Around Baseball 2019

[saskjayfan]

Agree with the last line.

 

My point is taking the position the Jays have a window that coincides with Vlad / Bo controllable years is ridiculous. And I fully expect them to be extended before FA hits, barring injury or suckage, leveraging the Jays control years to extend into FA years at reasonable price.

 

Disagree about next wave not coming until 2022. ETAs are spread over 2020, 2021, 2022.....

 

What impact players outside of Pearson are coming in 2020 and 2021?

[Barkerfan23]

Baseballs off season is extremely uninteresting. It's the same main talent and good talent rarely gets there

 

So little juice. This was the worst watched world series of all time and this will probably be the least exciting offseason

 

Baseball is becoming an afterthought

[saskjayfan]

Baseballs off season is extremely uninteresting. It's the same main talent and good talent rarely gets there

 

So little juice. This was the worst watched world series of all time and this will probably be the least exciting offseason

 

Baseball is becoming an afterthought

 

I could kick you in the balls if you think you'd have a better day.

[Bobthe4th]

What impact players outside of Pearson are coming in 2020 and 2021?

 

Depends what you mean by impact. If you mean all star caliber then possibly no one. But Kay, Merryweather and Borucki are all going to get a shot in the rotation in 2020, and importantly the Giles trade has a good chance of bringing in at least one player who is ready to be given a chance at MLB level.

 

If the majority of the core continues to improve, and we manage to rebuild the rotation and the outfield then with a few decent additions we could be good as early as 2021.

[saskjayfan]

Depends what you mean by impact. If you mean all star caliber then possibly no one. But Kay, Merryweather and Borucki are all going to get a shot in the rotation in 2020, and importantly the Giles trade has a good chance of bringing in at least one player who is ready to be given a chance at MLB level.

 

If the majority of the core continues to improve, and we manage to rebuild the rotation and the outfield then with a few decent additions we could be good as early as 2021.

 

I count all those guys as pretty much being here. If you want to say the core we have for 2020 needs developing in order to compete in 2021 then fine. If you expect the team to compete in 2021, it's going to be with the same guys that are here in 2020. I don't see anything of impact coming into the team in 2021 from within the organization. The free agent market is looking a lot weaker next year for what this team needs. This is the year to spend money.

 

It would be a shame to see the core players play great next year and have us win 77 games because we did nothing this off season as "we weren't ready to win"

[Bobthe4th]

I count all those guys as pretty much being here.

 

That doesn’t make much sense. In total Kay, Merryweather, and Borucki have appeared in 22 MLB games and we don’t know what the return from Giles is yet.

 

If you want to say the core we have for 2020 needs developing in order to compete in 2021 then fine. If you expect the team to compete in 2021, it's going to be with the same guys that are here in 2020. I don't see anything of impact coming into the team in 2021 from within the organization. The free agent market is looking a lot weaker next year for what this team needs. This is the year to spend money.

 

It would be a shame to see the core players play great next year and have us win 77 games because we did nothing this off season as "we weren't ready to win"

 

Right now the core isn’t good enough for us to make the playoffs in 2020 for 3 main reasons.

 

1. Outside the core, our position players are shite.

2. Our starting pitching is shite.

3. The majority of the core is mainly potential. In 2020 if some of them don’t take the next step forward, or even take a step back (e.g. Bo has a sophomore slump / Gurriel reverts to a utility player) then the core isn’t even that good right now.

 

That’s a lot of gaps to fill from both inside and outside the organisation. It’s not realistic to think this front office will spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that’d be required right now to try to fix it all at once.

 

Though I hope we acquire more than last year’s reclamation and low risk vets, I'm realistic enough not to expect us to be major players on the free agent market this offseason.

[Boxcar]

What impact players outside of Pearson are coming in 2020 and 2021?

 

Kirk, Pardinho, Groshans, SWR maybe

[Jimcanuck]

What impact players outside of Pearson are coming in 2020 and 2021?

