to today, and how could anyone hate the 2020 Diamondbacks? Ketel Marte marks one of the org’s best trade acquisition since it acquired Luis Gonzalez for Karim Garcia. Recently, they extended Nick Ahmed and David Peralta, ensuring a few more seasons with two of the team’s longest tenured players, and the team is starting to reap the rewards of GM Mike Hazen’s youth movement. 2020 may not mark the Diamondbacks’ best opening day roster but it may mark the best upside the organization has witnessed since Justin Upton was still a prospect.

 

Most “Effectively Wild” Player

Originally hailing from East of the Mississippi, Mason Saunders made a name for himself riding horses out West. With high expectations came plenty of pressure, but Saunders never wilted in three championship rides. This devout Christian and active member of the Freemasons and Shriners is an advocate for adoption, having adopted four children with his wife. When he’s not slinging for Carhartt, you can find him slinging axes with his friend, Khal Drogo. Maybe one day he’ll even lend his name to a chain of restaurants.

 

What flavor ice cream is your team?

Strawberry – It sounds boring but just give it a try. It’s got a refreshing bite up front and it you won’t want to stop eating halfway through because it tastes too rich.

 

Must-Try Stadium Food

I live about one thousand miles away but I’ll eat a sweet potato tot anytime, anywhere.

 

Win total prediction

90. If the 2013 Braves could shock the league with their lineup of no stars/no scrubs, why can’t the D-Backs do it in 2020?

 

---

Atlanta Braves

by Matt Mudd

A song for the 2020 Atlanta Braves: “More” by Lawrence

If Atlanta’s 2018 season was a pleasant surprise, 2019 was the proper culmination of a modern rebuild.

Those most instrumental in the team’s success were no surprise. Ronald Acuña Jr. spent the year solidifying himself as one of the game’s most exciting and valuable young players, Freddie Freeman’s brilliance at the plate continued to border on monotonous, and Ozzie Albies’ own combination of youth and excellence continued to be historic in its own right.

After its first full off-season running the team, the front office led by Alex Anthopolous proved itself savvy. Josh Donaldson’s 1 year-deal worked out beautifully for both sides, Dallas Keuchel proved to be the durable arm the team needed after his midseason acquisition, and retaining and acquiring depth like Adam Duvall, Adeiny Hechavarria, and Matt Joyce proved useful when starters spent significant time on the IL in the second half of the year.

I would like to spend the rest of this preview talking about how enjoyable the season was, but a new season is coming, and soon the joy of winning will quickly be erased by the fear of not winning as much.

This year is set up to be an important milestone in the current strategy for Atlanta’s front office. Success in all sports is more often fleeting than sustainable, but the team tells us they’re confident they have the formula. It revolves almost entirely around the idea that a team needs to be built almost entirely from within, and only filled in around the edges through free agency and trades (of course, this strategy is easier when you have two young superstars in Acuna Jr. and Albies on contracts that are at best team-friendly, and at worst blatantly exploitative). Last year may well be the masterclass in executing their master plan. Homegrown stars like Acuña Jr., Freeman, Soroka, and Albies were the constant and mercenaries like Donaldson and Keuchel were called in only when it was clear they were absolutely necessary.

Now, Donaldson, Keuchel, and long-time opening day starter Julio Teheran have left in free agency. The team has given relatively inexpensive and short-term contracts to the likes of Cole Hamels, Travis D’Arnaud, Marcell Ozuna, and Chris Martin, saving its biggest deal for Will Smith in form of a 3-year $39 million contract. These are good and useful baseball players that should help the team be successful in 2020.

Here’s the rub. We all know Atlanta is fully capable of spending more without sacrificing the future. The strategy espoused by the front office is more often used by teams whose goal is to turn a substantial profit rather than one that intends to win as many games as possible. The promise of spending the money saved on the Albies and Acuña Jr. contracts may ring hollow when your team’s second most valuable player in fWAR from 2019 signs elsewhere in free agency for an amount many considered below market value. Financial responsibility and savvy roster moves are well and good, but often when a team doesn’t embrace a chance to compete for titles with the proper sense of urgency, they’re often on the other side of the window quicker than they realize.

I digress, Atlanta has every reason to be excited for this season, and they have as good a chance as any team in the National League to be the most worthy adversary for the seemingly unstoppable Dodgers squad. We know that winning solves almost everything, and it may just continue doing that.

 

How do the Braves define success in 2020?

Four of the five teams in the NL East are looking to compete, and have allocated the resources to make it happen (at the very least in their own imagination). A playoff berth will be no small feat.

This said, after two rather unceremonious exits from the playoffs, the team will want more. They probably won’t be happy without an NLCS berth.

 

Who is one player from Atlanta who will be a topic on “Effectively Wild” this season?

As I had to talk myself out of writing my whole team preview about him, I’d be hard pressed not to select Mike Soroka. The young Canadian rookie finished sixth in Cy Young voting and second in Rookie of the Year voting. Soroka is the presumptive opening day starter, and with the Braves only acquiring and older Cole Hamels in free agency, the rotation’s success at least in part depends on Soroka’s ability to lead it.

Soroka’s K/9 number don’t jump off the page, but he showed an advanced ability for sequencing his pitches, producing ground balls, and limiting home runs. It will be intriguing to see how he backs up his rookie success.

 

What flavor ice cream is the Braves?

Chocolate ice cream — very good the whole time, very bad at the end.

 

What is one food item from at Sun Trust park that readers MUST try if they visit?

A quick Google search has told the Blooper “sandwich” includes four cheeseburger patties, a footlong hot dog, and chicken tenders topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, jalapeños, and cheese sauce. All crammed in between Texas toast.

I will take this and a trip to the hospital.

 

Win total prediction:

95.

 

---

Baltimore Orioles

by Chris Baber

The Pizza Hut in the small town I live in closed on February 10, and I immediately thought of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. More specifically, the VHS version with this amazing commercial from 1990. Peter, Paul, and Mary performed this song a short, 4 years prior to this perfect commercial on a VHS. The Orioles were bad in 1990. And again in 1991. They came in 6th in the American League East with a record of 67 and 95. The 1991 team seems like a massive success compared to the team from the past two years. Also, less important, George H.W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth II attended an Orioles game on May 15, 1991.

***

Two years ago, I journaled every game of the Orioles season. I decided to do it about Machado, as I knew it was going to be his last season with the team. That season started with a win and then, because everything is unfair, it went off the rails in a hurry. In seasons past, I dug deep into the stats; took screenshots of arm angles and release points and wrote a lot about Kevin Gausman. This year there is not much to say that has not already been said. The team traded its best player to save $10 million. They aren’t going to score a lot of runs. They aren’t going to hit a lot of homeruns. They aren’t going to excite you on the base paths. They won’t wow you with their defense. If they win 55 games and get a top 3 pick, that will be a resounding success. This is where we are now in the world of baseball for many fans. But you know what? At least they didn’t trade Mookie Fucking Betts because a billionaire is crying poor.

Losing is not fun. I could just end there. The Baltimore Orioles were not incredibly fun to watch last year. Sure, Jonathan Villar was very exciting in 2019, and was one of the main reasons I watched the O’s at all. Then they traded him for the stale gum from a pack of 1989 Topps. And yeah, the team had some pleasant surprises in John Means, and [checks notes] Hanser Alberto. Trey Mancini bounced back to have a pleasant year. On a very bad team, he somehow scored 106 runs. He looked better defensively than he did in 2018, but that is not saying much.

2019 was pretty tough from an Orioles fandom perspective. Sure, Villar’s combination of speed and power made his at-bats worth watching. I got to see Stevie Wilkerson get a save. Then at the end of the season, I got to see Wilkerson make one of the best catches I have ever seen.

When this catch happened, my wife, who was 9 months pregnant and just a few days from her due date, was fast asleep. I had my headphones on and a cat on my lap and got so excited by that catch that I jumped and did a silent yell, which scared the cat and woke the wife. Two members of my household were pretty mad at me. It was a pretty good way to end a lousy season.

Last year, I found myself watching a lot more of other teams, which I did anyway, but made a point to last season. I stayed up later to watch West Coast teams play. I also found myself going outside more instead of sitting inside to watch baseball. I listened to more games on the radio. I went on more bike rides. I learned how to play pickleball. I spent more time with friends. I made new friends. I rubbed my pregnant wife’s swollen feet. The dog enjoyed more time at the Dog Park. I looked for employment after ending graduate school. I sat on the porch staring into the middle distance while contemplating debt, climate change, impending global pandemics, why my cat throws up so much. I thought about how much life was about to change in October, when our baby was due.

When I did watch the Orioles, I did not feel the same connection as I had since I first became a fan in 1990. I did not feel sad about it. I felt indifferent. It could have been a number of things. It could be that watching bad baseball just isn’t that enjoyable outside of a few random really good plays. It could be that playing deep dynasty leagues made me less interested in one team, and more interested in many. It could be the changing landscape of baseball as a whole. While I still cheer for the Orioles, I also enjoy the game of baseball as a whole. I generally cheer individual players from many teams, which is something I would never admit to myself or out loud in 2010.

