Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 31, 2024 -- "Incoherence"

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A trade deadline like the one we just watched upsets us because it’s incoherent. The deals, individually, can be analyzed and explained and even justified. Looked at as a market, though, they don’t make sense. Bill C. wants to understand why his team’s GM didn’t do better than the Blue Jays’ GM did given he had better pitcher on offer with more team control. He reads Miguel Vargas and two A-ball infielders as less valuable than Joey Loperfido, Jake Bloss, and Will Wagner. So why didn’t Getz just trade Fedde to the Astros? We want an explanation.

There’s not going to be a satisfying one. As a practical matter, trades aren’t made as in a fantasy league, with someone posting that they have a starting pitcher on offer and they’re looking for draft picks. Some front offices do work better with others, whether it’s because they value players similarly or they have established personal connections. That’s been true for decades. The deadline is dynamic, as every single trade changes the mix of players on offer and the talent teams are looking to add. Each front office is under a different set of pressures from ownership, from fans, from the local media, from its players. Many of them simply aren’t working by the same rules everyone else is, as evidenced by the players in the Rockies/Angels game last night.
 
 

 

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 30, 2024 -- "Deadline Day"

 

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There are two teams that have yet to make a major-league trade in the deadline window. The A’s have been vocal about how they like their core, which is almost all controlled and inexpensive for years to come. They won’t buy, but unless they trade Brent Rooker, they’re likely to stand pat. The Twins are what the A’s hope to be in a few years, built around a core of homegrown players and shrewd trade additions. The Twins hold the AL’s second wild-card slot and are just 5 1/2 games out of first in the AL Central. They won’t be selling; it just doesn’t look like they will be buying big, maybe a reliever to lengthen the pen.

Monday, July 29, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 29, 2024 -- "Cardinals/Dodgers/White Sox Trade"

 

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I am second to very few people when it comes to believing in Miguel Vargas. However, Vargas has lost two years to the Dodgers’ failure to just drop him in the lineup and let him cook. Vargas has a .201/.294/.364 career line, an improved .239/.313/.423 this year. He strikes out just 20% of the time and, in 2024, has a 16/8 K/BB that’s much better than the league average. Vargas’s career OBP at Double-A and Triple-A is over .400. He just couldn’t find a place to play. The White Sox will have no such issue. Vargas, more than any of the three teams, is the biggest winner of this trade, maybe the biggest winner of the entire trade deadline.
 
 

Sunday, July 28, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 28, 2024 -- "Early Deadline"

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How unusual? The trade deadline floats now, from as early as July 30 to as late as August 2, the actual date and time seemingly picked to maximize the amount of chaos before a night of baseball games. This year’s deadline falls 35 minutes before the Blue Jays and Orioles, two teams that have been and will continue to be active, take the field at Camden Yards. If you set deadline day, whenever it lands, as a fixed point and work backwards, you get D, D-1, D-2, etc. 

I did that for the last three years, using MLB.com’s transaction log. Sometimes a deal gets leaked to Jeff Passan at 8:30 p.m. and doesn’t become official until the next afternoon. Take it up with MLB. With that said, there’s no way to massage the numbers that changes the conclusion that this has been a notably active stretch. The 14 trades we’ve seen over the last three days, D-5 through D-3 in this parlance, are nearly as many as occurred on those days total over the last three years.

2021: 5
2022: 5
2023: 5
2024: 14
 

 

Friday, July 26, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 26, 2024 -- "Mariners/Rays Trade"

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"Perhaps best for the Mariners is that they added a high-end bat without touching the top of their farm system. Smith and Hopkins are both 2023 draftees who are a long way from the majors. The Mariners can still decide to make a bigger deal with someone like catcher Harry Ford or shortstop Cole Emerson, or they can keep those players in the hopes that future Mariners teams built around them won’t be quite so desperate for offense in late July."

 

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

The Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, July 24, 2024 -- "Fun With Numbers: The White Sox"

 

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The White Sox dropped their ninth consecutive game last night, their 76th this season. The team’s 27-76 record is the worst 103-game mark since the 1979 A’s were also 27-76. Although a number of teams started worse in the first half of the 20th century, just two have been this bad, this late in the season, since World War II ended.

