Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, March 29, 2023 -- "Season Preview, Teams #24 - #19"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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19. San Francisco Giants (80-82, 728 RS, 756 RA, fourth in National West)

Having missed out on Aaron Judge and then pulling out of the Carlos Correa deal, the Giants built Cubs West, an expensive roster with no stars, just a lot of two- to four-win players. I can’t say they didn’t learn their lesson last year -- they did try to sign stars -- but the effect will probably be the same, a strong supporting case looking around for something to support. Michael Conforto, Mitch Haniger, Sean Manaea...none of these guys are top-five players on a great team.

So now the question is how good are Farhan Zaidi, Gabe Kapler, and their army of coaches. I believe the Giants have the ability to turn one-win players into three-win players, and to get five wins out of two two-win players by figuring out what they do best and putting them in position to succeed. I don’t think that’s enough. It wasn’t enough last year, and Buster Posey isn’t walking through that door. I’m stealing this from Prospectus’s Craig Goldstein, who said of the Cubs, “They’re like a meal made out of side dishes.” That’s the Giants, plenty of carbs and veggies, no meat.

The Giants’ winter underlines the need to develop your own core. They’ve done it before, of course; the three-time champions were largely homegrown and developed. There may be another group on the way in Kyle Harrison, Marco Luciano, Vaun Brown and more; last year was a rough year for the prospects in this system, and whether another core is coming hangs in the balance. It’s not too late for Luis Matos and Patrick Bailey to get back on track, and the Giants could really use at least one to do so. Every team needs to develop their own guys, because there’s never any guarantee that the free agent you want will sign with you, even if the money is right. Free agency isn’t the house’s foundation, it’s the expensive addition you tack on after the kids leave for college.

Of all 30 teams, the Giants have the smallest projected range.

The Upside: Kapler and Co. squeeze as much as possible from their platoons and matchups, while the free-agent pitchers stay healthy and the Giants beat out the Diamondbacks for third place at 84-78.

The Downside: Last year, but with the growing acceptance that the 2021 season was a bit of a fluke, and that the Giants just don’t have the talent base to compete with the Padres, Dodgers, and even the Diamondbacks as they fall to 76-86.

Random Player Comment: I’m struggling to find an interesting player. Blake Sabol was the fourth pick in December’s Rule 5 draft, taken by the Reds from the Pirates and immediately traded to the Giants. He’s 25, was a catcher in college, turned into a catcher/outfielder by the Pirates. He’s hit well at four levels since the pandemic, and appears set to make the Giants as the kind of third-catcher/fifth-outfielder/bench bat we haven’t seen on rosters in 30 years. It may only last until Hanigar and Austin Slater get healthy, but it’s fun to watch for now.

Mostly, though, he’s a Trojan. Fight on, Blake!
 

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, "Season Preview 2023: #30 - #25"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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26. Pittsburgh Pirates (66-96, 637 RS, 779 RA, fourth in National Central)

I never shut up about the importance of having a championship-caliber core, a group of four to six players that will produce 20-25 WAR, preferably at below-market rates. You have to develop at least some of your own core just to make the math work.

For the first time in a decade, the Pirates are building a core. Bryan Reynolds is the oldest of the group, at 28, and controlled for three more seasons. Ke’Bryan Hayes is a great third baseman, still a question mark at the plate, and a four-win player at 26. Oneil Cruz could be anything, with perhaps the widest floor/ceiling combination in the game. He’s 24 this year. Throw in Mitch Keller, Roansy Contreras, and David Bednar, and the Pirates start the year with, if not a championship-caliber core, the framework for a contender’s core.

Behind that group is one of the game’s top prospects in 2022 #1 pick Termarr Johnson, and three others in Endy Rodriguez, Quinn Priester, and Henry Davis, the first two of which could return from their minor-league assignments swiftly. Rodriguez is a fascinating player, a catcher by trade whom the Pirates, because of the presence of overall #1 pick Davis, have started to develop as a utility player. Rodriguez has done nothing but hit since the lost season, racking up a .323/.407/.590 line as a 22-year-old at high-A, Double-A, and Triple-A last year, with just a 19% strikeout rate.

The Pirates, like most teams we’re covering today, added veteran ballast this offseason to provide the illusion of activity in December while not doing much for the team in May. The hope is that the likes of Carlos Santana and Andrew McCutchen and Rich Hill will be pushed aside by the young players soon. The Pirates will begin raising the Jolly Roger a lot more once that happens.

The Upside: The flashes shown by Cruz, Keller, and Contreras are real, Rodriguez and Priester arrive in June, and the Pirates spend most of the year with a shot at a playoff berth before finishing 82-80.