My fandom has changed over the course of 34 years. I am not tied into the daily game as much as I once was. I do not live and die by a win or a seasons final record. I enjoy the game now more than ever, nonetheless. I still enjoy the smell of the grass. The crack of the bat. The taste of Boog’s BBQ. What I am happiest about is watching a full season of Orioles baseball with my daughter. Maybe I will miss the hardcore fandom that saw me crying with unbridled joy in 2014 when Delmon Young hit a go-ahead, three-run double in the ALDS. I was at that game with my dad and it is a moment that is in the top 10 experiences of my entire life. The absolute joy that permeated throughout Baltimore after that game. I gave so many random people hugs and high fives. Belonging to a fandom is really, really good for your mental health. Fandom allows for a sense of belonging, a sense of identity. Fandom can be pretty badass sometimes. Also, all fans suck and whatnot.

How does your team define success in 2020?

If Chris Davis is slightly better than below replacement player than I will consider 2020 a success. The 2020 Orioles are built to be bad. Not as bad as possible, but very, very bad. They still have some guys to trade if they want to win 0 games. This season is successful if prospects show growth. Adley Rutschman needs to continue to hit in the minors and maintain his status as a top 10 prospect. Austin Hays needs to regain his hit tool that made him a top 100 prospect two seasons ago. Yusniel Diaz needs to hit like a corner outfielder. Grayson Rodriguez, DL Hall, and Michael Baumann need to continue to develop into serviceable future starters. Cedric Mullins needs to figure it out as well.

Who is one player from your team who will be a topic on “Effectively Wild“ this season?

I am going to go with John Means. He will turn 27 one month into the season. He was worth 4.6 WAR according to Baseball Reference, and 3.0 WAR according to FanGraphs. He does not wow you with much of anything. Fastball is about 92 mph. He tosses a solid changeup with a ton of backspin. And he will throw a slider and a curveball. He was a solid #2 pitcher and if he can continue that level of performance or close to it, this is a guy worth talking about at least once over the course of a season.

What flavor ice cream is your team?

Toothpaste and Orange Juice. Okay, this isn’t a real flavor. The 2020 Orioles are the Butter Pecan flavored ice cream of Major League Baseball. It is sometimes acceptable. It is mostly terrible. One thing it is not…ever good.

What is one food item from your team’s stadium that you MUST try?

Everyone will talk about Boogs BBQ, which has pretty good pork and beef sandwiches. If you only get one trip to OPACY, you need to eat what that area is known for. Crab. Grab yourself some crab waffle fries and crab cakes from the Old Bay Seafood concessions. If you are not a crab fan, grab an Esskay Gourmet Hot Dog with burnt ends.

Win total prediction.
So bad. So, so bad. PECOTA says 63-99. I do not agree with that at all. Last year I was pretty close with my prediction. I think this is a worse team than last year, but I also think the AL East is due for some regression. I will go with the following:

2020 Record: 58-104, 5th in AL East, 28th in MLB.

 

2020 Win Projection Roundup

	FanGraphs	PECOTA	BTTP
ARI	80	80	90
ATL	87	83	95
BAL	61	63	58

 

Go back to: ARI | ATL | BAL

Season Preview Series 2020 Index

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-1-ari-atl-bal/feed/ 0 18553 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-index/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-index/#comments Wed, 04 Mar 2020 16:59:03 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18557 As MLB gets underway in 2020 with a revised and reduced schedule, we’ve done the same with our season previews, using a special “60 Words for 60 Games” format. Our writers have returned, this time... Read more »

The post Season Preview Series 2020 Index appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

]]> As MLB gets underway in 2020 with a revised and reduced schedule, we’ve done the same with our season previews, using a special “60 Words for 60 Games” format. Our writers have returned, this time offering summaries for each team with a strict 60-word limit.

1. AL & NL East
2. AL & NL Central
3. AL & NL West

 

Previous intro:

Welcome to the sixth edition of Banished to the Pen’s season preview series! Once again, we’re proud to publish a set of 30 writers from the Effectively Wild podcast community. Some of our contributors have been writing for us regularly since the very beginning, while others return to be occasional contributors.

The most exciting pieces for us, however, are by those taking a stab at baseball writing for the very first time. These writers represent, after all, the spirit in which Banished to the Pen was created – an outlet for anyone in the Effectively Wild community (and beyond) to try their hand at writing about the game we love.

Here in the 2020 preview series we’re introducing a new set of “Most Effectively Wild players,” defining success for our teams, uncovering interesting food items, revisiting blockbuster trades, predicting win totals, and, of course, litigating a banging scheme. We aim to post three trios of previews a week, in sometimes-alphabetical order. Thanks as always for coming with us for the ride.

You can also check out how our win predictions fared versus the pros.

 

1. 1. ARI (Nick Strangis), ATL (Matt Mudd), BAL (Chris Baber)
   2. BOS (Jamieson Weiss), CHC (Ben Bailey), CHW (James Cardis)
   3. CIN (Mark Neuenschwander), CLE (Marina Bostelman), COL (Dan Freedman)
   4. HOU (Daniel R. Epstein), KC (Nathan Valentine), MIA (Jon Jacoby)
   5. MIL (Andrew Ingrelli), MIN (Lee Pietruszewski), NYM (by Michael Conte)

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/season-preview-series-2020-index/feed/ 1 18557 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/counterpoint-the-red-sox-were-right-to-trade-betts-and-price/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/counterpoint-the-red-sox-were-right-to-trade-betts-and-price/#respond Mon, 10 Feb 2020 18:00:07 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18514 Enough is enough! You might be aware of Cointree trading. But there are several other trade types and secrets yet to know. There is and was a litany of reasons why trading Mookie Betts (and... Read more »

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]]> Enough is enough!

You might be aware of Cointree trading. But there are several other trade types and secrets yet to know. There is and was a litany of reasons why trading Mookie Betts (and David Price, and the 3/$96M remaining on his deal) made sense, including not wanting to spend nearly $60M for both players this season. The AL East is getting even more competitive with the Yankees looking like the “Evil Empire” of old, the Rays doing “Rays Things,” and the Blue Jays increasing their spending to surround their ridiculous core of young players. The Red Sox didn’t make the playoffs last year, and were looking at long odds at being anything other than a one-game player in this year’s post-season. But 2021, 2022, and beyond are still there for the taking; provided the team is not saddled with massive penalties in the coming seasons (going above the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT) again this year would open them up to the highest level of penalties). The club considered all of that when Betts (and Price) went on the market. Plus, they knew that if they acted now, they could ensure they received value in exchange.

The Red Sox Are Not Cheap

Can we please dispense with the tired trope that the Red Sox traded their best player because they are cheap. Enough with the conventional wisdom that they dumped a perennial all-star and face of the franchise because they had to get under the CBT (set at $208M this year) after being the only team to exceed the CBT threshold the previous two seasons. Enough with tossing the ownership group and their checkbooks under the bus.

The Red Sox have shown that they are not miserly. Yes, they try to be (see their opening offer to Jon Lester), but when push comes to shove, they pay. They signed Carl Crawford to a $142M contract; they signed David Price to a $217M contract; they signed Chris Sale to a $145M contract. Some may disagree with the wisdom of those deals, but sign them they did.

It is true that the Chaim Bloom, the new Chief Baseball Officer for the Red Sox, was given “guidance” to get under the CBT in 2020. And it is true that one way to help achieve that goal would be to trade Mookie Betts and his $27M salary. But that is not why (or not the only or even the main reason why) they did it. And to assert otherwise is simply Masshole myopia.

Paying Mookie Betts $35-$40M/year for a decade or more may be the right thing to do, but that is a decision they can make next off-season, when they have a better sense of the market…and after they have received a few players in return.

The Future (But Not 2020) Looks Bright

The Red Sox are nothing if not forward-thinking (even before they brought in Bloom). And they looked at the upcoming season, and the 2021 and 2022 seasons beyond that, and saw the following: J.D. Martinez having the ability to opt out two more times; Andrew Benintendi and Rafael Devers heading into their arbitration years; Chris Sale on the books for $29M/season (for 5 more years); Nathan Eovaldi on the books for $17M/season; and David Price still owed $96M coming off three seasons in which he hasn’t averaged 120 innings.

And they looked at the Yankees and saw a team that won 103 games and got better; and the Rays and the Athletics, each of whom won 92 games and got better. And they also looked at the win total projections for their team and saw 86-92, with Betts. And 84-88 without. The Red Sox knew – in their hearts and in their heads – that this team (with Betts and Price) was a Wild Card contender at best. So then the question became: how much do you stake on a single game elimination tournament?

The cost of going all out was simply too much – even for a team with as many resources as the BoSox.

What Does Mookie Want?

Bill Simmons, no stranger to Boston fandom – and a massive critic of this deal – has the five-year grace period theory. That is, an organization gets five years after any championship during which fans cannot “complain about anything that happens…(trades, draft picks, salary-cap cuts, coaching moves)…There are no exceptions.” By my count, the Red Sox are still within that window – seeing as they won the World Series about 16 months ago. So, even by the Sports Guy’s standards, the fans and the pundits need to let this go.

