Newsletter Excerpt, November 27, 2024 -- "Blake Snell to the Dodgers"

 

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You may not want to hear this, but I am impressed by the way Guggenheim Partners is doubling down on putting the best team on the field. Over the last ten non-pandemic years, the Dodgers have averaged 3.8 million tickets sold a year, an absurd run of success at the gate. The Dodgers are trying to give those fans, who pay some of the highest ticket prices in baseball, another championship team. They’re putting the fans’ money on the field. 

The best owner is the one who cares more about the next win than the next dollar, and paying $76 million next year for Blake Snell shows that is exactly where Mark Walter and Guggenheim stand.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 26, 2024 -- "NL West 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.

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

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Los Angeles Dodgers

With Japanese righty Roki Sasaki’s eventual bonus coming out of the 2025 international free-agent budget, pretty much every team can pay him the same amount of money. The actual rules governing the pools are complicated, tied to Bud’s Bonus draft picks, but the long story short is the difference in available bonus money is unlikely to be a factor in Sasaki’s decision. He’s going to pick based on where he wants to play and who he wants to play with.

The Dodgers would seem to have a lot of advantages, then. They’re already lining up a six-man rotation for next year with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani. With two Japanese stars on the roster, there’s an infrastructure in place for integrating another one, and organizational experience with how to best make Sasaki’s transition an easy one. The Dodgers are the best team in baseball and the closest thing to a guaranteed playoff team. Sasaki would be asked to be an ace for a lot of other teams; here, he could be the #3 or even #4 starter.

After last year’s outcry over Shohei Ohtani’s contract, in which the player deferred most of his salary for ten years to ease the burden on the team’s payroll, it would be hilarious to see the Dodgers now add a potential frontline starter for $5 million in bonus money and the minimum salary. Ohtani made $1.9 million in his first three seasons in the majors, then $8.5 million for his next two combined. Ohtani’s elbow surgery in 2018 and poor pandemic season in 2020 tamped down his pay, but Sasaki’s compensation will likely follow a similar path. The Dodger wouldn’t be buying talent in this case, but they would be leveraging their success, and their investments in Yamamoto and Ohtani, to add another potential superstar.

I’m sure they’ll try to make a rule stopping that soon, too.

 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 25, 2024 -- "NL East and 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.

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

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Pittsburgh Pirates

I’ve written about “The Demon” for more than a decade now. It’s pretty much an inviolable rule that if you’re one of the hardest-throwing starters in baseball, you’re going to blow out your elbow. Gerrit Cole has been shockingly durable, Zack Wheeler has stayed on the mound for a while after having Tommy John surgery early in his career, but they’re the exceptions. 

So when you see Paul Skenes drafted, and a year later he’s the hardest-throwing starter in baseball, it’s just impossible to not hear the clock ticking. It’s awful to think this way, but you have to. Skenes’s teammate, rookie Jared Jones, was the fourth-hardest throwing starter in baseball, at least until the end of the year, when he came back from a lat injury with much less velo. Maybe in 1964 or 1984 or even 2004 you could see a team call up two young hurlers like this and dream on the next six years. In 2024, you dream on the next six starts.

The Pirates’ moment is now. Their two best players are max-velo starting pitchers, a category of player that will get hurt and miss a season to two seasons. They’re healthy now, though, so the Pirates have to put a team around them that can win now. There’s no building long-term around pitchers like this. Ask the Braves about Spencer Strider. Ask the Marlins about Sandy Alcantara. Ask the Angels about Shohei Ohtani; in fact, ask them twice.

To put a 70-win team around Skenes and Jones next year, while asking them to make 55 starts at the minimum salary, is criminal. The Pirates project to have one of the worst offenses in baseball and one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, and the two go hand in hand. They’ve been bad at developing hitters, even while investing a ton of draft capital in them. They go into next year with Skenes, Jones, Luis Ortiz, Oneil Cruz, and Bryan Reynolds for a combined $16 million or so. Their total tax payroll is under $100 million. I doubt they can get Juan Soto to go to Pittsburgh for any amount of money, but they can get ten wins better over the third-worst offense in baseball last year just by writing checks.

Here is the shopping list for the 2025 Pirates. Yes, they’re overpaying for these players.

-- Alex Bregman, four years, $90 million. Bregman in his decline phase will be a three-win player for a few years, helped by an excellent contact rate and good defense. He’s a three-win upgrade on Jared Triolo.

-- Tyler O’Neill, two years, $50 million. This is a too-high AAV in an effort to convince O’Neill to come to Pittsburgh. There’s injury risk, to be sure, but I’d rather pay O’Neill at 30 and 31 than Teoscar Hernandez at 32 and 33. O’Neill is a better outfielder, too. By Baseball Reference calculations, the Pirates had the worst right fielders in baseball last year. TON is worth at least three wins to them even if he plays just 110 games.

-- Carlos Santana, one year, $15 million, plus vesting option. These two know each other, as Santana signed with the Pirates in 2023 before being traded at the deadline. The salary is more than what Santana has made on his last two deals, but he’s coming off a fantastic defensive season and is still above average at the plate. He’s worth two wins over Rowdy Tellez and Co. 

