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Pregame Pepper
Did you know ...
Game 7 of the 1960 World Series -- a 10-9 Pittsburgh win over the heavily-favored New York Yankees -- featured 24 hits, 19 runs, and 9 different pitchers but took only 2:36 to play . . .
Thanks to the crazy short season of 2020, the previous four National League MVPs – Cody Bellinger, Christian Yelich, Giancarlo Stanton, and Kris Bryant – combined to hit .223 . . .
The 2020 Chicago White Sox went 14-0 against lefthanded pitching . . .
With postseason play inexplicably expanded to 16 teams, the Houston Astros and Milwaukee Brewers became the first teams to reach the playoffs with losing records.
Leading Off
Biggest Snubs for 2020 MVP, Cy Young Awards
By Ahaan S. Rungta
The 2020 MLB season was no normal occurrence for any team but players still competed and took pride in individual regular season awards.
As usual, the prestigious Manager of the Year, Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year awards were voted on by members of the BBWAA. Additionally, members of the IBWAA, such as myself, voted for the IBWAA’s version of the awards.
It remains rare to find unanimous agreement on awards and it is virtually impossible for every avid baseball fan to agree on the voting results for every award. The task becomes even more shady in a sample size of 60 games; after all, baseball is a game of streaks, and streaks were often magnified in 2020 by a noticeable amount. Yet, players work hard for their contract incentives and career résumés, so the results are far from meaningless regardless of the state of the season.
Today, I’ll name one player for each of the four major player awards (MVP, Cy Young for each league) that I personally think was snubbed by voters and should have ranked higher. By consequence, this means that I voted for them higher in my ballot than they finished. I have chosen these four to review today because they both demand ballots for more than just the top 3, allowing a larger selection of players to appear on a ballot.
NL Cy Young: Corbin Burnes
Actual finish: 6th; my vote: 4th
Perhaps one of the biggest bounce-back stories in baseball, Corbin Burnes was a name many analysts and fantasy baseball players kept an eye on in 2020. After posting an 8.82 ERA as a starter and reliever in 2019, Burnes put up an eye-popping 2.11 ERA in 12 appearances (9 starts). He pitched nearly 60 innings and had a FIP of 2.03 and an ERA+ (ballpark-adjusted) of 216. In the official BBWAA ballot, Burnes received one fourth-place vote and 10 fifth place votes to put him at sixth overall.
Figure. Corbin Burnes’ profile, via Baseball Savant.
Burnes’ improvement from 2019 to 2020 was off-the-page, statistically. Last year, he was one of the worst pitchers in baseball by hard-hit rate given up, xERA/ERA, xBA, and xSLG. In 2020, he was elite in all those categories. Additionally, Burnes' quality of contact given up saw a huge shift. Per Fangraphs, in 2019, he was giving up an average launch angle of 10.7 degrees. That actually trended uphill to 11 degrees in 2020 but opponents stopped barreling the baseball consistently and his home run to fly ball ratio of 38.6% in 2019 collapsed to 4.7% in 2020.
Burnes had an xFIP of 2.99 and SIERA of 3.18, making him perhaps the most interesting man on the mound headed into the 2021 season to pitch alongside Brandon Woodruff’s also-intriguing profile in Milwaukee.
AL Cy Young: Marco Gonzales
Actual finish: Did not place; my vote: 5th
There seems to be a still-growing theory that strikeouts correlate exactly to success for the modern-day pitcher. It’s the cool thing to do since it displays an aura of dominance. It’s probably why Marco Gonzales of the Seattle Mariners got no love for the AL Cy Young race. In 2020, Gonzales pitched nearly 70 innings in 111 starts and posted a 3.10 ERA, better than that of Lance Lynn, Lucas Giolito, Dylan Bundy, and Framber Valdez, who finished 6th, 7th, 9th, and 11th in the final Cy Young standings. While his pitching style may not be sexy on paper with his bottom 3% fastball velocity, bottom 10% whiff rate, and bottom 25% fastball and curveball spin, he was effective with control and was in the top 20% of all pitching in soft contact allowed (by exit velocity).
His 0.947 WHIP was third in the American League (Maeda #1, Bieber #2), his walk rate of 0.904 per 9 IP was tops in the American League, and despite the timid strikeout rate, his K/BB of 9.143 was #1 in the sport, a testament to his control as a finesse pitcher. Gonzales was also consistent and did not discriminate by park. Of his 11 starts, he allowed more than 3 runs in only 2 of them and had an impressive 3.02 ERA in 7 starts on the road, including a complete game.
Gonzales has never received a Cy Young vote in his career but since the beginning of 2018, he has a 3.85 ERA in 74 starts for the Mariners. He will be 29 years old in the 2021 season and his 61st percentile rank in xERA in the 2020 season suggests that Gonzales can continue to be a legitimate front-end starter.
