2020 World Series Trivia: Best Active Players Without a World Series

With the conclusion of the 2020 World Series, it is once again time for the yearly Best Active Players Without a World Series quiz. There were some big names crossed off the list this year, which we will cover after the break below. Also, I published several quizzes throughout the World Series (they were a good thing to focus on between innings and during pitching changes!), which I've also included below:


Best Players Without a World Series, 2020 Edition
World Series with an Expansion Team

2010s ALCS Trivia
2010s NLCS Trivia

Building a Backyard Baseball 2020 Roster

[Also up over at The Crawfish Boxes]

I wanted to do something more lighthearted to help cheer up what would have been the last week before Opening Day before everything went into quarantine. And one of the most lighthearted topics I could think of was to revisit one of the earliest things from my baseball fandom, Backyard Baseball.

For those of you who didn’t have a chance to play the series growing up, Backyard Baseball was a series of video games by Humongous Entertainment that debuted in 1997. The premise was simple: it was a basic, arcade-style baseball game where all the players are kids and all the parks are just places they might play around their neighborhood. In that sense, it’s kind of like a video game equivalent of The Sandlot or The Bad News Bears. The series was aimed at kids, but the underlying game was actually very solid, and had a unique aesthetic sense that helped engrain it in the mind of young sports fans, making it a cult classic that has endured the years.

Backyard Baseball 2001 https://t.co/XPyMWJgybn

— Céspedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) November 24, 2019

After the success of the first game, the team expanded into other sports, where they hit upon another big idea: adding a handful of pro players (as cartoon kid versions of themselves, naturally) to the list of selectable options. When they circled back around to a sequel for Baseball, Backyard Baseball 2001 (so named for its release year: 2000), they upped their ambitions to that point and added one MLB player to represent each team, more than doubling the original thirty-person roster (one team go two representatives, but we’ll come back to that).

How Well Do the New-and-Improved Rangers Stack Up Against the Astros?

[also up over at The Crawfish Boxes]

As Spring Training continues, we shall also continue on our previews from around the division. Last week, I looked at the new-and-improved, 2020 Los Angeles Angels, so why don’t we take a look this time at the team that finished just ahead of them in the standings? After all, the Texas Rangers made some notable improvements of their own this winter.

Once again, let’s take it from the top: the 78-win Rangers finished a full 29.0 games out of first place in the 2019 AL West race, with their Pythagorean Win-Loss rate three wins below even that. That gap isn’t quite as big as the Angels’, but it’s still fairly massive, and it will probably take both some downwards regression from the Astros and some upwards regression from the Rangers.

I’m going to switch things up this week and start with the pitching, since that’s the area that saw the biggest movement. Last year, by Fangraph’s Wins Above Replacement, the Houston’s pitching staff was worth 23.7 Wins, while Texas’s was worth 14.2. In fact, these were the only two AL pitching staffs in 2019 to see multiple arms drawing Cy Young support, with the alliterative duo of Mike Minor and Lance Lynn representing Arlington. If we try and make them meet halfway: did the Astros drop roughly 4.75 wins, and did the Rangers improve that much?

For the first part of that question: yeah, there’s a good chance the Astros are that much worse. Getting Lance McCullers back and more starts from Zack Greinke helps, and it’s not hard to see Jose Urquidy stepping in for Wade Miley. Forrest Whitley stepping up could maybe help as well. But Gerrit Cole leaving was just a massive blow, and there are other smaller losses to make up for as well, like Will Harris and Collin McHugh. There’s a chance that the Astros avoid losing those ~4.8 Wins, but it’s going to be really close even if they do, and things will be highly susceptible to down years and injuries.

Meanwhile, the Rangers made big strides in this area, more than enough to make up the difference if the Astros don’t drop their nearly-5 WAR. Sure, new signees Kyle Gibson and Jordan Lyles look more like three/four-starters than aces, but that’s a massive step up for a team that was using Ariel Jurado and Adrian Sampson in those roles last year; things were rough after the top two. And of course, there was the arrival of Corey Kluber, who’s just one year removed from finishing third place in Cy Young voting.

Maybe one or both of Minor and Lynn fail to repeat on their surprise 2019 campaigns. Maybe Kluber’s injuries mean he doesn’t pitch like an ace. But the mediocre case still feels like a rotation full of middle-rotation-starters, and that’s still respectable, especially compared to what they had last year! It’s also not at all hard to see them finishing as one of the three or four best pitching staffs in the AL, even if they have a mediocre bullpen. Who comes out ahead in this category between them and the Astros will probably come down to injuries.

But…just like last week with the Angels, that’s only half of the question. And on the matter of position players…well, the Rangers are going to be counting on their new pitching staff to be picking up a lot of slack.

