Thursday, June 29, 2023

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, June 29, 2023 -- "Domingo, el miércoles"

 

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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: Domingo, el miércoles
Vol. 15, No. 59
June 29, 2023

Wednesday afternoon, I was responding to a reader email and in doing so, looked up the pitchers who were leaning on their curveball the most. Domingo German was second on that list, one of two pitchers throwing a curve 40% of the time. Later that afternoon, working on the Gaming newsletter, I wrote up the Yankees/A’s game with an eye towards picking the A’s, given German’s struggles since returning from his ten-game suspension for having sticky hands.

So I guess I was as well prepared for a perfect game as I’ll ever be. German threw 52 curves last night, more than half the pitches he delivered, and passed every sticky-stuff check on the way to retiring all 27 batters he faced. German threw the 24th perfect game in AL/NL history, the first since Felix Hernandez did so in 2012. It was a shot out of the blue; German allowed ten runs in 3 1/3 innings his last time out, and seven in two innings the start before that. In five starts since coming off his suspension, German had a 7.77 ERA, 7.49 FIP, and had allowed a 1012 OPS to his opponents.

Last night, the A’s couldn’t touch him. They struck out nine times, and of their 18 balls in play, few were in danger of becoming a hit. They swung at more than half the pitches German threw, missing on nearly a third of those. Forget walks; German went to just two three-ball counts last night, enabling him to pair his perfecto with a Maddux -- a shutout on fewer than 100 pitches. Per Baseball Savant, the A’s hit just two balls at 100 mph or harder, and just one ball that had better than half a chance of being a hit. Over the last three innings, there was no threat of a hit.

Given the way the sticky-stuff checks are handled, I have to take the absence of an issue last night at face value. I am certain that German didn’t violate any rules on the Oakland Coliseum mound last night. German, you may remember, was the subject of controversy in April, when the umpiring crew declined to remove him from the game despite his being warned multiple times for using excess rosin. So coming into last night. German had been strongly suspected of, or suspended for, violating the substance ban in 14% of his starts this year. It is dissonant, to me, to celebrate a player who was so recently disciplined for violating the foreign-substance rule.

That is not the only suspension on German’s record. He was banned for 81 games in 2020 under the domestic violence policy, following an investigation into an incident involving his girlfriend at a team event in September 2019. He served his suspension and by all accounts has behaved well since then. That’s hardly a factor in his pitching last night -- and it’s my policy here to focus on the field -- but German’s history adds to my ennui at this moment. It’s a lot of suspensions for one guy, you know?

There was also the way the game ended, in a blur. The A’s made their final nine outs on 25 pitches, and it wasn’t like they were hitting rockets. Just two of their batted balls in those last three innings were hit at even 90 mph, none at 100, almost all with no chance of being a hit. The A’s swung at 15 of those final 25 pitches, four of six in the ninth.

You think about watching the last moments of perfect games, and they almost always have tension to them. In 2012, the Rays made Felix Hernandez work, made him throw 44 pitches the last time through the lineup, and at least four pitches to eight of the final nine batters. YES Network was showing clips of David Wells’s 1998 perfect game. That one featured a seven-pitch battle to start the ninth, with journeyman Jon Shave eventually popping up for out #25. Not a single Twins batter went down on one pitch the last time through the lineup that day.

Last night? The A’s made the final three outs on the game’s final three pitches. From the moment German started throwing the first of them to the moment the 27th out reached Anthony Rizzo’s glove, 77 seconds elapsed. A minute and 17 seconds for three outs. There was no tension, no anticipation, no time to savor the moment, just a bad team trying to get to bed in advance of a 12:30 p.m. start the next day.

Perfection, like a flag, flies forever. Domingo German’s name is on a list now, a list with 23 other men of varying accomplishment who all share this, one day on which nothing could go wrong. Each of those days has its own story, from ones that are just lines in a record book to The Greatest Game Ever Pitched to “It is 9:46 p.m.” to DeWayne Wise to Gregor Blanco. With full credit to German for joining that list, I doubt his moment will be hyperlinked by a writer a decade from now.
 

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 28, 2023 -- "Start Spreading the Boos..."

 

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"If there’s a theme that connects these two teams, it’s that neither improved over the winter, something we discussed in the spring. Each kept its roster together at great cost (Judge, Diaz, Nimmo) or made like-for-like replacements (Verlander/Jacob deGrom; Rodon/Jameson Taillon) and counted on young players to improve the team from within. Each front office may have overestimated the talent on hand, especially in the middle of the roster, where both teams have been undercut by older players hitting their decline phase hard."

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 27, 2023 -- "cRISPy Padres"

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.

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"We have tools that can get at this, of course. We can adjust for run environment, and we know that batting average isn’t everything. Splits can be adjusted for context, just as full-season stats can, just as individual stats can. The Padres’ OPS+ with runners in scoring position is...OK, it’s really bad, 75. This year, Myles Straw has a 74 OPS+. Anthony Volpe has a 76. The Padres, at the halfway mark, are actually carving out new space on Mt. Chokemore."
 

