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Estimating how Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto will hit in the MLB

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By now, we have a lot of examples to look at to see how a hitter’s results change when leaving the Japanese baseball leagues to join Major League Baseball. So when I saw some fans getting excited about the prospects of their team signing position players Kazuma Okamoto or Munetaka Murakami this offseason, I decided to try to figure out how these two are likely to do in the MLB.

I found a nice page on Wikipedia that listed all the players who made that very switch. Nineteen of them were position players. I then ruled out any players that had less than 600 plate appearances in Major League Baseball, as that small of a sample size doesn’t inspire confidence that we’re getting an accurate measure of their ability in the MLB. That took 4 players out. I also ruled out all players who were too young when they came over for us to expect that their recent past performance would be at the same level as their near future performance. That ruled out just one player – Shohei Ohtani, who was only 23.7 years old when he played his first game in the majors. That’s almost 4 years younger than the next youngest, Ichiro Suzuki, who was 27.4. That left the 14 players you see in the following table:

These 14 players are listed in descending order of their OPS over their last 3 years playing in Japan just before coming to MLB. The three columns on the right are the ones we’re most interested in. It has their 3-year OPS in Japan, their first-3 (or first-4 or first-5) year OPS in MLB, and what the change in OPS was.

As you can see, in all but one case, the OPS comes down. And not just by a little bit – a .200 point drop is typical in this list. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the players who started with a higher OPS in Japan experienced the biggest drops.

Now let’s look at this data visually to see if we can spot any more trends. I’ve plotted each player’s OPS’s on the vertical axis, and their age at the time they started playing in MLB on the horizontal axis.

I can’t say I see an age-related trend here, except that perhaps the youngest have a slightly smaller drop than the older players. What does show is that trend we mentioned above, that the highest drops come from players with the highest OPS’s in Japan. As a rule of thumb, I’d say this:

  • If the player’s Japan OPS over the previous 3 years was over 1.000, expect a .200 to .275 point drop.
  • If it was in the .900’s, expect a .150 to .275 point drop.
  • If it was under .850, expect a .50 to .100 point drop.

This would be a good time to address some of the outlying data points.

Regarding So Taguchi, the only player whose OPS rose (if only by a paltry .010) upon coming to MLB. There are two things about his time in MLB that did not happen for any other player coming from the Japan leagues. The first is the unusual amount of time he spent in the minors his first two years. Going by plate appearances, he spent 96% of his first year in the minors, and 83% of his second year. Every other player to come over spend most or all of their time in the majors. Perhaps they saw some things they could improve with his plate approach? The other thing is how he was used. He was used almost exclusively as a late-innings replacement, and as such, he got a lot of favorable platoon matchups, much more than a full-time player would. This would have boosted his OPS – indeed, it was higher in the majors than in the minors!

Because the way they used Taguchi was so out of the norm, we can’t rely on his data point to inform us about typically-used players who cross over. So we’ll toss that out.

On the other end of things, there is Yoshi Tsutsugo and his .302 point drop, the biggest one in the chart. Is that a good data point? Notice it is based on only 640 major league plate appearances. That’s just above our cutoff amount. Did we pick a cutoff that was too low?

This may be a good time to point out that we may have a bit of survivorship bias happening here. There were four players we omitted from our data because their total plate appearnaces in the majors was below our 600-PA lower limit – in all cases, well below. Three of those four players had OPS drops of more than .300 points. But are those drops so large because the sample sizes are so small? Or were the sample sizes so small because the drops in OPS were so large? We can’t know for sure. And we can’t know if those large drops in OPS would have stayed that large with more plate appearances. All we can say is there might be a survivorship bias occuring here.

And that makes me inclined to keep the Yoshi Tsutsugo data point. It could be our lone representative of all the players whose play was so poor in MLB that they didn’t even play all that much in the end.

Okay, so so far, we’re taking So Taguchi out and that’s it.

Now it’s time to ask, where would Murakami and Okamoto land on this table and chart?

One thing about Murakami: he’ll be more than a year younger than anyone on this chart was on the day of their first MLB game. That could be a relevant difference. So it would be good now to bring back that data point we eliminated before, the player who was even younger when he started, Shohei Ohtani (you may have heard of him).