In 2019, the Astros’ position players managed 40.8 WAR, which is probably not going to happen again since it was pretty historic, but the team’s lineup should still be good. Texas’s lineup, in contrast, was worth 9.2 WAR, fourth worst in the majors and ahead of just Baltimore, Miami, and Detroit (the Tigers somehow managed -2.6 WAR from their position players, which is astounding for all the wrong reasons).

So yeah, our question is: are the 2020 Astros 15.8 WAR worse, and are the 2020 Rangers 15.8 WAR better? Last week, I wouldn’t commit to the Astros being 10 Wins worse, so losing another 6 Wins or so on top of that is the type of thing that we’re only going to see with some miserable injury luck or something.

How do the Rangers look in comparison? Well, Robinson Chirinos will be missed in Houston, and he definitely improves what was a net zero last year. Todd Frazier improves third base, but not quite as much, since they at least had half of a decent year from Asdrubal Cabrera (plus, Frazier will be 34 this season).

In the negative column, Hunter Pence will be missed, and Nomar Mazara and Delino DeShields were both shipped out of town. On the injury rebound front, a full season from Joey Gallo after his injury-marred-yet-breakout 2019 could mean extra wins. And…that’s really about it. This just isn’t at all close to 16 WAR.

The Rangers definitely look better in 2020, and their pitching is especially formidable. Their efforts to improve are commendable at a time when so many in the league are outright punting on the season. But they still only have half of the equation right now, and barring multiple big surprises, the Astros should definitely be able to hold them off again in 2020.

How Well Do the New-and-Improved Angels Stack Up Against the Astros?

[also posted at The Crawfish Boxes]

The Angels had one of the splashiest offseasons of any team in the majors, with the centerpiece being handing out one of the largest contracts in history. That stands in fairly stark contrast with Houston’s offseason, which (even aside from the sign stealing scandal and related fallout) still saw them lose the 2020 AL Cy Young runner-up, among other players. That contrast has been looming in my mind, so I wanted to step back and take a more objective look: how much did the gap close between the Angels and Astros this winter?

Before anything else, though, it’s worth keeping in mind the scale of what we’re dealing with. The Angels, for all of their good players, were still not a good team in 2020, finishing the year with a 72-90 record, behind the 107-win Astros. And it’s not like there was a lot of luck there that they can hope will help even things out; both teams finished exactly in line with their Pythagorean records, so we can just go off their regular records.

That put them a full 35.0 games out of first place, which coincidentally matches the single biggest one-year improvement by a team in MLB history (the 1998 to 1999 Diamondbacks, who went from 65 wins to 100 in part with the help of new free agent Randy Johnson). It’s probably unrealistic to expect that from the Angels, so let’s divide that swing between the two teams. If you want to split the difference, dating back to 2000, a little less than two teams per year improve and fall by 17 games. So the Angels, to compete for the division title, are hoping to be one of the two biggest improvements this season and the Astros being one of the two biggest drops (and even that might not be enough, given that 17+17 still only accounts for 34.0 games).

Honestly, that sense of scale is reasonably comfortable already for anyone rooting for the Astros, but let’s break it down further, into the individual components. Let’s start with the offense, since that’s where the Angels made their biggest, most notable improvements. In 2019, L.A. finished with about half of the position player WAR (Fangraphs version) of the Astros, 40.8 to 20.3, in large part thanks to finishing 26 points behind Houston in wRC+, 125 to 99.

Some of that can come from regression to the mean on the Astros’ part, given their historic 2019 campaign and how hard it is to repeat historic seasons. And losing Robinson Chirinos (113 wRC+) is going to hurt some. But it’s not like there aren’t areas for improvement to help offset those losses, too: Yordan Álvarez (87 games, 178 wRC+) should be getting a full season, and Carlos Correa (75 games, 143 wRC+) will hopefully be healthy; Jose Altuve and George Springer each missed about 40 games last year, and could make up some of that difference in increased playing time.

On the margins, Tyler White and Tony Kemp won’t be getting 400+ plate appearances, and while Jake Marisnick’s glove will be missed, Myles Straw could easily prove an adequate replacement on the whole, with a better bat making up the difference even if his defense is a notch below Jake’s. And of course, there’s still the hope that Kyle Tucker steps forward and provides another great bat.

The Astros will almost certainly be worse at hitting in 2020, because no one has hit like they did in 2020; but there’s still plenty of room to fall and still be above average. For example, if they had a team wRC+ a full 10 points lower last year, they still would have been third in the league.