But, “No!” scream the masses(holes), “we are tahkin’ about Mookie Freakin’ Betts heah, a once-in-a-generation stah, and we let him go so John Henry can make a few million more!?!” I guess there is a relativism in every theory.

Unfortunately, this jeremiad assumes facts not in evidence. Actually, it denies facts in evidence. Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Well, the corollary would be: “When someone tells you what they want, believe them.” Mookie Betts has told the Red Sox, in pretty uncertain terms, that he wanted to go into free agency. He understands this is a business. As Buster Olney reported: “[He] understands his importance to the union and wanted to get to free agency, as Gerrit Cole did, to push the free agent [financial] ceiling for the union brethren. That is his right.”

It was reported last week that prior to the 2019 season, the Red Sox offered Betts a 10/$300M deal, and he countered at 12/$420M. Maybe this is accurate, and maybe the Red Sox could have locked Betts up until he was 39 years old at $35M/season. But my guess is that Betts was testing the waters. If he thought the Red Sox would bite at $420M, why wouldn’t he go to the market to see if he could get $421M somewhere else? Or maybe he countered at $420M because he didn’t want to play the rest of his career in Boston, and he knew the Red Sox would reject the proposal. We have no idea what he is thinking – other than what he has told us:

“It doesn’t really matter who’s there. It’s going to be the same answer. Nothing’s going to change. [Dombrowski’s firing] is proof that this is a business. I love it here, but definitely it’s still a business.”

We live in a time of “player empowerment,” as we have seen time and again in basketball and football. When possible, players now design their careers and dictate where they want to play. Mookie seems to be no different.

I guess the Red Sox could have made a Godfather offer – say $500M over 12 years – and forced Betts to say “no.” The argument being that it is just money – and the Fenway Sports Group has tons of it and they will raise ticket prices anyway – so just pay whatever it takes to keep the player.

But, as I stated above, that may not have done the trick. We saw Anthony Rendon turn down the Dodgers because he didn’t want to play in Los Angeles (shh!, don’t tell him the actual name of the team he did sign with). Back in 1976, Reggie Jackson turned down a 5/$5M deal from the Expos for a 5/$3.5M from the Yankees. Why? Because he wanted to be the straw that stirred the drink in the Big Apple. Fans castigate teams for not signing free agents, forgetting the “agency” part of the equation on the player’s side. The bottom line is that no matter what you offer, you cannot compel someone to sign a contact.

Again, reading the tea leaves with Betts made it too risky to hope you could sign him before he hit the open market.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

So what were the Red Sox to do? Should they have played out the 2020 season knowing that Betts was leaving? Should they have felt lucky to get six-plus years of his greatness and be pleased with their draft pick compensation (which, because the Red Sox would be over the CBT, would be – wait for it – between the fourth and fifth round)? Should they have allowed their fear of fan blowback to keep them from improving the team for 2021, 2022, and beyond? If you answered “yes” to these questions, you are thinking with your sports heart, not with your sports brain. As Bob Sugar once said:

The Sox were in an impossible situation. Losing Betts at the end of 2020 and getting only a pre-fifth round draft pick was unthinkable. Waiting until July was perilous. What if they were only five games out and playing great; what if Mookie pulled a hamstring or broke a wrist on an errant fastball right after the All-Star Break; what if the offers at the deadline were weak, and what was available was substantially less than what they got from the Dodgers? Chaim Bloom is a bright guy; he did all of this math. The Red Sox had lemons – again, because Mookie told them he was going to test free agency – and they made lemonade.

It appears from Ken Rosenthal’s reporting that the Red Sox are paying half of what’s left on Price’s contract. And the deal does leave a hole in the Red Sox rotation. But at least they can attempt to address that now – eight weeks before opening day. Imagine (it is not hard to do) that Price ended up on the IL a time or two this season, and then the Red Sox had to scramble to fill his slot – with a converted reliever, a Quad-A guy, or an opener. The guys at the Cask ‘n Flagon would be none-too-pleased with that turn of events. With this deal, they now know what they (don’t) have, and they will have about $48M over three seasons to make do – more than enough to pay a Joe Musgrove-type.

And yes, Price could come to Los Angeles and be the next coming of Sandy Koufax and help lead the Dodgers to their first World Series title in 32 years. But there is simply no guaranty he would have done that with a “B” on his cap. Price is a much better bet to be successful in the cavernous ballparks of the NL West than in the cozy confines of the AL East; and I feel relatively confident that Price won’t pick a fight with Orel Hershiser, regardless of what “Bulldog” says about him on the air.

The Red Sox Got Value

It took some time, and many machinations, for this deal to get finalized, but the end appears in sight. In return for Betts and Price, the BoSox get a proven big-league outfielder with great bat-to-ball skills and a cannon of an arm. Alex Verdugo hit .294/.342/.475 as a rookie last season with a 114 OPS+. Simply put, he is a very good ballplayer, 14% better than average. No, he won’t be Mookie Betts. But neither will the 138^th pick in the 2021 draft (that is approximately where the their compensation pick would land).

And, in lieu of hard-throwing and injury-prone Brusdar Graterol (who now goes to the Dodgers), the Red Sox get high-end infield prospect Jeter Downs. Downs is ranked 44^th on the MLB and 86^th on the Baseball America prospect lists. He can play second, third, or short, and with the impending retirement of Dustin Pedroia, could pencil in as Boston’s second baseman of the future. It says a lot that the Dodgers were extremely reluctant to part with Downs, and only did so at the eleventh hour to ensure this deal came to fruition.

And, as a kicker, the Red Sox also get catching and middle infield utility prospect Connor Wong. He is much in the mold of Blake Swihart. They didn’t get Gavin Lux or Dustin May, but the Red Sox got some players who can grow with the organization in the coming years. And it is worth mentioning that Verdugo is under team control for another five years, and neither Downs nor Wong have any major league service time.

None of that is sexy, and it isn’t something you can put on the back of a t-shirt, but it is important when trying to (re)build a championship ball club.

The Winner Now May Not Be the Winner Later

The Dodgers won the trade (or trades, if you want to make this two 2-team deals), of that there is no doubt. They have incredible depth, and will not miss Verdugo or Kenta Maeda (who went to the Twins in return for Graterol) or Downs. That is, unless/until Betts goes 0-fer and the Dodgers’ middle relief gets shellacked in the NLCS, and they lose to the Braves in seven games. I am sure Bill Plaschke or Dylan Hernandez or Molly Knight or Pedro Moura will write some column raising the following questions: “Could Maeda have done a better job in those important innings? And what of Betts, who was just another Machado, who flamed out on the big stage, and is now leaving in free agency?”

As a Dodger season ticket holder, I hope that neither happens. Insofar as I don’t have high hopes for the Red Sox this season, I do hope that Betts leads the Dodgers to a World Series title over the Yankees, enters free agency, and signs a 12/$421 deal next November. And I hope he signs that deal with…the Red Sox. A man can hope.

PLAY BALL!!

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/counterpoint-the-red-sox-were-right-to-trade-betts-and-price/feed/ 0 18514 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/gotta-go-fast-to-cooperstown-the-case-for-kenny-lofton/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/gotta-go-fast-to-cooperstown-the-case-for-kenny-lofton/#respond Thu, 30 Jan 2020 12:00:14 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18465 In 1991, the world witnessed the debut of a super-fast, super cool dude with an attitude to match. The beginning of his career was brilliant, and while the high point was early and quick, his... Read more »

The post Gotta Go Fast…to Cooperstown: The Case for Kenny Lofton appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

]]> In 1991, the world witnessed the debut of a super-fast, super cool dude with an attitude to match. The beginning of his career was brilliant, and while the high point was early and quick, his consistency and quality for the better part of two decades led him to be remembered as an all-time great.

Scott Brady

Surprisingly, I’m not referring to Sonic the Hedgehog (although it is a fun comp), but Cleveland’s answer to Ken Griffey Jr.—Kenny Lofton. Lofton was one of the greatest centerfielders to ever play in Major League Baseball. Some people (probably not anyone reading this now) don’t seem to agree with this sentiment…for some reason. So, for the next ten minutes or so, allow me to gush about Lofton and lay out why he deserves to be enshrined amongst baseball’s elites in Cooperstown.

Let’s start with the basics—his Baseball Reference page (click for full-size image):

 

Right off the bat, there’s several things that jump out, some more obvious than others: lots of stolen bases, lots of base hits, lots of walks. He could hit for average, get on base at a high clip, and run into a dinger or dozen. If it feels like you’ve seen this picture before, there’s a reason why:

 

Do you see the second name on that list? That’s Hall of Famer and saber-community darling Tim Raines, who per Baseball Reference’s Similarity Score metric, is the second most similar player to Lofton. If you look at an overlay of Raines’ and Lofton’s career WAR via FanGraphs, the comparison is even more striking:

 

Why am I bringing this up? Simply to note that Lofton and Raines had extremely similar careers, but Lofton never got the same chance at Baseball Immortality that Raines did. Raines stayed on the Hall of Fame ballot for a full ten years and was elected in his final year of eligibility, never falling below the threshold of necessary votes to stay on the ballot. Lofton received less than five percent of the electorate’s vote in his first and only year on the ballot. Since then, the Veteran’s Committee has been far too busy electing your dad’s favorite players—I mean, “all time greats of the game,” Jack Morris and Harold Baines—to give Lofton a second thought.