The Downside: Cruz can’t outrun his strikeout rate, Hayes’s bat never gets going, and the thin bullpen behind Bednar creates a lot of 6-4 losses in April and May. Reynolds is traded in July, and the Pirates stumble to another 62-100 season.

Random Player CommentJT Brubaker is 29 years old, with a career 4.99 ERA and a WAR just a hair above replacement level. He’s also been more popular in Bradenton this month than sunscreen and early-bird specials, striking out 37% of the batters he’s faced with a 26/3 K/BB. Law flagged him as a breakout; he just needs to be average to help this Pirates team. Last year, Brubaker traded his weak four-seamer for a sinker, and his continued emphasis on the two-seamer and an effective slider should make him a credible #3.
 

Monday, March 27, 2023

2023 Predictions

 Projected 2023 standings and awards picks (*denotes wild card):

Team        W-L    Pct  GB   RS   RA

Blue Jays  93-69  .574  --  867  747
Rays*      92-70  .568   1  754  648
Yankees*   90-72  .556   3  739  659
Red Sox    83-79  .512  10  778  763       
Orioles    77-85  .475  16  666  709

White Sox  89-73  .549  --  755  677
Guardians  85-77  .525   4  678  653    
Twins      77-85  .475  12  704  741
Royals     76-86  .469  13  684  730
Tigers     70-92  .432  19  604  698

Astros     96-66  .593  --  729  586
Angels*    91-71  .562   5  793  687
Mariners   88-74  .543   8  680  610
Rangers    79-83  .488  17  704  717
Athletics 56-106  .346  40  575  801

AL MVP: Shohei Ohtani, Angels
AL Cy Young: Luis Castillo, Mariners
AL Rookie of the Year: Masataka Yoshida, Red Sox



Team        W-L   Pct  GB   RS   RA

Braves     93-69  .574  --  771  647
Mets*      87-75  .537   6  736  670
Marlins    81-81  .500  12  627  619
Phillies   81-81  .500  12  726  717
Nationals 54-108  .333  39  587  866

Cardinals  85-77  .525  --  746  699
Brewers*   84-78  .519   1  740  695
Cubs       75-87  .463  10  690  753
Pirates    66-96  .407  19  637  779
Reds       64-98  .395  21  674  838

Dodgers    97-65  .599  --  788  620
Padres*    96-66  .593   1  823  679
D’backs    83-79  .512  14  755  749
Giants     80-82  .494  17  728  756
Rockies   62-100  .383  35  677  902


NL MVP: Mookie Betts, Dodgers
NL Cy Young: Corbin Burnes, Brewers
NL Rookie of the Year: Ezequiel Tovar, Rockies

Blue Jays win World Series over Braves, 4-2


Thursday, March 23, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, March 23, 2023 -- "Season Preview 2023: Conferences"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--
 
"Beginning with Selig’s cashiering of his preceding commissioner, Vincent, the leagues have been ground to dust. They no longer exist other than as labels atop the standings and All-Star uniforms. The execrable construct 'the MLB' spreads because for fans -- hell, for media -- under the age of 40, there’s no real memory of 'the AL' and 'the NL' as going concerns. There’s just one league with two conferences."

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, March 22, 2023 -- "Getting Lucky"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--

The Joe Sheehan Newsletter
Vol. 15, No. 18
March 22, 2023

It doesn’t always work out this way, of course. Not in baseball. You build something like the World Baseball Classic, you hope for it, but you can’t make it happen.

The first one, back in 2006? It ended with the tying run nowhere near the scene, Akinori Otsuka whiffing Yuli Gurriel to win it all for Japan. Two players who would have nice MLB careers, to be sure, but hardly the stuff of legends. In 2009, you had Yu Darvish taking out Keun-Woo Jung to lock it up for Japan, again. In ’13, it was Fernando Rodney against Luis Figueroa. Good ballplayers all, but there’s a reason this thing was drifting from ESPN to MLB Network over time.

That’s baseball, of course. Last year’s World Series, that wasn’t bad, Ryan Pressly retiring the heart of the Phillies’ order to win it for the Astros, getting Bryce Harper along the way. In 2021, though, it was Tyler Matzek wiping up a 7-0 Braves win against, hey, that man again, Yuli Gurriel. In baseball, the game chooses the players, not the other way around.

In football, boy, it’s not like that. The last Super Bowl had the greatest player in the game, Pat Mahomes, orchestrating a game-winning drive as the clock ticked down in a tied contest. The one before that saw a star, Matthew Stafford, leading the Rams down the field in a fourth-quarter drive that flipped the game. The Rams’ win was sealed when perhaps the league’s best defender, Aaron Donald, sacked the Bengals’ quarterback on fourth down.