 

Monday, June 26, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 26, 2023 -- "Midseason Awards"

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.

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AL MVP: Shohei Ohtani
NL MVP: Ronald Acuña Jr.

AL Cy Young: Framber Valdez
NL Cy Young: Marcus Stroman

AL Rookie of the Year: Josh Jung
NL Rookie of the Year: Corbin Carroll

Friday, June 23, 2023

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, June 23, 2023 -- "Red Streak"

 

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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: Red Streak
Vol. 15, No. 56
June 23, 2023

“In the short term, they’re watchable, at least on the nights Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo start.”

Coming into 2023, I tied the Reds’ story to the success of their starting rotation, and in particular the two budding aces at the front of it. So it’s funny that today, both Greene and Lodolo -- and a third young starter in Graham Ashcraft -- are on the injured list, and the Reds are the most watchable team in baseball.

After sweeping the defending champions in Houston, the Reds have won 11 straight games, and edged into first place in the NL Central at 40-35, with a 1 1/2-game lead on the Brewers. It’s the franchise’s third-longest winning streak since 1901, and they can tie the modern record of 12 tonight against the Braves, on an eight-game tear themselves.

The difference in the two winning streaks illustrates the difference in the teams. The Braves have been hammering their opponents, winning four of the eight games by at least five runs, outscoring  them, 65-27. They’ve won 15 of 17 and have pushed to within two games of the Rays for the best record in baseball. The Reds? Five of their 11 wins have come by one run, another in extra innings. They’re up 68-43 on their 11 foes in that time. The Braves are a great team doing what great teams do. The Reds are a rebuilding team on a heater, catching some breaks to turn an 8-3 stretch into 11-0.

That’s what makes it so much fun. A Cincinnati team channeling the Big Red Machine for a couple of weeks is a man-bites-dog story that no one saw coming, the kind that spices up a six-month season. A month ago today, the Reds sold 14,159 tickets to a Tuesday night loss to the Cardinals, one that dropped them into last place in the NL Central. Tonight, they’ll double that figure as people stream into Great American Ball Park to watch a first-place team try to do something no Reds team has done since 1957.

What happened? No one man changes a baseball team, but...Elly.

Elly De La Cruz has been in the majors for 17 days, and the Reds are 13-2 in that time, 12-2 when he starts. He’s hit .321/.387/.536, going a perfect 6-for-6 stealing bases. He’s 21 years old without a lot of experience above A ball, and yet he’s managing a credible 3.2-to-1 K/BB, 31% strikeout rate, and 10% walk rate. De La Cruz has been splitting time between shortstop and third base, looking like someone who has played shortstop a lot and third base not quite as much.

None of that gets at the experience of watching Elly De La Cruz play baseball. He’s calm and confident standing in the batter’s box, willing to make the pitcher come to him. When he gets the pitch he wants, he takes a powerful, controlled swing, and he’s already shown the ability to both attack in the zone and generate good contact outside of it. If he’s not the fastest player in baseball, he’s the fastest good player in baseball, applying that speed aggressively. De La Cruz is a triple waiting to happen, limited only by the size of modern ballparks.

Baseball teams do this all the time now. Adley Rutschman last year.  Wander Franco in 2021. Juan Soto in 2018. They’ll get to May or June and turn loose the colt they’ve been hiding in the barn. De L...no, Elly, he’s already that guy...Elly has a gear those greats don’t. He has Soto’s presence, Franco’s position, Rutschman’s skill from both sides of the plate, and something extra, something Peter Gammons would call duende, the thing that makes you track a Reds game to make sure you see every one of his at-bats, and when he gets on base, stay with him to see what he does next.

It’s not possible to separate the Reds’ 11-game winning streak from Elly.

No one player wins 11 in a row, though. The Reds are winning because they’ve started putting their next good team on the field, faster than I anticipated. Elly is at .317/.378/.483 during the streak, 2020 Rookie of the Year Jonathan India is at .214/.340/.548. 2021 second-round pick Andrew Abbott started the first and most recent games of the winning streak. The Reds are 4-0 when he starts. A first-round pick from that same draft, Matt McLain, hasn’t been hitting well during the streak, after a hot start, but has been a stalwart on defense. Alexis Diaz, drafted in 2015, is the team’s best reliever. Undrafted free agent TJ Friedl has hit .300/.391/.450 during the streak, in his ninth year in the Reds’ org. Even some Canadian drafted more than 20 years ago has come back from a shoulder injury to chip in a 972 OPS in three games. I’m hoping The Athletic will find a way write about him. Behind this group, 2022 first-round pick Cam Collier is a rated prospect, and the Reds have the seventh pick in next month’s draft.

When the Reds chose to tear down a playoff contender after the 2021 season, I was livid, the decision representing much of what is wrong with modern baseball. I still think the choice was an indefensible abdication of a team’s responsibility to its fans. In defense of the front office, it did a far better job with this teardown than it had with the 2016 one in which it dealt Todd Frazier, Aroldis Chapman, and Jay Bruce for nothing. Trade acquisitions Spencer Steer, Jake Fraley, Will Benson, and Brandon Williamson are all contributing to the streak. Pushing up from the minors are Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Noelvi Marte, Edwin Arroyo, and Chase Petty, all picked up in rebuilding deals.