There are several reasons why Lofton has struggled to gain any kind of traction in a push for the Hall of Fame and why he had so little support in his only go-around on the ballot. He fell shy of 3000 hits (and it wasn’t close). He didn’t bat .300 for his career. He didn’t hit 500 home runs, or even 400, 300, or 200. He moved around a lot in the latter half of his career, when he retired in 2007 he had played for a total of 11 different teams. He was selected to six All Star Games and won four Gold Gloves, but outside of that never won any other major awards. Narratively speaking, he doesn’t have a lot of moments that are remembered by the public.

All that being said, I’m going to flip each one of these reasons on its head to explain why Lofton should be seen as a shoo-in Hall of Famer.

Lofton finished his career with 2428 hits. It’s pretty easy to explain away why he didn’t get to 3000 (or at least get closer): he was hurt frequently and was more of a role-player in his later seasons (he only played in 150+ games twice in his career). Like with a lot of other guys who fell short of certain statistical mile-markers, you can also blame the 1994-1995 Player’s Strike. When the 1994 season ended abruptly, Lofton had a league-leading 160 hits (and we’ll revisit this season later). Give him the remainder of that season and he probably would’ve finished the year with well over 200. If the 1995 season then would’ve also started on time, maybe he gets to 2500 hits, which might’ve helped him with a certain class of voter.

Now Lofton didn’t hit .300, but he did hit .299, so you can basically throw out his batting average (hint: you should’ve to begin with because it’s an overly simplified stat without proper context). The number you want to pay attention to is his career on-base percentage, an excellent .372. During his early peak years in Cleveland, he had four seasons where it was over .400. Lofton always had a good eye at the plate and would regularly draw somewhere around 65-80 walks a season, topping out at 87 in 1998. He also never struck out more than 84 times in a season, which seems even more impressive in today’s high-strikeout environment.

Lofton finished his career with 130 home runs—a modest total at best. That wasn’t his game though, Lofton was a speed-demon (another reason why the Sonic the Hedgehog comp works so well). In 782 attempts, Lofton stole 622 bases—a 79% success rate, which is very good. He was also a guy who was fast enough (and had good enough bat control) to bunt for a single, which is one of only three occasions I find it acceptable to bunt. Good for you, Kenny.

After reaching free agency in 2001, Lofton would leave Cleveland and go on to play for eight different teams before returning to Cleveland in 2007. Why did he move around so much? Don’t only bad players who no one wants play for so many different teams? Not quite: Lofton kept getting picked up by contenders because they wanted his bat and glove for the playoffs. A quick run-down:

• In 2002 after signing with the White Sox, he was traded to the Giants and helped them to an inspired World Series run; more on that later.
• In 2003 after signing with the Pirates, he was traded to the Cubs and was on the field for the now-infamous (and in my opinion, overrated) Steve Bartman Incident during Game 6 of the NLCS. Maybe if Lofton had been in left field instead of Moises Alou that foul ball would’ve been caught.
• In 2004 Lofton signed on with the Yankees as a part-time player. He ended up being a part of their slaughtering of Boston during the first three games of that year’s ALCS.
• In 2005 he was traded from the Yankees to the Phillies, I like to think to re-create some nineties magic with Jim Thome. Overall that particular Phillies team largely underachieved, but Lofton had arguably his best personal season since the turn of the millennium.
• In 2006 Lofton signed with the Dodgers, again as a part-timer, they made it to the playoffs but were swept by the Mets in the NLDS.
• In 2007 after originally signing with Texas, Lofton returned home to Cleveland for one last stroll in the sun and led a fun group of players to Game 7 of the ALCS. He retired after that season.

Kenny Lofton didn’t win Rookie of the Year—but he should have. In 1992 he finished second in the award voting to…

*checks notes*

Who the hell is Pat Listach? Apparently he had a bWAR of 4.5 in 1992 (for comparison’s sake, Lofton’s was 6.6). His career bWAR is…4.4. I think I’ve made my point.

Kenny Lofton also never won an MVP—but he should have…at least arguably anyway. Returning to 1994, Lofton had a league-leading 7.2 bWAR when the strike hit—better than Ken Griffey, Jr (6.9), David Cone (6.6), or eventual award winner Frank Thomas (6.4). Lofton hit a career-best .349/.412/.536 and was on his way to a Troutian type of season, but with less homers and more steals. Had Cleveland made it into the playoffs that season (they were the leading wild card team at the time of the strike) after a four decade lay-off, voters might have handed the award to Lofton, who was viewed as the catalyst of the Cleveland offense. Alas, it wasn’t to be (and to be fair, it’s not like Frank Thomas was bad either—we’re talking about increments of WAR here), and he finished fourth in the MVP voting that year. The last season he received MVP votes in was 1997.

Now the idea that Lofton never had any signature moments is, quite frankly, bullshit. He had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of history a lot of the time (also see above), which might explain why outside of certain fanbases his career largely isn’t remembered. Let’s revisit his stint with the Giants in 2002, shall we?

Did you know that Kenny Lofton won the pennant for the Giants in 2002? I sure didn’t (until recently that is). Why is this not talked about more? I have a theory, and it’s three-fold:

• It wasn’t a home run. How many times have you seen textbook-remember-that-guy Travis Ishikawa’s walk-off winner from 2014?
• It was on the west coast, i.e. not Boston or New York. See Boone, Aaron.
• The Giants did not win the World Series. While not always the case (again, see Boone, Aaron), Pennant Winners often are not as well remembered as World Series Winners.

However, there are so many other great moments from Lofton’s career. We begin with a summer day in 1996 that has become legend in Cleveland:

He made many other great catches during his time in Cleveland, this is just the one that is best-known.

A year previously during the ALCS against the Mariners, Lofton was a force in Game 6, highlighted by his scoring of the go-ahead run to win the pennant (he had previously gotten on base via bunt single because he was just that fast):

To prove I wasn’t lying on that previous fact, here’s a few more absurd catches from his tenure in Cleveland:

Lofton had some fun All Star Game moments too:

And because I don’t want to be a total homer, here’s some of his finer moments with other clubs:

There’s something else I want to mention about Kenny Lofton: he was cool (again, the Sonic comp is spot-on). He’s the only baseball player I can remember from my childhood who had a prominent shoe beside Griffey. I mean, check out this Taco Bell commercial from 1998:

The dude was just dripping with swag.

I’ll extrapolate on why Kenny means so much to me personally, why he’s my guy: the first MLB game I ever attended took place on September 10, 1996. The first thing I saw my hometown Cleveland team do? I saw Kenny Lofton hit a leadoff home run. I was sold. The crazy part is that as I said earlier, that wasn’t Lofton’s game. As I got older, I started to watch all of the other things he did: his patience at the plate, his excellent bat control, his slickness in the outfield, his blazing speed on the base paths. He was the ideal ballplayer in my mind’s eye. He could do everything and then some.

When Kenny came back to Cleveland in 2007, it was special. He was happy to be back too. As Cleveland rolled to their first division title in six years and made a legitimate push for a World Series title, Kenny was there every step of the way and in the middle of all of the action. A World Series title in his final season, back with his most beloved team, would’ve made a great story. Thanks to Taylor Swift and Joel Skinner, the story we ended up getting was quite different. The ride was fun while it lasted though.

Finally, here are some cold, hard numbers: Kenny had a career bWAR of 68.3 (average HOFers typically fall in the 55-60 range). His career wRC+ was 109. Outside of his 20 game career debut with the Astros in 1991 (wRC+ of 37), he only had two other seasons where it was below 100, in 2000 (90) and 2004 (96). He is fifteenth all time in career stolen bases. He led the AL in stolen bases for five consecutive seasons, topping out at 75 in 1996. According to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS leaderboards, Lofton is the 10th best centerfielder…ever. He is bookended by Carlos Beltran, Andruw Jones, and multiple Hall of Famers:

 

One more note about the postseason too: much like a certain New York shortstop, he is also all over the postseason career leaderboards. Most notably, he is first in career stolen bases in the postseason. These accumulated stats are largely a product of his frequent postseason appearances, but it’s still fun to bring up.

