2022 MLB General Season Chatter: Ghost Runners On The Half-Billion Dollar Infield

Hardest-hit batted balls tracked by Statcast (since 2015):

Oneil Cruz: 122.4 mph, today
Giancarlo Stanton: 122.2 mph, 8/9/21
Giancarlo Stanton: 122.2 mph, 10/1/17
Giancarlo Stanton: 121.7 mph, 8/9/18
Giancarlo Stanton: 121.3 mph, 7/25/20

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) August 24, 2022

it was a single off of the top of clemente wall in RF in pittsburgh and would have been a home run (and obviously the hardest hit one in the statcast era) in 26 parks

also it reminds me of a weird career stanton has had

Weird how? Been pretty consistently solid slugger with a few outlier good years and a bunch of injury hampered years

yeah, weird is not the right word. he's amazingly consistent on the hitting side, when he plays. a career 141 wRC+, never below 118 in a season, never higher than 161 either. maybe it's his injury history that's notable? i don't pay any attention to his injury status, i just always assume he's injured, and he usually is. despite all that, he always comes back, year and year, hitting the ball harder than anyone. maybe what's weird, if anything is, is that he's quick to break but he's also quick to repair

It's weird that he could pass 500 HRs, frequently achieves these bizarre feats of strength that shouldn't be possible, plays for the Yankees, and also I constantly forget he exists when I'm not watching him do something. He seems like someone who should be a high-impact gamechanger type but he hasn't been that in years. Kinda just a dude now

i don't get to see him play that often. by stats he kind of seems like he verges on one true outcome, and that's a boring kind of player to watch when they're not hitting the one most truthful outcome. especially if they're not a superlative defender. he needs to do some roy hobbs shit

hit hard, throw hard, be 6'7"

In his last 10 ABs, Corey Dickerson is 10-for-10! 😱 pic.twitter.com/b7RVNdz6ro

— MLB (@MLB) August 25, 2022

i think this is tied (10) with the most in NL history, if i'm reading this right? record is 12 in the AL (Walt Dropo and Matt Diaz -- baseball is weird)

https://www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/rb_bstrk.shtml

er, just Dropo, not Diaz. and also, it's a three-way tie for first, between Dropo, Pinky Higgins, and Johnny Kling. loving these names

icymi

A 99 MPH cannon. 🔥

Run on Aquino and you will get punished. 💀 pic.twitter.com/9eQLZn9bG8

— MLB (@MLB) August 25, 2022

as of monday the red sox, despite being 3.5 games behind the orioles and having a far worse run differential, were still ahead of baltimore in fangraphs' odds to make the playoffs

that finally changed on tuesday, although today they still give the sox a 0.1% chance to win the world series while the o's are at 0.0% (despite their 5.5-game lead over boston)

i mean obviously neither are going to make it, but it does seem like the model should adjust to the 77% of the season that's been played and in which the sox have been awful

Julio Rodríguez sure seems like a budding superstar, but I'm still surprised 21-year-olds are getting these massive extensions after playing like....half a season. That seems like throwing a big mix of pressure/risk/expectations into the equation right at the start. Hearing about this made me realize that I can't remember the last time I heard about Wander Franco (turns out he is on the IL).

This Mets season has been so great that most of my stress has been directed at the Braves' inability to lose for the last two/three months.

re boston it’s going to be an interesting offseason. not sure why xander would feel like sticking around at this point. killer b’s all gone, pitching a shambles. it feels like the real rebuild is yet to come. looking back on the betts deal… one of the worst i can remember

just reading about the julio rodriguez deal:

