Cleveland Sports Forum

Did not say he would replace Willis but he will be back with the Tribe. Might be this year.

Yes, the baseball is different — again.

An astrophysicist examines this year’s baseballs and breaks down the changes

By Dr. Meredith Wills 150

Welcome to baseball, circa 2019. Balls are flying, and records are falling. Players are on pace to hit 6,618 home runs, 1,000 more than last season’s 5,585 and 500 more than 2017’s all-time high of 6,105. At least 13 of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams are in a position to break franchise records. Twenty-one players are expected to hit more than 40 home runs — including Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich, who is projected for 61 — and the number who have already exceeded last season’s home run totals currently stands at 36 (and has probably gone up since this writing).

Balls are also traveling farther, with Rangers outfielder Nomar Mazara hitting a 505-foot homer this past Friday and tying the Statcast era record. In 2018, only 82 home runs surpassed 450 feet. This season, that number is already up to 84, with a projected total of 178 — an increase of 117 percent. And it’s not just long distances. Despite the fact that fly ball rates are up less than 0.5 percent from 2017 and 2018, home run rates are up 7.8 percent and 17.8 percent.

So, what’s going on?

Yes, the ball is different

As Jayson Stark recently demonstrated, it’s the ball. On Thursday, commissioner Rob Manfred even issued a statement acknowledging that “we do think it’s a drag issue.” Rob Arthur provided evidence of this as early as the first week in April, showing that this season’s ball had a significantly lower drag coefficient than that of 2018. With such a small sample, he determined the aerodynamics were comparable to those of the 2017 home run surge. By now, it’s clear that Arthur’s findings were an underestimate.

Last year, MLB commissioned a Home Run Committee to figure out the reason behind the 2017 home run surge. The committee found the only possible cause was a decrease in the ball’s drag coefficient; however, the group was unable to identify the specific source of the change. Performing my own independent studies, I determined the decrease in drag could be traced back to an increase in lace thickness, which inadvertently produced a rounder baseball. The introduction of thicker laces also corresponded to a marked increase in pitcher blister injuries, suggesting that as a possible factor.


Home run rate 1990-2019. The dates of each baseball sample are labeled by color.
To be clear though, the 2019 baseball is not the 2017 baseball. Not only is it different from those of late 2015-2018, it’s different from balls going back to at least 2000.
Baseballs from early 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Balls up through early 2015 make up one population, balls from late 2015 through 2018 constitute another, and balls from 2019 are a third. (Meredith Wills)
Even hitters and managers aren’t quite sure what’s going on. During an April 27 postgame interview, Astros pinch-hitter Tony Kemp said of his walk-off home run, “I think I surprised myself. … I wasn’t imagining myself hitting a home run in that situation, but I’ll take a home run right there.” When asked about a home run he hit on June 2, Dodgers first baseman David Freese answered, “I don’t know. I don’t really know how that went out, but it did.” Similarly, an “excuse-me” home run hit by Mets third baseman Todd Frazier on June 6 surprised managers on both sides. Mets manager Mickey Callaway commented, “You don’t anticipate (a hit like that) going out. You usually read the swing, and it just kept on going.” Meanwhile, Giants manager Bruce Bochy said, “I thought it was a fly ball. I was surprised by how far it went.”

Pitchers, in particular, are saying the ball has changed. Mets starter Noah Syndergaard described the baseballs as “(feeling) like ice cubes,” referencing a video of a dog trying to pick up an ice cube. Nationals closer Sean Doolittle told USA Today’s Steve Gardner, “(the baseballs) feel really slick. … There’s been several times where I’ve gotten one and I haven’t even thrown a pitch with it. It just really didn’t feel right in my hand, and so I just threw it out.” He also described the seams as feeling “lower but wider, if that makes sense,” and pointed out that, “(for guys) that spin the ball, it seems to be a little bit different.” Cubs starter Jon Lester told reporters, “… (the balls are) not rubbed up like they used to be. You get balls back and they’re basically white. It seems like they’re right out of the box.”

Statements like these suggest a baseball with smoother leather (which would not retain mud as effectively) and possibly with lower seams. Those properties would also produce a ball with less drag, leading to more home runs.

A detailed study of this season’s baseballs shows that is indeed the case.

What exactly has changed?
While the 2017 home run surge seems related to thicker laces, that does not mean the 2019 ball has undergone the same changes, as there are a number of ways to improve aerodynamics. Three effects can cause a ball to travel farther: It displaces less air, it “wobbles” less, or it creates less turbulence. The first requires a smaller ball; the second relies on a more centered core; the third occurs with either a smoother surface or a more spherical ball.

In its report and executive summary, the Home Run Committee considered properties of the baseball relevant to such aerodynamic changes. The committee measured two of them directly:

Smaller size
Lower seam height
However, neither of those was sufficiently different to account for the decrease in drag. Therefore, they postulated three additional and as-yet-unmeasured sources:

Smoother leather covers
Greater spherical symmetry (i.e. a rounder ball)
A more centered core (or “pill”)
While Manfred recently suggested pill-centering as a possible reason for the ball’s improved aerodynamics, this is the most difficult result to produce without significant manufacturing changes, since existing techniques make it hard to keep the pill from being centered to begin with. This 2011 Science Channel video shows how a baseball is wound. A baseball with a sufficiently off-center core would not only require different winding equipment, but its lopsidedness would cause the machinery to vibrate. (As an analogy, think of the thumping and jerking that occur during the spin cycle of an unbalanced washing machine.) Systematic production of such baseballs would lead to damaged equipment, and ball-winding equipment repairs or replacement appear nowhere on the Home Run Committee’s factory maintenance list. As baseballs are generally produced at least a half-year in advance, any major machinery updates affecting the 2019 ball would probably have been implemented before the report’s release last May. Therefore, it seems unlikely that pill-centering would explain a sudden change in drag; at the very least, we would be remiss not to also examine other possible sources.

Fortunately, each of the other four properties can be measured and quantified. Building on last year’s baseball construction research, I examined a sample of 39 balls from 2019, taking detailed measurements of each ball’s exterior and construction materials. I then compared my findings to samples used in previous studies: 12 balls from 2014, 14 balls from 2016-17, 12 balls from 2018, and 20 balls from 2000-2014. (Note: In a previous study, I identified these balls as covering 2010-2014, since that is what I was told by my source. I have since discovered that at least one ball dates to 2003, so I have expanded the presumed dates of the sample back to 2000, when then-Pacific Bell Park first opened.) In addition, I have expanded the 2018 sample to include six more balls and have added a 12-ball sample from the 2015 postseason. As a result, my complete pre-2019 data sets consist of 32 balls from before 2015 (13 with known years) and 44 late-2015-to-2018 balls.

The size of the ball
MLB’s official rules state the dimensions of the baseball must “measure not less than nine nor more than 9 ¼ inches (between 22.9 and 23.5 centimeters) in circumference.” Since a smaller ball would lead to lower drag, I measured the 2019 baseballs and compared their circumferences to samples from previous seasons. My results were similar to those of the Home Run Committee, in that I could find no systematic difference. If anything, this season’s ball seems slightly larger, though with such broad ball-to-ball variation that any systematic change would be indistinguishable.


Baseball circumference in centimeters for baseball samples from 2000-2014, 2014, 2016-2017, 2018 and 2019.
The seams are lower
Since lower seams make for a smoother surface, an overall change in their height would influence the ball’s aerodynamics. To find seam height, I used digital calipers to measure first the average thickness of each leather cover and then the average thickness at its edges. Because the interior surface of each cover is smooth (i.e. the seams do not protrude inward), the difference between these two thicknesses constitutes the seam height. With this method, I determined seam heights for five of my samples: 2000-2014, 2014, 2015 postseason, 2018 and 2019. As each ball has two covers, this gave me twice the number of data points.
Side view of leather covers from a 2018 and a 2019 baseball. Note the seams are thicker on the 2018 cover. (Meredith Wills)

For the period of 2000-2018, my findings tallied with those of the Home Run Committee, in that seam height showed no meaningful or consistent seasonal change. However, my 2019 results were very different.