There’s a big future ahead in Cincinnati, which makes it easier to be realistic about the team’s present. Their current run is more like the Pirates’ hot start than the Braves’ recent stretch, the peak performance of a flawed young roster just getting its legs under it. The Reds are starting Luke Weaver (6.47 ERA, 5.48 FIP; 5.82 ERA since 2020) tonight, returning Graham Ashcraft (6.78 ERA, 5.10 FIP) Saturday, and retread Ben Lively (4.11 ERA, 5.12 FIP in return from KBO) Sunday. The Braves might hang 30 runs on the Reds this weekend. It’s more likely this team slips under .500 in July, owing to its weak starting pitching, than that it hangs on to first place.

That doesn’t change what these last two weeks have meant. The baseball season has to be more about the journey than the destination, more than just a seven-month slog to make one team’s fans happy and 29 teams’ fans mad. The Pirates’ hot start, the A’s seven-game winning streak, the Luis Arraez chase for .400, the Marlins winning 12 one-run games in a row, and yes, the Reds being in first place in late June...it’s all part of the ride, even if none of it lasts. There’s more to baseball than rings and parades, more to baseball fandom than winning the World Series. There’s the ride, and right now, the ride is amazing.

If you want to take something from this Reds run, it’s that it pushes up their timetable. I expected them to emerge as contenders by 2025, with a possible breakout year by 2024. They’ve accelerated that now by a year, putting the pieces in place to be a good team as soon as next season. They’ll have to get that rotation, especially Greene and Lodolo, healthy, and at some point convert the group of infielders crowding the roster into outfielders, including a true center fielder, and pitching. The Reds have moved very quickly from rebuilding to building, and can take the next step to winning as soon as next year.

To get there, though, will require a commitment from ownership. Bob Castellini, not so long ago, authorized a payroll around the league median, only to see his investment scuppered by the pandemic. With Joey Votto, Mike Moustakas, and Wil Myers all coming off the payroll after 2023, the Reds’ highest-paid player is Greene at $3.3 million, and they have a projected total payroll of less than $30 million. With MLB backstopping the Reds’ TV money at 80% of its contracted value, Castellini’s risk in the Diamond Sports Group mess is capped. Given their combination of pre-arb talent, tradeable prospects, and payroll room, there’s no reason the Reds can’t add at least two starting pitchers -- Aaron Nola and Eduardo Rodriguez? -- to position themselves as the NL Central favorites in 2024.

For now, though, there’s Elly, and there’s that gorgeous ballpark in a baseball town, filled this weekend with fans proving once again that all it takes, all it ever takes, is winning.

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 21, 2023 -- "Mailbag"

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.

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Is your view that the business success of the Raiders after leaving Oakland is due to the size of the stadium? That the NFL is a unicorn? Something else? Would be curious to hear your thoughts.

--Gideon M.


It doesn’t matter where you put an NFL team. They need to sell about 600-700K tickets a year. The stadia are TV studios. “The NFL is a unicorn” isn’t a bad way of putting it.

At that, the Raiders have been bottom five in attendance and percentage of capacity sold.  Their revenues are high through incredibly high ticket prices and what looks like a self-scalping plan, neither of which will be available to a baseball team. They’ve also been there for two years, effectively. I don’t think a single thing about the Raiders’ experience in Vegas ports to a baseball team.

--J.

 

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 20, 2023 -- "Too Soon"

 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.

You can subscribe to the newsletter at a 25% discount this week, just $59.95 for one year, using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"If being five games out of the #6 seed doesn’t sound like much, well, you only have to go back to 2022, the first year of this format, to see what it can mean. The Phillies squeaked into the NL field by being the least bad of three teams for one spot in September, then got to within two wins of a championship. With the baseball postseason, all that matters is getting in, as we’ve seen over and over and over again."
 
 

Monday, June 19, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 19, 2023 -- "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.

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

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Colorado Rockies

This last division round-up might have run two days ago had I been able to think of anything to say about the Rockies. There’s not a more faceless team in baseball right now. The Royals have Bobby Witt Jr. and some trade pieces. The Nationals have that really young up-the-middle core. Hell, the A’s are interesting for all the off-the-field nonsense.

The Rockies? They’re bad, but not historically so. Despite not being a contender. they have one of the oldest lineups in baseball. Their best player is a plus defensive third baseman who isn’t Ke’Bryan Hayes. Their best pitcher is a soft-tossing lefty who does it with smoke and mirrors. Their three highest-paid players are on the IL. So is their only 2022 All-Star. So is the scruffy face of the team. Their star rookie, who is actually a plus contributor, has an 81 OPS+. Last year’s feel-good story has a 21% walk rate. Every time I look up the Rockies are claiming someone off waivers who I didn’t know was still active. The best thing they’ve done this year is get 65 innings of good work from two 33-year-old left-handed relievers.