Here’s the new table with the three of them added:

Here’s the new plot with those three added and So Taguchi removed:

As you can see, I’ve added Murakami and Okamoto, with their OPS’s from their last 3 years in Japan showing, and a guess at where they’ll end up in the majors as a fuzzy orange patch. We can see that Ohtani did have a drop, but the smallest drop of anyone who started over .900 OPS. Was it because he was young, and young players are more likely to be improving with each year? Or was it because he is a unique human being who can master any new challenge he sets his mind to? Probably a little of both. As far as this impacts Murakami, it had me guessing on the smaller side for his OPS drop, but more closely aligned with Ichiro Suzuki’s, who he’s closest to in both starting age and starting OPS.

Okamoto’s drop puts him at a very MLB-average place. I hear he’s got excellent defensive skills: teams interested in him should know that his value will come from his defense, and not from his bat. This is especially important given that he plays positions that tend to be bat-first (corner infield, and outfield).

Murakami, by this analysis, looks to be an above average bat. But how much so? Enough to make up for his unimpressive defense and baserunning? Some have concerns about his ability to hit major league pitching, and his increasing whiff rate. Will teams look at him and see someone who would benefit from better coaching, coaching they may be able to provide? His raw power will still be there, and that may be enough for some to decide he’ll be a help to the team, and to believe they could improve the rest. If they can, he could become quite the acquisition. It’ll be interesting to watch.

Would Pete Alonso improve Red Sox first base situation all that much?

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Pete Alonso is one of the best bats in baseball, no question about that. But to get his bat at first base, you have to take with it his awful fielding and awful baserunning. That waters down his value to some extent. But by how much? And how does he compare to players currently on the Red Sox, and other available options?

I’ll present the data here and some other observations, so that you can compare. I’ll finish by talking about whether it makes sense for the Red Sox to add a player or stick with who they have. All the data shown here is from BaseballSavant.

The players to be compared

I picked the 3 first base free agents who were considered the best on the market when this offseason began, and put their stats on the top row of the comparisons below. (I started putting these together weeks ago when Josh Naylor was still a free agent.) On the bottom row I put a top first base trade possibility in Yandy Diaz, and the two top major league first base options on the Red Sox currently, Romy Gonzalez and Triston Casas.

For 5 of the players, I show their 2025 numbers. For Triston Casas, who didn’t play enough in 2024 and 2025 to give us a good idea of what he is, I show his 2023 numbers.

Expected stats

Let’s start with the expected stats. This is where they look at the velocity, launch angle and trajectory of every ball a player put in play, and tally up the probable results based on those numbers.

Focusing primarily on xwOBA, we see that all six players did well, although when you look at the actual values instead of the percentiles, Alonso is clearly separated from the pack, with only Triston Casas giving him a challenge there.

Quality of contact

Now we’ll look at quality of contact.

Alonso had the best overall contact, however Romy Gonzalez had more hard-hit balls. In fact he had the 5th highest Hard Hit% in baseball for players with over 300 PA. (Who was ahead of him? 1. Roman Anthony 2. Kyle Schwarber 3. Shohei Ohtani 4. Aaron Judge.) Yandy Diaz also hit it hard frequently.

But neither Gonzalez nor Diaz get an ideal launch angle (“LA Sweet Spot %”) as much as Alonso does. For both of them it turns out it’s because they hit too many ground balls – Diaz especially. This is likely the reason Diaz’s results aren’t as good as Alonso’s, and for Gonzalez, one of two reasons (we’ll see the other in the next section).

While O’Hearn and Naylor are limited by lower bat speed, O’Hearn improves his results by often having a good launch angle, and Naylor gets a better exit velocity by hitting on the sweet spot of the bat a lot.

Triston Casas’ 2023 comes the closest to Alonso’s 2025 among those pictured here. The differences may only be due to looking at a rookie season versus a veteran in his prime having his best season yet.

Non-contact stats

So that’s what happens when they swing and make contact. What about the numbers when they don’t make contact? Who chases pitches out of the zone too much (Chase %)? Who misses a lot when he swings (Whiff %)? Who walks too little or strikes out too much?

Alonso and O’Hearn are average in these categories. Yandy Diaz is above average, and Romy Gonzalez is well below average. Triston Casas has a great eye, but still manages to swing and miss at an above average pace. Josh Naylor doesn’t chase and doesn’t strike out, but walks an average amount.

Here we have what looks like the other reason Romy Gonzalez doesn’t get better results despite hitting the ball so hard. He chases too much. And while fixing that doesn’t necessarily fix his higher strikeout rate and low walk rate, it ought to at least help.