Ultimately, Lofton should be a Hall of Famer because of his all-around game. He was best known for his skill on the base paths and in the outfield, but he was no slouch at the plate either. This was a truly an elite player. To hammer this home, I want to leave you with one more highlight, arguably the greatest game in Lofton’s career. It truly shows how he could take over a game from atop the lineup, how many different ways he could beat you; causing chaos on the base paths and putting on a show in the batter’s box. As I mentioned before, home runs weren’t really a part of Lofton’s game. Nonetheless, on this particular day—and on 129 other occasions during his career—he managed to put his bat on the ball and drive it to just the right part of the ballpark:

 

The post Gotta Go Fast…to Cooperstown: The Case for Kenny Lofton appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/gotta-go-fast-to-cooperstown-the-case-for-kenny-lofton/feed/ 0 18465 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/will-the-phillies-ever-overcome-their-6528-run-differential/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/will-the-phillies-ever-overcome-their-6528-run-differential/#respond Fri, 22 Nov 2019 11:00:18 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18434 2019 was supposed to be a big year for the Phillies. They acquired Bryce Harper, the biggest free agent of the offseason. They further solidified an already-promising lineup with other new faces, including an aging... Read more »

The post Will the Phillies Ever Overcome Their -6,528 Run Differential? appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

]]> 2019 was supposed to be a big year for the Phillies. They acquired Bryce Harper, the biggest free agent of the offseason. They further solidified an already-promising lineup with other new faces, including an aging but still perfectly fine Andrew McCutchen, and one of the best catchers in baseball in J.T. Realmuto. Plus, Gabe Kapler was starting his second season as skipper — while he wasn’t overtly bad in 2018, there were some growing pains, and ideally a young manager learns from past mistakes. That’s the hope anyway. Accordingly, the Phillies were expected to be good in 2019, and were picked by more than a few to make their first trip to the postseason since 2011 — the last time they had a record above .500.

It didn’t happen. Maybe it was bad luck. McCutchen had a season-ending ACL injury in early June when the Phillies were a game up in the NL East, and they had a hard time finding his replacement at the leadoff spot. The biggest issue, however, was that the Phillies weren’t quite ready to compete with their below-average pitching staff in what turned out to be a very tough division, even with the company of the lowly Marlins. The Phillies finished 81-81, and in a discouraging 4^th place. Kapler was axed and is now managing in San Francisco.

Less notable, although not to this author, was the Phillies’ minus-20 run differential in 2019. And here’s why that’s very important: Since 1901, the Phillies have a minus – a negative – 6,528 run differential, easily the biggest hole in all of baseball. They’ve lost on average nearly 55 runs a year for 119 seasons. Here, take a look:

1901-2019

(God bless the Padres. Only been in existence since 1969, yet right there in the Bad Run Differential Final Four.)

So in the end, even a should-be promising season like 2019 resulted instead in a few more runs for teams who were not the Phillies. How did such a historic and proud franchise like this one wind up here? Well, when sorting by National League teams with the worst run differential in history, the Phillies have six in the top ten. They’ve been prolifically bad. Especially in the 1920s, a decade in which the Phillies allowed more than 2,000 runs than they themselves managed to score. That’s not easy to do. The 1940s weren’t much better, with nearly 1,800 fewer runs than the competition. So again, they’ve been very bad. A lot of it happened a long time ago but they’ve been very bad nonetheless.

And that brings us to today’s question: How long will it take the Phillies to correct this? To climb out of this gargantuan hole and have a positive — or at least a zero — run differential for their franchise’s history? I’ve suggested three answers below, starting with the most optimistic to the least, albeit most likely, scenario.

1. In 31 years, or by 2051

In 1976, an appropriate year for Philadelphia’s home team to be good, the Phillies won 101 games and an old NL East title before being swept in the division series by the eventual champs, the Big Red Machine era Cincinnati Reds. That notwithstanding, powered by sluggers like Mike Schmidt and Dick Allen, and a pitching staff fronted by Steve Carlton that was one of the best in baseball, the Phillies had a positive 213 run differential for the year. That’s a franchise record and the 30^th best mark in the NL dating back to 1901.

Extrapolate that +213 over 31 years and the Phillies would finally have a positive run differential. Now, this is quite unlikely for a myriad or reasons, but they’ve done it once, they can do it again…31 times in a row.

2. In 120 years, or by the year 2140

Look, it took the Phillies 120 years to rack up -6,528 runs, give them another 120 years and surely they can do that “For Every Action, There’s An Equal And Opposite Reaction” thing. This is a franchise that is certainly well-funded. They play in front of passionate fans who, say what you want, but they demand nothing but the best and will let the powers-that-be know if they’re not delivering. I suspect there will be plenty of pressure on whoever occupies ownership and the front office over the next twelve decades to deliver a winning product, a sentiment that perhaps wasn’t quite there during the first half of the 20^th century. Now, I wasn’t alive during the first half of the 20^th century, so who really knows, but the world from 1900-1950 had much worse problems than crappy baseball teams so this all sounds sensible enough.

And during this current century, the Phillies are sitting at a positive run differential of 60. That’s not much, but still, the Phillies largely have a “before any of us were even born” problem. These are not our grandparents’ Phillies, these Phillies are mostly fine.

3. Never

Never. Of course never. With pending labor wars, real wars, climate change, you name it, there are simply not enough years left of this sport (or planet) for such a summit to even be scaled. And even if we had infinite years of baseball in front of us, the negative run differential is just so massive that the Phillies will always be in the red. And that’s okay. Start winning a few NL East titles again and no one will really care. (No one besides me really cares anyway.)

**********

Look for updates to this post in 2051, 2140, and at the end of times to see where things stand. Until then, good luck, Phillies.

Credit to Baseball Reference’s invaluable Play Index for allowing such silly stats to be available. 

The post Will the Phillies Ever Overcome Their -6,528 Run Differential? appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/will-the-phillies-ever-overcome-their-6528-run-differential/feed/ 0 18434 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/evaluating-the-2019-predictions-projections/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/evaluating-the-2019-predictions-projections/#comments Sun, 03 Nov 2019 20:40:09 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18404 The Nationals are World Series champions and the offseason is here. Before we start looking ahead to the spring, however, it’s time to look back…to the spring. That’s right, no-one who made a preseason win... Read more »

The post Evaluating the 2019 Predictions & Projections appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

]]> The Nationals are World Series champions and the offseason is here. Before we start looking ahead to the spring, however, it’s time to look back…to the spring.

That’s right, no-one who made a preseason win total prediction is getting away without the usual level of accountability. It’s time for BttP’s fifth annual prediction and projection review. Can PECOTA defend its title? Will one of the other projection systems strike back? What if the humans decide to overthrow the computers? Let’s find out who takes home the coveted title of Least Bad At Predicting Baseball, At Least For This Year.

A quick recap of how this works for the new reader. For each of the sets of predictions and projections that featured in our preseason analysis, the mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) has been calculated. MAE is the average difference between the predicted total and the actual, while RMSE is the square root of the average of the squares of all the differences. RMSE gives greater weight to large errors because they are squared, so if you think bigger misses should be punished more heavily, this is the more relevant number.

Read the preseason piece for a full breakdown of where all the competitors stood in March, but if you want to get right to the results, here’s a quick reminder of who’s competing for the title:

The Contenders

PECOTA (PEC): The Baseball Prospectus projected win totals based on their in-house projection system.

FanGraphs (FG): The FanGraphs Depth Charts projected totals, which are a combination of the Steamer and ZiPS projection systems, with an additional playing time adjustment applied by FanGraphs staff.

Davenport (Dav): Totals based on Clay Davenport’s projection system, with Clay’s own playing time estimates.

FiveThirtyEight (538): Site projections from FiveThirtyEight.com, based on their Elo rating system.

Banished to the Pen writers (BttP): Predictions from each of our writers from our season preview series.

Effectively Wild guests (EW): Predictions from each of Effectively Wild‘s team preview podcast guests.

Composite (Comp): The average of the six projection/prediction sets above, with the BttP/EW sets adjusted down to add up to 2430 wins so they are not given extra weight.

Public (Pub): The average of all responses to a preseason poll in which I asked people to predict win totals for every team. This has replaced the PECOTA over/under game from previous editions.

The Results

Set	MAE	MAE Rank	RMSE	RMSE Rank
Pub	7.73	2	8.92	1
538	7.70	1	9.08	2
Comp	7.90	3	9.28	3
FG	8.43	7	9.68	4
PEC	8.30	5	9.70	5
EW	8.40	6	9.86	6
BttP	8.20	4	10.04	7
Dav	9.43	8	10.70	8

What a result for the newcomers. 538 makes an impressive debut by taking the MAE victory, but the real turn-up here is the wisdom of the crowds functioning spectacularly to claim the RMSE title. The Public set was most notably closest on the Pirates compared to the other competitors: still 7 wins too high, but closer than the projection systems by 2-4 wins and a full 10 better than Effectively Wild preview guest Stephen J. Nesbitt.

Beyond that, the Public set simply did well by not whiffing too big. It was the only set to not have at least one 20-win miss, and those big misses really hurt in RMSE. The Tigers were so bad that Davenport and BttP preview authors AD and Mark Sands both missed by 24 wins, making the Public’s 19 comparatively excellent.

538, meanwhile, nailed the Cubs’ 84 win season exactly and also had the Reds pegged better than anyone else, missing their 75 wins by just two. It was slim pickings in terms of other correct win totals, as the only other correct win total came from the Composite set, which aggregated opinions on the White Sox perfectly.

FanGraphs and PECOTA had an incredibly tight battle, with PECOTA taking MAE but FanGraphs just barely edging it in RMSE. Davenport was, once again, the last-place projection system and indeed a fairly distant last place overall. Like PECOTA and FanGraphs, the two human projection sets that weren’t the public split the difference. Our BttP previewers were better by MAE but Anthony Fenech’s Tigers pessimism meant that the EW prediction missed by a mere 16 wins, tipping the RMSE calculation in their favor.