Be bad. We understand bad. Be entertaining. Before they started soaking the baseballs in milk, at least Rockies games would be carnivals. Who doesn’t like a 12-11 contest with a bunch of lead changes? Have an identity. The Rockies’ identity right now is as the last MLB franchise still stuck in the 20th century, running baseball ops off a library of dog-eared Street and Smith’s annuals and warily eyeing the dust-covered Apple IIe someone bought at a yard sale.

In a sport that allows 40% of the league into the playoffs, it’s hard for any team to be all that far from contention. The Rockies, though, are as far from it as any team in the sport. I’d honestly rather be an A’s fan than a Rockies fan right now. They’re completely lost.
 

Thursday, June 15, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 15, 2023 -- "AL Central 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.

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Kansas City Royals

Some of the best stories in baseball happen when a team you never see coming throws it into gear and chases down the league leader with determination. That’s what the Royals have done, losing nine in a row to pass the A’s for the worst record in baseball.

Last September, I spent a weekend in Kansas City with my good friend Rany Jazayerli, second only to Paul Rudd among famous Royals fans, and aging just as gracefully. There was a lot of chatter that owner John Sherman would be making big changes, and he did a few weeks after the trip, letting longtime executive Dayton Moore and manager Mike Matheny go. This was supposed to be a fresh start for an organization that had stumbled into a championship in 2015 in the middle of a 35-year run of failure.

The confusing part was Sherman’s decision to retain J.J. Picollo, elevating him to GM in Moore’s absence and handing him the keys to the roster. Picollo wasn’t new blood; he’d been with the Royals since 2006, working first as director of player development and later as assistant GM. He had a big part in that 2015 team’s success, and also in the years of disappointment around it. If the Royals wanted a change, keeping the guy who had been Moore’s bobo for 15 years was a strange way to do it.

Piccolo has had the conch for about a year now, and it’s been a disaster. The major-league pitching staff has gone backwards. Piccolo lit tens of millions of dollars on fire and made the team worse by signing Jordan Lyles, Franmil Reyes, and Jackie Bradley Jr. The Royals’ best pitcher is 39 and their best player is 33. More than five years into a rebuild, one Piccolo has had a big hand in, the farm system ranks 16th and the MLB team dead last.

What are we even doing here?

The Royals have, at times, hidden behind the “small market” shield. The truth is, there was a time when the Royals were as innovative as any team in the game, playing exciting ball, developing superstars, and paying the best of them. The Royals are maybe my favorite example of the idea that it’s not your market that determines your fate, but your owner and his commitment to winning.

Does John Sherman have that commitment? We don’t know yet. He seems more focused on getting a downtown mallpark at the moment. It’s been nearly four years since he bought the team, and they are no better off than they were the day he arrived. The decision to retain Piccolo simply wasted a year. It’s time to sever ties to the previous administration and get a management team in place that will bring the Royals into the 21st century.
 

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 14, 2023 -- "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.

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New York Yankees

The big topic here in the city is how much longer the Yankees can stick with rookie Anthony Volpe at shortstop. Back on April 26, I wrote up Volpe and Gunnar Henderson, favorably contrasting the Yankees’ commitment to their rookie with how the Orioles were using theirs. Seven weeks later, though, that commitment starts to look like stubbornness.

Volpe, since that column, has hit .182/.226/.370. My fear that Volpe’s early-season walk rate would be cut down has come to pass -- he has a 50/8 K/BB in 164 PA since April 26. While he’s had some big hits, pitchers have challenged Volpe to beat them in the zone and won. His contact rate on pitches in the strike zone is 83.2%, roughly in the bottom quartile. I thought the problem would be fastballs, but in fact it’s the wrinkly stuff. Volpe is hitting .173 and slugging .307 against curves and sliders, while holding his own (.258 BA, .621 SLG) against four-seamers.

That Volpe has held onto his job -- he is tied for the AL lead in games played -- is in part a credit to how well he’s done everything else. He’s 14-for-14 stealing bases, and at least by Defensive Runs Saved he is a plus defender at short. (Statcast is less generous.) Perhaps more important is that the Yankees are playing at a 93-win pace and have more visible problems, like an $80 million injured list. Baseball Reference pegs Volpe as a one-win player so far, even with the .191 BA.

Still, his inability to manage the strike zone has gotten worse over time. Volpe has one walk in 30 June plate appearances, and just one walk in 54 PA dating to May 25. As with the Orioles and Jorge Mateo, the Yankees may have better options; Oswald Peraza, the odd man out this spring, is hitting .307/.377/.581 at Triple-A and is the one shortstop in the organization better with the glove than Volpe is. But for Volpe’s strong spring, Peraza would have been the starting shortstop on Opening Day.

I love the patience the Yankees have shown with Volpe, who has superstar upside, especially at shortstop. There are risks to sending him down, both short term and long term. Volpe’s complete loss of the strike zone, though, is an indication he needs a reset. It’s time to swap him for Peraza. The team can deal with a potential logjam up the middle -- Peraza, Volpe, and Gleyber Torres -- when it happens.

Monday, June 12, 2023

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, June 12, 2023 -- "Las Vegas Athletics?"

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.

