Newsletter Excerpt, December 21, 2023 -- "Hall of Fame Ballot"

 

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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"Utley gets my vote, though it was closer than I would have expected. He’s one of eight players on this ballot I consider to be Hall of Famers:

Adrian Beltre
Carlos Beltran
Joe Mauer
Andy Pettitte
Manny Ramirez
Alex Rodriguez
Gary Sheffield
Chase Utley"

Newsletter Excerpt, December 20, 2023 -- "Driving Cadillacs in Our Dreams"

 

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 Royals had a .303 OBP last year, the sixth straight in which they’ve run a team OBP under .310. They haven’t had an OBP above the AL average since 2015, when they reinvented baseball. Renfroe has a career .300 OBP, Hampson .305. The Royals are chasing defense, speed, and power when their problem is what it’s been for most of the last 40 years: They make too many outs. Piccolo has the same blind spot Dayton Moore did, and it’s why the Royals are going nowhere with him in charge.

"The Royals are getting positive press for doing less than the bare minimum. They have invested so little for so long that spending $50 million on a bunch of zero- to two-win players looks like progress. It’s not. Good teams don’t buy these players, they develop and create them. The Royals will pay this group $48.5 million next year. That’s Shohei Ohtani money, and the Royals are doling it out to a supporting cast. The Royals already had a supporting cast. They need a core." 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 18, 2023 -- "Dodgers/Rays Trade"

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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"For the Dodgers, though, there’s more to the deal. They’ve quietly gotten old. Mookie Betts is 31, Freddie Freeman is 34, Will Smith is 29, Max Muncy is 33. Shohei Ohtani is 29. Parallel to this, the Dodgers haven’t turned their highly rated farm system products into inexpensive young replacements who might have kept them from needing to commit so much to thirtysomethings. Josiah Gray and Keibert Ruiz are in D.C. I mentioned Busch and Vargas above, two guys who failed to launch in 2023. The Dodgers’ playoff exit was accelerated in part because a whole crop of young pitchers, save Bobby Miller, didn’t contribute."

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 14, 2023 -- "Starting Pitcher Tiers"

 

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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'One framing of this philosophy is through Cy Young voting. There are just three pitchers who have received Cy Young votes in all of the last three years: Cole, Kevin Gausman, and Corbin Burnes. If you look at just the last two years, you add in Framber Valdez, Logan Webb, Zac Gallen, and Spencer Strider. There just aren’t very many pitchers you can count on to be among the best in baseball -- to be #1 starters -- on a year-to-year basis anymore. Even those are providing many fewer innings than they did just ten years ago, and a fraction of what they did 30 years ago."

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 12, 2023 -- "Sho-Bag"

 

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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That money could have been used to sign three serviceable starting pitchers and a third baseman who would get Max Muncy off the infield. Will Ohtani inspire Betts, Freeman, and Muncy to show up in October? Guess we will find out.

--Dan Z.

The money doesn’t matter, the room on the payroll does, and the contract structure minimizes the impact of that. They’ll still acquire two starters, I think, one up top and one for bulk innings. I’m more bullish on the Gavin Stone/Michael Grove/Ryan Pepiot/Emmet Sheehan group than you may be. I think collectively they’ll provide 300-400 average innings, though I don’t know which pitcher will emerge. Probably Stone and Pepiot, if I’m guessing today.

Those four combined for 202 innings with replacement-level performance in 2023. I think they double the innings and are worth five wins in 2024.

--J.

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 12, 2023 -- "Transaction Analysis (Derogatory)"

 

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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"So you don’t need to look at the statistics that show Kimbrel to be an average reliever, someone in a slow decline, someone whose talents are common in the modern game. All you need to do is look at how every time a team signs him, it ends up looking for ways to use him less, and in less important situations, usually before he’s even been around for a full year."