Those three players make the 2025 Pirates eight to ten wins better while adding about $60 million cash to the payroll -- still well below average. They put an improved defense on the field behind Skenes, Jones, and Ortiz, and make for a huge improvement at the plate. After doing this, the Pirates can scour leftovers for upgrades at DH and the middle infield, maybe see if Joc Pederson or Gleyber Torres slips through the cracks until February.

If you can’t believe I’m recommending this plan, well, neither can I. The equation is just different for a team built about Paul Skenes and Jared Jones. You have to act as if there is no tomorrow, because everything we know about players like them tells us there is no tomorrow. 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 20, 2024 -- "AL West 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.

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

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Seattle Mariners

The Mariners, who seemed to score about eight runs a week in the summer, actually ended up 12th in the majors in wRC+ with an above-average 104 mark. Randy Arozarena was great for them, and Julio Rodriguez closed with a 140 wRC+ over the final two months. It wasn’t enough to catch the Astros, but it may have been enough to change the tenor of their offseason. With most of the players who drove that late-summer drive returning, do the Mariners actually need to trade a pitcher for a hitter?

That’s an old-fashioned baseball trade, of course, one team trading from strength to shore up a weakness, matching up with another team to do the same. The Orioles are the mirror image of the Mariners, loaded with so many good young hitters they can overpay for Trevor Rogers, but thin in the rotation. Matching them up isn’t quite so easy, though, and teams can be reluctant to trade young players with superstar upside. George Kirby for Coby Mayo and Heston Kjerstad works better when you’re the third caller to KZZZ than when it’s your job in the balance.

The Mariners, I think, can run at this from a different direction. They are the one team in this division with a strong farm system, deep in up-the-middle prospects. Colt Emerson and Cole Young have a clear path to jobs in Seattle as the future double-play combination, and behind them is teenage sensation Felnin Celesten. Blocked, though, is catcher Henry Ford, top-50 at MLB Pipeline, an OBP machine at every level of the minors so far, and considered strong defensively with no chance he’ll need to move out from behind the dish.

Cal Raleigh just wrapped his third straight three-win season for the Ms, hitting 34 homers, throwing out a league-high 32 basestealers, and setting a career high with 4.6 bWAR. Raleigh is a star, controlled through 2027 and just now reaching arbitration. He blocks Ford the way Rudy Gobert blocks weak layups. 

The Mariners don’t have to trade one of their top starters. They can trade Ford, a top prospect at a key position who could be major-league ready by the summer, and keep the team’s strength intact. Where might he go? Bad or rebuilding teams who could use a young catcher include the Marlins, though they don’t have hitters to deal; the Reds, who do have hitting depth; and perhaps the Rays, depending on what they’re trying to do in 2025. 

The simplest thing is to trade...well, I’d try to make it Bryce Miller...for the best hitter you can get, and that’s certainly not a bad idea. Getting more creative can help the Mariners not just align their talent better, but in trading someone who won’t contribute next year for someone who will, create a true three- or four-win upgrade in a division that has been decided by less than that the last two years.

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 18, 2024 -- "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.

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Detroit Tigers

So...what now?

The theme today, and with 20-odd MLB teams, is “payrolls nowhere near the tax threshold.” The Tigers were 28th in payroll last year, just over $100 million after benefits, and are under $100 million heading into the winter. Their late-season run bumped their attendance 15% year-over-year and got them a couple of home playoff games, and they should be able to break two million tickets sold next year for the first time since 2017. They are staying with Diamond Sports Group at a negotiated lower rate, so they avoided their local TV money dropping to near zero.

The penalties for investing in your product, the ones that restrict the movements of teams like the Cubs and Red Sox, or cost the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees big money, are intended in part to spread talent around. Signing Juan Soto to a $50 million salary will cost the Yankees $100 million a year, at least for the next few years. The Tigers don’t have that problem. The economic idea is that teams faced with paying these penalties won’t be able to justify the investment -- no player is worth $100 million a year -- and will pass on signing the player, allowing teams below the threshold to be more competitive for stars. We’ve seen some teams be cowed by that, but a handful at the top have not.

The Tigers do not have these problems, with a payroll three or four superstars shy of the penalty thresholds. Moreover, because they have so much room to grow their attendance, they can gain directly by spending money in free agency. The Padres and Phillies provide great recent examples of how teams can make money just by the act of signing free agents. The Padres sold 10% more tickets after signing Manny Machado in 2019, and their attendance has jumped 57% over six years. After the Phillies signed Bryce Harper, their attendance jumped 27% in 2019 and, like the Padres, 57% over six years.

Teams used to understand that some of the value in signing free agents was in the act itself, of getting your fans excited in the offseason, excited enough to buy tickets. During the RSN era, though, so much of a team’s money was guaranteed that many teams neglected to bother with generating excitement. That’s obviously changing, and if attendance becomes a bigger part of a team’s business model, the payoff for being active in the offseason increases.