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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: Las Vegas Athletics
Vol. 15, No. 49
June 12, 2023

We’re going to pause the division pieces for a day to head out to Carson City, Nev., where the Nevada Senate is holding its fourth special session since the official close of business last Monday. Today’s session, and in fact the last three, have all been in consideration of S.B. 1, the proposed funding of a new ballpark on the Las Vegas Strip for use by the Oakland Athletics. Steve Yeager, the speaker of the Legislature, posted an explainer about this process over the weekend.

Also over the weekend, the Las Vegas Review-Journal weighed in with a facts-light editorial encouraging the Legislature to pass the bill. This isn’t a surprise; the benefits of the bill, such as they are, would redound to Las Vegas and Clark County, rather than the state as a whole. Per Neil DeMause at Field of Schemes, the estimated public tab for the park comes to $500 million, though that could change before the bill goes final. That’s a big number for a relatively poor state, one that doesn’t rank highly in education or health care outcomes. Even at $500 million, it will be hard for the public to make its investment back, especially if spending at the new park largely goes to paying off the new park. Ballparks create lousy, part-time, seasonal, ill-paid jobs once construction is over, and almost anything else built on the Tropicana site will produce more revenue, and tax revenue for the state, than the new ballpark will.

With that all said, I have thought for a while that what we’re seeing is play-acting, and that in the end both the Senate and Assembly will pass the bill because it’s the path of least resistance. The votes will likely be close, but there’s a reason these deals are now done through state governments rather than at the polls: It’s easier to move politicians than people, easier to threaten politicians than people.

The thing is, this is not a good deal for the A’s. It leaves them paying a billion dollars for what is planned as the smallest park in the smallest market in baseball. The A’s have $775 million in funding for the Howard Terminal location, though that’s a more expensive project -- John Fisher’s mallpark dream -- that isn’t at the finish line. The city of Oakland is still open to negotiating with the A’s, and, per their site, says that “Oakland’s leadership remains confident that a new Waterfront Ballpark District at Howard Terminal is within reach.” If the A’s stay in Oakland, they split the tenth-largest media market in the country, as opposed to moving to the tiniest. The Bay Area is far wealthier than the Las Vegas area as well. Oakland is not a small market! Las Vegas absolutely is.

The current ugly state of the A’s is treated as immutable, when it’s actually just a moment in time. The A’s have often been the more popular team in the Bay Area. They regularly out-drew the Giants in the 1970s and 1980s, to the point where the Giants tried to move to Toronto (in 1976) and the Tampa Bay area (in 1992). The construction of the Giants’ Oracle Park and John Fisher’s decision to run the A’s into the ground created the current state of affairs. It is hardly etched into stone tablets. There is an upside to the Oakland A’s that is completely inaccessible to the Las Vegas A’s.

That’s locked in by a choice that remains the fatal flaw in the Las Vegas plan -- the size of the ballpark. Now, it’s a bad decision to move from Oakland to Las Vegas, there’s just no getting around that. Building a 30,000-seat park, however, is actually worse.

Think about where baseball teams get their money. National TV and streaming and other deals, money that’s shared equally. That will be the same for the A’s in Las Vegas as it is in Oakland. They get local revenue from TV and radio deals. The A’s current TV deal pays them $41 million a year. Baseball teams in markets closer in size to Las Vegas make as little as half that. I’ve referred to Las Vegas, in a baseball context, as “Hot Milwaukee.” The Brewers’ last TV deal paid them $23 million a year, and their new one pays them “significantly more” without any details I can find. (It’s also a Bally’s deal, so they may end up paid in scrip.) NHL TV and revenue data is harder to find, but this estimate pegged the Las Vegas Golden Knights’ eventual overall revenue in the lower half of the league despite their great attendance. I think we can confidently say that the Las Vegas A’s will have bottom-five, and maybe bottom-one, local-TV revenues.

That leaves the ballpark. If the A’s aren’t going to make money through a big local TV deal, they’ll have to do it by selling tickets and hot dogs and foam fingers to a city filled with potential baseball fans. The A’s Vegas plan addresses this by claiming that 30% of the team’s attendance will be tourists. Off a projected attendance of 27,000 a game, that’s more than 8,000 people from outside of Vegas showing up 81 times a year, every year. Marlins/A’s on a Sunday, when everyone’s flying home? 8,000 tourists. Angels/A’s on a Tuesday in September, both teams out of the race? 8,000 tourists. Giants/A’s in 2035, when the thrill of baseball on the Strip is long gone? 8,000 tourists. It’s a plan that has no basis in reality.

The math is where this fails. If you build a 30,000-seat ballpark, you need to not just average 27,000 tickets sold a night, you damn near have to make that your median. You’ve capped your upside but not limited your downside. If the team is good, you can’t sell a lot more tickets. For the games that might have a lot of outside demand, those first series in 2028 against the Cubs and Dodgers and Red Sox, you can’t sell a lot more tickets. For the World Series, you can’t sell a lot more tickets. The A’s are averaging 8,600 tickets sold this year, but they could fit 54,000 people into the park for a playoff game. The Las Vegas A’s won’t be able to do that.