The most predictable team this year were, ironically, the Mets. Their 86 win season was missed by just 1.6 wins on average. The aforementioned Tigers were the landmine in 2019, with an average miss of 20.5 wins. Although we didn’t get any spot-on predictions this year, special mention goes to BttP previewers Scott Brady (Indians), Alex Crisafulli (Cardinals), Andrew Ingrelli (Brewers) and Peter Bloom (Nationals), who all missed their team’s total by just one, and EW guest Barry Svrluga, who did the same with the Nationals in the other direction. Lindsey Adler of The Athletic also deserves a mention for going bold with a 105-win Yankees prediction and missing by just two.

While 2019 represented a more easy to predict season than the past two, it still lags comfortably behind 2016, when the RMSE from the top set was just 7.3 and all of the predictors were ahead of this year’s winning RMSE. As the league gets more polarized, that shouldn’t be surprising; 47 or 107 win teams simply don’t show up in projections, and even most human predictions aren’t that extreme.  The sortable table below shows how all of the sets compared to the final win totals.

Table 1
Div	Team	Actual	PEC	FG	Dav	538	BttP	EW	Pub	Comp
ALW	HOU	107	-9	-11	-8	-9	-11	-9	-8	-10
NLW	LAD	106	-13	-13	-15	-11	-11	-13	-11	-14
ALE	NYY	103	-7	-6	-6	-6	-6	2	-5	-6
ALC	MIN	101	-19	-19	-15	-17	-15	-17	-18	-18
ALW	OAK	97	-20	-15	-12	-14	-13	-9	-13	-15
NLE	ATL	97	-12	-13	-18	-13	-5	-7	-10	-12
ALE	TBR	96	-10	-12	-8	-10	-9	-6	-10	-10
ALC	CLE	93	4	-1	-1	2	-1	-4	-3	-1
NLE	WAS	93	-4	-3	-6	-4	1	-1	-4	-4
NLC	STL	91	-5	-5	-8	-6	-1	5	-4	-4
NLC	MIL	89	-2	-6	-9	-3	1	2	-1	-4
NLE	NYM	86	1	-1	1	-1	-2	-2	-3	-1
NLW	ARI	85	-5	-8	-13	-6	-5	-13	-10	-9
ALE	BOS	84	6	10	9	11	11	15	12	9
NLC	CHC	84	-4	4	-3	0	7	8	3	1
NLE	PHI	81	8	5	4	3	9	7	8	5
ALW	TEX	78	-8	-7	-8	-8	3	6	-7	-4
NLW	SFG	77	-4	-2	-11	-6	-7	4	-6	-5
NLC	CIN	75	6	6	5	2	9	6	5	5
ALC	CHW	72	-2	-2	5	-1	6	-2	1	0
ALW	LAA	72	7	10	13	8	15	11	11	10
NLW	COL	71	13	10	8	11	22	21	14	13
NLW	SDP	70	11	9	4	5	12	10	9	8
NLC	PIT	69	11	10	9	10	13	17	7	11
ALW	SEA	68	4	8	15	11	6	9	7	8
ALE	TOR	67	7	9	14	8	4	8	8	8
ALC	KCR	59	14	11	10	11	11	9	7	10
NLE	MIA	57	10	8	8	7	3	11	5	7
ALE	BAL	54	4	8	13	6	-3	-2	3	4
ALC	DET	47	19	21	24	21	24	16	19	20

Public Predictions

Given that the Public set came away with the RMSE win and only narrowly missed MAE, you might already have guessed that a few people did really well. One respondent came out with an extremely nice 6.90 MAE and an 8.43 RMSE to beat the winning marks by 0.8 and 0.49 respectively. Unfortunately, that respondent did not leave their name, so we’ll just have to call them Nostradamus.

The next-best contestant in MAE did leave their name: congratulations to Scott T. Holland, who came out with a 7.07 MAE. While slightly less of a mystery than Nostradamus, the still rather cryptic Humphrey was just barely pipped in RMSE at 8.44.

That’s not to say there weren’t some truly terrible predictions that fell way behind all of the other sets. Several people had an average error of more than ten wins, and one was even over 11.

People who looked at PECOTA predictions before completing the survey were actually slightly worse in MAE, at 8.49 on average compared to 8.40 for those who did not. They just about flipped that in RMSE, 10.04 to 10.06. There was a slight edge for those four respondents who actually used PECOTA during the survey, with 8.37/9.95 respectively.

As might be expected over a sample of this size, there were a lot more spot-on predictions here, so the special mention goes to those three participants who got three separate team totals correct: Simon G, Alex, and AJP.  Full results for all 56 people who took part can be found here.

Ranks

When it came to predicting the order the teams finished in, it was no contest at all. 538 ran away with it, while FanGraphs performed much better in RMSE here by having just two double-digit misses.

Set	MAE	MAE Rank	RMSE	RMSE Rank
538	3.90	1	4.88	1
FG	4.43	4	5.29	2
Comp	4.27	2	5.42	3
Pub	4.47	5	5.51	4
BttP	4.47	5	5.97	5
PEC	4.57	7	5.99	6
EW	4.40	3	6.02	7
Dav	4.93	8	6.44	8

Here, it was Boston which confounded our predictors the most, with almost every set but PECOTA missing their rank – all too high, of course – by 11 spots. PECOTA did marginally better at 9, while Alex Speier’s streak of impressive predictions came to an end as he missed by 15 wins and 12 ranking places.

The Twins also proved to be tricky, this time in the other direction, as every set but Davenport (-5) and 538 (-7) was out by ten spots or more on the low side. PECOTA really lost out here by being way too low on the A’s, predicting them as just the 21st-ranked team in the preseason only for them to end up fifth.

Div	Team	Rank	PEC	FG	Dav	538	BttP	EW	PUB	Composite
ALW	HOU	1	0	-1	0	0	-1	-2	0	-1
NLW	LAD	2	-2	-2	-3	-1	-1	-3	-2	-2
ALE	NYY	3	0	2	1	1	2	2	1	2
ALC	MIN	4	-10	-10	-5	-7	-11	-12	-11	-11
ALW	OAK	5	-16	-9	-5	-10	-11	-8	-9	-11
NLE	ATL	5	-7	-6	-14	-6	-2	-5	-4	-7
ALE	TBR	7	-3	-4	1	0	-6	-3	-5	-2
ALC	CLE	8	6	3	4	5	1	-4	3	3
NLE	WAS	8	2	2	1	2	3	2	2	2
NLC	STL	10	0	2	-3	1	0	6	1	3
NLC	MIL	11	3	-2	-6	4	1	2	3	1
NLE	NYM	12	4	2	5	3	-4	-4	-3	-1
NLW	ARI	13	-4	-8	-11	-5	-9	-12	-8	-9
ALE	BOS	14	9	11	11	11	11	12	11	11
NLC	CHC	14	-3	7	-1	3	5	8	5	3
NLE	PHI	16	10	8	6	5	6	3	10	8
ALW	TEX	17	-9	-8	-9	-9	-4	1	-8	-7
NLW	SFG	18	-5	-6	-11	-6	-9	-2	-7	-8
NLC	CIN	19	4	2	2	-2	3	-1	1	1
ALC	CHW	20	-6	-6	-2	-4	-3	-6	-4	-5
ALW	LAA	20	0	6	10	3	7	1	5	3
NLW	COL	22	9	5	3	6	16	16	9	8
NLW	SDP	23	8	4	0	1	4	1	4	3
NLC	PIT	24	7	5	3	6	5	9	4	5
ALW	SEA	25	0	3	12	7	1	2	4	4
ALE	TOR	26	4	4	11	4	1	2	5	3
ALC	KCR	27	4	1	0	1	0	0	0	0
NLE	MIA	28	0	-1	-2	-1	-1	1	-1	-1
ALE	BAL	29	-1	-1	1	-1	-1	-1	-1	-1
ALC	DET	30	1	2	5	2	5	1	3	2

So there we have it. 538 makes the case for Elo-based projection systems, while the people prove that, like the automated strike zone, the machines haven’t actually got it all figured out yet.

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/evaluating-the-2019-predictions-projections/feed/ 1 18404 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/the-next-star-from-japan/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/the-next-star-from-japan/#respond Mon, 30 Sep 2019 11:00:26 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18351 When it comes to Nippon Professional Baseball, the most persistent topic of discussion tends to be the names of the players who are going to try and make the jump to Major League Baseball. There... Read more »

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]]> When it comes to Nippon Professional Baseball, the most persistent topic of discussion tends to be the names of the players who are going to try and make the jump to Major League Baseball. There are a number of NPB players who have been vocal about their desire to play in MLB one day. Unfortunately, because of the current posting system and clubs who will not let players be posted, most of these players are more hope than actuality. There are, though, certain players who will be posted in the near future, including one player who has made it known he wants to make the jump next season.

Yoshitomo Tsutsugo has let everyone know for a while now that MLB is where he wants his career to turn to next. The third baseman, outfielder, and designated hitter is eligible to be posted come 2020. All signs point to his team, the Yokohama DeNA BayStars, being willing to grant him his wish and post him for MLB teams to bid on his negotiating rights. While he’s not a player who will garner the heavy interest of a Hideki Matsui or Masahiro Tanaka, nor a player able to attract attention through his ridiculous talent level like a Shohei Ohtani, he’s also not someone to dismiss. He’s had a great NPB career and if I were to bet money on him succeeding in MLB, I’d be willing to wager a fair amount.