The Dog Days (worst 103-game records, 1946-2024)

                            Finished
Mets        1962    26-77     40-120
White Sox   2024    27-76     
Athletics   1979    27-76     54-108
Athletics   2023    28-75     50-112
Tigers      2003    28-75     43-119


The 1962 Mets are the gold standard for baseball incompetence, one of two teams to ever lose 120 games in a season, and the only one to do so since the start of the 20th century. Can the White Sox catch them? They would have to finish 15-44 or worse, which isn’t as hard as you might think, a .254 winning percentage just slightly lower than the .262 mark to which they’ve played. Teams close the season on jags like that with some frequency, four times in this century alone. The Sox themselves have lost 46 of their last 59, so they just need to do it again to race past the ’62 Mets.

The Sox will send Chris Flexen to the mound in Arlington tonight in an effort to snap their nine-game losing streak. If they do drop the game, they will be the first team since 2021 to have two separate losing streaks of at least ten games. Three teams, including the crosstown Cubs, pulled the trick that year, and five have in this century.

With a 14-game losing streak already on the books, the White Sox have a chance to join a very select club if they can’t pull out of this spiral over the weekend. Just three teams in baseball history -- the 2021 Orioles, the 1935 Braves, and the 1911 Braves -- have ever had two distinct losing streaks of at least 14 games in a single season.

Why are the Sox this bad? Well, that’s a story dating back decades to when a rich guy named Jerry bought the team, but we don’t have that kind of time. On the field this year, well, we know it’s not the starting rotation’s fault. As I wrote back in June, the White Sox have one of the best top-twos in baseball in Garrett Crochet and Erick Fedde. Sox pitchers are 28th in ERA, 27th in FIP, and 16th in fWAR. It’s not a great staff, it’s just not an “all-time terrible” staff.

No, it’s the offense. The White Sox are last in MLB with a .279 OBP, last with a .345 SLG, and last with a 76 wRC+. The Sox probably can’t catch the 1920 A’s (.252/.304/.337, 68 wRC+) for worst offense since the mound was set at 60' 6", but they could become the worst offense of the 21st century.

The Dog Years (worst wRC+, 2001-2024, ex. 2020) 

                       AVG   OBP   SLG  wRC+
Diamondbacks   2004   .253  .310  .393   74
Marlins        2013   .231  .293  .335   74
White Sox      2024   .218  .279  .345   76
Expos          2004   .249  .313  .392   77
Tigers         2019   .230  .294  .388   77


Those White Sox and Expos lines are a pretty good illustration, in themselves, of how far offense has fallen over the last 20 years. This year’s Sox are giving up 34 points of OBP and 47 points of SLG to those late-period Expos, and yet they have nearly the same wRC+.

The 2024 White Sox are making outs at a rate that we haven’t seen in almost 60 years. Now, the 1900s...really the period from 1904 to 1909, the true Deadball Era...are their own thing. League OBP ranged from .297 to .306 across those six seasons. The three lowest team OBPs, five of the lowest six, etc., etc. all date from those six years. So let’s draw a line at 1909, and consider teams since then.

The Dogs (lowest team OBP, 1910-2024)

White Sox   1910   .275
Mets        1965   .277
White Sox   2024   .279
Athletics   2022   .281
Mets        1968   .281
Browns      1910   .281


Just three teams since the end of the Deadball Era have posted an OBP below .280, and one of them is the great-great-grandfather of the team doing it right now. 

The record for fewest runs per game mostly dates to the same era. The 1909 Washington Senators scored 382 runs in 156 games, the only team in history to play at least 150 games and score fewer than 400 runs. Thirty-eight teams have failed to score 500 runs in a season, none of them since 1972, but 1972 was shortened a bit by a player strike. Of the three teams that didn’t score 500 runs in 1972, all missed at least six games. The 1972 Angels scored just 454 runs in 155 games, though, and surely would have missed 500 runs in a full season. 

1972 is an interesting line of demarcation because it was after that season that the American League adopted the designated hitter. The NL followed suit in 2022. The White Sox have scored just 321 runs, averaging 3.1 runs a game and on pace for 505, which would be the worst production by an offense with a DH in baseball history.