 

Your earlier post did not refer to impact players. A team is not entirely comprised of impact players. The 2 WAR guys are also important to round out a winning roster.

[Jimcanuck]

In his start in the Arizona Fall League’s annual Fall Stars Game, Royals prospect Daniel Lynch was extremely impressive. The 6-foot-6 lefthander whiffed two hitters in a scoreless inning and showed a fastball that reached 99 mph.

 

Because the game was played at Salt River Fields, the first strikeout came with a little bit of an asterisk. The park utilized the TrackMan-enforced strike zone for the AFL’s six-week season, which led to some interesting calls.

 

Lynch opened the Fall Stars Game with a strikeout on a pitch that initially appeared to be more than a bit low, especially against 5-foot-9 Rays prospect Vidal Brujan. Yet, after a brief pause, home plate umpire Erich Bacchus reared back and rang up Brujan, who stared at Bacchus, dumbfounded.

 

Except that in this case Bacchus was merely the messenger. The real call was made by a computer, sent to an iPod clipped to his belt, then relayed to an ear piece before Bacchus relayed the call.

 

 

The automated strike zone was in effect for every game played at Salt River Fields, which is the home of the AFL’s Salt River and Scottsdale clubs. Major League Baseball was testing the TrackMan technology in a more casual setting.

 

And Brujan’s strikeout, which left Lynch laughing on the mound, wasn’t a one-time bug. Hitters throughout the brief AFL season were getting rung up on pitches catchers were scooping out of the dirt as well as ones that crossed somewhere near the middle of a hitter’s chest.

 

By the end, two things were clear: Pitchers with arsenals geared toward working from the top to the bottom of the strike zone were at a stark advantage, and nobody—neither hitters nor pitchers—was happy with TrackMan.

 

"Not a fan,” Angels outfielder Brandon Marsh said. "Just because the ball can barely clip the zone—top, bottom, inside, outside—and the catcher can have his wrist break and drop the ball and it’s still a strike.

 

"I mean, I can’t complain against it, because it’s the ‘perfect’ strike zone, but baseball has always had human error in it, good and bad. I feel like, if you take that away from the game it’s changing the whole game. I’ll adapt to anything whether it happens.”

 

 

For a quick refresher on what TrackMan has been tasked with enforcing, we turn to the MLB rulebook, which defines the strike zone as “that area over home plate which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap.”

 

With that in mind, a pitch gets called a strike when “any part of the ball passes through any part of the strike zone.”

 

That last part is the key. If a small piece of the baseball passes through a small piece of the strike zone, that’s a “rulebook” strike. As seen in the AFL, calling a game strictly by the book makes it clear that the strike zone is far bigger than human umpires normally enforce.

 

Even with the built-in advantage created by TrackMan, pitchers in the AFL were not impressed with what they saw during their games at Salt River Fields.

 

“Whether it benefits me or not, I’m just coming at it from a baseball purist standpoint. Umpires are back there and they have a job for a reason,” Mariners righthander Penn Murfee said. “It’s to manage the calling of the game—why take out one of the biggest pieces of that? The enemy of good is better in a lot of senses and I just think that’s a good idea from someone who came along who never should have been tempted.”

 

Besides the zone itself, another factor that irked both hitters and pitchers alike is the delay between the pitch hitting the catcher’s glove and when the home plate umpire relayed TrackMan’s decision. The entire process took roughly four seconds, and led to hitters getting punched out to end innings as the catcher was throwing the ball back to the mound in preparation for the next pitch.

 

“I think the weirdest part is just the pause from the pitch hitting the catcher’s glove and then the umpire calling it a strike,”Rays outfielder Josh Lowe said. “Sometimes it happens throughout the regular season where an umpire is frozen on a pitch and it takes him a second or two to call it, but you see it more out here, where you don’t know if it’s going to be a strike or not.”