For the first time in at least 19 years, seam height had decreased to such an extent that, even taking uncertainties into account, the seams were demonstrably lower. (This is described by the term “statistically significant.”) In fact, when compared to the average from previous seasons, the seams on the 2019 balls are only 54.6 percent ± 15.0 percent as high. While these data cannot measure the extent of the effect, there is no doubt that lower seams would improve aerodynamics. These results are also consistent with anecdotal pitcher observations.
Seam height in millimeters for baseball samples from 2000-2014, 2014, 2015 postseason, 2018 and 2019. Note the seams on the 2019 balls are significantly lower.
The leather is smoother
“Absolute smoothness” is difficult to quantify; the most precise techniques require lasers. However, finding “relative smoothness” is fairly simple. One way to do this is by measuring the “coefficient of static friction,” which amounts to the traction between two surfaces. Anybody who has tried walking on ice in different types of shoes has encountered the effects of static friction — if you’re wearing boots, you’re far less likely to slip than if you’re wearing dress shoes.

Quantifying static friction is remarkably straightforward. All that is required is a uniformly smooth board and the object being measured (in this case, a leather cover). One places the object on the board and raises one end; when the object loses traction and slides, the angle between the board and floor provides all of the information needed to calculate the coefficient of static friction. Therefore, as long as the same board is used, it becomes possible to measure leather smoothness.




A demonstration of how static friction is measured. Once the board reaches a certain angle, the folded leather cover will lose grip and slide. From that angle, one can determine the coefficient of static friction. (Cameron Adams)
As with seam height, I measured samples from 2000-2014, 2014, 2015 postseason, 2018 and 2019. Since the majority of the balls were either unused or batting practice balls, this meant the samples were generally unaffected by umpire-applied mud. To ensure a uniform shape, each cover was folded in half, with the two sides held together by neodymium magnets. Because the folding process puckers the upper side of the cover, I took care to measure the side that appeared smoothest, and some samples were eliminated due either to scuffs or excessive puckering. (In cases where covers are glued down very tightly, it is difficult to remove them without affecting smoothness.)



A leather cover showing puckering. Since the addition of such texture would affect smoothness measurements, covers like this were not included in the sample. (Meredith Wills)
Each folded cover was placed on a piece of laminated pressboard, one end of which was then raised until the cover began to slide. The height of the raised end of the board was recorded, enabling calculation of the angle between the board and the floor. To keep the motion as uniform as possible, the board was moved along and against two laminated surfaces, with microfiber towels placed at each end.

Up through 2018, the baseballs showed the sort of ball-to-ball variation expected from a handmade construction process. However, the static friction for the 2019 balls is 27.6 percent lower, a statistically significant result demonstrating the leather covers are genuinely smoother. Like decreased seam height, this contributes to a lower drag efficient, making home runs even more likely. In addition, slicker leather can be expected to produce the sort of grip issues being experienced by at least some pitchers.
Leather smoothness, as determined by the coefficient of static friction, for baseball samples from 2000-2014, 2014, 2015 postseason, 2018 and 2019. The lower the static friction, the smoother the leather. Note the covers on the 2019 baseballs are significantly smoother.
The ball is rounder
In a previous article, I found the 2017 home run surge may have been caused by improved spherical symmetry (i.e. ball roundness), which could be traced back to “bulging” along the seams; because this deforms the ball, more bulging produces greater drag. My results showed that pre-2015 balls had much more pronounced deformation than balls from 2018, meaning the rounder 2018 balls would travel farther.

Using the same techniques, I measured seam bulging on my 2019 baseballs. I also added six balls to my 2018 sample.

My findings were, to say the least, unexpected. While the 2000-2014 balls showed bulging of 0.66 percent ± 0.34 percent and the 2018 balls 0.28 percent ± 0.33 percent, those from 2019 deviated from spherical by only -0.04 percent ± 0.31 percent. Not only were the 2019 balls virtually round, what bulging they did show was slightly negative, suggesting the seams might be slightly “nestled” into the leather. In addition, while this change is only a trend when compared to the 2018 sample, the difference between the 2000-2014 and the 2019 samples is statistically significant.

Here, the effect on aerodynamics may actually be two-fold. Not only are the balls rounder (therefore producing less drag), but “nestled down” seams might decrease the impact of the already-lower seam height. This double-whammy would produce a ball that travels even farther.


Deviation from spherical symmetry (or “roundness”), as determined from measuring seam bulging, for baseball samples from 2000-2014, 2018 and 2019. The upper graph shows the average percentage difference from the baseball’s average diameter, with zero (the black dashed line) being completely round. The lower graph shows the same data for each baseball. Note the 2019 baseballs are almost completely round and even show slightly negative seam bulging. In addition, the difference between the 2000-2014 and the 2019 samples is statistically significant. This information is relevant to the findings on lace thickness.
The lace thickness has changed (again)
While the 2019 balls already show a number of changes that would affect drag, it would be remiss not to also look into what I believe is the source of the 2017 surge — that is, lace thickness. Since my original study, I have acquired a number of new baseball samples, enabling me to look for changes over time. As before, lace thickness is measured in “wraps per centimeter.” Since thinner laces will have more wraps, the larger the number, the thinner the laces.

The previous results — comparing 2014 to 2016-2017 balls — were as expected. In addition, balls from 2018 and the 2015 postseason had lace thicknesses comparable to those of 2016-2017. (Note the 2015 postseason results suggest the change in laces occurred partway through the 2015 season.) The spread in lace thicknesses over 2000-2014 is interesting, in that its uncertainty overlaps those of late 2015-2018; however, when one looks at the graph showing home run rates over time, the idea that lace thickness undergoes periodic changes does not seem unreasonable. While the effect was more dramatic over late 2015-2018, one of the thicker lace measurements came from a ball that could be definitively dated to 2003. Since the home run rate in 2003 was much higher than that of 2014, this may imply that trends or fluctuations in home runs may correlate — at least in part — with lace thickness. That being said, despite the larger uncertainties, the 2000-2014 laces are, on average, thinner than those from late 2015-2018.

As with the other measurements, the 2019 baseballs are markedly different — and once again in an unexpected way.

With statistical significance, the lace thickness has decreased to something comparable with pre-2015. This change could be encouraging for pitchers, given the increase in blisters during late 2015-2018.
Lace thickness for baseball samples from 2000-2014, 2014, 2015 postseason, 2016-2017, 2018 and 2019. Since thickness is measured in “wraps per centimeter,” thicker laces have fewer wraps. Note that laces from before 2015 are thinner, those from 2015 postseason through 2018 are thicker, and in 2019 the laces become thinner again.
However, the decrease in lace thickness also flies in the face of earlier findings concerning spherical symmetry.

Traditionally, the final manufacturing step involves air-drying damp, finished baseballs. Since the laces are made of cotton and stretched cotton stays stretched when air-dried, the supposition was that thinner laces would not only stretch more but dry stretched, producing a ball with more bulging along the seams. That theory appeared sound, and was validated by findings comparing pre-2015 and 2018 baseballs.

While it is possible the original seam-bulging supposition was incorrect, the fact the 2000-2014 and the 2019 balls show marked differences in spherical symmetry suggests that lace thickness is no longer affecting shape. Regardless, the improved roundness of the current ball would lead it to carry farther.

‘Re-evaluating specifications’
When announcing the purchase of Rawlings in June 2018, MLB executive vice president Chris Marinak told reporters, “We are particularly interested in providing even more input and direction on the production of the official ball.” These goals were also advocated in the Home Run Committee’s recommendation that “MLB should re-evaluate the specifications on parameters of the baseball that affect the game,” specifying size, weight and other properties known to vary not only from season to season but from ball to ball. Such improvements to specifications and oversight would lead to baseballs that are more uniform and thus behave more predictably.

Despite Manfred’s early-season supposition that the increase in home run rate was due to “variation(s) that we don’t know how to eliminate,” the changes to the current ball show that variation has decreased, particularly leather smoothness. As baseball leather is skived (i.e. scraped down) by hand, increased smoothness could be the result of better quality control. Rawlings has even attempted to improve this process before, telling the Home Run Committee that they “eliminat(ed) wet shaving” in February 2017.