Just look around the league. The Braves draw very well. They’ve sold anywhere from 28,000 to 43,000 tickets this year. The Orioles are a good example of the kind of mid-market team the Vegas A’s want to be. They’ve ranged from 9,000 to 45,000 this year. Those Brewers I keep referencing? Anywhere from 18,000 to 43,000. Every baseball team has getaway days, bad opponents, playing-out-the-string Septembers, and you make up for that by being able to fill a big building when times are good.

The only way the Las Vegas A’s work is to buck the trend of building smaller ballparks. The era of local-TV money carrying a team’s books is over. Baseball teams around the country are going to become more reliant on attendance, and no more than the team in the smallest TV market in the sport. If the A’s are going to succeed in Las Vegas, they have to take the path the Golden Knights did: Put a great product on the field, embrace being Las Vegas’s baseball team, not some tourist attraction, and try to draw 2.8 million fans a year.

I estimated, based on the Golden Knights’ attendance, that the A’s would draw 22,500 a game. That puts them below the MLB median, but not terribly so. Any chance the A’s have to succeed in Las Vegas hinges on pushing that number up, on getting the Vegas Valley excited about a baseball team that is theirs. The Golden Knights won out of the gate, reaching the Stanley Cup Final in their first season, and around the pandemic they’ve continued to succeed, quite possibly winning the Stanley Cup tonight. T-Mobile Arena seats 17,500, the eighth-smallest building in the NHL, and the Golden Knights played to 103% of capacity this year.

Moving a baseball team from Oakland to Las Vegas is a bad idea. Moving it into a 30,000-seat ballpark is a fatal one. Any Las Vegas ballpark has to be the first to acknowledge the post-RSN model -- attendance is key -- and give the A’s a chance to do what the Knights have done. Their new ballpark, wherever it is, has to seat more than 40,000 people, maybe 45,000, to have any chance to make the A’s more than a corporate-welfare case by 2038.

Truthfully, that may not even be enough. The Golden Knights had a honeymoon period and they used it to damned near win a championship and cement a generation of fans. The A’s honeymoon period will be spent playing outdoors in the suburbs in Las Vegas Ballpark, a Triple-A stadium with a capacity of 10,000. Whatever may happen in 2028, the A’s local revenues from 2024-27, with one year in Oakland and three in Las Vegas, will be the lowest in the sport, and their payroll will follow. (It’s unclear whether a Las Vegas A’s team would be fully eligible for payouts under MLB’s local revenue sharing plan, but its mere existence would distort those calculations in a way that makes me skeptical.)

The 2023 A’s may be the nadir of a rebuilding project, but looking at the organization, we’re a few years from a turnaround. So the A’s “honeymoon” will be spent losing 95 games a year under brutal conditions in a minor-league park, without any stars to connect with. It is very possible that by the time 2028 rolls around, the A’s will have burned off the goodwill their arrival generates.

If it’s going to work at all in the long term, however, it can’t be in a tiny park counting on visiting Tigers and Royals and Astros fans for its success. The Golden Knights are a model, and it’s the one the A’s need to emulate: Be the locals’ team, fill the park, and win.

Thursday, June 8, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 8, 2023 -- "NL 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.

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New York Mets

Is it time to worry a little bit about Francisco Lindor?

The shortstop has been a different player with the Mets, still valuable, to be sure, but less than what he was in Cleveland. Lindor, to pick one nit, has yet to make an NL All-Star team, after making the AL team in all four of his full seasons with the -dians. He’s lost a small step defensively, with last year his worst per both Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average, with a bounceback in 2023. He’s not the baserunner or basestealer that he was in Cleveland, running less often and at a lower success rate. His 2021 campaign, his first in Queens, was the worst of his career by bWAR, 2020 aside, and his 2023 season is shaping up as his second-worst.

The biggest problem is at the plate, where Lindor is making the same swing decisions while getting worse results.

The Change

              Sw%    OSw%   ZSw%        
Pre-Mets     48.3    32.4   70.3    
With Mets    47.7    32.1   70.9

              Ct%    OCt%   ZCt%        
Pre-Mets     84.2    73.3   91.1       
With Mets    78.1    64.8   87.0



That’s a lot of numbers, I know. The first chart shows that Lindor, since coming to the Mets, is making almost all the same choices he made as a -dian: Swinging about as much overall, and at the same rates at pitches both inside and outside the strike zone.

The second chart shows that he’s not getting the bat to the ball when he swings. He’s not hitting the ball when he chases and, perhaps more concerning, when he gets a strike to hit. Lindor was once one of the best in the game at hitting strikes, and now he’s just another guy. His 2023 zone contact rate of 86.9% is middle of the pack for qualified hitters. This year, he has by far the highest swinging-strike rate, 11.3%, of his career. Pitchers are noticing; Lindor is seeing more pitches in the zone than he has since 2019.

Lindor’s batted-ball quality is still good, though not great -- barrel rates and hard-hit rates in the upper half of the league. He’s just not getting to the ball enough, which combined with some bad luck on those batted balls, has him hitting .216. You can squint and see some bad luck, but open your eyes and you see there’s some real loss in skills here that have to be a worry for a Mets team tied to Lindor through 2031.
 