Doggone It (fewest runs by a DH team, min. 155 games)

                      R   R/G
White Sox   2024    321   3.1*
Mariners    2010    513   3.2
Athletics   1978    532   3.3
Orioles     1988    550   3.4
Angels      1976    550   3.4
Mariners    2011    556   3.4

*through 103 games


We don’t talk about batting average much any more, but the Sox, at .218, are threatening to become just the seventh team since 1910 to hit under .220. We’re going to wrap this up, though, by taking the Sox off the hook. The Sox aren’t even the worst team in baseball this year at hitting for average. 

Sea Dogs (lowest batting average, min. 100 games, 1910-2024)

                    AVG
White Sox   1910   .211
Yankees     1968   .214
Athletics   2022   .216
Mariners    2024   .216
Rangers     1972   .217


The Mariners are a bad couple of months from having the worst batting average in more than a century.

 
 
 

Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 23, 2024 -- "One Week Away"

 

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Chicago Cubs (49-53, 9 games out in NL Central, 3 1/2 games out of last WC slot)


"Where we are right now, I would have to say that moves only for 2024 -- unless things change over the next week -- we probably won't do a lot of moves that only help us for this year," Hoyer said. "If moves help us for 2025 and beyond I think we're exceptionally well positioned."

From seven lines above:

3 1/2 games out of last WC slot

The Cubs have been incredibly frustrating in all phases of the game for four months, and they’re still around .500 and a good week from a playoff berth. Again, how much closer do you need to be to make buying -- and the Cubs have holes that could comfortably be fixed by league-average talent -- a good option?

The Cubs should be better down the stretch as well, when a whole bunch of injured pitchers return. As it is, their bullpen has been great lately, first in ERA and fourth in FIP over the last 30 days. The team badly needs at least one hitter, probably a corner infielder, and adding a bat-first catcher would help a lot. The idea that the Cubs, with their payroll, core talent, and position in the standings wouldn’t be trying hard to get into the tournament, would be focusing on next year, is offensive to me as a sports fan.

Monday, July 22, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 22, 2024 -- "Thinking Inside the Box"

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This continues to look like one of those years for the Braves. They were incredibly healthy in 2023 when they posted 104 wins and a runaway NL East title. This year, they lost two of the best players in baseball in Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr. for the season; Albies and Sean Murphy for two months each; and have seen Austin Riley, Max Fried, and Michael Harris II all miss time to injuries. Strider and four months of Acuña alone is a ten-win hit, and with Albies and Murphy you’re up well over a dozen WAR lost. The Braves are 24-24 since losing Acuña.
 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, July 20, 2024 -- "Paul Molitor's Axe"

 

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Whereas I expect the Brewers to allow more runs over the season’s last ten weeks, I think the Twins’ best run prevention is ahead of them. They have more raw skill in their rotation, a longer track record of success, and pretty good internal depth options in Varland and David Festa. Combine that with a good offense that projects to get better with improved health, and not only do I expect the Twins to make the playoffs, I think they’ll catch the Guardians in August and win the AL Central with some cushion.
 
 

Sunday, July 14, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 14, 2024 -- "The Francisco Lindor Appreciation Society"

 

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It doesn’t matter if he’s on an All-Star team or an MVP ballot or even a playoff team. Apart from the shortened season, when even then he was a league-average hitter playing at a three-win pace, Francisco Lindor has posted up as one of the best players in baseball his whole career. He’s on his way to his third five-win season in four as a Met, and the sixth of his career. Lindor has started all but one game this year, and played in every one. He’s missed four games, total, since Opening Day 2022. Lindor will cross 50 WAR early next year if he doesn’t get there late this year. He’s done all of this while being underappreciated first by his team’s owner, and now by his team’s fans.

Not here, though. Francisco Lindor has been one of the bright shining lights of baseball for a decade, and will be for years to come.
 
 

Newsletter Excerpt, July 13, 2024 -- The Skenes

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The no-hit bids, the successful girlfriend, the All-Star start...these are all nice, but is it enough, really? What Skenes needs is to be honored the way truly great pitchers are -- by having a stat named after him. In the tradition of The Maddux, invented by Jason Lukehart to signify a shutout thrown on fewer than 100 pitches, I present to you The Skenes: Starts of at least six innings with no hits allowed.
 