NL MVP: Trea Turner
Actual finish: 7th; my vote: 3rd
Juan Soto and Trea Turner are a couple of my favorite players in today's game and they happen to be teammates, making the 2020 Nationals MVP discussion open-ended. The now-22-year-old Soto might already be in the conversation for best hitter in baseball and he deserved to get the MVP love that he did. Soto received votes ranging from 2nd to 8th and finished fifth overall. However, I voted for Trea Turner higher than Soto and, in fact, in my top three. While I respect the tug-of-war debate between Soto and Turner and I think one can go either way with their philosophies regarding “value” to the team, I’m here to convince you that Turner was criminally snubbed.
In 2020, Turner led all of baseball in hits. He finished the season with a .335/.394/.588 slash line and his ranks as an offensive player were elite across the board. He finished 3rd in the NL in offensive bWAR (Soto #1), 4th in batting average, (Soto #1), 2nd in total bases, 3rd in stolen bases, 4th in runs created (Soto #2), 7th in offensive win percentage (Soto #1), and 4th in the power-speed number. Among all MLB shortstops in 2020, Turner was the leader in AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS, wOBA, and wRC+.
Figure. Trea Turner’s profile in 2020, via Baseball Savant.
The deal-breaker for the team award for me? The tools outside the batter's box. Turner is quite possibly the best base-runner in the world and his sprint speed was, as usual, top five in baseball. Additionally, he was 82nd percentile in outs above average, a metric that measures range as a defender, and he put up his numbers consistently over the course of the full season, playing in 59 of the 60 games.
The Nationals may have gotten down years from many on their way to a World Series hangover dud of a season, but Turner was carrying the ballclub at the leadoff spot and in the infield. Even accounting for the extra vote that mistakenly went to Ryan Tepera, the fact that Turner only received 3 of 30 votes above 7th place is alarming.
AL MVP: Shane Bieber
Actual finish: 4th; my vote: 1st
While the conversation of a pitcher winning the MVP award is likely going to open up a can of worms, I’m willing to risk opening it up to discuss. I’m confessing: I voted Bieber for MVP. In 2020, Bieber had a 1.63 ERA and 0.866 WHIP in almost 80 innings pitched in 12 starts for the Cleveland Indians. He was the unanimous Cy Young winner in the National League but I wanted to reward him more.
While we have seen pitchers in our generation win MVPs (Justin Verlander, 2011 and Clayton Kershaw, 2014), the short season may have been a huge red flag when considering a pitcher to win the prestigious award in 2020. For perspective, Verlander and Kershaw accumulated 24 and 21 wins, respectively, in their MVP seasons. That accounted for 25% and 22% of their team’s wins, respectively. In 2020, Bieber went 8-1, making his record accountable for 23% of the Indians’ wins in the regular season. While I won’t continue the discussion further of why a pitcher should be eligible to win the MVP, I’ll point out that the parallels existed to recent pitchers that did win the award and he was likely penalized for a drab roster in Cleveland that eventually got rocked in the first round of the playoffs.
In Bieber's appearance on the ballot, he received votes as high as third place but a majority of the voters ranked him either fourth or fifth. I have to wonder—if Bieber's impact on the Indians in 2020 was not enough to be a finalist as a pitcher, will there ever be a pitcher winning an MVP in the future?
Ahaan S. Rungta is a sports podcaster (Count It), YouTuber (xCheese Baseball), and a writer for Red Sox Life, Fantrax, and Max’s Sporting Studio. He is active on Twitter at @AhaanRungta and via email at ahaanrungta@alum.mit.edu.
Cleaning Up
Cleveland Rocks! And It’s a Great New Nickname For The City’s Baseball Team
By Dan Schlossberg
Cleveland Rocks! It’s not only a great slogan for the city’s Conventions & Visitors Bureau but also a great nickname for the local baseball team.
After all, the city is best known as the home of the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, the host venue for the All-Star Game gala in 2019.
Uniforms could have a number on one side and a set of drums on the other – a salute both to the new nickname and the crazed fan who constantly beats the tom-toms in a deranged effort to help the team win.
The nickname would also be a tribute to one of the club’s biggest stars, Rocco Colavito, a matinee idol who was foolishly traded even-up for Harvey Kuenn – a home run champ for a batting champ – by Frank (Trader) Lane, also known as Frantic Frankie.
Cleveland Rocks is certainly better than Mistake On The Lake, a moniker for the city when it was truly the center of the Rust Belt, with industrial disaster epitomized in a burning river channel.
The ballpark, now called Progressive Field, has almost had as many nicknames as the ballclub.
Originally named Jacobs Field after a former team owner, it was known to locals as “the Jake.” It attracted so many flocks of seagulls that visiting announcer Fran Healy once cracked that it was the first time he witnessed a foul in fair territory.
The team’s roots reach back to the 19th century. Forest City, an independent team, played two years in the National Association of Professional Ball Players from 1870-72. Then came the Cleveland Blues, a National League expansion franchise that lasted from 1879-84. The Cleveland Spiders lasted 13 years – two in the American Association, then a major league, and 11 in the National League from 1887-99. They even carved a niche in the record book as the worst team in baseball history after going 20-134, worst in major-league history, for a .130 “winning” percentage that left them 84 games out of first place in 1899.