Fielding and Baserunning

What’s left? Fielding and baserunning.

Here again we see strong similarity between Triston Casas and Pete Alonso. They’re both terribly slow, and awful at both fielding and baserunning. But being slow isn’t the excuse for the rest, because look at Josh Naylor, who is even slower, but manages to be an average baserunner and a decent fielder.

When it comes to baserunning, Romy Gonzalez is the opposite of Josh Naylor. He’s the only one in this group that could be called “fast”, yet he’s still a poor baserunner. Maybe he should get a pointer or two from his teammate Trevor Story, who runs just as fast as Gonzalez but was one of the top baserunners in the game last year. Or maybe we should give him a little credit for being an average or above average baserunner in the past.

As for good fielders, it looks like Ryan O’Hearn is the only one, with Naylor and Gonzalez a little below average. But Gonzalez split his time between first and second base (and some other spots), and when you break his fielding down by position, both in his career and in 2025, he’s been an above-average fielding first baseman, and a below-average fielder everywhere else.

Categorizing these players

So to sum up, I see two basic types of player here.

Pete Alonso and Triston Casas are the power hitters who can get on base, too, but are awful at fielding and baserunning. Yandy Diaz is, too, but with a little less power and a little better baserunning.

In the other category are Josh Naylor and Ryan O’Hearn, who have some power, but not a lot, but still manage to have above-average impact as hitters. And at everything else, they’re average, on the whole.

The 2025 version of Romy Gonzalez belongs in the O’Hearn/Naylor camp, as a well-rounded player with an above-average bat. But he has the raw tools to become much better. He’s got enough speed to become a great baserunner. He’s one of the best in the game at hitting the ball hard, but he hits it on the ground too much, and he misses it too much. And here’s the thing: the parts of his game that are lacking and that are holding him back, are all things he can learn to be better at. He can learn to be a smarter baserunner. He can learn plate discipline. He can learn to hit the ball just a little lower than he does now, to get it into the air more.

The question is, will he?

If he does, he creates a new category, combining the best of O’Hearn/Naylor with the best of Alonso/Casas, and he’d be better than all of them.

Who’s on first?

So what should the Red Sox do? If they can get Pete Alonso in to play first base for them, should they?

Alonso would certainly help the lineup. But if Triston Casas has a healthy year, he’s basically a Pete Alonso clone for much less money.

What if Casas is injured again, though? He sure seems injury prone. Then your backup plan is Romy Gonzalez, who is as good as your second-or-third best first base free agents that were on the market at the start of this offseason. And with the right coaching and effort, could end up being better than all of them in the short term.

So regardless of whether Casas can or can’t play, the Red Sox will have a plus option at first base. They don’t need Alonso to play first base for them.

But Alonso would improve them at DH. But to make that room, they’d need to trade/drop Masataka Yoshida, to whom they owe $36M over the next two years, and probably one of their 4 top-notch outfielders. Not to say they won’t; they may. But they may not.

In the end, Alonso may not add as much value as people think he will, when compared to what the Red Sox would get from the current players who he would replace. All that may not be worth the expected $150M price tag.

My Red Sox posts on OverTheMonster

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It’s become very hard to find a particular author’s FanPosts on OverTheMonster. So I’ve made this page so that I can find mine.

But before we get to mine, have a look at this post by another FanPoster that aged really well:

Mar 28, 2018 How the Red Sox will Achieve World Domination in 2018

posted over 7 years ago by Ricochet!

Here are links to every FanPost I made from 2017 through 2019. I hope to add the earlier ones in soon.

