Newsletter Excerpt, November 30, 2022 -- "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. 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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"The real key, though, won’t be found in San Diego next week, but in Chicago next summer. That vaunted Sox core combined unavailability with underperformance in a brutal fashion. Only Jose Abreu played in 140 games, only Abreu, Andrew Vaughn, and AJ Pollock qualified for the batting title. Yasmani Grandal and Yoan Moncada, two of the team’s reliable OBP sources, tanked. This core, save Abreu, is all coming back, and Grifol’s primary task will be getting them back to health and to their pre-2022 levels."

Newsletter Excerpt, November 28, 2022 -- "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. 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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"Yelich is now a problem for the Brewers, who have a lot of good-not-great players like him. Their stars are on the mound, Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes, and early speculation has them possibly trading one of them to manage payroll. This would effectively be adding to the cost of the Yelich contract and likely be the start of an ugly spiral. It’s one thing to spend $29 million a year on three wins; it’s another to sell off your true core to subsidize that expense."

Newsletter Excerpt, November 17, 2022 -- "Cashman's Cash Men"

 

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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"Drill down further, and you see Cashman built a 99-63 team in 2022, one that was beaten in the ALCS by a better team, the one that went on to win the World Series. Is Cashman just a bystander to that success? No, of course not; he and the front office he leads drafted Aaron Judge, signed Luis Severino, traded for Clay Holmes, picked Matt Carpenter off the scrap heap. That trade with the Twins everyone hates now (emphasis on now, as opposed to May) was good for a net 1.4 bWAR and sent away a player, in Gary Sanchez, whom the fan base despised by the end of his time in New York. Enjoy Nestor Cortes? That was Brian Cashman. Like the Jose Trevino story? Also Cashman."

Newsletter Excerpt, November 14, 2022 -- "The Interesting List"

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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"They have to spend some money right now. Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson are here, Grayson Rodriguez is coming, you’re paying the three of them $2 million, maybe $3 million a year, through 2025. You can afford some $30 million players around them. Go get two middle-of-the-order hitters and two starting pitchers and you’ll still be $50 million under the tax threshold. The 2022 season caught the locals’ interest; it’s critical to keep it."

Newsletter Excerpt, November 11, 2022 -- "Carlos Correa"

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

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

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

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"A team signing Correa gets his age-28 to age-34 seasons. Forget positional value, platform year, career to date, all of it. It’s incredibly hard to make up the difference between getting one player from ages 28 to 30 and the other from 35 to 37, which is what we’re talking about."

Newsletter Excerpt, November 10, 2022 -- "Trea Turner"

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

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

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

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"The players who age the best are the ones who have broad skill sets that include speed. Turner, like Larkin, does everything well on a baseball field. Larkin was the better defensive shortstop, Turner hits for more power. In Larkin’s era, Turner might have stolen 80 bases a year, and in Turner’s era, Larkin might have hit 300 homers. (He had 198 in his career.) Baseball Reference’s Similarity Scores have Larkin as Turner’s second-best comp through age 29."