Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Newsletter Excerpt, December 28, 2022 -- "Nathan Eovaldi and the Rangers"

 

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.

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"You can tell just about any story you want to tell about the 2023 Rangers. It all comes together and they chase down the Astros to win the West. The pitching staff falls apart in a hail of injuries and the lineup makes too many outs, leaving them in fourth place. Something in between -- 70 good starts from the expensive guys, a much-improved bullpen, a quietly excellent defense, and 85 wins -- is my bet."

Thursday, December 22, 2022

Newsletter Excerpt, December 22, 2022 -- "Wil Myers and the Reds"

 

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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"Any time a bad team signs a player like Myers, you’ll hear 'and they can trade him at the deadline,' as if the market for two months of a two-win player is robust. That’s a line of thought I’d love to see stricken from coverage of the game. If Wil Myers had trade value he wouldn’t be signing with a bottom-five team for $7.5 million."

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Newsletter Excerpt, December 21, 2022 -- "Wait...what?"

 

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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"Heyman reports that Correa will play third base, with the Mets’ incumbent. Francisco Lindor, keeping his shortstop job. This isn’t an Alex Rodriguez/Derek Jeter situation; Lindor is a very good defensive shortstop, and by some measures better than Correa is. Between the two, you’d likely project Correa, taller and with some back issues in his past, to have to move off shortstop first. Steamer pegs this as a 3 1/2-win upgrade for the Mets, and as someone very high on Correa, I think it’s closer to five wins."

Monday, December 19, 2022

Newsletter Excerpt, December 19, 2022 -- "Dansby Swanson and the Cubs"

 

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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"So it’s not the years, and it’s not the money, it’s making a “big move” that doesn’t do what you need it to do, which is significantly improve the offense. The Cubs’ 2023 lineup is a feat of wishcasting, from Seiya Suzuki to Matt Mervis to Cody Bellinger, hoping a whole lot of players perform at or near the top of their ranges."

Friday, December 16, 2022

Newsletter Excerpt, December 16, 2022 -- "The Years Don't Matter"

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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"So teams now have the strongest incentives in a long time to minimize AAV. There was a time they did so to keep short-term expenditures down, a time before massive national and local television deals made next year’s cash flow a non-issue. Now, they want to keep AAV down as a means of keeping the payroll from interfering with their ability to operate in the amateur talent markets."

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Newsletter Excerpt, December 14, 2022 -- "Uncle Steve Arrives"

 

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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"This December, though, we got the Manic Pixie Dream Owner that Mets fans have been waiting for. In a rush of signings wrapped around the winter meetings, Cohen retained key pieces of last year’s 101-win team while trying to build in pitching depth last year’s team lacked."

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Free Preview: "Trevor Hoffman and Andy Benes"

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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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter
Vol. 7, No. 125
December 21, 2015

Trevor Hoffman and Andy Benes were born about two months and 2,000 miles apart in 1967. Not that either of them would have cared at the time, but there were 782 complete games in MLB that year, and just 649 saves. In 375 of those saves, the pitcher credited with the save recorded at least four outs -- about 57% of the time. Two pitchers, John Wyatt and Elroy Face, led the league with 10 saves of one inning or fewer apiece -- a good month for someone like Glen Perkins these days.

Benes, from Indiana, would grow big and strong, dominating schoolboy hitters in Evansville, staying home for college at the Missouri Valley Conference outpost and becoming the very first pick in the 1988 draft. The Padres selected him and signed him to a contract with a $235,000 signing bonus, the highest ever to that point. A little more than a year later, Benes made his debut for a Padres team struggling to stay above .500 and within shouting distance of the Giants in the NL West. He acquitted himself well, with a 3.51 ERA (100 ERA+) in ten starts as the Padres closed on, but never caught, the Giants.

The strapping right-hander would never see the Padres' farm system again. For the next five years, he took the ball when it was given to him and tried to be an ace: 33 starts and 219 innings a year from 1990-93, as Tom Werner tore down the Padres, and on pace for more of the same when the players went on strike in 1994. In the 1994 Player Ratings Book, Bill James called Benes "one of the best pitchers in the game," while noting that Benes's win totals wouldn't rise until he joined a better team. At the start of 1995, it was clear that Benes wouldn't be a Padre for much longer. Even having his worst year --  4.17 ERA -- Benes was one of the prizes at the '95 trade deadline, and would eventually be sent to the Mariners in exchange for Marc Newfield and Ron Villone. Those names may not mean much today, but Newfeld was a top-30 prospect and Villone a top-60 prospect at the time, representing the kind of package you can't get any more for a half-season of an impending free agent.