 

 

Friday, July 12, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 12, 2024 -- "Fun With Numbers: Bases Loaded"

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The 123/0 performance the last two seasons represents a massive drop-off from the period just before. BABIP is down 80 points with the bases loaded and nobody out over two seasons, with a truly bizarre dip in power with the bases loaded and nobody out last year. That 2024 BABIP is the lowest since 1987 and the sixth-lowest on record. Run expectancy in bases-loaded, no-out situations is 2.34 runs. Last year’s mark, 2.26 runs, was fifth-lowest since 1998. (Big thanks to Robert Au at Baseball Prospectus for that info.) Some combination of pitching and defense is just wrecking hitters in these spots.

Batted-ball data shows that hitters are hitting the ball less hard in these spots, and while not shown in the chart, the average launch angle has dipped two degrees in four years. Hard-hit rate is down from 39.2% the first two years to 36.3% the last two.
 
 

 

Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Newsletter, Excerpt, July 10, 2024 -- "First Shall Be...Sixth?"

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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Historically, the first inning has been the highest scoring inning in a baseball game. It is the one inning in which a manager can determine who leads off and who follows, a pretty big advantage. The tradeoff was that the second inning -- when the lower middle and bottom of lineups typically bat -- was the lowest scoring frame. How powerful was this effect? From 1957 through 2021, 64 seasons for our purposes, the first inning was the highest scoring inning 59 times, the second-highest scoring inning four times, and the third-highest scoring inning once. 

In 2022, the first inning was the fifth-highest scoring inning. In 2024, it is the sixth-highest scoring inning. There is absolutely no precedent for this in recorded baseball history.

 
 
 

 

Monday, July 8, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, July 8, 2024 -- "NL West Notes"

 

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Los Angeles Dodgers

The Dodgers have given at least 50 plate appearances to 15 players this year. Five have been absolute zeros, just dead roster spots.

                       PA    AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS+
Gavin Lux             259   .207  .263  .282    56
Enrique Hernandez     200   .197  .260  .295    59
Chris Taylor          150   .155  .262  .256    49
James Outman          129   .167  .264  .281    56
Austin Barnes          85   .213  .289  .240    54


If you’d like to make an argument for these players based on something other than offense, you’re welcome to do so, but note that they have combined for -0.7 bWAR, with none better than 0.2 bWAR. 

There’s not much the Dodgers can do for the moment. A third of their starting lineup is out with injuries, and the team won’t be completely healthy until August, when Mookie Betts returns from a broken hand. The inevitable roster crunch when Betts, Jason Heyward, and Max Muncy return makes it hard for the Dodgers to go outside the organization for help in the short term. Flyers taken on Taylor Trammell and Cavan Biggio have not paid off. 

The positive, however, is that the injuries have created opportunities for two homegrown Dodgers to stake their claim to roster spots. Rookie Andy Pages has a lot of swing-and-miss in his game. When he swing-and-hits, though, it’s with authority, including a 10.7% barrel rate and a solid 11.6% pulled-flyball rate. Pages has been a surprisingly good outfielder while showing off one of the best throwing arms in the game. He’s even become more disciplined; Pages went the first 76 plate appearances of his career before drawing his first walk; since then, he has a reasonable 53/16 K/BB with a 7.5% walk rate that’s not far below the league average. 

Better news of late has come from Miguel Vargas, whom the Dodgers have handled poorly the last couple of seasons. He’s been up and down to Triple-A, and after struggling to play second base last year doesn’t seem to have the team’s confidence at any spot. He’s only played left field this season, and not all that well. But in 53 PA, he has a .319/.377/.596 line with just nine strikeouts against five walks. An 0-for-4 Sunday snapped a streak of 11 starts in which Vargas hit safely. The ability to hit has always been there, and given the state of the Dodgers’ outfield, he should get regular run. As with all young players, regular playing time is the key to success.

Heyward’s return will create a logjam, perhaps force a rotating platoon situation with the three right-handed-hitting outfielders. The Dodgers, though, do not have to go outside the organization right now. Andy Pages and Miguel Vargas, left alone to play regularly, will solve their lineup depth problem.