 

Those familiar with umpires like Tim McClelland and Joe Brinkman are used to not seeing the visualization of the strike call until very late after the pitch is in the catcher’s mitt, but those guys vocalized the call for the hitter and pitcher much earlier, so not everybody was left in the lurch. The human behind the plate during TrackMan games was forced to wait, just the same as everybody else, which can obviously annoy all those involved.

 

For all its faults that still need to be corrected, there are some obvious advantages to the TrackMan zone. First, clearly, is consistency. Teams need not worry about whether an umpire’s zone typically favors hitters or pitchers, or whether an argument in the third inning might influence a call in the seventh inning. So long as everything runs smoothly, the strike zone will be the same from the first inning until the last inning.

 

And for as weird as the strike zone has seemed at its highest and lowest points, the outside and inside corners are going to be called consistently and correctly. In other words, balls cannot be turned into strikes by skilled catchers with quick hands and smooth actions.

 

There’s also the benefit to pitchers with poor in-zone command. If a catcher sets up for an outside fastball, for example, but a the pitch is yanked onto the inner part of the plate, human umpires might be fooled enough by the catcher reaching for the pitch to call it ball.

 

That’s not the case with TrackMan.

 

“It does allow the pitchers to be able to throw fastballs at the top of the zone, competitive pitches, and for those pitchers to get those called strikes that are well deserved on their end,” Angels outfielder Jo Adell said. “For hitters, obviously, that’s a tough pitch to hit. There’s a lot of low-ball hitters these days, and it’s a way for pitchers to be effective at the same time. How good it is inside-outside really helps the hitters not feel like they have to get up to bat with a fungo sometimes.”

 

Even with the benefits they reaped, both hitters and pitchers who experienced the TrackMan zone in the AFL came away still wanting a human umpire behind the plate, like they had during the regular season and at games at the AFL’s other three ballparks.

 

“I think I’d rather deal with a human error rather than a computer error. It’s still really tough to get this zone adjusted to everything,” Lowe said. “Like I said, the top and bottom of the zone is the hardest part, and if they’re ever going to use that in the big leagues or any other levels, they’re going to have to work on that. But for the most part I’d rather deal with a human umpire.”

 

Mariners lefthander Raymond Kerr had similar feelings toward the zone he faced during games at Salt River compared with his experiences in the rest of his games.

 

“I don’t like that. It takes away the catcher’s ability to frame, and umpires are delayed on calls. I just think it slows down the game a little bit,” he said. “I heard about it like two months ago, but I didn’t think they were really going to do it, because the umpire doesn’t really have a job after that. They’re just sitting back there getting buzzed calling strikes and balls. I think by doing that you’re going to make umpires a little lazier behind the dish.”

[saskjayfan]

Kirk, Pardinho, Groshans, SWR maybe

 

Pardinho and Groshans haven't played high A yet. They are going to hit all levels next year and have an impact in 2021? That seems more than a tad optimistic. Even if SWR makes it to the the majors mid way through 2021 it's a lot to ask a rookie to help a contending team. Realistically, the next best prospects are coming in 2022. The projected ETA on all those guys according to MLB pipeline is 2022.

 

My point is pretty simple. You have the balls to make moves to win now and in 2021, which involves spending money and prospect capital, or you spend nothing, trade Giles for more prospects and push it out to 2022.

 

Waiting means more crap years in terms of wins and losses. It means crap revenue for the team. It's going to be more difficult to convince free agents to come here and Rogers brass to spend money when the team is losing games and money.

[Barkerfan23]

Let's see how many left handed outfielders and 5th starters we can get for Giles

[Boxcar]

Pardinho and Groshans haven't played high A yet. They are going to hit all levels next year and have an impact in 2021? That seems more than a tad optimistic. Even if SWR makes it to the the majors mid way through 2021 it's a lot to ask a rookie to help a contending team. Realistically, the next best prospects are coming in 2022. The projected ETA on all those guys according to MLB pipeline is 2022.