But while the Astros’s position players will still probably good in 2020, it’s not hard to imagine the Angels’ improving enough to match them on that front. Jason Castro is stepping into a spot that was basically a zero last year. Shohei Ohtani and Andrelton Simmons each missed over 50 games, and Mike Trout missed a little over 20. Justin Upton missed nearly 100 games, and the 63 he played in didn’t look anything close to his previous seasons. And of course, there’s Rice-alum Anthony Rendon, who signed a massive contract this offseason and is more than enough to make up for their biggest loss from 2019, Kole Calhoun. We haven’t even gotten into Jo Adell, their equivalent of Kyle Tucker, but saying their Angels’ lineup is on par with the Astros doesn’t feel like too much of a reach.

To go back to our earlier pair of questions, are the Astros 10 wins worse on offense, and are the Angels 10 wins better? I think Houston is worse than before, but 10 wins is a big drop, even for a team that was at a historic high last year. But the Angels very easily might be 10 wins better on this front. And every win above 10 makes up some of that gap from the Astros not dropping 10 wins.

I think I’d still lean towards the Astros due to several big questions hanging around L.A. (Can Justin Upton bounce back? How well and much will Albert Pujols play? Are the bigger injuries last year a lingering problem, or a one-year fluke?), which mostly seem to come down to “they have a similar ceiling, but the Angels have a lot more uncertainty”. I could honestly see the matter coming down to who has a healthier season.

But that’s only half the question, and man oh man is the pitching half of things still as lopsided as ever. Gerrit Cole leaving hurts, and I don’t blame anyone for being concerned about that. But the Angels are not the ones who are going to push Houston on this front; after finishing 18 WAR behind the Astros in 2019, L.A.’s big pickups were Julio Teheran and Dylan Bundy, and at this moment, those two would make up half of their playoff rotation. Fangraphs predicts both of them to finish with ERA’s above 4.40 and FIPS in the 4.50 to 5.00 range.

Shoot, even if they make a big mid-season trade for a starter, those two still might both appear in a potential ALCS rotation, depending on the health of Andrew Heaney (just 95.1 innings in 2019), Shohei Ohtani (hasn’t pitched since 2018, on track to start pitching a month and a half late and only go once a week when he’s back), and how well their assorted fourth and fifth starter options can stick (Griffin Canning, the best of their bunch, is already in a worrisome spot health-wise this spring). Put another way, in a best-case scenario, I can see Los Angeles maybe fielding a competent rotation, but it’s hard to envision a ceiling much higher than that, and it’s extremely easy to see them ending up below that ceiling.

So let’s go back to that two-pronged question we used in the first two parts; is the 2020 Astros pitching 9 WAR worse than it was in 2019, and is the Angels staff 9 WAR better? Losing Cole is big (Fangraphs had him at about seven and a half wins alone), and Wade Miley was competent for most of the year, but there are plenty of mitigating factors to that total. Lance McCullers’ return and a full season of Zack Greinke will help offset some of that, and Jose Urquidy projects to be about on Miley’s level at least; they could still be 9 wins worse on the whole, but it will largely come down to injuries, young pitchers, and regression in that case.

But the Angels just do not strike me as 9 WAR better than last year on the pitching front, let alone enough above that to start making up ground if the Astros don’t fall their full 9 WAR. And remember, just adding 9 WAR isn’t enough; they also have to make up for the late Tyler Skaggs, who was their best starter last year (1.8 WAR in 79.2 innings). And unlike on the offense, where the Angels can match Astros fans’ hopes for Kyle Tucker with their dreams for Jo Adell, the Angels don’t have a Forrest Whitley in the wings, let alone the recent track record Houston pitching has seen under Brent Strom.

Maybe the Angels can make up for that on offense, but that’s expecting something like a 15 WAR improvement on top of a 10-WAR drop by the Astros, which is starting to reach “extremely improbable” territory. The Astros will have a harder path to the division title in 2020 than they did in 2019, and the improved Angels will be a part of that, but they probably won’t wind up replacing the Astros themselves.

Hiring Dusty Baker is the Astros Making the Best of a Rough Situation

[Also over at The Crawfish Boxes]

The Astros are hardly in an ideal situation, finding themselves suddenly lacking both a Manager and a General Manager mere weeks before pitchers and catchers report for what is expected to be a contending season. However, they appear to have finally settled on longtime manager Dusty Baker, and honestly? I think that's a fine choice, especially on short notice.

Really, of all the names that were considered for the role, Baker's was far and away the one that was the most interesting, to me. We have a decent idea of who all was considered for the role, given Chandler Rome's list of nine candidates from the other day, and it's not bad considering the short notice the role opened on. Still, I was also hesitant given that half of the list was candidates with no managerial experience.