The Spiders averaged 145 fans per game, giving them a total home attendance of 6,088 and earning them a one-way ticket into oblivion. They were contracted, along with teams in Washington, Baltimore, and Louisville, when the NL condensed from a dozen clubs to eight.
But Cleveland still had a ballclub: a Western League team based in Grand Rapids, Michigan moved to Cleveland, called themselves the Lake Shores, and was in the right place at the right time when the minor-league Western League claimed major-league status under the new American League in 1901.
Variously known as the Blues (for their uniforms), Naps (for star player Napoleon Lajoie), or Bronchos, the club took on the Indians moniker ostensibly as a tribute to Louis Sockalexis, a Cleveland Spiders outfielder reputed to be the first Native American in major-league history.
Even though the nickname has lasted more than a century, it has been on the fast track to oblivion for years – long before George Floyd and Black Lives Matter rallies impacted the national consciousness about racism.
The club’s Chief Wahoo logo definitely demonized Native Americans has already been stripped from the uniform, the yearbook, the media guide, and other promotional materials. Fans have also been told not to wear war paint to the ballpark. The drummer guy could be silenced too – much to the delight of anyone who sat within earshot.
But not all Native Americans dislike the name Indians. Many tribes, especially in the western states, refer to themselves that way and consider the title a badge of honor. Just as there are many factions in politics, there are countless differences of opinion among the real-life Indians.
Applauding the move is Ray Halbritter, Oneida Nation Representative and leader of the Change the Mascot campaign. He said the change reflects a growing understanding that native peoples should not be relegated to serving as mascots for sports franchises.
“For decades,” he said earlier this week, “Native American leaders including the National Congress of American Indians have called on Cleveland to change the name and logo. By finally acting, Cleveland’s team is moving the team and professional sports forward down a new path of inclusivity and mutual respect.”
Change the Mascot works to educate the public about the damaging effects on Native Americans arising from the continued use of the R-word. This civil and human rights movement has helped reshape the debate surrounding the Washington team’s name and brought the issue to the forefront of social consciousness. Since its launch, Change the Mascot has garnered support from a diverse coalition of prominent advocates including elected officials from both parties, Native American tribes, sports icons, leading journalists and news publications, civil and human rights organizations and religious leaders.
Unlike such obviously-racist nicknames as Washington Redskins and Syracuse Orangemen, “Indians” can be considered a badge of honor, symbolic of accomplishment, courage, and triumph over adversity.
That is precisely the reason the Atlanta team insists on keeping the nickname Braves – after sending Chief Noc-a-Homa, a real Native American, to the unemployment line and shelving their Smiling Chief logo. It’s interesting to note that Hank Aaron, who never hesitated to speak up for civil rights, never objected to wearing that symbol on his sleeve.
As for the Indians, often called The Tribe by headline writers, changing a long-standing, time-tested name is a big deal. In fact, it will take more than a year before all the fixes can be made – especially in a ballpark topped by a huge scoreboard with the questionable word at the top.
That means history will be made next season: the last Indian to hit a home run, the last Indian to win a game, the last man to manage the Indians, even the last umpire to call balls and strikes at an Indians game. Fans may not be able to wear war paint anymore but nobody can take away their memories – or the statues of Bob Feller and Larry Doby that stand in front of the ballpark.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is weekend editor of HERE’S THE PITCH and author of The New Baseball Bible: Notes, Nuggets, Lists, and Legends From Our National Pastime. The 480-page illustrated paperback features a chapter on the origin of team and player nicknames. Dan may be reached by e.mail at ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
Because COVID-19 caused schedule peculiarities, Amed Rosario hit a walk-off home run for the Mets at Yankee Stadium and Trent Grisham hit one for the Padres at Oracle Park in San Francisco . . .
No Pittsburgh starting pitcher won more than two games in 2020 . . .
Colorado outfielder Charlie Blackmon hit .303 this past year by hitting .405 in his first 28 games and .200 in his last 31 . . .
Thanks to their short porch in right field, the 2020 Yankees hit 67 home runs at home and 27 on the road.
Readers React
On Dick Allen . . .
Loved the Dick Allen synopsis feature in IBWAA. I saw one of the two he hit out of Connie Mack — my first MLB game as a kid with my dad — and I was awestruck to say the least. And hooked forever on the sport. Thanks again for writing it.
THEO SIMENDINGER
Glenwood Village, CO
The writer is the founder and chairman of the No Bats Baseball Club.
On John Smoltz . . .
Just a quick note on one of last weekend's Timeless Trivia bullet points: John Smoltz is not the only Hall of Famer to get Tommy John surgery. However, I believe he is the only pitcher. Paul Molitor also had Tommy John surgery back in 1984.
MICK REINHARD
Camp Hill, PA
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Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Brian Harl [bchrom831@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.
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