 

My point is pretty simple. You have the balls to make moves to win now and in 2021, which involves spending money and prospect capital, or you spend nothing, trade Giles for more prospects and push it out to 2022.

 

Waiting means more crap years in terms of wins and losses. It means crap revenue for the team. It's going to be more difficult to convince free agents to come here and Rogers brass to spend money when the team is losing games and money.

 

I agree with your sentiment I was just listing possibilities.

[BTS]

Is Fangraphs getting kickbacks for turning their site into a job board? Three job notices posted today alone.

[Ray]

Julio Teheran non-tendered.

[BTS]

Talk me out of Danny Salazar.

 

Came in here to post about the Indians outrighting him. Very intriguing target.

[Orgfiller]

Talk me out of Danny Salazar.

 

Ace reliever Danny Salazar? Yes please.

[glory]

Talk me out of Danny Salazar.

 

As a reliever, absolutely. No chance he can be a SP.

[glory]

Odorizzi is getting the qualifying offer. Cross him off the list (for the Jays).

[Deadpool]

In his start in the Arizona Fall League’s annual Fall Stars Game, Royals prospect Daniel Lynch was extremely impressive. The 6-foot-6 lefthander whiffed two hitters in a scoreless inning and showed a fastball that reached 99 mph.

 

Because the game was played at Salt River Fields, the first strikeout came with a little bit of an asterisk. The park utilized the TrackMan-enforced strike zone for the AFL’s six-week season, which led to some interesting calls.

 

Lynch opened the Fall Stars Game with a strikeout on a pitch that initially appeared to be more than a bit low, especially against 5-foot-9 Rays prospect Vidal Brujan. Yet, after a brief pause, home plate umpire Erich Bacchus reared back and rang up Brujan, who stared at Bacchus, dumbfounded.

 

Except that in this case Bacchus was merely the messenger. The real call was made by a computer, sent to an iPod clipped to his belt, then relayed to an ear piece before Bacchus relayed the call.

 

 

The automated strike zone was in effect for every game played at Salt River Fields, which is the home of the AFL’s Salt River and Scottsdale clubs. Major League Baseball was testing the TrackMan technology in a more casual setting.

 

And Brujan’s strikeout, which left Lynch laughing on the mound, wasn’t a one-time bug. Hitters throughout the brief AFL season were getting rung up on pitches catchers were scooping out of the dirt as well as ones that crossed somewhere near the middle of a hitter’s chest.

 

By the end, two things were clear: Pitchers with arsenals geared toward working from the top to the bottom of the strike zone were at a stark advantage, and nobody—neither hitters nor pitchers—was happy with TrackMan.

 

"Not a fan,” Angels outfielder Brandon Marsh said. "Just because the ball can barely clip the zone—top, bottom, inside, outside—and the catcher can have his wrist break and drop the ball and it’s still a strike.

 

"I mean, I can’t complain against it, because it’s the ‘perfect’ strike zone, but baseball has always had human error in it, good and bad. I feel like, if you take that away from the game it’s changing the whole game. I’ll adapt to anything whether it happens.”

 

 

For a quick refresher on what TrackMan has been tasked with enforcing, we turn to the MLB rulebook, which defines the strike zone as “that area over home plate which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap.”

 

With that in mind, a pitch gets called a strike when “any part of the ball passes through any part of the strike zone.”

 

That last part is the key. If a small piece of the baseball passes through a small piece of the strike zone, that’s a “rulebook” strike. As seen in the AFL, calling a game strictly by the book makes it clear that the strike zone is far bigger than human umpires normally enforce.

 

Even with the built-in advantage created by TrackMan, pitchers in the AFL were not impressed with what they saw during their games at Salt River Fields.