The Astros are pretty clearly in win-now mode, and while I think the Astros will be contending this year and possibly even in 2021, I'm not sure how much further than that I'd be willing to go. The farm system is depleted after the last few years, and losing their biggest draft picks for 2020 and 2021 is only going to exacerbate matters. The primary focus should be on the next season or two, which is why I'm skeptical of rookie managers (in this case meaning Mark Kotsay, Eduardo Pérez , Joe Espada, and Will Venable).

There's a lot of uncertainty in hiring someone totally unproven, and even in the event that you find someone great, it may take a while for them to find their footing. Just look at Terry Francona, or Bobby Cox, or Joe Torre, all of whom didn't record a winning season until their second teams as managers. Even the legends who figure things out relatively quickly still usually have something of an adjustment period, like Tony La Russa and Bruce Bochy needing a full season or more to make it above .500. And this is without getting into the unique challenges Houston will present this year, with increased pressure following in the fallout of the sign stealing investigation. Given all that, I'd rather go with a more experienced manager.

And of the managers with experience, Baker was far and away my favorite option. Let's just start with the first, most basic point: Dusty has had substantially more success than anyone else available. For example, just comparing him to the other candidates who had managed before:

Manager	Seasons	Winning Percentage
Baker	22	0.532
Showalter	20	0.506
Gibbons	11	0.501
Ausmus	5	0.478
Banister	4	0.509

Every candidate has had some success, but Baker is just heads and shoulders above the other four. Not that they’re bad, of course, Baker has just managed a level of success that few have sustained for as long as he has. In fact, he’s twenty-third all-time in Games Above .500. That doesn’t just happen by accident.

Perhaps more importantly, this hasn’t happened by just camping out on a good team for years. Baker has continued his success across all four teams he’s managed to date. And it’s not like he’s just stepped into already successful teams, either: every one of his first seasons in a new town have seen his team improve, with three of those four improving on their previous year’s record by double digits. The only one that didn’t improve by that much was the Reds, who were in midst of a losing streak; by 2010, his third season, he had gotten them their first winning season since 2000 and their first playoff appearance since 1995.

Few managers can boast that type of quick success across so many teams, and the ones that can are pretty fondly remembered, like Billy Martin and Davey Johnson. There’s not really a good way to measure the exact effect a manager can have on a team, which is why direct comparisons between seasons like that seem important. It’s the closest we can get to running a season again with minimal changes to measure differences, and while one or even two success stories might be luck, four feels a little closer to a pattern.

The larger point is, there’s clearly more to managing than just the things Baker has been criticized for, like in-game bullpen management or optimizing the lineup (the latter of which still has a minimal effect at most). If there wasn’t, we probably would probably have seen more success among the total neophytes with close ties to analytical front offices that were so in vogue a few years ago. Most went the way of guys like Robin Ventura or Walt Weiss, making little impact. But even the ones that made the playoffs tended to have questionable records that drove fans of their teams crazy. Seriously, ask a Cardinals about Mike Matheny, or Tigers fans about Brad Ausmus. Or Nationals fans about Matt Williams, for that matter.

That last one seems especially relevant, seeing as it led to Baker’s last gig. And it seems like a not-dissimilar comparison to what the Astros face, with a talented roster but chaos at the head of things. Keeping things calm and getting the players to play to their full potential would be greatly appreciated for the 2020 Astros, in my opinion.

But even aside from that, Dusty’s reputation has sort of wildly surpassed the man himself, with a lot of the points held against him coming from things that happened a decade or more ago. He’s pretty clearly shown an ability to learn and grow, though, which is both a good quality and critical point to look at when evaluating him as a potential manager for 2020. You can point to Mark Prior and Kerry Wood’s (who had arm troubles years before Baker got to Chicago anyway, but we’ll ignore that) injuries if you want, but noting that his approach has changed and his last two teams didn’t see similar problems in his wake feels at least as important, if not more so.

And I guess you could worry about his postseason record, but it feels kind of like a moot point. I tend to think a lot of the playoffs are still pretty random and that the effect a manager can have is pretty underwhelming, so you might as well focus on maximizing regular season success and work from there, but let’s set that aside. The only available managers with World Series under their belt are guys who have made it pretty clear they’re retired, so it’s not like there was a clearly better option floating around. And the other four veteran manager candidates on that list combined have as many playoff series victories as Baker does by himself.

Really, the biggest part of a manager’s job seems to be second-guessed, so no choice is going to make everyone happy. But at the same time, Dusty Baker is without a doubt in the top 10% of managers all-time, likely even higher, and it’s not every day you can find someone like that on short notice. No other candidates looks like as sure a bet, which seems crucial given how much longer the team’s window for success looks to be open. He has a long track record of success, has succeeded on teams that look similar to the 2020 Astros, and has shown an ability to learn from his mistakes. Working with a more analytical front office might even help him improve more. I don’t know what else you could want if you’re in Houston’s situation.