Other changes may also relate to better specifications. In their report, the Home Run Committee describes the final manufacturing step as follows: “The balls are rolled between grooved wooden platens after stitching (when the balls are moist) and again 24 hours later, to flatten the seams and maintain a spherical shape.” Before 2019, deviations from spherical symmetry were consistent with lace stretching due to air-drying. However, the fact that the new ball is rounder despite thinner laces suggests that perhaps the cotton laces are no longer being stretched during the finishing process. Since the only way to dry cotton without stretching is through heat and moisture removal (think of putting wet clothes in a dryer), one hypothesis is that balls are now being dried under hot air flow. Preventing lace stretching may also account for lower seams, since tighter laces could potentially “hold seams down.”

Putting it all together
The first recommendation of the Home Run Committee was that “MLB should work with Rawlings and/or independent test labs to develop methods to measure and monitor parameters of the baseball that affect the carry.” Independent aerodynamic testing is currently studying sources of drag variation, and according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, internal testing is also being done, since MLB officials “privately acknowledge that its internal testing shows less average drag on the baseball than last year.”

In addition, Rawlings is actively experimenting with baseball construction. Buster Olney told “Baseball Tonight” listeners that, having spoken to Rawlings, “they’re just hoping that … they can develop a baseball with a tacky surface.” He also reported that “Rawlings now is in the second prototype of a ball with a consistent grip, one that was previewed with players in Spring Training. Rawlings is making some tweaks, (and) they hope to have a third prototype ready for laboratory testing sometime this summer.” Rawlings’ concern seems to be the leather, since the spring training prototype was intended to eliminate the need from pregame “rubbing-up” — a process designed to increase grip. While it is unclear if Rawlings’ interest in improving grip is related to or has been affected by the current baseball, we know that the company monitors leather smoothness as part of the manufacturing process and therefore is probably aware of this season’s issues. Since early season data found that walks, wild pitches, and hit-by-pitches were up — all issues that relate to grip — Rawlings’ efforts in this area will likely be welcomed by players.

In his recent statement, Manfred said “(Rawlings) hasn’t changed their process (or materials) in any meaningful way.” Given MLB’s internal tests showing lower drag, and Rawlings’ ongoing experimentation with the ball, this seems like a potential disconnect. However, it may simply be a question of semantics.

The Home Run Committee found that Rawlings regularly implements production improvements, including changes to the yarn (February 2014), the pill (March 2014, May 2015), the leather (June 2014, February 2017, August 2017) and the drying process (March 2016, February 2018). The Committee described these changes as “largely technical in nature and very unlikely to be in any way related to the (2017) home run increase.” That being the case, things like enhancing leather smoothness or drying baseballs more efficiently might not be considered “meaningful” to manufacturing.

While this may have been a reasonable attitude in the past, such enhancements now appear to have compounded, producing a more aerodynamic ball.

Since internal inquiries continue to be inconclusive, it might be beneficial for MLB to commission another report from the Home Run Committee, this time focusing on the 2019 baseball. Unlike the study of the 2017 home run surge, where the Committee looked at a number of potential causes besides the ball, this research would be much more straightforward. And while my study focuses on the construction differences themselves, the Home Run Committee is in a position to determine how much each attribute — lower seams, smoother leather, greater spherical symmetry — contributes to aerodynamics. Such information would prove invaluable to MLB’s goals of tightening specifications and improving quality control. It would also help Rawlings determine future production improvements.

After all, any one of these changes would cause the ball to fly farther; together, they have made the current home run surge inevitable.

if the article says she's an astrophysicist I guess she is. But the only results on a google search are for her articles on baseballs.

Some of us remember Doug Glanville as a very good MLB player...

Glanville: Baseball culture tolerates a lot of things no normal office would. And that can be a problem


By Doug Glanville Jun 27, 2019 75

Mickey Callaway is speaking in a baseball language I understand.

Over a nine-year major league career, my baseball office moved with me. It started in left field at Wrigley Field, moved to center at Veterans Stadium, then Arlington Stadium, then back to Wrigley, and finally to Citizens Bank Park. Three cities over nearly a decade — and in retrospect, I saw plenty of HR violations.

The worst of what is allowed to go on inside a major-league locker room, or on the field, would not be permitted in most office spaces in the United States. In fact, some of what happens would get you arrested on the spot.

I try and imagine what would happen if I walked into NBC Sports, where I work now, and, with intent, threw a stapler at 95 mph at one of my producers because he had offended me in some unwritten way. If I induced bodily harm, firing would be the least of my concerns.

In baseball, that is generally considered to be within the realm of appropriate disagreement.

Plenty of bad behavior occurs in real-world workplaces, too, of course. But professional sports can make it feel inevitable, and accepted, in a way that it isn’t elsewhere.

In the early years of a professional baseball career, the indoctrination of players begins in earnest. The rules of engagement inside the hallowed spaces of the locker room are deemed sacred; nothing is allowed to get in between the team, and only approved revelations are allowed to get out. Despite the perpetual news cycle, fed through a blend of traditional and social media, the expectation is that the team will remain impervious to dissent and fragmentation. That is still what is expected.

Part of that team concept creates an important bond between players and the coaching staff — they are united as one, seeking a championship together. There are many other people, including the media, who are in the orbit of this unit, and who are all important for a variety of reasons. The media mix includes voices of the people, a dash of public relations, and a check and balance to decision-making by the manager and the front office.

There was a time when the media was more directly a part of the team. When I was in Philadelphia during the time of play-by-play announcer Harry Kalas, he had been grandfathered into being able to sit in the back of the plane, typically a private space of veteran players who tell stories and secrets. One time, when a tidbit of information that was shared in that space made it to the broadcast in the next few days, a mutiny ensued. Although it did not come from Harry, all broadcasters were ultimately banned from the back (a ban which was eventually rescinded). This decision divided the team. Ah, the infamous “distraction” had arrived.

Voice cracking, Kalas accepted the loss of his back-of-the-plane access, wary of the attitude of the then-new generation of ballplayers that didn’t respect his decades of special status. Up until this point, HK was unquestionably part of the team. Sure, he didn’t swing a bat, but he was our voice, our historian, our storyteller.

In those years, the beat writers were often on the plane with us, traveling to the same towns, the same hotels. Many are still a frequent presence, shadowing the players, to be at all or most of the games.

It creates a unique dynamic. A key to any beat writer is access and the ability to get the story and quotes from sources, but they also have to maintain a certain objectivity in order to ask the tough questions, while having the pulse of the fans and the questions those fans want asked. Otherwise, they risk becoming PR pawns.

The necessity of access was clear through the career of 2017’s Spink Award winner and Hall of Fame enshrined journalist, Claire Smith, the first woman to receive such an honor. Some of the Padres decided that the team should block her from access during the 1984 postseason because she is a woman. Steve Garvey, a star of the game, circumventing this directive, gave her an interview in the hallway outside of the locker room, and helped change history for women in the clubhouse. Access is everything to a baseball journalist.

Tim Healey, who was on the receiving end of Callaway’s tirade over the weekend, as well as Jason Vargas’ threat, is such a journalist. He is covering the Mets, game by game, year by year. Like any beat writer, that tightrope can get tougher when a team is struggling with high expectations (as is always the case in New York). Things are said, sometimes harshly, but it is expected that everyone has to look to tomorrow, if there is one.

The locker room forgives a lot for the greater good of the team — or at least that is how it is framed. The game is emotional, highly competitive, and people need a bandwidth that is unlike most work environments. Room is supposedly required to go too far, or even to get physical, in order to make a point. Then we move on. We move on because the game will move on without us if we don’t.

Callaway understands this as well as anyone. He played, he coached, he managed. He is fully indoctrinated to this world of exceptions. Exceptional talent, exceptional expectations, and exceptions to the rules of the typical workplace. It is that last exception that creates the most problems.

Certainly, with the hyper-intense workspace of professional sports, players and staff understand the extra room required. The focus, the stakes, the egos, the legacy all blend together; everyone coalesces as a team. It is temperamental, and it is unapologetic.

I once charged the mound in the minor leagues, and I felt completely justified under this system. It was even logical, within the scope of the game of baseball. People agreed with me that an appropriate reaction to a ball being intentionally thrown behind my head was to attack the pitcher. No thought was given about what would happen if I gave him a concussion, or if he hit me in the head and gave me one. I was free to punch another man during a game, and in the sovereign land of pro baseball, the law was on my side. Suspended, maybe (I wasn’t); fined, sure ($35); but no police officer was waiting for me in the parking lot.

