Newsletter Excerpt, December 11, 2024 -- "Max Years"

 

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That four-pitch mix also makes him unusually effective when working deep into games. Fried’s career .255/.315/.361 line allowed the third time through is 12th-best in baseball over his eight-season career, and he loses less effectiveness as he pitches deeper in games than his peers do:

               AVG   OBP   SLG   K/BB    K%   OPS+  LgOPS+

First time    .230  .282  .348    4.0   25%    94      96

Second time   .235  .291  .343    3.5   23%    96     104

Third time    .255  .315  .361    3.5   24%   109     113

All pitchers lose effectiveness the third time through, but Fried is the rare pitcher who is often better the third time through than the available relief options are when they enter the game. That’s a big reason why, since the start of 2021, he leads MLB with four shutouts and is third with five complete games. CGSHOs are hard to come by now, of course. Fried is tied for fourth among starters the last four years with 12 starts of at least seven innings and no runs allowed. (Remaining free-agent ace Burnes leads with 16.) 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 10, 2024 -- "The TV Gap, In Practice"

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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If you take a step back from the details, you can divide MLB teams into two categories: Stable TV situations and unstable ones. Even the Diamond teams only have deals in the short term, and Diamond has proven itself to be a poor partner over any time frame. There are eleven teams I would describe as having stable, profitable TV situations: the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, Mets, Nationals, Cubs, and Dodgers are on networks built around those teams. Three other teams -- the A’s, Giants, and Phillies -- are partnered with Comcast and seem to be stable. The A’s made Sacramento their temporary home in no small part so as to retain their local-TV deal.

Now, we’re just a few weeks into the 2024-25 offseason, so what follows is a snapshot, but I think it may be an illustrative one. So far, there have been a dozen contract commitments of at least $15 million. Those break down as follows:

11 stable teams: nine signings, $1.365 billion
19 unstable teams: three signings, $156 million

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 9, 2024 -- "Juan Soto Signs"

 

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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Forget the money -- it doesn’t affect you. Forget the years -- they don’t affect you. It is very rare that that a team can make itself this much better in free agency, and signing a 26-year-old Juan Soto is one of those times. Soto’s combination of skill and youth is incredibly rare on the market, and by signing him, Steve Cohen made the Mets a lot better in one single move. That’s all you can ask from the owner of a baseball team. 

 

 

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

 

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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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.

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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.

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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.