In the NBA, the stars always run the show. Last summer, in the clinching game of the NBA Finals, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson combined for 41 of the Warriors’ 92 shots, and threw in nine assists, too. For the Celtics, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum took more than half of the team’s 80 shots between them in a losing effort. The end of almost any important basketball game, certainly any championship game, is about the superstars.

Baseball doesn’t allow for that. Sometimes it’s Chris Sale mowing down Manny Machado to bring on the dogpile, but more often it’s Mike Montgomery against Michael Martinez, or Jason Motte finishing off David Murphy, or Otis Nixon trying to bunt his way on against Mike Timlin.

Sometimes, though...sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes the end of a big international tournament comes down to a one-run lead with one out left, and a matchup between the greatest player ever and the one coming to take that crown from him.

That’s what we got last night at the end of the 2023 WBC, Mike Trout against Shohei Ohtani, teammates most of the time, thrown together in opposition with two outs, nobody on, Japan holding a 3-2 lead in the title game, looking for their third win in five WBCs. The U.S., for its part, was trying to join Japan as the second team to win multiple WBCs, and match Japan’s record of winning two in a row.

Shohei Ohtani, mind you, had already put in a day, working a walk and beating out an infield single, a ball he hit at 114 mph, the second-hardest hit ball of the game. Now he was on the mound, nine pitches deep, a walk and a groundball double play behind him. Ohtani, coming off two of the most incredible seasons in baseball history, establishing himself as one of the best hitters and best pitchers in the sport, something I thought impossible, now had a chance to end the biggest game he’d played since leaving NPB in 2017.

He started with a breaking ball, low, never a strike, a chase pitch that Mike Trout is way too good to chase. Down 1-0 to the tying run, Ohtani came back with...I don’t know how “country hardball” translates, but this was it, 100 mph middle-middle, hit it if you can see it. Trout couldn’t, 1-1.

With some room to maneuver now, Ohtani went back off the plate, just off the outer edge, with another 100-mph fastball with some cut to it. Trout, once again, refused to chase. 2-1. Watching, the dominant emotion was gratitude. A homer on the first pitch, or a pop-up to third on the second, would have felt anticlimactic. I was standing by now, wanting this to last like cold lemonade on a summer day, like a great second date, like your kid’s childhood.

There are days when it seems like we’ve forgotten Mike Trout, his greatness, fragile and therefore frustrating, now existing in the shadow of Superman. Plenty of hitters, though, would have been long gone after these three pitches, swinging over the breaking ball and behind that 1-1 heater. Trout, though, had the count in his favor, had a bat in his hands, had the home-country advantage.

Ohtani? He had a hundo more, again fired over the middle of the plate, a couple inches higher than the first one. Mighty Casey swung through it, not all that close to doing damage, and was down to his last strike. On a night when the pitchers of Samurai Japan had thrown enough splitters to bring Roger Craig back to life, [Ed. note: The legendary pitching coach and manager is very much alive. I apologize.--JSS] their win was coming down to a guy throwing fastballs in the happy zone and living to tell the tale.

Ohtani reared back now, and for the first time, cracked a little. He overthrew, pulling a fastball down and away, sending it to the backstop at a snappy 102 mph.

Three and two.

Two outs.

Top of the ninth.

3-2 ballgame.

The greatest ever.

Maybe the next greatest ever.

Ohtani made Trout choose. Having been beaten twice with fastballs middle-middle, Trout had every reason to think the payoff pitch would be a third. He was geared up for one, his bat carving an arc through the middle of the strike zone, but the ball wasn’t there. It was moving away from his bat, towards the outside corner, at a mere 87 mph. The decision to throw a slider here, that’s one we can discuss.

The slider Ohtani threw, though, ends that discussion. Tight, late break, on the black. We don’t know for sure who invented the slider, a pitch that sort of emerged from a primordial soup of breaking balls. We do know that 80 years of sliders all led to this one, aimed down the middle and then cornering like something out of “The Fast and the Furious.” Strike three. Game, silks.

You invent the WBC, and then you wait 17 years for a moment like we got last night. You watch baseball, and you wait 45 years for a moment like we got last night.

Classic, indeed.
 

Newsletter Excerpt, March 21, 2023 -- "Rays, and the Guardians"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"What connects these two teams is that they complicate the modern criticism of teams for not spending money. Spending money on players isn’t an end in itself, but a means to build a winner. The Rays and Guardians have run low payrolls while routinely winning. Over the last ten years, the Guardians have the fourth-best record in baseball, the Rays the seventh-best. Those ranks are second and fifth in the AL alone. Between them, they’ve accounted for 11 playoff berths in those ten seasons, and the AL hasn’t contested a postseason without at least one of them since 2015."