Date Article
Jul 28, 2019 This Fangraphs writer clearly doesn’t get how deep the Red Sox lineup is
Jun 22, 2019 Is JBJ about to turn into a pumpkin?
May 31, 2019 OPS contest thirdway checkin
Apr 6, 2019 We can throw away the first 10 Red Sox games
Mar 30, 2019 It’s not just that the Red Sox starters are still in spring training
Mar 15, 2019 Contest: Who will be the most improved Red Sox hitters this year?
Nov 2, 2018 Poll: which free agents should the Red Sox bring back?
Sep 14, 2018 Last night the Red Sox clinched home field advantage in the World Series
Aug 20, 2018 Are the Red Sox becoming victims of their own success?
Jul 24, 2018 The Red Sox do not need another reliever
Jul 6, 2018 Red Sox first half surprises and busts (OPS contest results)
Jul 5, 2018 A 10-day opportunity to build a lead over the Yankees
Apr 20, 2018 Absurd projections and feasible dreams after one ninth of a season
Apr 3, 2018 A quick look at how the first trip through the rotation went
Mar 24, 2018 Contest – predict the Red Sox’ first half OPS’s
Dec 27, 2017 Which Mitch? What an injury-free Moreland might produce in 2018
Oct 23, 2017 Get Big Papi into the Red Sox dugout as a coach
Oct 3, 2017 Fanpost Friday playoff predictions of tomisphere
Sep 15, 2017 The Red Sox could play 9 games in a row against the Houston Astros
Jul 28, 2017 Final-stretch thoughts on Rusney, Dustin, Mookie, Brock, Eduardo, Deven, Rafael, and everybody
Jul 14, 2017 Poll: How do we feel now about the Red Sox catchers?
Jul 4, 2017 Deven Marrero just had a fantastic week at the plate
Jul 3, 2017 Contest results: predict Red Sox first half OPS’s
Jun 15, 2017 Poll: Is it time to advance Devers & Chavis?
Jun 8, 2017 How I became a fan of the Boston Red Sox
May 24, 2017 Poll: Will the next Red Sox call up be … Ryan Court?
May 13, 2017 Cap extra innings at three, then declare a tie
May 8, 2017 Judging Surprising Aarons
May 1, 2017 Fix the Red Sox offense – mostly, by waiting
Apr 18, 2017 The coming year will determine whether to trade Leon or Swihart
Apr 4, 2017 2017 Red Sox Season in Review: What a Year It Was
Mar 26, 2017 Contest: predict Red Sox first half OPS’s
Mar 20, 2017 FF Favorite: Javier Baez, For Love of the Game
Mar 15, 2017 Poll: Who will be the Red Sox main catcher after the All-Star break?
Mar 4, 2017 What you think of the World Baseball Classic depends a lot on who you are
Feb 25, 2017 My rule change would hopefully reduce the chance of injury
   

The Texas Rangers have about a 1 in 4000 chance of making the playoffs

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If you look at the playoff odds on FanGraphs.com right now, you’ll see the Texas Rangers listed as having a 0.0% chance of making the playoffs this year. But that doesn’t mean they have no chance. It just means their chance is so small that it doesn’t round up to 0.1%; instead it rounds down to 0.0%, as any chance less than 1 in 2000 will do. As it turns out, their chance of making the playoffs is about 1 in 4000 right now.

How we get to that number involves a lot of logical reasoning, complicated by the fact that the Rangers will play a series against one of the four teams they’re chasing, and there will be two series played this week between some of those same four teams.

Let’s set the stage properly. Here are the 8 remaining playoff contenders in the American League:

Only 6 teams in the American League may go to the playoffs. To be one of those 6, the Rangers must pass 2 of the 7 teams ahead of them in the standings (so long as one of them is not a division winner). Fortunately for the Rangers, there are 4 teams they still have a chance to reach. Unfortunately, they’ll be very difficult to reach.

Notice that if the Rangers win all 6 of their remaining games, and the Red Sox lose all 6 of theirs, that the Rangers would only manage to be tied with the Red Sox. But because they hold the tiebreaker over the Red Sox (having won 4 of the 7 games played between them this year), the Rangers would beat out the Red Sox in that case.

The same goes for Detroit. The Tigers must lose all 6 of theirs, and the Rangers must win all 6 of theirs, for the Rangers to tie; because they win the tiebreaker (having won 4 of 6 against the Tigers), the Rangers would beat out the Tigers.

The Rangers did not win their season series against the Astros, however, so must beat them by a game in the final standings, to pass them for a playoff spot. Because they are currently 5 games behind them, that could only happen if the Rangers win all 6 of their remaining games, and the Astros lose all 6 of theirs.

For the Rangers to catch the Guardians, they’ll have to win some of their remaining 3 games against them; those wins would give the tiebreaker to the Rangers. So the Rangers could stand to lose 1 game, or could stand the Guardians winning 1 game, and still beat them for a playoff spot.

Given that there’s only 1 team that isn’t forcing the Rangers to win all their remaining games, but that they need to beat at least 2 of these teams, the only option for the Rangers is to win all their remaining games.