Hoffman had a less-direct path to his MLB career. Undrafted out of high school and barely recruited, Hoffman ended up at Cypress College in Orange County, Calif. He played well enough to eventually land at the University of Arizona and -- as a shortstop -- was drafted by the Reds in the 11th round in 1989. Benes took about a year to reach the majors; Hoffman took almost two just to find his position. After two seasons of anemic batting in the lower levels of the Reds' minors, the organization moved him to the mound to take advantage of his arm. After a year of effective relief work, he rose to become the #8 prospect in the Reds' system per Baseball America. The Reds tried him as a starter in 1992, but he was back in the bullpen by the end of the year. The Marlins took Hoffman in the expansion draft after the season and he made the team out of spring training. By the end of April, he was the expansion squad's set-up man behind Bryan Harvey, even as his command often failed him. Hoffman had a 3.52 ERA on June 22 when the Marlins shipped him as part of a three-player package to San Diego for Gary Sheffield.

The very first save opportunity Hoffman got in San Diego was protecting a 1-0 lead for Benes on June 27, 1993. The first overall pick turned the game over to the converted shortstop on a night when the starter had struck out ten men over seven one-hit innings, only to leave for a pinch-hitter in the seventh. Hoffman would blow the game, allowing a pinch-hit RBI double to Gary Varsho in the eighth.

The two players would be teammates for two years, but in that time, Hoffman went from some kid acquired in a fire sale to an established closer, saving 20 games in the four-month 1994 season and 31 more in the shortened 1995 one. Benes went from the Padres' ace to a focal point for the local fans' frustration -- this #1 pick who couldn't win 20 games! -- and eventually became a Seattle Mariner.

At 21, Benes was the most desirable amateur baseball player in the country. At 21, Hoffman was a college shortstop. At the age of 24, Benes was a 15-game winner, Hoffman was a failed shortstop and failed starter throwing Triple-A relief and about to be exposed in the expansion draft. At the age of 25, Benes was an ace, while Hoffman was the guy the ace's team could pay a lot less than they had to pay the MVP-caliber third baseman. At 26, Benes had already thrown more MLB innings than Hoffman would in his entire career.

At 48, Benes is a forgotten man, while Hoffman is a candidate to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In thinking about Hoffman and the Hall of Fame, I keep coming back to Andy Benes. Benes was a starter in college and in the minors and for all but a handful of outings in his 14-year major-league career. He was a horse in that role -- basically healthy through the age of 33, missing a handful of starts in 1997 not to an arm problem but a broken finger. Benes is one of the better overall #1 picks of all time. He may have disappointed Padres fans by being a league-average starter rather than a superstar one, but he was an All-Star and he picked up award votes a handful of times. When he hit free agency, which he did twice, he was paid the going rate for top-tier starting pitchers. At no point during his career did anyone suggest that Benes should stop throwing 200 innings a year and start throwing 70.

If they had, would he be on a ballot today?

Benes is why I can't get behind the idea of Trevor Hoffman for the Hall of Fame. I don't know for sure that Benes could have done what Hoffman did, but I know that many, many pitchers have done so. I am certain that Hoffman could not do what Benes did, and just as certain that what Benes did -- be a good starting pitcher for a decade -- is more valuable than what Hoffman did, which is to be a short reliever, and then a one-inning reliever, for 15 years. Benes isn't being considered for induction; in fact, he never appeared on a ballot.

Average starting pitchers are more valuable than closers, and we know this because salaries are made public. The most money anyone's every paid a relief pitcher in a given year was $15 million -- that was to Mariano Rivera. Rafael Soriano did the best in the market, at $14 million per season. The biggest single contract went to Jonathan Papelbon, at $50 million. Do any of these numbers cause you to gasp? Jeff Samardzija has been a lesser version of Andy Benes for the last four years; he's going to make $18 million a year. J.A. Happ is a #4 starter, maybe a #5. He'll get $12 million a year. This very offseason, Happ and Darren O'Day were both free agents. O'Day has been one of the best relievers in baseball for four years running; he got less over four years than Happ got for three. The best starting pitchers in baseball make $30 million a year. The best position players in baseball make $25 million a year. The best reliever ever maxed out at $15 million.

Given everything we've seen over the past 20 years, closers being made out of starting pitchers and first basemen and catchers and shortstops, with the industry drawing a clear distinction between the players it values and the players it doesn't, with every roster now peppered with guys who can do what Hoffman did, elevating the standard for what a pitcher in this limited role can do if trained for it, how can we consider players in this role -- this thing you land in when you can't do the other stuff -- for the Hall? How can we forget Andy Benes and lionize Trevor Hoffman when the real difference between them is that Benes was too good and too valuable to do Hoffman's job?

The argument against modern relief pitchers in the Hall of Fame is the gap between Andy Benes and Trevor Hoffman. Is there much question that if you told a 26-year-old Andy Benes to stop providing all those starts and all those innings, and instead focus on throwing 15 pitches a night three days a week, he'd have been both more effective and less valuable? Or that if you'd told a 26-year-old Trevor Hoffman to start carrying his weight and ramp it up, he'd have washed out of the league in under two years?