No apology was needed because those in the circle understand. There are some rules — I did not charge the mound with my bat, he did not hide a knife in his socks to stab me with it — but these, too, are understood. You fight fairly, but you can fight. You can try to hurt someone else.

Callaway berated a beat writer, and a player piled on by threatening that writer … and the clubhouse culture will absorb it. At its most insensitive, those in the wake are collateral damage, and those who complain are like those complaining about the weather.

Yet the game can lose something important if we excuse, justify, or even endorse such behavior. We can get upset and say regrettable things, as most people do at some point. But when we are in leadership, as Callaway is, it is our responsibility to walk that back responsibly, since we have people following us. Callaway’s reaction gave license to Vargas’ reaction, and he escalated it into a direct threat.

To respond by focusing on the contrived nobility of not wanting to be a “distraction,” or on the desire to move on without acknowledging the damage — and the license given to abuse others — is highly problematic. We have too often seen societal problems that land on sports’ doorstep reduced to mere inconveniences, things that take players away from their needed focus. Even if the issue at hand is as serious as spousal abuse, or open racism, the prevailing attitude often is that we must deflect, because the starting pitcher has a great slider tonight.

In these moments, it can be hard to figure out what the game cares enough about, outside of its own preservation, to pause its social order and reorient it. Without such flexibility, it can misdirect us to frame mistreatment as a social norm, passing on the opportunity to respect every person, not just those on your roster.

The truth is that most of these players are inherently professional, and can endure many diversions and distractions. I have seen countless examples of players performing at a high level while enduring death in their families, natural disasters, political unrest in their home countries or chronic illness.

The game should not give hall passes for any kind of abuse, even when it is something that is generally forgivable within baseball’s culture. A beat writer may accept the volatility of emotions over a long season, and may have thick skin, or even regret how he or she asked a question. But when harshness is ignored, or even sanctioned, and when others join in, now we move from having a bad day to welcoming the worst of the self-centered focus that is expected in order to excel in this game.

People in the game accept that there are unique standards for being a professional athlete. I certainly struggled on the field when my father was sick during the latter part of my career; we can see anything that keeps us from being our best as a threat to our self-perception and self-confidence, as an enemy, often forgetting the need to take a deep breath and know that in some cases, real people are getting run over to preserve this focus.

Be upset at losing. Be upset at falling short. Be upset at unfair criticism. But the game can’t let anyone be beyond reproach if they respond to those feelings in a way that chips away at the best of the sport’s humanity.

In the end, the game will end for all of us, and the real world will inevitably come knocking. Better to know how to speak its language sooner rather than later.

What this year’s All-Star snubs tell us about the new voting system


By Cliff Corcoran Jun 28, 2019 113

Picking an All-Star team is not an exact science. It is an inherently subjective task that requires weighing not only the relative offensive and defensive performances of players at every position on the field, but also in-season performance against previous career accomplishments. Position changes, differences in playing time, streaks, slumps and comportment complicate things even further.

It is thus no surprise that the annual All-Star rosters satisfy few observers, regardless of the method by which the players are chosen, be it fan voting, player voting, manager selections or decisions handed down from the commissioner’s office.

Fan balloting, which Major League Baseball has deployed to select the All-Star Game’s starting lineups (minus pitchers) since 1970, has two inherent faults: impatience and homerism. The former results in fans placing votes at their first opportunity, and thus often overreacting to fluky April performances, skewing the vote before a fifth of the season has elapsed. The latter is more self-explanatory and, if MLB’s social media campaigns are any indication, more feature than bug as far as the 30 teams are concerned.

To its credit, MLB addressed the impatience issue by pushing the release of the All-Star ballots back a month last year, from May 1 in 2017 to June 1. This year brought still more changes, as MLB broke the election of the starters into two stages. The primary voting took place from May 28 to June 21, after which the top three vote recipients at each position in each league advanced to a final vote that took place in a 28-hour window from noon on Wednesday, June 26, to 4pm on Thursday the 27th.

In theory, the new electoral process addressed both impatience and homerism. Impatience was countered not only by the late-May start date, but by a fresh start to the voting on June 26, forcing any fan who wanted to place a direct vote for an All-Star starter to evaluate the finalists in late June, less than two weeks before the All-Star Game itself. It countered homerism by eliminating players from 12 of the 15 teams in each league at each position before the voting advanced to the final round.

Did it work?

The results of that final vote, officially dubbed “The Starters Election,” were announced Thursday evening. Prior to that, I made my own picks (listed at the bottom of this article) for the starter at each position in each league (the eight fielding positions plus a designated hitter in the American League), just as I had, in print, in late June each of the last two years. In each case, I attempted to be as objective as possible, picking primarily based on in-season performance, but allowing track record, particularly second-half performance from the previous year, to influence some close races. In considering each player’s hitting, fielding, and baserunning, I consulted advanced metrics from Baseball-Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus, but also eyeballed the traditional stats and gave at least a passing thought to each player’s actual star-power.

In 2017, the fans selected just 10 of my 17 picks to start the All-Star Game. In 2018, 11 of my 17 picks were also picked by the fan vote. This year, under the radically restructured two-step process, the fans and I agreed on . . . 10 of 17 players.



It’s important to note here that several of those seven exceptions, as was also the case in previous years, were simply a case of choosing different winners in a virtual tie. Or at least they seemed to be before I looked at the fan-vote percentages and realized that my picks at shortstop in each league, catcher and first base in the National League, and one of the outfield spots in the American League weren’t nearly as close to the Starters Election winners as their performances this season suggest they should be. Worse yet, while MLB’s changes to the fan voting process do appear to have gone a long way toward combatting impatience, they have largely failed to check homerism. As a result, several players in each league who have arguably played well enough to start the All-Star Game weren’t even among the top three finalists at their position, among them two players I listed among my preferred starters.

Here’s a closer look at the nine players who I believe were snubbed before the Starters Election even began and why (all statistics through the games of Wednesday, June 26).

National League
First base
Freddie Freeman, Braves
.313/.399/.595 (151 OPS+), 21 HR, 61 RBI, 2.8 bWAR, 2.9 fWAR, 2.2 WARP

Pete Alonso, Mets
.281/.371/.634 (167 OPS+), 27 HR, 61 RBI, 3.6 bWAR, 3.3 fWAR, 2.4 WARP

Freeman will start at first base for the National League in this year’s All-Star Game. Alonso was my choice to start. I can understand preferring an established star having an excellent season over a rookie having an excellent three months. What I can’t understand is Alonso’s failure to even make the cut as a finalist. The other two finalists with Freeman were the Pirates’ Josh Bell (164 OPS+, 2.6 bWAR), another young player experiencing a breakout season, and the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo (132 OPS+, 2.1 bWAR), another established star playing up to expectations. Both deserved serious consideration, but neither should have placed ahead of Alonso. Instead, as of the last Primary update on June 17, both had something approximating three times as many votes as Alonso. Chalk that up to the disenchanted Mets fanbase and the fact that homerism cuts both ways.

Third base
Anthony Rendon, Nationals
.313/.402/.625 (158 OPS+), 17 HR, 55 RBI, 2.7 bWAR, 3.2 fWAR, 2.8 WARP

Kris Bryant, Cubs
.287/.395/.539 (139 OPS+), 16 HR, 41 RBI, 2.4 bWAR, 3.1 fWAR, 2.0 WARP

Josh Donaldson, Braves
.256/.358/.487 (115 OPS+), 15 HR, 37 RBI, 2.3 bWAR, 1.8 fWAR, 1.4 WARP

If I told you that only two of these men could be finalists at third base in the National League along with deserving starter Nolan Arenado, would you have much difficulty deciding whom to leave out? How would you feel if I told you the player who actually missed the cut was Rendon? Rendon has finished in the top 11 in the NL MVP voting three times, including in each of the last two seasons, and in the top six twice — yet has never made an All-Star team. This year, he’s having a career year at the age of 29, but as of that June 17 update, he was a distant fifth in the fan voting. The Starters Election at third base in the NL should have been a close vote between Arenado (127 OPS+, 3.2 bWAR) and Rendon. Instead, Rendon wasn’t even on the ballot and Arenado won in a landslide. Rendon remains arguably the most underrated player in the majors.