Let’s start a list of requirements like this one:

We’re assuming here that every game a team plays the rest of the way has a 1/2 chance of being a win, and a 1/2 chance of being a loss. Because the Rangers have 6 games remaining, and there’s only 1 way to achieve the stated outcome (Rangers win all 6), that’s 1 outcome out of 26 possible outcomes, or a 1/64 chance of it happening.

What other outcomes must we consider?

Well if none of these teams were playing each other in these final 6 games, it would be a little less complicated. All the outcomes would be independent, so we could calculate the odds of each team’s win totals independently, as a starting point. Our list of requirements would look like this:

Because the Rangers would have to beat at least 2 of these teams, we’d take pairs of outcomes and calculate their odds:

[ (Red Sox lose all) AND (Tigers lose all) ]
OR [ (Red Sox lose all) AND (Astros lose all) ]
OR [ (Red Sox lose all) AND (Guardians lose 5 or 6) ]
OR [ (Tigers lose all) AND (Astros lose all) ]
OR [ (Astros lose all) AND (Guardians lose 5 or 6) ]

Notice that we didn’t include (Tigers lose all) AND (Guardians lose 5 or 6). That’s because one of those teams will win the central division; beating a division winner doesn’t help you win a wild card spot. They have to beat at least one of the Red Sox or Astros to get into the playoffs.

So we would multiply odds everywhere there’s an AND above, and then add them everywhere there is an OR above.

This would double-count or triple-count some cases though. For example, it would triple count the case where all three of these occur: (Red Sox lose all) AND (Tigers lose all) AND (Astros lose all). We’d have to subtract out double the odds of that happening.

After making a few more adjustments where 3 of those occur, we’d probably have one final adjustment to make for the case where all 4 occur:

(Red Sox lose all) AND (Tigers lose all) AND (Astros lose all) AND (Guardians lose 5 or 6).

Then we’d multiply our result by the odds of the Rangers winning all their games, because that has to happen in every case of the Rangers making the playoffs.

But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where, in the final games of the season:

The Tigers play 3 games against the Red Sox
The Tigers play 3 games against the Guardians
The Rangers play 3 games against the Guardians

Oh my. This reduces the number of games that determine the Rangers’ fate from 30 down to 21. That’s good for the Rangers, because it means a lot fewer games would have to go a certain way for them to make the playoffs, and that gives them better odds.

It also changes how we do this. Now the outcomes we need to consider look like this:

I’ve used highlighting to show outcomes that are related to each other in that they cannot both happen. For example, looking at the two lines in gold, we see that the Red Sox cannot simultaneously lose all their remaining games while also winning all 3 against the Tigers.

Let’s consider those two middle lines right now. If the Tigers lose all their remaining games, that means both the Red Sox and Guardians win at least 3 games. And that means the Rangers can’t beat either of those teams. The only team left that they could beat is the Astros. So if the Rangers beat the Tigers, they must also beat the Astros (and only the Astros) to get into the playoffs. That gives us this:

(Tigers lose all) AND (Astros lose all)

Which is actually this:

(Red Sox win all 3 against the Tigers) AND (Guardians win all 3 against the Tigers) AND (Astros lose all)

And there is no chance of double-counting with other outcomes. This will very much simplify our work to compensate for double countings.

To this we add the following:

[ (Red Sox lose all) AND (Astros lose all) ]
OR [ (Red Sox lose all) AND (Guardians lose 5 or 6) ]
OR [ (Astros lose all) AND (Guardians lose 5 or 6) ]

But consider that in the end we’ll be multiplying everything by the odds of (Rangers win all), which must happen in every scenario. Because the Rangers play 3 of those games against the Guardians, that means three of the Guardian’s losses have already been accounted for by the (Rangers win all) outcome. So we only need to consider the additional chance that the Guardians lose 2 or 3 against the Tigers. So the above becomes:

[ (Red Sox lose all) AND (Astros lose all) ]
OR [ (Red Sox lose all) AND (Guardians lose 2 or 3 to Tigers) ]
OR [ (Astros lose all) AND (Guardians lose 2 or 3 to Tigers) ]

Notice that in all 3 of these scenarios, the Tigers become unreachable to the Rangers, because they win at least 2 games. The only double or triple counting in this trio of scenarios is where the Rangers beat everyone but the Tigers:

(Red Sox lose all) AND (Astros lose all) AND (Guardians lose 2 or 3 to Tigers)

That’s a triple-count, so we have to subtract double the odds of that happening.

