Astros Weekly Round-up

I just did a recap of the Astros' 3-1 win over the Mariners over at the Crawfish Boxes, which features the continuation of a number of streaks. 

Also, if you didn't see it earlier in the week, I also wrote about Carlos Correa's early success in 2019.

The Most Encouraging Part of the Astros' first two weeks

Over at The Crawfish Boxes, I wrote about Carlos Correa's hot start, and why it might be more meaningful in evaluating the Astros' season than your average first two weeks.

Predicting Today's Future Hall of Fame Closers

I recently ran my annual look at which hitters and starting pitchers are on pace for the Hall of Fame, and in them, I mentioned the idea of switching things up and looking at relief pitchers as well. After all, there’s been something of an explosion in relief talent in Cooperstown over the last two years; after being stuck at five closers in the Hall for a decade, we’ve seen three new ones added in Mariano Rivera, Lee Smith, and Trevor Hoffman. Plus, Billy Wagner continues to hang around the ballot, and may see his support continue to climb in the coming years.

Now obviously, eight closers still isn’t anywhere near the body of evidence we have to work with when trying to predict position players or starters, but it might be fun to play around with, and see if we can spot any sort of nascent trends in who the Hall is electing.

It’s not a lot to work with, but there are some fun things I noticed while looking into things:

Weekly Writing Round-Up

Over at The Crawfish Boxes, I published a piece looking at the Astros' (quite frankly, bizarre) struggles with the bat so far in 2019.

Earlier, I also contributed a game recap for their lone win of the week.

Also, keep an eye on this spot; I should have a follow-up to the Future Hall of Fame series coming soon.

Predicting Today's Future Hall of Fame Pitchers, 2019 Edition

We turn now to the second part of my annual series predicting future Hall of Famers, the starting pitchers.

As a quick refresher on the methodology: I looked at every Hall of Fame starter’s career WAR over every age of their career, then took the median WAR as a “Hall benchmark” of sorts. Then, I looked at how many players throughout history were at or above that mark at each age, and took the percent that were eventual Hall of Fame inductees as the rough “odds” that the current player would reach Cooperstown. For starters, I focused exclusively on pitchers who started 10% or more of their games at each stage, and looked only at pitchers who debuted in the liveball era (1920-on), due to how radically the nature of the role of starter has evolved over time. Also, I will be grouping players based on their age in the 2018 season, with the traditional June 30th serving as the cutoff.

The normal caveats apply: some players not in the Hall might get inducted, some players with Hall-worthy careers might be overlooked, and non-playing factors might ultimately be the deciding factor for a lot of candidates. One other thing worth noting, which I studied more in-depth last year: success as an old pitcher is especially key for modern starters to get inducted, in a way that it isn’t for position players (for reasons I went into more deeply in those pieces). That sort of widened my scope of which pitchers I was focusing on here; also, given how much starters can use their mid-to-late-30s to bolster their cases, and how unpredictable the question of “who stays good into old age” can be (hello, Jamie Moyer, Tim Wakefield, and Bartolo Colon), it’s probably worth casting a wider net for starters either way.

Another AL Preview

For the fifth time, I have a season preview piece running at The Crawfish Boxes, this one focusing on the Yankees. If you're interested in parts one-through-four: Athletics, Angels, Mariners, Red Sox

More 2019 Season Preview Stuff

Over at The Crawfish Boxes, I have another piece up looking at an AL Rival. This time, it's the Boston Red Sox. If you missed any of the three earlier ones, there's also the A's, Angels, and Mariners.

Also, as part of a team-wide article, I made a prediction about a milestone the Astros might be able to match in 2019.

Thoughts on Craig Kimbrel and the Astros

A few pieces over at The Crawfish Boxes:

First, we looked at the remaining players on the free agent market and who the Astros might consider signing.

Then, I thought more about my Craig Kimbrel comment and decided to expand on it.

Predicting Today's Future Hall of Fame Hitters, 2019 Edition

Once again, it’s that time of the offseason where I dive into the best young players in the game and determine which ones are on a pace to make Cooperstown. As usual, I’ll be starting today with the position players.

To give you a refresher on the process: I begin by looking at every Hall of Famer, then finding the median career Wins Above Replacement (Baseball-Reference version) by age for the group. Then, I look at how many players in history have matched or bettered that WAR total through that same age. From there, I take a simple percentage of how many players made the Hall out of the total set of players who reached the median WAR (removing players still on the ballot or not yet eligible for Cooperstown). While it doesn’t account for things like eventual Veterans Committee selections, or give us a great idea of which below-median players will eventually be elected, it does give us surprisingly strong odds for the best of the best, and way earlier than most people expect.

So, with the preamble out of the way, let’s dive right in:

The AL Rest, Part 3

I originally wasn't going to do one of these for the Mariners, but after looking over their roster, I realized they were stronger than I had been giving them credit for. I don't think they're a major player for the AL West this season, but if they could surprise everyone last year, this year might not be completely out of reach (although the biggest payoff for these moves will likely be the years after 2019).

If you missed the earlier parts of this series, here are the Athletics and Angels.

The AL Rest, Part 2

Over at The Crawfish Boxes, I followed up Monday's post previewing the Athletics with one looking over the Angels' chances for upsetting the Astros in 2019. Go check it out, and if you missed the one on the A's, that can be found here.

The AL Rest, Part 1

Over at The Crawfish Boxes, I have the first of two pieces going up this week comparing the Astros to a divisional rival who will be challenging them for the AL West title. First up is the Oakland Athletics, led by their strong infield of Matt Chapman and Matt Olson. It also got me remembering back when I interviewed Chad Pinder and Sean Manaea for the Cape Cod League, although that's more of a side tangent.

A Few New Pieces

Over at The Crawfish Boxes, I have a post looking at the Astros' 2019 PECOTA projections.

At Out of Left Field, I wrote about another one of my favorite games of 2018.

What Have the Marlins Gotten Back from All of Their Trades?

ESPN noted that, following the J.T. Realmuto trade, 23 of the Marlins’ top 25 players by WAR have been traded, rather than leaving as a free agent or eventually retiring with the team. It’s a pretty sorry affair after 27 seasons, but I wondered if maybe they had at least gotten back prospects to rebuild the team over the years. This isn’t necessarily to see how the trades looked at the time, just to see the eventual outcomes. So let’s take a quick look at the returns for the 23 players sent away.

The Best Players Without a Retired Number, by Number

Jonah Keri posted something the other day over at CBS Sports about the best players to wear each uniform number. It made me think of an idea I had been kicking around for a while (read: had a filled-out spreadsheet sitting open on my desktop for months), the “Best Players Without a Retired Number, by Number” list, where I basically try and guess the best retired number candidates for each uniform number. This seemed like as good of an excuse as any to see how that experiment would go, so let’s dive right in.