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 7, 2023 -- "NL Central 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.

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

--
 
"Neither Leiter nor Alzolay has pitched since Friday as the Cubs have played a series of non-competitive games that haven’t called for the “A” bullpen. It appears, reading the tea leaves, that Julian Merryweather is now the #3 man in the pecking order, at least while we wait out Boxberger’s right forearm strain.
 
"When they are next in position to win a game, though, the Cubs will have picked up a small edge on the field. Ross’s apparent lack of interest in using a save specialist gives him the opportunity to get important outs each night with the pitcher best suited to doing so."
 

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, 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.

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. 14, No. 120
December 5, 2022

You know, between the recent strange winters and the slow ones before that, I stopped expecting the winter meetings to be meaningful. In the run-up to these meetings, and in the first couple of days of them, it’s felt more like the meetings-as-legend. I haven’t attended the meetings in a decade and I generally don’t miss them, but these last couple of days it definitely would have been a lot of fun to be in San Diego.

I would love an evaluation of the Mets choosing Justin Verlander over Jacob deGrom.

-- Danny T.


While these two free agents are naturally paired, this question centers the Mets in a way that I don’t agree with. I’m not sure they chose Justin Verlander over Jacob deGrom. Remember, of course, that it was deGrom who opted out of the final year of his Mets contract after making just 26 starts in the last two years. The contract deGrom signed with the Rangers, very early in the free-agency process, is for five years for $185 million guaranteed plus a complicated option year. That seems to me to be the outer bounds of what deGrom’s reasonable expectations were for both length and average annual value.

deGrom has become the most extreme member of the “great or unavailable” club in the history of the game. When on the mound he’s been damn near unhittable, throwing 101-mph fastballs and 94-mph sliders, pitches unheard of for starters until very recently. His 2021 season, just 15 starts, was quite possibly the best 90-inning season ever: a 1.08 ERA, 1.24 FIP, 146/11 K/BB, just 40 hits allowed. Over his last 224 innings, deGrom has a 2.05 ERA and a 1.80 FIP.

The obvious problem, of course, is that it’s 224 innings over three years. The Mets have better knowledge of deGrom’s body than any other team, and they’ve watched him miss time over the last four years with minor injuries to...[deep breath]...his hip, his elbow, his back, his neck, his hamstring, and his shoulder, the last of which limited him to 11 outings in 2022. deGrom hasn’t missed a season by blowing out his UCL like so many pitchers at the high end of the velo chart have. (deGrom had his Tommy John surgery in 2010 as an amateur.) He’s just transferred the burden of his velocity down the kinetic chain.

Like they did a year ago in signing $500 million worth of infielders, the Rangers busted through the wall like Kool-Aid Man to get the player they wanted early in the offseason. They treated deGrom as if his rate stats are real and his availability stats are not. There’s no precedent for the combination of financial guarantee and recent workload we’re seeing here.

Wishcasting (largest pitching contracts ever, with pre-signing workloads)

                                      Innings   
                    Year     $MM     WY    WY-1
Gerrit Cole         2020    $324    212     412
Stephen Strasburg   2020    $245    209     339
David Price         2016    $217    220     468
Clayton Kershaw     2014    $215    236     463
Max Scherzer        2015    $210    220     434
Zack Greinke        2016    $207    222     424
Jacob deGrom        2023    $185     64     156
Justin Verlander    2013    $180    238     489
Felix Hernandez     2013    $175    232     465
Stephen Strasburg   2017    $175    127     342


WY: Walk year
WY-1: Walk year + previous year

The closest line in this chart to deGrom’s is Stephen Strasburg’s, who signed his first long extension with the Nationals in May 2016, coming off a 2015 season in which he’d made 23 starts. Availability was never Strasburg’s forte, but he did throw more than 500 innings over the first three seasons of his contract before opting out, signing a second deal -- for $245 million over seven years -- and all but disappearing.

The Rangers decided they wanted deGrom’s performance and would take the risk that he might be unavailable. They made an offer that was, given deGrom’s recent innings totals, unprecedented. That, to me, doesn’t say anything about the Mets at all. It says that the Rangers were willing to make a huge risk/reward play. They want to contend now, and after an extended fallow period their farm system may be ready to produce low-cost, high-productivity players who help subsidize three stars making a combined $90 million a season. The Rangers aren’t really trying to catch the Astros; they’re trying to catch the wild-card teams, trying to play .520 ball into July, get better at the trade deadline, and force their way into the brackets.

Will it work? I think it’s an impossible contract to evaluate. deGrom has a body struggling to hold up under the massive force he generates, and like any starter who throws this hard, his ulnar collateral ligament, already once repaired, could go at any time. Look at the top two names on that chart above. Gerrit Cole has made almost every start (missing a few to a non-arm injury in 2021) since signing his deal, throwing 455 innings, plus some more in the playoffs, in 2.4 seasons. Strasburg, a year older than Cole at the time of signing, has thrown 31 innings in three years.