Basically, the extension starts off as an eight-year, $120 million deal. After seven years, the Mariners have to decide whether to pick up a club option that starts after the eighth season. The specific length and value of that option depends on how Rodríguez fares in MVP voting, but it can run for eight or 10 years and range in value from $200 million to $350 million. If the Mariners don’t pick up the option, Rodríguez has a five-year, $90 million option that he can exercise, providing him some financial security on the back end if he gets injured or goes the way of Cesar Cedeno. The contract maxes out at 18 years and $470 million. At a minimum, Rodríguez can guarantee himself $210 million. Per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the deal also comes with a full no-trade clause, giving Rodríguez veto power over any trades in the event that another team comes to like the terms of his deal a lot more than the Mariners do.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-ms-and-julio-rodriguez-write-the-most-expensive-choose-your-own-adventure-book-ever/

has there ever been a player option that is so long? after 8 seasons, if Rodriguez goes full-on Bellinger, he could still give himself another 5 years, $90M. by then, in the distant year of, 2030, that will probably be a pittance compared to the cost of living in the nuclear charred landscape, where mordor meets the road and everyone is crying. but still! it's hard to imagine doing that to fans, too -- they've watched you suck for so long, and then you press the "5 more years of my bullshit" button, lol.

then again, a lot of players who are as good as julio rodriguez, at his age, turn out to be worth the investment. this is pure speculation and i know nothing about baseball or life, but to me this seems like the kind of contract a GM puts together when they know they're not going to be there 8 years from now for the repercussions, lol

Rodriguez isn't even the best rookie in the American League, where's Adley's megadeal

coming, probably! and man, betting on a catcher to stay healthy for a long time also sounds like a bad idea, lol. i guess it's easier now in the post-buster posey injury era, though.

NO FUTURE!

jeez, this is a lot of money riding purely on MVP votes!

At minimum, Seattle will be deciding on whether to extend the contract by eight years and another $200MM. That figure could escalate as follows, depending on Rodriguez’s finishes in MVP balloting over the next seven years:

$240MM over eight years with two or three top ten finishes
$260MM over eight years with four top ten finishes
$280MM over eight years if he wins an MVP and finishes in the top five once more or finishes in the top five of MVP balloting on three occasions
$350MM over ten years if he wins two MVP awards or finishes among the top five in balloting on four occasions
In the event Rodriguez hits that highest threshold and the Mariners exercise the option, the contract would max out at 18 years and $470MM in total value.

rodriguez should go full cheater and pay each of the 30 writers who vote for AL MVP. just give them each a million or whatever, it'll be worth it for everyone

These super early megadeals feel a bit like reading the first half-chapter of a book and finding it so amazing that you don’t need to read the rest to know it will be one of the best books. Definitely possible, but does not seem advisable. No one could have predicted a Bellinger megadeal after his 2019 MVP season would have turned out horribly from the Dodgers perspective.

Btw the dodgers have gone 41-9 in their 50 games, and I believe 115-47 over their last 162 regular season games.

coming, probably! and man, betting on a catcher to stay healthy for a long time also sounds like a bad idea, lol.

good point, save the money for gunnar

Hader has been a disaster for the Padres

very surreal top of the tenth as the espn broadcast has given way to a full playback of a new adam wainwright original song

top of the sixth. i'm sorry, i don't know what just happened there

it wasn't horrible. i feel strange

imo the cardinals should prioritize pujols getting to 700 over the playoffs and bat him in the 1 hole every day no matter what. i'm assuming cardinals fans agree with me.

Many of them probably would!

Did not realize the Dodgers have a starting lineup with three people in it hitting under .200 (Gallo, Muncy, Barnes). And Bellinger is at .207.

props to former top yankees prospect manny banuelos earning his first W since 2019

so two of the front runners for the AL cy young both got injured within a day of each other (COINCIDENCE?!). unclear when either will return, but I wonder if this will make it Cease's to lose?!

it doesn't sound like verlander will be out long so i think he's still in the running

hader in this jersey looks like when i create a team / player in mlb the show

https://i.imgur.com/EpzVIrM.png

lmao now this is an entrance

This is incredible.

(🎥 @SNYtv)

pic.twitter.com/jp1YjAb5JT

— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) September 1, 2022

they should change the song based on his performance, throughout this season but also into his older years as he gets worse. go more minor key, more adagio

ngl i thought that was scherz playing trumpet and nodded agreeably to myself

'timmy trumpet' is a good new york name

spencer strider with the god-mode pitching performance of 2022. 8 IP 16 K

16 K and no walks. Early in his career, Clemens had a 15 K/0 BB game, and James wrote a long piece in one of the abstracts about how no one flukes into a game like that; you can have a fluky 15 K/2 BB game, or a 13 K/1 BB game, but the only pitchers who'd ever had 15 K/O BB games were legitimately great.