We can put all this together, with odds, in a new chart:

We add the first four lines then subtract 2 times the last line to compensate for double counting:

2-12 + 2-12 + 2-7 + 2-7 – 2 x 2-13 = 2-6 + 2-12 = 65/4096.

Which we multiply by the odds of the Rangers winning all 6 of their remaining games, to give 65/262144. That’s about 1 in 4033, or 0.0248%.

Had it not been for teams playing each other, the odds would have been 1 in about 16,186. So the Ranger’s chances of making the playoffs are about 4 times better because of these teams playing against each other.

The Al Central tiebreaker that isn’t, but that is

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The Cleveland Guardians haven’t secured the tiebreaker against the Detroit Tigers for the AL Central division title.

But they have.

What on Earth am I talking about?
Read on …

Right now the Tigers are one game ahead of the Guardians with 6 games left to play. It’s therefore very possible that they end up tied for the division lead. In that case, the division winner would be decided by a tiebreaker.

The tiebreaker is based on which team has won more games in their head-to-head matchups this season. The Guardians have won 6 of the 10 games played between them and the Tigers so far this year, and the Tigers have won 4. But there are 3 more to be played, and they’ll be played today through Thursday. Whichever team ends up with 7 or more wins against the other wins the tiebreaker between them.

So for Detroit to win the tiebreaker, they’ll need to win all three of the remaining games. But that would put Detroit 4 games ahead of Cleveland with only 3 games left to play in the season. Cleveland would not be able to make up that ground, so would not be able to win the division (not even by a tie and a tiebreaker).

The only way for a tie to come about this year is therefore if Cleveland wins at least one game against Detroit. And if that happens, Cleveland reaches the required 7 wins to hold the tiebreaker.

Basically, if the tiebreaker matters, then the Cleveland Guardians will hold it.

And that also means that whichever team wins this three game series between them, will find themselves in the lead for the division, just as was the case with the Seattle Mariners/Houston Astros series this past weekend.

And that makes the Guardians/Tigers series the most impactful series happening right now. Definitely one to keep an eye on!

The Toronto Blue Jays have about a 99.99987% chance of making the playoffs

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There is a very very narrow range of circumstances under which the Toronto Blue Jays do not make the playoffs. So narrow, in fact, that if we assume every game remaining in the MLB this year has a 50% chance of being won by either team, the odds of the Blue Jays failing to make the playoffs are 1 about 793,072. That equates to a 99.999874% chance that they make the playoffs.

So how do we work out such numbers? Buckle up for a logic roller coaster ride.

To fail to get into the playoffs, every one of the Yankees, Red Sox, Mariners, Astros, Tigers, and Gaurdians would have to beat the Blue Jays, and these are the only 6 teams capable of surpassing the Blue Jays at this point.

At this point, the Blue Jays can end up with at most 73 losses, if they lose all 7 of their remaining games. So surpassing them would especially require a lot of winning by the Gaurdians and Astros (with 71 losses each currently) and the Red Sox and Tigers (with 70 losses each).

But these teams are limited in how much winning they can do the rest of the way, because there will be 6 games played between them. The Tigers and the Gaurdians will play 3 games against each other, and the Tigers and the Red Sox will play 3 against each other. That means there will be at least 6 losses spread around among those 3 teams.

So let’s consider the possible outcomes of the Tigers/Gaurdians series. For each outcome, let’s assume the Blue Jays lose all 7 of their remaining games, ending with a record of 89-73. Let’s also assume both the Tigers and the Gaurdians win all 4 of their other remaining games.

Except that we can’t assume that. Because if the Tigers win all their other 4 games, that means they deliver 3 losses to the Red Sox, who end up at best 89-73, the same as the Blue Jays. Because the Blue Jays end up with 7 wins and 6 losses against the Red Sox, they win the tiebreaker with the Red Sox and are in the playoffs. So the Tigers must lose a game to the Red Sox, and the Red Sox must win their other 4 games not against the Tigers, for the Blue Jays to have a chance at elimination here.

So we’ll assume the Tigers lose 1 more game (versus the Red Sox) outside of the Tigers/Gaurdians series, and the Guardians don’ t lose any others.

If the Gaurdians sweep the Tigers, the Tigers end up 88-74, a game behind the Blue Jays, and the Blue Jays are in the playoffs.

If the Tigers sweep the Guardians, the Gaurdians end up 88-74, a game behind the Blue Jays, and the Blue Jays are in the playoffs.