Shortstop
Javier Báez, Cubs
.287/.326/.548 (120 OPS+), 19 HR, 52 RBI, 5/10 SB, 3.2 bWAR, 2.9 fWAR, 2.5 WARP

Trevor Story, Rockies
.294/.360/.547 (116 OPS+), 17 HR, 48 RBI, 12/16 SB, 3.2 bWAR, 2.9 fWAR, 3.2 WARP

Paul DeJong, Cardinals
.263/.350/.468 (116 OPS+), 13 HR, 36 RBI, 6/7 SB, 3.1 bWAR, 2.9 fWAR, 2.3 WARP

Here are three outstanding defensive shortstops who play in three very different hitting environments. Looking at their raw statistics (slash line, homers, RBI), one can see why the voters might have put some space between Báez and Story, both of whom advanced, and Paul DeJong, who didn’t. Looking at the advanced park-adjusted metrics, however, it’s plain to see that DeJong very much belongs beside the other two. Instead, the Primary round advanced the Braves’ Dansby Swanson (99 OPS+, 1.0 bWAR). That had far less to do with the relative performances of Swanson and DeJong than the ballot-stuffing of Braves fans and the apathy of Cardinals fans, the latter of whom hadn’t pushed DeJong above eighth as of the June 17 update.

Braves fans advanced a member of their local nine to the finals at every position. Yet, of the seven Braves to advance, including Donaldson and Swanson, only Freeman and outfield starter Ronald Acuña Jr. deserved to do so. Atlanta fans kept it up in the Starters Election, lifting Donaldson, Ozzie Albies and Brian McCann to wholly unearned second-place finishes.

American League
Outfield
Max Kepler, Twins
.272/.351/.547 (136 OPS+), 19 HR, 51 RBI, 1/5 SB, 2.7 bWAR, 2.7 fWAR, 2.3 WARP

Byron Buxton, Twins
.266/.324/.527 (122 OPS+), 9 HR, 38 RBI, 10/13 SB, 2.9 bWAR, 2.5 fWAR, 2.3 WARP

Michael Brantley, Astros
.317/.375/.502 (133 OPS+), 11 HR, 43 RBI, 3/5 SB, 2.5 bWAR, 2.2 fWAR, 1.8 WARP

Josh Reddick, Astros
.300/.339/.444 (108 OPS+), 9 HR, 28 RBI, 4/6 SB, 1.0 bWAR, 1.0 fWAR, 1.3 WARP

Here we have a pair of Twins and a pair of Astros. One of the Astros, right fielder Josh Reddick, is clearly undeserving of All-Star support in a league that also includes the other three above, Mike Trout, Joey Gallo, Mookie Betts, and the third Astros outfielder, George Springer, not to mention the star power of Aaron Judge, who was limited by injuries to just 25 games through Wednesday’s action. The other three outfielders above are a closer call, but if forced to rank them, the defensively-challenged Brantley would seem to belong behind both Kepler’s superior plate production and Buxton’s all-around excellence. Instead, it was both Brantley and Reddick that advanced to the Starters Election. Brantley will start the All-Star Game, while neither of the Twins having arguably superior seasons made it past the Primary (though they, as with all of the snubs here, can and are likely to be included as reserves). Brantley does get a bit of extra credit for his career accomplishments — this is his third straight All-Star Game and fourth overall — but to not have Kepler or Buxton in the Starters Election was an embarrassment.

Shortstop
Xander Bogaerts, Red Sox
.298/.389/.534 (138 OPS+), 15 HR, 55 RBI, 2.8 bWAR, 3.7 fWAR, 3.0 WARP

Marcus Semien, Athletics
.271/.352/.437 (114 OPS+), 11 HR, 40 RBI, 3.5 bWAR, 3.0 fWAR, 3.0 WARP

Gleyber Torres, Yankees
.291./.354/.549 (135 OPS+), 19 HR, 47 RBI, 2.5 bWAR, 2.4 fWAR, 2.8 WARP

Carlos Correa, Astros
.295/.360/.547 (138 OPS+), 11 HR, 35 RBI, 1.8 bWAR, 1.8 fWAR, 1.1 WARP

What Marcus Semien lacks in power relative to the other shortstops above he makes up for with his glove (and there’s less to make up for than it seems given the power-suppressing nature of Semien’s home ballpark). A look at the wins above replacement statistics is all it takes to see that Semien belongs. In fact, he’s my pick to start for the AL this year. My reasons include the fact that he is building on improvements made last year; that, all else being equal, I’ll always take the glove man at shortstop; and that the actual starter, Jorge Polanco, spent half of last year serving a suspension for testing positive for Stanozolol, which, at the very least, should require him to be more of a slam-dunk choice than he is in order to earn an All-Star start. Yet, Semien wasn’t even a finalist, nor was Bogaerts. Torres and Correa were, another win for both traditional, unadjusted statistics and homerism.

The Yankees and Astros dominated the Primary voting in the AL this year, with both teams advancing a finalist onto the three-man ballot at catcher, second base, shortstop and third base, and the entire Astros outfield making the cut. A’s fans, meanwhile, couldn’t get Matt Chapman into the Starters Election, and Semien wasn’t even in the top 10 as of June 17. The bigger issue there, of course, is that it shouldn’t have been just A’s fans voting for those players. Chapman finished seventh in the AL MVP voting last year, was the AL’s Platinum Glove award winner, and is having a comparable season this year. That he couldn’t even crack the finals in this new voting format is more than enough evidence that more work needs to be done to improve the process.

Just look at Chapman compared to the two half-season wonders who did make the finals at third base in the AL:

Third base
Matt Chapman, Athletics
.269/.353/.534 (137 OPS+), 19 HR, 44 RBI, 4.1 bWAR, 3.3 fWAR, 2.8 WARP

Hunter Dozier, Royals
.297/.380/.574 (149 OPS+), 13 HR, 42 RBI, 2.0 bWAR, 2.3 fWAR, 2.1 WARP

Gio Urshela, Yankees
.303/.354/.458 (114 OPS+), 6 HR, 35 RBI, 0.8 bWAR, 1.0 fWAR, 1.6 WARP

It should be noted that Dozier has had more than 100 fewer plate appearances than Chapman on the season, and that both Dozier and Urshela, both of whom are older than Chapman, were sub-replacement-level major leaguers coming into this season.

This is not a shame that A’s fans should bear alone. It shouldn’t be the sole job of the hometown fanbase to vote a player as valuable as Chapman into the Starters Election or the All-Star starting lineup. Yankee fans who voted for Urshela and Twins fans who voted for Marwin González (97 OPS+, 1.5 bWAR), who also ranked above the astonishingly seventh-place Chapman in the June 17 update, should be especially ashamed of having put blind homerism ahead of the true purpose of the vote and the All-Star Game itself.

In its first year, the new, two-tiered All-Star voting system has, ultimately, changed very little about how the starters are elected. Yes, it has forced fans to place votes in late June, but the results, at least this year, were no better than in either of the last two years. Most significantly, the process continues to be plagued by rampant ballot-box stuffing and homerism, with a player’s uniform having nearly as much relevance to his fortunes in the fan voting as his performance in that uniform. That makes it especially difficult for deserving players in smaller markets, such as Oakland, or on weaker teams, such as the imploding Mets, to garner the electoral support necessary to even compete for a deserved starting opportunity.

All-Star voting remains an excellent source of fan engagement in the lull between the excitement of the new season and the intensifying of that season via the trading deadline and pennant races. However, engaging fans for the good of the league as a whole, rather than just their favorite team, continues to be a challenge for the sport and its All-Star voting process.

Cliff Corcoran’s 2019 All-Star starter picks:

American League

C: Gary Sánchez, Yankees
1B: Carlos Santana, Indians
2B: DJ LeMahieu, Yankees
SS: Marcus Semien, Athletics
3B: Alex Bregman, Astros
OF: Mike Trout, Angels; Joey Gallo, Rangers; Mookie Betts, Red Sox
DH: J.D. Martinez, Red Sox

National League

C: Yasmani Grandal, Brewers
1B: Pete Alonso, Mets
2B: Ketel Marte, Diamondbacks
SS: Trevor Story, Rockies
3B: Nolan Arenado, Rockies
OF: Cody Bellinger, Dodgers; Christian Yelich, Brewers; Ronald Acuña Jr.,

Do Browns fans sympathize with Montreal wanting to get back into the game?