For his career, Tsutsugo has slashed .285/.382/.528 with 205 home runs in 10 NPB seasons (he also had a very brief stint in 2015-2016 with Leones del Escogido of Liga de Béisbol Profesional de la República Dominicana that did not turn out that well). The power numbers are present, as is his ability to get on base and do more than just mash home runs. He is a modern baseball player in that he strikes out a fair amount, but that comes with the territory these days and it’s not like he strikes out at a super concerning level. His defense would play at first base, but he’s more suited for a corner outfield spot or stints in a DH role.

No matter where he has played in 2019 or where he has hit in the lineup, the Hashimoto native has produced. He has put together another great season for the BayStars both traditionally and in a more advanced sense. His .272/.388/.511 slash line and 29 home runs are in line with his previous production. Beyond those numbers, he’s posted a .239 ISO, .391 wOBA, and 138 WRC+. His Spd of 1.0 is actually pretty good for a big bopper such as Tsutsugo. His season total dWAR of 1.6 is not as high as in years past, but spending time at DH comes with a penalty. His latest season is not an outlier, but rather a continuation of the success he first found in the 2014 season.

Tsutsugo seems tailor-made to help an MLB team come 2020. He has the power in his bat to hit 20+ home runs, fits well into the positional flexibility that teams want, and–based on his ability to get on base–could be plugged into a team’s lineup in the 2 spot and set the table nicely for those batting behind him. He may not carry the cache of recent big-name crossovers, but Tsutsugo has the potential to succeed in MLB. I see no reason to doubt that he will do exactly that and then some.

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/the-next-star-from-japan/feed/ 0 18351 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/the-case-for-relegation/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/the-case-for-relegation/#comments Fri, 23 Aug 2019 11:00:31 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18345 Many months back I sent an email to my editors here at Banished to the Pen pitching the idea of relegation being brought to Major League Baseball. They were receptive, but then in my research,... Read more »

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]]> Many months back I sent an email to my editors here at Banished to the Pen pitching the idea of relegation being brought to Major League Baseball. They were receptive, but then in my research, I noticed a lot of other articles on the idea and my enthusiasm for the project waned. However, as this MLB season has progressed I got the bug to write the article again, and here we are. Relegation is something that would dramatically change MLB. For good or bad, well, that’s up to you to decide.

For starters, let’s define relegation. In this instance, relegation is being taken from the European football model. Relegation isn’t just a European model, nor is it limited to football alone, but that is the model I am most familiar with. Essentially there are a series of interconnected leagues and teams can play their way into the league above via winning their league while also running the risk of being relegated down to the league below if they finish in the cellar. That’s a very simplified explanation, but it should do us well here.

Why the need for relegation in MLB? I’d say first we need to take that question a step further and ask, why the need for relegation in MLB and Minor League baseball? Winning is the easiest answer. The unwritten contract between a team and its fans is that the team will try to win and the fans will support the team because of their effort.

MLB teams were always going to go after the most profits, but they did so under the guise of truly trying to win. In 2019 the reality is that half the league is tanking under the false hope that they will be able to turn themselves into a winner 5 or 6 years down the line. Then there are a handful of teams who have decided that while they could win it would really be for the best if they didn’t do that right now, but a few years from now. There are no rules against this sort of approach and that’s why fans can dismiss the chances of over half the league to actually win before the All-Star break has even occurred.

MiLB isn’t an organization where winning has mattered for years. It takes a huge backseat to player development. I get the need for player development, but one of the reasons that lots of MiLB teams suffer from empty stadium syndrome is because the local fans feel no need to go out and spend hard-earned money on a team that doesn’t truly care whether they win or not. In between pitch counts, innings restrictions, playing time rules, and other development based measures MiLB has become a series of leagues where essentially meaningless games take place.

Where relegation fits into all of this is to take these various leagues and make winning the most important thing once again. Some restructuring, that I will get into later, would need to take place, but baseball would continue to be played at just about every major and minor league stadium, only now with a meaning behind the games. The Miami Marlins wouldn’t be so quick to throw away yet another season if they thought finishing in last place would mean they are relegated to a lower level. Conversely, the Sacramento River Cats would go all in knowing that winning a title meant they would be promoted to a higher level.

Here would be the levels or leagues for the United Baseball System:

Major League
Class AAA
Class AA
Class A

That’s it, those are all the levels, and obviously, this is going to require some major shakeup. Each league would consist of 20 teams. Starting with the ML, for the first season simply grants the playoff teams from the previous MLB season automatic entry to the league. The remaining teams can compete in a round-robin style tournament for each where the 10 teams with the best record after whatever number of games are played also gain entry into the league. That leaves ten teams on the outs, relegated to a lower level.

This method will create a trickle effect because now Class AAA has those 10 previously MLB teams and only has room for 10 more teams from within its ranks. Initially, the same method that was used in ML can be used at Class AAA. Take the 10 teams that have been relegated from ML and add in the 2 champions from the former International League and Pacific Coast League the previous year. Those 12 teams make up your initial Class AAA teams with the remaining clubs playing a round-robin tournament where the 8 teams with the most victories also advance to be included in the Class AAA level.

A couple of notes before we continue, some teams will have to be renamed. The days of the Iowa Cubs and Syracuse Mets are over. No more taking the name of an MLB team and using it as your own. The MLB will be no more, and the teams at the other classes want to make it to the ML and they should do so using a team name that is distinct to them. Also, I haven’t forgotten about Liga Mexicana de Béisbol, rather I want them to be removed from any association with this system. They have their own great league, it doesn’t need to be drawn into this. Let them do their own thing and continue to try and win on their own. That goes for any unaffiliated league, they get to remain unaffiliated because there will always be room for unaffiliated baseball in my world.

Back to the meat of the issue. I’d use this same beginning relegation system for every level. This will create a logjam, there’s no avoiding that. We’ve just now reached the Class AA level and there are way more teams than there are spots. This is where things get a little creative. Instead of the teams relegated from the former Triple-A being granted automatic spots they will be entered into the Class AA playoffs with the other teams, minus the 3 championship teams from the former Double-A leagues who get automatic entry. This won’t help clear the logjam, but it will make it so teams have an incentive to keep winning the year before the new system takes place. This process will then be repeated for the former Class-A leagues, excluding the short season leagues.

Short season and rookie league teams are where roster construction becomes involved. Initially, every single MLB team will be allowed to protect 5 players they currently have rostered on a present MiLB team. It doesn’t matter if that team makes it into ML or Class AAA, they get to protect five players from within their system before those playoffs even begin. The short season and rookie league teams sit out the round-robin playoffs and are without players. Once all the round-robin playoffs have concluded and all four levels of the United Baseball System are set with 20 teams per level and each team with a roster of 26 active players and 5 protected players, they can begin to negotiate with the teams who did not manage to qualify for any of the four levels as well as any and all players from those teams, short-season league teams, and rookie league teams.

They are now all free agents, players and unqualified teams alike. I get that teams in the UBS will still need farm teams for younger players and rehabbing players. To that end, each UBS team will be limited to 2 farm teams, consisting of rosters of 26 players each. They can choose to sign whichever players they want and can feel free to retain any of the unqualified team’s facilities for use as a farm team facility if they can come to terms on an agreement. The free-agent players and teams will be able to negotiate though, otherwise, there’s no point to the UBS. There will be no draft because players deserve the right to negotiate for fair pay. There won’t be any international or amateur draft in future years either, for the very same reason.

Okay, now for the easiest part, the year is 2028 and the first season of the UBS is coming to an end. Advancement and relegation will depend on placement within the league. The three teams in the ML with the worst record will find themselves relegated to Class AAA. The same goes for Class AAA to Class AA and Class AA to Class A. Meanwhile the champion from each of the lower classes automatically moves up a level. The teams that finished second through fourth in each level will then hold a round-robin playoff where the top 2 teams each advance to the next level while the third team remains at its current level. Class A will end up being the most do or die because the teams that finish in the bottom three will end up booted from the UBS and could then either attempt to negotiate to become a farm team or join an unaffiliated league. (It should be left up to players and teams to enter into contracts for whether they would stay with a Class A team that is booted out of the UBS or become free agents.)

I understand this is a pipe dream. Relegation will never happen, but that doesn’t mean a man can’t dream. I want to see teams trying to win again, and I know that relegation would bring that about in the swiftest and simplest manner. Teams across the MLB and MiLB ranks have no incentive to win as the system is structured today, so let’s change that and truly shake everything up to make the games mean something again and make it where teams have to honor their end of the unwritten contract by trying to win.