 

“Whether it benefits me or not, I’m just coming at it from a baseball purist standpoint. Umpires are back there and they have a job for a reason,” Mariners righthander Penn Murfee said. “It’s to manage the calling of the game—why take out one of the biggest pieces of that? The enemy of good is better in a lot of senses and I just think that’s a good idea from someone who came along who never should have been tempted.”

 

Besides the zone itself, another factor that irked both hitters and pitchers alike is the delay between the pitch hitting the catcher’s glove and when the home plate umpire relayed TrackMan’s decision. The entire process took roughly four seconds, and led to hitters getting punched out to end innings as the catcher was throwing the ball back to the mound in preparation for the next pitch.

 

“I think the weirdest part is just the pause from the pitch hitting the catcher’s glove and then the umpire calling it a strike,”Rays outfielder Josh Lowe said. “Sometimes it happens throughout the regular season where an umpire is frozen on a pitch and it takes him a second or two to call it, but you see it more out here, where you don’t know if it’s going to be a strike or not.”

 

Those familiar with umpires like Tim McClelland and Joe Brinkman are used to not seeing the visualization of the strike call until very late after the pitch is in the catcher’s mitt, but those guys vocalized the call for the hitter and pitcher much earlier, so not everybody was left in the lurch. The human behind the plate during TrackMan games was forced to wait, just the same as everybody else, which can obviously annoy all those involved.

 

For all its faults that still need to be corrected, there are some obvious advantages to the TrackMan zone. First, clearly, is consistency. Teams need not worry about whether an umpire’s zone typically favors hitters or pitchers, or whether an argument in the third inning might influence a call in the seventh inning. So long as everything runs smoothly, the strike zone will be the same from the first inning until the last inning.

 

And for as weird as the strike zone has seemed at its highest and lowest points, the outside and inside corners are going to be called consistently and correctly. In other words, balls cannot be turned into strikes by skilled catchers with quick hands and smooth actions.

 

There’s also the benefit to pitchers with poor in-zone command. If a catcher sets up for an outside fastball, for example, but a the pitch is yanked onto the inner part of the plate, human umpires might be fooled enough by the catcher reaching for the pitch to call it ball.

 

That’s not the case with TrackMan.

 

“It does allow the pitchers to be able to throw fastballs at the top of the zone, competitive pitches, and for those pitchers to get those called strikes that are well deserved on their end,” Angels outfielder Jo Adell said. “For hitters, obviously, that’s a tough pitch to hit. There’s a lot of low-ball hitters these days, and it’s a way for pitchers to be effective at the same time. How good it is inside-outside really helps the hitters not feel like they have to get up to bat with a fungo sometimes.”

 

Even with the benefits they reaped, both hitters and pitchers who experienced the TrackMan zone in the AFL came away still wanting a human umpire behind the plate, like they had during the regular season and at games at the AFL’s other three ballparks.

 

“I think I’d rather deal with a human error rather than a computer error. It’s still really tough to get this zone adjusted to everything,” Lowe said. “Like I said, the top and bottom of the zone is the hardest part, and if they’re ever going to use that in the big leagues or any other levels, they’re going to have to work on that. But for the most part I’d rather deal with a human umpire.”

 

Mariners lefthander Raymond Kerr had similar feelings toward the zone he faced during games at Salt River compared with his experiences in the rest of his games.

 

“I don’t like that. It takes away the catcher’s ability to frame, and umpires are delayed on calls. I just think it slows down the game a little bit,” he said. “I heard about it like two months ago, but I didn’t think they were really going to do it, because the umpire doesn’t really have a job after that. They’re just sitting back there getting buzzed calling strikes and balls. I think by doing that you’re going to make umpires a little lazier behind the dish.”

 

None of the arguments against this are valid. a) speed it up by putting a shock collar on the ump and when he screams in pain, it's a strike (or, I guess, just put a speaker there that yells "strike" or "ball" in Samuel L. Jackson's voice or something) adjust the rule if you want the zone to be smaller, or more consistent. Instead of "from the midpoint between the cock and the chin to the kneepit" change it to "from 35CM above the ground to 90CM above the ground" or whatever you decide.