Five questions we have about the Tampa Bay-Montreal split-season gambit


By Jonah Keri Jun 27, 2019 153

The owner of the Tampa Bay Rays and the former minority owner of the Montreal Expos addressed local media 24 hours apart, with each of them mostly failing to answer the slew of questions baseball fans have in both markets.

Here’s what we know: Rays majority owner Stuart Sternberg has pitched a plan that would see the Rays split future seasons between the Tampa Bay region and Montreal. Stephen Bronfman, a former Expos limited partner whose father, Charles, was the original majority owner of that team, says he supports Sternberg’s plan and is excited about the prospect of bringing baseball back to Montreal.

After that, nobody knows for certain what’s going to happen, how it might happen, or (despite Sternberg floating 2024 as a potential target date) exactly when it would happen. That includes the man with the plan, the commissioner of baseball, and everyone else involved.

Here are five questions we have about this unprecedented plan, plus some speculative answers.

Why Montreal?
Whenever relocation or expansion candidates get cited by commissioner Rob Manfred and other leaders of baseball, we get a laundry list of locations, including but not limited to Charlotte, Nashville, Portland, Las Vegas, San Antonio, at least one or two cities in Mexico, and Montreal. Sternberg’s current proposal doesn’t mention any of those other cities, however. Just Montreal.

According to a source close to the Rays, that decision has as much to do with Sternberg’s affinity for the city than anything else. He’s visited the city numerous times, he’s watched the Expos play, shotgunned smoked meat every chance he could get, come up for the Leonard Cohen exhibition and concert, and inked himself with a giant tattoo of Youppi! that runs the length of his back. (All but one of those things are true.) Sternberg has shown no interest in selling the Rays, and if he’s serious about the split-season plan, he’d like to partner with a city in which he’d like to spend three to five months a year. Montreal is that city.

Both Sternberg and Bronfman noted extreme and synergistic weather patterns as another major reason for the link-up. The Tampa Bay area experiences both brutal heat and nasty thundershowers during the summer. Meanwhile, anyone who lived through this spring in Montreal can speak to the cold temperatures and general climatic ugliness that hit the city right around the time baseball season starts up.

Build open-air stadiums in both places (more on that in a minute), split the schedule between Tampa Bay at the start of the season and Montreal from some time in June to season’s end, and you get the best weather each city has to offer while dodging some of the worst days on the calendar.

Is this a good deal for Montreal baseball fans?
That might depend on how you frame the question.

Major League Baseball upped and left 15 years ago, the move to Washington capping what had been years of gruesome dealings with cheap, bumbling, self-sabotaging owners, many of them not named Jeffrey Loria. Some baseball could be considered better than no baseball.

Baseball advocates have touted both all-in relocation and relocation as possible alternatives to this plan. But assuming the A’s get their proposed new stadium built in downtown Oakland, the Rays are the only option on the table when it comes to anything remotely resembling traditional relocation, and Sternberg’s half-and-half plan — not a full 81 games in Montreal — is the one currently on the table.

As for the possibility of expansion, you could look at the split-season plan one of two ways. The optimist would argue that Montreal getting looped into these negotiations signals to the baseball world that the city is primed to welcome MLB back one way or another, and that this could be the first step toward baseball permanently relocating to Montreal on a full-season basis.

But there’s a darker scenario to consider too. Maybe the reason Charlotte and Nashville and Portland and Las Vegas and other cities weren’t considered for the split-season plan is because they’d settle for nothing less than full-season baseball. And maybe one of the reasons Bronfman is so amenable to the split-season plan (“The sooner the better,” he said Wednesday in response to when half-season baseball could come to Montreal) was because he knows what a crapshoot the expansion process could be.

As glowing as Manfred has been about the prospect of baseball in Montreal, his job is to keep as many balls in the air as possible to ensure the best possible outcome for the league. Montreal was a surprise winner of one of the four expansion spots back in 1969. It’s possible the city isn’t one of the top two teams selected for expansion this time, or even one of the top five finalists when all’s said and done. It’s possible that it’s this plan, or no plan.
Commissioner Rob Manfred (left) talks with Rays owner Stuart Sternberg prior to a game at Tropicana Field. (Kim Klement / USA Today)

Why do the Rays want to do this?

The Rays consistently rank at the bottom of MLB’s pile in team revenue. The Tampa Bay region lacks the mega-sized corporate sponsors prevalent in larger markets. Fewer people live within a 30-minute drive of Tropicana Field than they do relative to any other major-league stadium. And the region itself is not that large, if we consider St. Petersburg and Tampa to be its main drivers, and Orlando to be a separate market.

Looping in 4 million residents, plus the corporate presence that dwells in the greater Montreal area, would create a merged market that could start to flirt with the midpoint of major-league markets in terms of economic strength, and shoot past it for sheer population base.

Most intriguing from a revenue standpoint would be the possibility of landing more than one local television deal. The Rays have drawn competitive television audiences for much of the past decade-plus since their first playoff appearance in 2008, an outcome that’s helped mitigate the effect of dead-last (or nearly dead-last) attendance most seasons. Add Montreal to the mix and you add another local TV deal in English, another in French, and possibly a national deal in Canada, one that would make all kinds of sense if Bell, a telecommunications and cable giant and chief rival to Blue Jays owners Rogers, were to partner with the team and challenge Toronto’s stranglehold on the national baseball consciousness.

Beyond the particulars of Tampa Bay or Montreal as baseball markets, it’s worth considering the merits of such a plan on a broader level. “We are simply not well-suited for a Major League Baseball team that needs to draw tens of thousands of people to each of its 81 games at its ballpark,” Sternberg said at his Tuesday presser. Residents of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Miami and other cities could make similar claims.

Maybe in today’s era of a million personal entertainment choices, spending three and a half hours at a baseball game (or 20) with no playoff implications is asking too much of a lot of places. Maybe, given how TV, Internet, and other non-stadium revenue sources make up so much more of the pie compared to attendance than it did 20 and 30 years ago, fewer butts in seats isn’t the end of the world anyway. Bronfman called the split-season proposal “groundbreaking.” It certainly is different, and in the abstract, there are reasons to appreciate its audacity.

So what’s the problem here?
Stadiums. Who’s gonna pay for them?

As much as other revenue sources matter, new stadiums still represent major revenue opportunities. Make the costs of construction public and a major share of the profits private, and those opportunities shoot sky-high for enterprising baseball owners.

Sternberg sees that potential windfall and wants to capture it. He’s failed to do so in Tampa Bay, with the latest defeat an $892 million plan to build a new park in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa that got shot down in December. Mostly because nobody could agree on who would pay for it.

One telling part of the Montreal press conference came near the end, in response to a question about stadium financing. A reporter wanted to know why Bronfman seemed to be going back on a pledge he made last year stating that he wouldn’t come asking for big handouts of taxpayer dollars to build a new stadium for a hypothetical future team in Montreal. Bronfman replied that he misspoke.

“We’re not looking for an investment from the city,” he said. “But we could use a little help with zoning, infrastructure. But not construction, we never asked for anything like that.” That stance runs counter to Sternberg’s approach, which has been to ask local government to lay out well over half the total cost of stadium construction.

Under the current proposal, Sternberg, not Bronfman, would be the majority owner of this merged team. And Sternberg wants to build not one, but two new stadiums, one for each market.

In one place, the Rays owner is going up against city councils that have rebuffed multiple plans for new stadium deals due to requests for big taxpayer dollar outlays. In another city 1,500 miles to the north, Sternberg wants to go toe-to-toe with a provincial government that 20-plus years ago wisely and correctly prioritized public needs such as new hospitals over a publicly financed ballpark for a giant conglomerate.

Yes, building open-air stadiums in both markets would cost less than adding roofs, particularly retractable ones. But if Sternberg couldn’t sell one reluctant region on a new stadium for a full slate of games, how on earth will he sell two reluctant regions on a new stadium for a half-slate of games?

This is the question no one can answer. And far above potential objections by the players’ union, figuring out what to call this new merged team, or any other factor, the stadium quandary is the one most likely to squash this deal before it ever gets off the ground.