The Tigers have a low payroll, a young team, and a city excited about its ballclub again. This is exactly the moment to spend money. They made the playoffs with a .300 OBP, and should just target anyone who can bump that up. Alex Bregman is a fit. Tyler O’Neill is a fit. If they want to move on from Spencer Torkelson, Carlos Santana is a fit. Yes, Soto is a fit. (Juan Soto fits 30 MLB teams and probably a handful of NFL and NBA ones.) A.J. Hinch’s “bullpen chaos” was, like Stephen Vogt’s, an adaptation to the talent on hand, and the Tigers have more pitching than the Guards do. Still, the Tigers can absolutely afford to play at the top of the market to bring in Burnes or Fried, to give Skubal a teammate on his level.

The 2024 Tigers were a great story. Now we see if Chris Ilitch is willing to make them a great team.

 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 15, 2024 -- "AL East 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.

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Toronto Blue Jays

The Blue Jays have made the playoffs in three of the last five seasons, and in that time have the tenth-best record in baseball. 

The Blue Jays have not won a playoff game in eight years. 

You can frame the Blue Jays, coming off a last-place finish with the worst bullpen in baseball, any way you like. What you can’t do is deny that the 2025 season feels like end of a cycle for them, one way or another. Those playoff runs, one in the pandemic season, all produced quick first-round exits. A failed attempt to sign Shohei Ohtani last winter left a pall over the offseason, one that wasn’t lifted when the Jays then declined to sign anyone else of note. (Justin Turner produced 0.4 bWAR and was traded at the deadline.) The core of homegrown players took big steps backward, with only Vladimir Guerrero Jr. meeting expectations. The Jays ended up with middling starting pitching, middling offense, and a bullpen collapse that turned them into deadline sellers.

This has become an old team, whose pitchers had the fifth-highest weighted age last year, the hitters the 12th-highest. Guerrero is a free agent at the end of ’25, as are Bo Bichette and Chris Bassitt. Kevin Gausman, George Springer, Daulton Varsho, and Alejandro Kirk are free agents after 2026. Kiley McDaniel pegged the Jays as a bottom-ten farm system in midsummer, so if the Jays can’t win now, it may be a while before they can win again. It’s really now or never.

If you want optimism, take it from a few things. One, the Jays’ third-order record was 78-84, not terrible. Two, a bullpen is the easiest thing to fix on the fly. The team’s top three relievers by talent, Jordan Romano, Chad Green, and Erik Swanson, were never fully healthy last year. They combined for just 105 innings of a 4.37 ERA and a FIP well over 5.00. I would not be surprised to see the Jays get 175 innings of 3.50 ball from that group next year. The A’s, just to pick the most recent example, had the worst bullpen in baseball in ’23, and the ninth-best in ’24. 

The focus has to be on the offense, which lost six points of wRC+ from 2023. Brandon Belt’s 138 wRC+ was simply never replaced, nor was Matt Chapman’s 110 mark. Bo Bichette went from being a superstar to a replacement-level player. The Jays hit 156 home runs, their fewest since 2008, and slugged .389, their lowest mark since 1997. You can’t just blame changes to Rogers Centre, either; the Jays hit their fewest number of road homers since 2008 and had their lowest road slugging since 2005. They just didn’t hit.

The Jays’ projected 2025 lineup features a lot of wishcasting for guys like Spencer Horwitz, Will Wagner, and Nathan Lukes. All three had good numbers in ’25, but all three are older prospects without substantial pedigrees. Building a lineup that’s one-third wishcasts is two-thirds crazy. The Jays are probably headed into a rebuild, anyway, and with the power of Rogers Communications behind them have plenty of access to cash. Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins might be well-served to upend the market by dangling short-term, high-AAV contracts for Alex Bregman, Max Fried, Tyler O’Neill, and Gleyber Torres to make the 2025-26 teams the best they can be, try to put one or two more playoff teams on the field, and perhaps even make the team one Guerrero will commit to past 2025.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 12, 2024 -- "The End of the RSN Era"

 

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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My concerns, then, are not about the short term. Everyone is going to find some kind of TV home. It will be better for some fans, especially the ones who have complained for years about what have been deemed “blackouts.” (They’re not, any more than KFC blacks you out of buying a Big Mac.)  It could, and we’ll get to this later this winter, start to reconnect on-field success with profitability. MLB may be able to cobble enough streaming rights together to at least experiment with a full in-market product. It is going to have opportunities to do live tests of pricing and packaging and marketing.

In the long term, though, I’m not sure this is sustainable. That Yankee deal with MSG 35 years ago kicked off three decades of complaining, and even the massive amount of revenue sharing that occurs today has not quieted that. In 2022, the top five teams by TV revenue earned about four times what the bottom five did. In 2025, the top five is going to out-earn the bottom five by a factor of 20. There is no path by which streaming revenue returns a fraction of RSN revenue in the short or medium term, so this problem is going to be persistent and will probably grow. Manfred wants to put MLB on a path to one-stop streaming, all 30 teams with no local blackouts, and he can’t get there when the local TV rights of a third of MLB teams are worth more than $100 million a year, while a third are worth almost nothing.