 

It's not going to be seamless, but it's forfteenbajillion times better for everyone involved once they get used to it.

[Jimcanuck]

None of the arguments against this are valid. a) speed it up by putting a shock collar on the ump and when he screams in pain, it's a strike (or, I guess, just put a speaker there that yells "strike" or "ball" in Samuel L. Jackson's voice or something) adjust the rule if you want the zone to be smaller, or more consistent. Instead of "from the midpoint between the cock and the chin to the kneepit" change it to "from 35CM above the ground to 90CM above the ground" or whatever you decide.

 

It's not going to be seamless, but it's forfteenbajillion times better for everyone involved once they get used to it.

 

No doubt. Interesting that using trackman with a 3D strike zone giving the hitters fits, like the ball that dives and catches the bottom front end and hits the dirt in front of the catcher..... STRIKE!

[Dick_Pole]

Talk me out of Danny Salazar.

 

Apparently the Jays already have/had him:

 

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/salazda01.shtml

 

Similar Pitchers

Yordano Ventura (982.4)

Matt Shoemaker (970.6)

Zack Wheeler (969.0)

Zach Davies (966.3)

Anthony DeSclafani (964.4)

Steve Swetonic (963.9)

Kenta Maeda (963.2)

Mark Prior (963.2)

Aaron Sanchez (962.9)

Jose Berrios (961.6)

 

Similar Pitchers through 29

Chase Anderson (973.5)

Chris Young (969.6)

Dillon Gee (969.5)

Zack Wheeler (969.0)

Matt Harvey (968.6)

Kelly Downs (967.7)

Tim Leary (966.1)

Pascual Perez (966.0)

Shane Reynolds (965.7)

Garrett Richards (965.4)

[Bobthe4th]

None of the arguments against this are valid. a) speed it up by putting a shock collar on the ump and when he screams in pain, it's a strike (or, I guess, just put a speaker there that yells "strike" or "ball" in Samuel L. Jackson's voice or something) adjust the rule if you want the zone to be smaller, or more consistent. Instead of "from the midpoint between the cock and the chin to the kneepit" change it to "from 35CM above the ground to 90CM above the ground" or whatever you decide.

 

It's not going to be seamless, but it's forfteenbajillion times better for everyone involved once they get used to it.

 

I don’t understand why it takes 4 seconds, but that’s far too long.

[TheHurl]

Under the current rules, but with robot umps shift possibilities would be endless. With no one on and less than 2 strikes you could move your catcher anywhere in foul territory.

[Abomination]

Under the current rules, but with robot umps shift possibilities would be endless. With no one on and less than 2 strikes you could move your catcher anywhere in foul territory.

 

Heh. That would get fixed in a hurry.

[Abomination]

Big yes to Salazar, no to Teheran.

[saskjayfan]

I wonder what we think about J.D. Martinez. He opted in so that means he couldn't find a better deal elsewhere. His market is reduced to only AL teams. Seems like a bit of a market opportunity if we inquire.

 

Actually, I guess JDM is basically a rental because he'll opt out next year since he'll have 2/39 left and can probably beat that.

 

He's opting out this year.

[saskjayfan]

He just opted in.

 

yeah my bad...they were talking about him potentially opting out on mlb radio. I thought I read he opted out...regardless, there's no way Shatkins is spending that kind of money on Martinez, so we aren't going to trade for him.

[saskjayfan]

How does Will Smith not accept his qualifying offer?

[Jimcanuck]

The expectation on Moose is 2-3 yrs @ $14-16M per

 

Can play 2B, 3B, 1B

 

A nice target and fit

[gruber92]

The expectation on Moose is 2-3 yrs @ $14-16M per

 

Can play 2B, 3B, 1B

 

A nice target and fit

 

Wait a minute.. Mike Moustakis can play second base?