What comes next?
Sternberg and the Rays try to get the best deal they can from all parties involved. St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman has already reminded the Rays that they’re bound to dingy, poorly located Tropicana Field for eight more years, thanks to the iron-clad use agreement that was signed by Sternberg’s predecessor, Vince Naimoli. Kriseman also has no intention of allowing St. Pete to bankroll a new stadium for the Rays, no matter how many games get played there.

“If Mr. Sternberg wishes to formally explore this concept with me and his desire to privately and fully fund a new stadium in the City of St. Petersburg, I am willing to listen,” Kriseman told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times.

Sternberg said it would be “highly unlikely” that the Rays pursue a full-time arrangement to stay in the Tampa Bay area if the split-season plan fails: “I don’t see it happening in St. Petersburg and would be hard-pressed to see it working in Tampa from what I know.”

That means the Rays must figure out if they want to buy their way out of their last eight years at the Trop. Sternberg would also surely want to share in the potential windfall that could occur if and when St. Pete follows through on its plan to redevelop the Trop site into a huge, mixed-use complex. It’s not clear how that would work either, if the Rays proceed with their split-market plan.

Meanwhile in Montreal, baseball fans can romanticize about what might have been, with Wednesday’s presser occurring on a beautiful summer’s day, just down the street from where former Expos owners wanted to build the ill-fated Labatt Park back in the 90s.

Two decades later, the city’s been presented with an imperfect plan, one that could entice some fans, but also threatens to both alienate existing Rays fans in Tampa Bay, and turn off baseball-hungry die-hards in la belle province.

Except here’s the thing: Montreal became Chernobyl in the eyes of Major League Baseball by the time the team bolted. Institutional memories don’t die easily, and the likes of Charlotte and Vegas may well be simpler and more viable solutions to baseball’s plans for relocation or expansion.

On the off, off chance that the Sternberg group and the Bronfman group find a way to cajole two new stadiums into existence, maybe Montrealers will have to live with Opening Day coming three months after the end of spring training. Maybe an every-other-year playoff-hosting format could deprive the city of October baseball, the golden goose that only came once in the Expos’ 36-year existence.

Maybe, in the unlikely event that a miracle happens and this plan somehow works, you just take what you can get.

Tampa Montreal is a perfect pairing. Next let's try Miami and Missoula

Ha.

We have a Rookie League out here in Montana. Missoula has a team, the Osprey. Arizona affiliate.

Here in Great Falls we have the White Sox rookie league team, the Voyagers. (there was a pretty famous UFO sighting at a game here once decades ago. One of the team employees got video of it, so now it's a thing here. The Mascot is named Orbit.)

Missoula may still draw as many people as Tampa.

I really think Tampa could have supported a team. They went wrong with their ballpark. Who wants to go spend an evening in a dark depressing building when you could be out enjoying the real Florida rays.

Even if they had to go dome, go with the glass ceiling and let light in. The Trop is just depressing, even watching on TV.

Sounds intriguing to me and a nice way to get:

1. A less expensive, smaller open air ballpark in Tampa
2. Same for Montreal
3. Get Montreal and their fans back into the mix of MLB
4. The best of both their weathers

Carlos Gonzalez has elected free agency after being outrighted to Triple-A Iowa by the Cubs.

Gonzalez had the option to report to Iowa, or to hit the market. The market it is. The former fantasy stalwart has struggled this year with just a .200/.289/.283 line with three homers and 10 RBI for the Cubs and Indians.

White Sox released 1B/DH Yonder Alonso.

Alonso was designated for assignment by the White Sox last Friday and drew no interest from other teams on the waiver wire.

Acquired from the Indians over the winter, the 32-year-old went on to bat just .178/.275/.301 with seven home runs and 27 RBI in 251 plate appearances for Chicago. He will officially become a free agent in a couple of days.

Kirby Yates follows Brad Hand as a Padres All-Star, but this year the circumstances are slightly different


By Dennis Lin Jul 1, 2019 4

It was Sunday morning in Baltimore, earlier in San Diego, when a former Padres reliever learned he had made his third consecutive All-Star roster. Before a road game at Camden Yards, Brad Hand fired off a text to a close friend, prompting an exchange that reflected the tenuous nature of their careers. Only in recent years had each of them found unforeseen security and the recognition that followed.

“He was like, ‘Are you coming?’” Kirby Yates later recalled. “I was like, ‘No.’ And then once I found out, I was like, ‘I am coming.’ He’s like, ‘Yes, that’s good.’ He’s pretty pumped, too.”

On July 9 in Cleveland, Hand and Yates will reunite at the peak of their profession — the former a repeat All-Star for the home team, the latter a first-time representative for San Diego. Their paths originally converged at Petco Park.

There, Hand went from waiver claim to lockdown closer. At the same time, Yates went from waiver claim to trusted setup man, then Hand’s successor, then a lockdown closer himself.

In separate cities and leagues this season, their ascents have continued. Hand, pitching for the Indians, carries a 2.29 ERA and 23 saves, tied for the second-highest total in the majors. The top spot belongs to Yates, who has converted 27 of 28 chances and, in Sunday’s extra-inning loss to St. Louis, lowered his ERA to 1.27.

Such success pointed to Yates’ selection as a fait accompli. But, like Hand, the 32-year-old arrived in the Padres organization as a failed project. His road had been littered with even more obstacles. Undrafted and often overlooked, Yates has soared in San Diego, developing a split-finger fastball that saved his career and then propelled it to lofty heights.

His inner drive and self-awareness, meanwhile, have remained intact. Before Sunday’s game at Petco Park, not long after swapping texts with Hand, Yates learned of his own anointment.

“You don’t know until somebody tells you, ‘Hey, it’s official,’” Yates said. “I wasn’t going to let my guard down, and I’m happy I didn’t. But it does feel good.

“I think I’ve had to earn everything I’ve gotten. I had to earn my way to the big leagues, I had to earn my way to stay here, I had to earn every role I’ve got. I think this is something that I feel proud of, because I earned it. I mean, nobody’s ever going to take this away from me.”

Yates tempered his comments in the wake of a defeat and the news that no teammate will accompany him to Cleveland. Sunday also brought word that no San Diego position player had been named to the National League All-Star team.

Inside the clubhouse after the game, Fernando Tatis Jr., a rookie who already ranks among the sport’s most exciting players, acknowledged that he had expected a selection that never materialized. Manny Machado, an established star who has launched 11 home runs this month, voiced his praise for Yates and his opinion that “all 25 of us deserved to go.”

“You look at the numbers around this clubhouse, and there’s a few guys that are deserving,” Yates said. “Going alone, that kind of sucks, based on where we’re at and the way we’re playing and what guys are doing around me. I wish there were a few people joining me.”

A year ago this time, Hand clung to a similar desire. But he, too, would receive a solo ticket as the Padres’ lone All-Star. Yates, in the midst of his own sterling season, experienced the sensation of being snubbed.

“Last year, I set out a goal that I was tired of not being good,” Yates said. “Like, I’m going to make an All-Star team just for myself. And I got close, but I was totally fine with the outcome. And this year was kind of the same thing, and this year it just kind of happened. I’m truly grateful for it, and it’s not something I’ll ever take for granted.”

Only three players born and raised in Hawaii — Sid Fernandez, Shane Victorino and Kurt Suzuki — had reached an All-Star Game. On Sunday, Yates called home to inform his father, Gary, that there will be a fourth. In a broader sense, he will not be alone. The Kauai native and younger brother of former big-league reliever Tyler Yates expects that more than a dozen family members will be in attendance at Progressive Field. Together, they will hike to the pinnacle of a winding journey.

Kirby Yates also will savor the opportunity to catch up with a good friend. He and Hand last convened over dinner during spring training.

“I know my wife and his wife are excited to see each other,” Yates said. “It’ll be neat, just because our career paths are similar. He’s on his third straight All-Star Game, and that’s pretty cool. Not a lot of guys get to say that. I think that’s something he should be extremely proud of.”

Their trajectories, of course, are not exactly alike. Last July 19, two days after he pitched a scoreless inning in the 2018 All-Star Game, Hand received word that he and fellow reliever Adam Cimber had been traded to Cleveland. He soon fired off a text to his setup man. A few days later, the All-Star break over, Yates lamented the loss of his teammates. He also expressed a desire to remain with the organization that had hosted his rise.