That, I think, is the range of potential outcomes here, and if you have a strong opinion about where deGrom will land in that range, you’re a smarter person than I am.

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. Given the back end of their starting rotation and what is, at the moment, a thin bullpen, the Mets needed to run back the shape of the 2022 team to stay with the Braves in the NL East. If a 40-year old with two lost seasons in three can be said to be safe, it’s Verlander. The righty missed 2020 and 2021 with a torn UCL and the Tommy John surgery required to repair it. He bookended the missed seasons with AL Cy Young Awards in 2019 and 2022, and prior to that he’d finished second in 2018. deGrom and Verlander have had very different paths through the last five years, but when you total them up...


             ERA     IP    FIP   ERA+   K%   K-BB%
deGrom      2.05    645   2.14   193   36%     30%
Verlander   2.33    618   2.90   182   33%     28%



deGrom is second in pitcher bWAR since 2018, Verlander is sixth. The four other pitchers in the neighborhood have all thrown at least 785 innings in this timeframe.

Verlander, of course, threw nearly three times as many innings as deGrom did last year. He’s about 5 1/2 years older than deGrom is, which is reflected in his getting a two-year contract as opposed to a five-year deal. Even with a repaired UCL, you have to have some concern about how long Verlander will hold up. The trade-off is cash up front. Verlander signed for pretty much the identical annual salary new teammate Max Scherzer did a year ago, $43.3 million per, tying Scherzer for the highest mark in baseball history, at least for the moment. (Aaron Judge is a threat to surpass that number this winter, and Shohei Ohtani will be a threat to do so next winter.)

A few weeks back I wrote up the top position-player free agents. I didn’t do the same for the pitchers in part because I genuinely don’t know what to do with them. The top guy hasn’t pitched a true full season since 2019. The next guy missed the two years prior to 2022 with a blown elbow. The next man up, Carlos Rodon, just had his first full season since 2016 and has, even at his best, always felt like a threat to break down. Rodon has never thrown 180 innings in a season and has thrown 150 just twice, and that just once in six years. On the other hand, he’s been one of the five best pitchers in baseball over the last two seasons. It’s just an impossible profile to parse, and an impossible future to predict.

I suppose the lesson we can take from the pitcher signings that we’ve seen and Rodon’s to come is that baseball has just about given up on volume. It’s nice to have, if you can employ Aaron Nola or Sandy Alcantara or someone else who will reach 200 innings in a season. It’s a bonus. Very quickly, though, the expectations for a top starter have been lowered sharply. Maybe it’s a leftover from the pandemic season, but I think it was always headed that way. This winter has just underlined the point. The standard is now 180 innings, and if you’re good enough, maybe even 150 if that’s what it takes to keep someone healthy. Maybe it’s a strict five-man rotation, like in Milwaukee, or a six-man, as Shohei Ohtani dictates in Anaheim. Maybe it’s regular skipped starts, or even an expectation that you’ll need a month off now and again to stay healthy. Whatever the details, MLB teams have made very clear that they’re paying for per-inning performance, and just hoping for volume.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, June 6, 2023 -- "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.

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

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"Patching that one small hole may be worth doing. Looking ahead to the second half, the Astros will need to go through Corey Seager, Nathaniel Lowe, and Shohei Ohtani in the AL West. Potential playoff opponents will feature Josh Lowe, Luke Raley, Brandon Belt, and Anthony Rizzo. Having right-handed pitchers who can get lefties out is valuable, and you don’t want to trade off too much talent to play matchups. Still, the ability to attack platoons or make a good lefty hitter uncomfortable can be valuable, especially in leverage."

Monday, June 5, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 5, 2023 -- "Fun With Numbers: One-Run Fun on Mon."

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.

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

--
 
"One last note...keep an eye on Francisco Rodriguez’s single-season record of 62 saves, set back in 2008. All of the Guardians’ close, low-scoring games create save opportunities for Emmanuel Clase, and even in a season when he’s been a lot less dominant than he was in 2022, Clase has racked up 19 saves, four clear of anyone else in baseball. Clase is on pace for just 52 saves at the moment, while leading the majors in appearances and games finished. Even a small improvement by the team’s offense could create a couple of additional save opportunities a month, which would give Clase a chance to chase down K-Rod."

 

Friday, June 2, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 2, 2023 -- "Lou Gehrig Day"

 

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.

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

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"Lou Gehrig Day doesn’t commemorate the day he hit four homers, or the day he hit two homers in a World Series game, or even the day he ended his consecutive-games streak. It commemorates his death, and it does so in the hope that highlighting how he died will eventually mean no one dies this way again."

Thursday, June 1, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, June 1, 2023 -- "Behavior Modification"

 

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.

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

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"The difference between pulling a fly ball and hitting a grounder up the middle, even with the defense hobbled, is 230 points of batting average and 1400 points of slugging. Even hitting a line drive up the middle is a little worse than hitting a fly ball: .620/.793 versus .474/1.686. The difference is so large that it’s worth wearing an increased strikeout rate to try to hit pulled fly balls."