If you want to put Trevor Hoffman in the Hall of Fame, that's fine. Just remember to save the spot on the wall next to him for Andy Benes, because then Benes belongs, too.

Monday, December 12, 2022

Newsletter Excerpt, December 12, 2022 -- "NL East and AL East Notes"

 

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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"It’s funny to see all the praise being heaped upon Dave Dombrowski, when for a decade now his primary skills have been trading other people’s prospects and spending other people’s money."

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, December 7, 2022 -- "Aaron Judge"

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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Around 4 a.m., I texted a friend to cancel lunch plans for…well, now. It was hubris to make plans during the winter meetings. Maybe I just forgot what the meetings could be like after two years without them. Maybe I expected them to be uninteresting, because interesting baseball Decembers have gone the way of complete games and dedicated pinch-hitters and 16th innings.

The text read, in part, “Aaron Judge is probably leaving the Yankees.” I went to sleep thinking that would be the case, that the most popular athlete in New York since Derek Jeter retired would be taking his talents westward, to the Giants, who need a star like San Francisco needs housing. Signing Judge would serve to replace Buster Posey as the team’s locus, the team’s best player, the team’s likable superstar. 

Then, I slept, and when I woke up, the Yankees were once again the Yankees. The team had agreed to sign Judge to a nine-year contract for $360 million, the third-largest in baseball history, bringing back the 2022 AL MVP, the owner of the AL single-season home-run record, the spiritual architect of the Judge’s Chambers in Section 104.

Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner were trapped by their lack of options. Judge was, for most of last season, the Yankees’ offense. He produced 80 batting runs for a team that produced 96 in total. No returning Yankee produced more than 17. There is young talent coming, including a potential superstar in Anthony Volpe, but the projected Yankees offense without Judge…now around Judge...is heavy on the same group of thirtysomethings who weren’t good enough or available enough this past season. There was no Judge-like second option in free agency, either. The Yankees’ choices were to sign Judge or not score enough runs to win.

This will surely keep the Yankees in the American League mix in 2023, even perhaps allow them to once again fend off the Rays and Blue Jays for an AL East crown. Judge will be the bridge from this aging, expensive lineup to one with Volpe and Jasson Dominguez and Austin Wells and Oswald Peraza and Trey Sweeney.

The money won’t matter; the Yankees print money. No, how this deal ages will depend on whether Judge can fight the historical trends on tall hitters, both performance and health. The cautionary tale, of course, is right there: Giancarlo Stanton is 2 1/2 years older than Judge and one of the only comps for him in baseball history. Stanton has played just over 500 innings in the field the last two seasons, missed more than 70 games to injury in those two years and hit .211/.297/.462 at age 32. Judge, of course, was a better player than Stanton was at 29 and 30, and so he has further to fall. Judge is likely to be one of the best players in baseball next year and a very good one for a few years to come.

The Yankees have retained their one essential talent, and if in the long term they end up paying for the decline of that talent, well, that is just baseball’s compensation structure. They paid Judge about $36 million for the first six-plus seasons of his career. They’ll pay him more than that, on average, each year for the remainder of it. 

This contract isn’t about 2028 or 2029, though. It’s about 2023. The Yankees kept their best player, a homegrown superstar, by paying him a lot of money to stay. Judge is worth more to the Yankees than he would be to any other team, and come March 30, no one is going to be thinking about the aging curves of tall players or the luxury tax or Judge’s 2027 Steamer projection. They’re going to be cheering #99 on a cool spring afternoon, waiting for the command to all rise. 

 

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Newsletter Excerpt, December 6, 2022 -- "deGrom and Verlander"

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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"The Mets signing Verlander wasn’t a choice they made between him and deGrom. The Mets signing Verlander was a very quick, very essential reaction to the loss of their #1 starter."

Monday, December 5, 2022

Newsletter Excerpt, December 5, 2022 -- "AL West Notes"

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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"As much as some six-win addition seems necessary to tie this together, perhaps it will have to be enough for Rendon and Mike Trout to be those additions by playing a full schedule. The two missed a combined 158 games last year, and 230 in 2021. There is no factor more important to the success of the 2023 Angels than $70 million worth of baseball players playing with the frequency and productivity that figure implies they should. Perry Minasian can make all the small deals he wants, but if the Angels don’t get 12 WAR from Rendon and Trout, they probably can’t make the playoffs."
 
 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 5, 2022 -- "NL West Notes"

 

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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"The way the incentives work now, though, it’s not certain. The Dodgers learned last year what they keep learning, which is that lots of regular-season wins just don’t buy you very much. Only nerds like me care whether you win 97 or 117. The Dodgers also know that the repeater penalties for going over the tax threshold are severe and to be avoided if possible. One year under the threshold would be a big deal for a team that paid $60 million in taxes the last two years, while also working under the various other penalty structures -- draft-pick penalties, differentiation in free-agent compensation, differentiation in international bonus pools."