That wish, so far, has been fulfilled. One month before the July 31 trade deadline, the Padres have moved beyond a state of perpetual reconstruction. They are 42-41, for now a legitimate factor in a wild-card race. Outside of the team’s closer, the bullpen has been a glaring weakness. On Sunday, two innings after Yates supplied a scoreless frame, St. Louis’ Matt Wieters clobbered a two-run homer.

Yet the team’s burgeoning talent has been conspicuous. Machado, the marquee acquisition of the offseason, went deep again in the series finale, giving the Padres a franchise-record 17 home runs over their last five games. Tatis once again was a terror on the basepaths, scoring from first on a single by Eric Hosmer, who recorded his fourth consecutive multi-hit game. The club faces a rare opportunity in the second half of the season. Team sources have indicated that, barring an unforeseen haul, Yates is likely to stay put.

“We’ve got a lot of guys playing right there at the level of other guys who are All-Stars,” Padres manager Andy Green said. “Sometimes it comes down to votes, and other times you don’t always get what you deserve.”

On Sunday, at least one player received his due.

“It’s unbelievable watching what he’s doing this year,” Machado said.

Checked in the Pittsburgh doings of Erik Gonzalez [still on the DL after a serious fracture] and Lonnie the Calf Chisenhall. Lonnie broke his finger on the last day of spring training; then of course aggravated his calf; then was a nonbaseball break; now looking for a second [4th?] opinion on the calf. Signing the Chiz was about as wise a move for the Pirates as signing Danny Salazar for the Indians. Although Danny is supposedly ready to pitch for Akron on Thursday after a couple rehab appearances in the AZL

Chisenhall amazes me. He needs to be an athletic trainer when he is out of baseball - he's been there and done that for every condition imaginable.

Stark: Justin Verlander wants to fix the baseballs; MLB would be wise to hear his pitch


By Jayson Stark 6h ago 41
CLEVELAND — Before he got the call to start the All-Star Game, Justin Verlander got another call — right into the principal’s office.

Waiting for him in that office Monday afternoon wasn’t an actual principal, or even the actual commissioner, Rob Manfred. But when Manfred’s favorite lieutenants — Joe Torre, Jim Leyland and at least one other MLB official — decided it was time to stop by the clubhouse for a visit, it was safe to guess they weren’t bringing along scrapbooks to reminisce about the 2012 ALCS.

“I may actually have facilitated that meeting,” Verlander’s Astros teammate, Gerrit Cole, admitted Tuesday night after the American League finished off the National League, 4-3, in the All-Star Game. “I saw Jim and Joe were in (manager Alex Cora’s) office. And they said hi. Then Jim, in not a profanity-laden way, said, ‘Get Justin in here right now.’ So I came out and said, ‘Hey, Skip wants to see you.’ And he said, ‘OK.’ Then he comes back and he goes, ‘Man, I just got chewed out.’”

In case you’re not familiar with hallowed All-Star Game tradition, it isn’t every year the starting pitcher gets summoned to the manager’s office to get chewed out by the powers that be. No, to pull that off, it takes creativity.

Or, in Verlander’s case, it took using the stage provided by the annual pre-All-Star press conference as the inspirational occasion to accuse Major League Baseball of buying Rawlings, the company that makes the baseballs, so it could intentionally juice the ball.

“If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically,” Verlander told ESPN, “it’s not a guess as to what happened. We all know what happened. Manfred, the first time he came in, what’d he say? He said we want more offense. All of a sudden he comes in, the balls are juiced? It’s not coincidence. We’re not idiots.”

Here in the media biz, we love Verlander for his refreshing penchant for delivering blistering opinions with the same ferocity he’s been delivering 98-mile-an-hour smokeballs for the last 15 seasons. But over in the run-the-sport business so lovingly presided over by the commissioner, those blistering opinions apparently aren’t always quite so popular. Who knew!

So Torre, Leyland and their friends delivered a slightly different take — which, from what we can gather, went something like, “We love you, Justin. You just don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Manfred wouldn’t comment on Verlander directly Tuesday afternoon during his annual visit to the July meeting of the Baseball Writers Association of America. But he might as well have been reading a text message to his favorite All-Star starter when he said, “Baseball has done nothing, given no direction, for an alteration of the baseball.”

We’ll spare you all the details and rationalizations here. But we should at least mention Manfred seemed to find it mildly amusing that anyone — from Cy Young winners to talk-show hosts — would think it was his secret lifelong dream to rescue his sport by blowing up every home run record known to mankind.

“There is no desire on our part to increase the number of home runs,” Manfred said. “On the contrary, we’re concerned about how many we have.”

Is the ball different? It’s obviously different. To his credit, Manfred made no attempt to dispute that Tuesday. But how? Why? What does it all mean? The commissioner seemed genuinely confused himself — and promised his team of independent scientists was delving fervently into all those questions at this very moment. So there? Feel better and less conspiratorial now? Beautiful.

There’s an excellent chance, therefore, that and several other pithy messages were hand-delivered to Verlander by his special clubhouse visitors Monday. So, after he’d spun off an enjoyable 1-2-3, two-strikeout first inning in his first All-Star start since 2012, Verlander was asked a question he had to know was coming.

Has his opinion about the baseball changed since Monday?

Verlander smiled, took a deep breath, bounced his thoughts around his brain for a second, then replied, carefully, “Good question.” He paused and smiled again. “I think I need to dig a little further.”

Was it true he’d spoken to his friends at Major League Baseball since we’d heard from him last?

“Uh, yes,” he said, succinctly, again choosing his words meticulously.

Could he describe that conversation in any way?

“No. No,” he said. “Don’t need to.”

Nevertheless, he admitted he’d heard Manfred’s public response early in the day. Finally, he was asked where he wants it all to go from here.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Like I said, those decisions are above my head. It’s just one of those things. If they want to reduce the drag on the ball or put it back the way it was, then we can work together, obviously. I’ve got some input. But you know, I’ve thrown a lot of different baseballs in my career. And I actually talked to some guys yesterday … and they said they’d welcome hearing some of my opinions. So I’m all aboard.”

By “some guys,” he presumably meant “some guys in the commissioner’s office.” But even if he didn’t, let’s think about the rest of those remarks. We have no idea whether Manfred and his team would really “welcome” hearing more of Verlander’s opinions on this topic. But here’s what we think:

They should. And they should start tomorrow.

Most kids who get called to the principal’s office don’t emerge as valued members of the Blue Ribbon Committee on Unruly Classroom Behavior. But if that’s what happens in this case, some legitimate good could even come from all of this — because this is a man whose passion for the game he plays is beyond question, even if his theories on what’s at work here might not be born out by the actual facts.

“And he’s also an expert,” Cole said. “He’s pitched in this league for a decade and a half. And he’s thrown about 3,500 pitches each year. So if anybody’s going to be an expert on the baseball, it’s probably going to be a guy that’s done that.”

Verlander has thrown 47,251 pitches in his career, according to Baseball Reference. That doesn’t even count spring training, postseason or All-Star games. Think of how many baseballs he has held in his hand. Why wouldn’t baseball care about his opinion on what those baseballs feel like now versus what they felt like five, 10 and 15 years ago? When we ran that idea past other All-Star pitchers Tuesday night, they were all in.

“He had strong feelings, and I appreciate that,” said the Twins’ Jake Odorizzi. “Look, as pitchers, it’s no secret we want the balls to be as least-flying as possible, the most anti-aerodynamic thing in the world. I’m no scientist. I’m not anything like that. But it seems like there’s been some adjustments. So I think the way he put it out there is the way a lot of guys view it.

“He’s on his way to a Hall of Fame career. He’s been pitching a number of years. And he’s been through a lot of games and a lot of seasons. So I feel like he’s pretty qualified to be talking on things like that.”

And you know what? That’s the truth. Who’s more qualified to help “fix” the baseball than the people who throw them? So why stop with just looping in Verlander? What’s the downside to baseball appointing a special advisory committee of veteran pitchers who could help balance the science with real, live game experience?

Let’s go there. Let’s do this. Let’s solve these problems together instead of shooting conspiracy theories into the All-Star ozone. Everything is better when there’s partnership and cooperation. So what better place to try that than the quest to “fix” the baseball?

“Look, everybody’s fine about it,” Odorizzi said. “They just want to know what it is. That’s really all we want.”

And guess what? That’s really all Verlander wants, too.