94 game score, nice. I had the game on where I tend bar but was too busy tonight to catch any of Strider's K's. Every time I looked up the Braves were up. I love watching him pitch, his delivery is very Kimbrel-esque.

This was the Clemens game ('84, his rookie season):

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS198408210.shtml

i only caught the last inning he pitched but his composure through that, hitting the spots when it counted, was impressive

He’s pitched for nearly a year so where’s his 10 year $230 million extension

I might be wrong but i imagine those massive extensions will mainly be for position players. Too much injury risk with any pitcher

The Rays now officially residing in the Yankees' collective head.

down to a three-game lead in the loss column

i actually kind of like aaron boone and i don't think he's a bad manager, but i have to love all the stories that are like 'boone furious as yankees hit bottom' despite, you know, still being in first place

Boone is a p lousy in game bullpen manager ime. I also think he (via front office, surely) tinker too much w lineups and matchups

idk i don't think it's boone's fault that judge is carrying the entire offense, or that they traded away a legitimate MLB starting pitcher for a guy who's been in a walking cast for 12 weeks

christ the twins are utterly useless

pitch clock is coming and infield shifts are going

A pitch clock, a ban on shifts, and larger bases are about to become permanently part of Major League Baseball when a joint committee votes Friday to approve the rules for use starting next season, according to a person familiar with the committee’s schedule.

MLB is pushing for the changes, which league officials hope will rejuvenate what many believe has become a stodgy sport in the age of data. They hope the pitch clock will bring game times down from record highs. They hope banning the shift will allow more hits and therefore more action. They hope larger bases will induce more stealing, and therefore more havoc on the bases. They hope, in other words, that these changes will yank baseball out of its modern-day slog.

And though the competition committee, which was created as part of the new collective bargaining agreement between the owners and players’ union, is meant to ensure player input on any major rule changes, it was not built to give them veto power: Six of the 11 members of the committee are MLB representatives. Four are players. One is an umpire. What MLB wants, one would think, MLB will get.

Minor league baseball players take a step toward unionization

So the sport long treasured as the one without a clock is about to get one. And after seeing the results of a test run in the minor leagues, as well as the noticeable effect it has had on young pitchers just arriving in MLB, everyone from once-skeptical players to old-school executives are growing comfortable with the idea — or so the conversation in clubhouses around the league for the last month would suggest.

The first two changes are somewhat self-explanatory. As tested in the minors this season, the shift rule would require four infielders to have their feet on the dirt, with two fielders on each side of second base, as the pitch is delivered. As tested in the minors — though hardly visible from the stands — bases will grow from 15 inches square to 18 inches square.

As for the pitch clock, the specifics of the rule on which the committee will vote Friday were not immediately available. But in Class AAA this season, pitchers were allotted 19 seconds to deliver a pitch with a runner on base, 15 seconds without. If they failed to deliver the ball in that time, the umpire called a ball. Pitchers could step off the rubber (or, as the a new baseball jargon will say it, “disengage from the rubber”) no more than twice per at-bat. If they stepped off a third time, they were called for a balk — unless they recorded an out by doing so. In other words, a third pickoff attempt is permitted as long as it works.

MLB is overdue for a female umpire. One may be on the way.

In Class AAA, hitters could call timeout just once per at-bat. If they were not in the box with nine seconds to go, the umpire penalizes him with a strike. By the end of the minor league season, teams were rarely combining for more than one violation per game.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/08/mlb-rules-pitch-clock-infield-shift/

They hope larger bases will induce more stealing, and therefore more havoc on the bases.

Saw a minor league game with a pitch clock and it seemed just fine, really unobtrusive

Is there a pitcher lobby? Seems like all these new rules favor the batter way more.

Banning the shift feels a little odd because it’s basically the hitters admitting they can’t make the adjustment.

Over the last three months, the Braves are 62-24, which is a .721 winning percentage. I keep thinking they are going to falter a little bit but they don’t.