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/the-case-for-relegation/feed/ 3 18345 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/who-is-dick-lundy/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/who-is-dick-lundy/#comments Tue, 06 Aug 2019 11:00:37 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18130 Scrolling through the all-time best seasons in sWAR found on the Seamheads Negro League Database, the name Dick Lundy doesn’t appear until the 40s, and in total he only makes the one appearance. It’s not... Read more »

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]]> Scrolling through the all-time best seasons in sWAR found on the Seamheads Negro League Database, the name Dick Lundy doesn’t appear until the 40s, and in total he only makes the one appearance. It’s not surprising, then, that Lundy’s name has essentially been lost to time and Negro Leagues historians. The 5’11 shortstop never played an inning in Major League Baseball or in any form of affiliated ball. He was passed over for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and his name has never been one carried into casual baseball circles.

Of all his great years there is one that stands out among the rest. His 1927 season with the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants of the Eastern Colored League should be remembered, but like Lundy himself, it too has long been forgotten. That year Lundy helped guide the Giants to the Negro League World Series before they fell to the mighty Chicago American Giants five games to three. Lundy wasn’t just the starting shortstop for the Giants, he was also the team’s manager.

I won’t get too much into Lundy’s managerial career here, but it was a great one. He managed a number of teams throughout his time in baseball, including many years as a player-manager. He took the Bacharach Giants to two Negro League World Series, where they fell short both times. He managed beyond his playing days and was thought of by his peers as a brilliant tactician and terrific mentor to younger players.

What I mainly want to talk about here is Lundy’s 1927, where he amassed 5.2 sWAR during the regular season and an additional 0.3 sWAR in the NLWS. His total sWAR of 5.5 is the 40th-best season ever produced in known Negro Leagues history, and the third-best by a shortstop. 1927 featured Lundy excelling at all facets of the game, a trait that would define the entirety of his career.

The Jacksonville, Floria native slashed .323/.388/.486 for an OPS+ of 130 in 1927. He had 9 home runs, 21 doubles, and 6 triples in 416 plate appearances. Lundy had 9 stolen bases to only one caught stealing. He walked 35 times and only had five strikeouts in the entire season. A 1.2 K% coupled with a BB/K ratio of 7.00 is excellent. His ISO was slightly above average at .163, but his wOBA of .393 was well above average. When it came to being a hitter Lundy could do it all and he could do it all at the highest level.

The shortstop’s RF/9 of 3.6 put him in the elite category. I get it, RF/9 is a very flawed metric, but for an era where play-by-play data doesn’t exist, it gives a great indication of the type of fielder Lundy was. What gives an even better indication of Lundy’s fielding prowess is the word of mouth that he engendered. I have yet to read a description, biography, story, or anecdote about Lundy that didn’t describe him as one of the best fielding shortstops the game of baseball has ever seen. When the metric says he’s great and word of mouth says he’s great, let me tell you, Dick Lundy was a great fielding shortstop.

Lundy was never quite the complete package throughout the rest of his career as he was in 1927. That’s not to say that he wasn’t still great, because he was through the majority of his career. 1927 was an upper-echelon season from an athlete in the prime of his career, and it’s not surprising that he never quite reached that height again. That doesn’t diminish Lundy’s career in the slightest. A great career is still a great career. When Lundy’s career is taken in totality, 34.2 total sWAR and a 162 game average sWAR of 6.2, it is the National Baseball Hall of Fame that is diminished. That Lundy hasn’t been granted his rightful place among the very best to ever play the game remains a grave injustice. Maybe one day that beleaguered institution will give Lundy his due. Until that happens, the career of one of the greatest shortstops to ever play the game remains available for everyone to dig into; Lundy’s legacy deserves to live on.

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/who-is-dick-lundy/feed/ 7 18130 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/saber-starter/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/saber-starter/#respond Tue, 16 Jul 2019 11:00:02 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=15524 Presented here is a virtual baseball card series that aims to serve as an introduction to sabermetrics: Why is on base percentage better than batting average? What’s a good OPS? What does wRC+ mean? Most... Read more »

The post Sabermetrics Starter Cards: An Introduction to Advanced Stats (Updated 9/24/19) appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

]]> Presented here is a virtual baseball card series that aims to serve as an introduction to sabermetrics: Why is on base percentage better than batting average? What’s a good OPS? What does wRC+ mean?

Most entries consist of: a brief description, a “range table” that breaks down what’s good/average/bad, and top-five MLB leaderboards for the past two seasons. Simplified formulas are shown when possible. Also included is a list of which of the three leading sabermetrics sites (BP=Baseball Prospectus, BR=Baseball-Reference, FG=FanGraphs) use each particular stat in their leaderboards.

Cards #2-9 are available below, with a checklist (#1) and more being added in the future – currently slated for a total of 20.

Also featured are two career leader cards (#19 and #20), featuring works from various artists (click to enlarge):

Credits: kerowack (Bonds), Damian Schaab (Mays), Gummy Arts (Ruth & Johnson), Scott Brady (Williams & Fernandez), Antonio Losada (Clemens), Mark Mosley (Kershaw)

 

Click on card to open slideshow in full-screen view:

 

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By Brandon Lee, Darius Austin, Ken Maeda.
Thanks to Rob Mains, Alex Crisafulli, Andrew Patrick, Daniel R Epstein, Eric Roseberry, Khurram Kalim, Mike Carlucci, Nick Strangis, and Scott Kushner for their contributions, feedback, and assistance.

The post Sabermetrics Starter Cards: An Introduction to Advanced Stats (Updated 9/24/19) appeared first on Banished to the Pen.

]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/saber-starter/feed/ 0 15524 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/casey-at-the-bat-2019-a-modern-retelling/ http://www.banishedtothepen.com/casey-at-the-bat-2019-a-modern-retelling/#comments Tue, 18 Jun 2019 17:45:52 +0000 http://www.banishedtothepen.com/?p=18122 The former Mudville nine faced likely loss upon that date, (they’d moved from Mudville years before — it was best to relocate). With Cooney-Barrows out one-two, in the ninth, down five to three, a tiny... Read more »

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]]> The former Mudville nine
faced likely loss upon that date,
(they’d moved from Mudville years before —
it was best to relocate).
With Cooney-Barrows out one-two,
in the ninth, down five to three,
a tiny one-point-two-five was
their win expectancy.

A few fans sprung up from their seats,
to beat the traffic’s rush.
That trickle turned into a stream,
a surging human crush.
But some still there remembered Casey,
standing in the hole,
and thought “With his fly ball rate,
he could knock one past the pole.”

But Flynn hits before Casey,
as does speedy Jimmy Blake;
Flynn’s OPS was in the tank,
and Blake could hardly rake.
So on those few still hopeful fans
a heavy feeling sat;
Casey’s odds were dim indeed
of getting an at-bat.

But Flynn held off the breaking stuff,
and drew a stunning walk;
while Blake, the leadoff man, saw his
weak grounder strike a rock.
And when the play was finally done,
the bad hop had shot through —
the men who stood on base and smiled
added up to two.

Then the speakers rose to life,
HD screens said “Make some noise!”
A hopeful cheer sprung up anew
from all the girls and boys.
It started as the fans began
to hope for a blown save,
and it wrapped around the bleachers twice,
travelling like the wave.

There was ease in Casey’s stride as
they played his walk-up song.
There was confidence throughout the stands
he’d hit a three-run dong.
And when, while taking in the noise,
Casey tipped his cap,
you felt no doubt he’d knock one out,
a mighty towering rap.

Five thousand cellphones held up
for his practice cut.
The phones stayed on, recording all,
as his foot dug in a rut.
Then while the leveraged closer prayed
that he could slam the door,
Casey knew he’d boost his slash line,
while augmenting his WAR.

And now the pitch comes spiralling
with lofty rate of spin,
and now he stands there mute, inert,
watching it come in.
Close by the black at the plate’s edge,
the sphere slides just aways,
“Not my spot,” says Casey.
“Strike one!” the umpire says.

From the benches, filled with people,
flew up a slew of fists and beers
for what (hashtag)TeamCasey dubbed
the worst call of the year.
“Check the friggin’ QuesTec!”
roared a raucous older fan —
a decade-obsolete request
(the system’s now TrackMan).

With a toothy grin and bearded chin,
great Casey’s visage shone;
he quieted the maddened crowd,
he’d face the pitch alone.
He stepped back in another time,
the closer hurled once more,
and with no swing he watched a cutter
catch on the backdoor.

The umpire called “Strike Two!”
and what the fans say is deleted;
it leaves the back end of a bull,
but it shall not be repeated.
Now Casey’s face grew stern and cold,
his muscles strained and flexed,
and despite a friendly pitcher’s count,
the closer sure was vexed.

The sneer is gone from Casey’s lip,
his bat held at a dangle,
his thoughts alight on nothing but
the optimal launch angle.
And now the pitcher holds the ball,
and now he lets it go,
and now the air is shattered by
the force of Casey’s blow!

Oh, somewhere in this modern land
the sun shines much too bright.
But a podcast’s streaming somewhere
as the wi-fi signal’s right,
somewhere someone’s blogging,
someone’s laughing at a GIF.
But there is no joy for Casey’s fans —
he hit into the shift.

 

 

 

 

Contributions by Brandon Lee and Darius Austin. Art by Ken Maeda.

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]]> http://www.banishedtothepen.com/casey-at-the-bat-2019-a-modern-retelling/feed/ 2 18122