If the Gaurdians win 2 of 3, the Tigers end up 89-73, tied with the Blue Jays. Because the Blue Jays had 4 wins and 3 losses in their games against the Tigers this year, they win the tiebreaker between the teams, and are in the playoffs.

That leaves the scenario where the Tigers win 2 of 3. Then the Tigers end up 90-72, ahead of the Blue Jays, while the Guardians tie the Blue Jays at 89-73. So as a tiebreaker we look and see that the Blue Jays and Gaurdians each won 3 games against each other this year. We have to use the second tiebreaker, which is records within their own divisions. The Gaurdians end up 36 and 16 against their weaker division; the Blue Jays 25 and 27 against their stronger division. The Gaurdians therefore win this tiebreaker, and the Blue Jays are out of the playoffs – if the other 3 teams surpass them too, that is.

That’s the only scenario in which the Blue Jays are eliminated.

What if The Tigers lose one more game against another opponent? Then they end up with the same record as the Blue Jays, and the Blue Jays are in because they win the tiebreaker with the Tigers. So the Tigers must only lose the one game against the Red Sox.

That covers what must happen with the Tigers, Gaurdians, and Red Sox. What of the Yankees, Mariners, and Astros?

The Blue Jays hold the tiebreaker over the Yankees, so the Yankees must get to at least 90 wins, and therefore must win at least 3 of their last 7 games.

The Blue Jays hold the tiebreaker over the Mariners, so the Mariners must win at least 4 of their last 7 games.

The Astros hold the tiebreaker over the Blue Jays, so they must win at least 5 of their last 7 games.

So now we must get the odds of all these things happening and multiply them together to get the odds that the Blue Jays miss the playoffs. We assume in every game that the teams have an equal chance of winning. The following table contains all the odds:

The reason the Mariners and Astros are lumped together in the last line is that they play one more game against each other, so their odds of reaching their respective win totals are linked because of that game.

When you multiply all these odds together you get 693,198 divided by 2 to the 39th power, which is about 1 in 793,072, or 0.000126%. That’s the odds that they don’t make the playoffs; so the odds that they make the playoffs are about 99.999874%.

How to fix the Red Sox by the end of May

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Something needs to be done about the Red Sox bullpen. They’ve been the worst in baseball at holding slim leads late in games. And hopefully some changes come soon. But that’s not what I’m writing about in this article.

The Red Sox have had some weaknesses on offense and defense this year that need addressing. Here are FanGraphs’ numbers for offense, defense, and baserunning this year for the primary player at each position (leaving out first base as it is unsettled):

Outside of pitching, the Red Sox need better results this year from LF, SS, 2B, 1B. I think half of this will solve itself in time, and the other half can be solved by the end of May with help from Marcelo Mayer and Roman Anthony.

Duran will solve left field. He was the team’s best player last year, and top 10 in the MLB in everything – defense, offense, & baserunning. I think he’s having temporary struggles, and he’ll figure it out.

Campbell is new and it’s showing now. But his talent is such that I believe he will get much better, on offense with counteradjustments, and on defense with practice. No change needed at second base.

Story, I’m not so sure about. If he keeps slumping, I could see a platoon with Marcelo Mayer come about soon. That would solve shortstop.

So with that one change, that leaves just first base needing attention. I’ve come around to thinking that Roman Anthony needs to be the answer there. I know, it would be totally new for him. But it’s new for every other player they have playing there now. And he’s a good-not-great defensive outfielder trying to find a position on a team with three great defensive outfielders. Anthony is a quick study and I think he could come up to speed at first base quickly. He’s tall (6′ 3″) which helps at first base, though he throws right-handed, which is less than ideal when he needs to throw to 2B, but workable. Two weeks of playing first every day at AAA, and I think he’ll be as good as any other option they have now.

Bonus: with Mayer at SS and Anthony at 1B, Campbell would be flanked by two of his best friends from the minors, and that may increase his comfort level. The newness of everything could be part of what is going on with him.

The worst Red Sox article from Wednesday, Feb 25

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Yesterday’s Hall of Shame baseball article was by Daniel Fox of the Sporting News.

It includes this lie:
“the Red Sox’s overflow of left-handed hitters and the eventual need to move Devers down the defensive spectrum has led the team to shop their first baseman.”

What a doozy. Let’s break this down.

No shopping

The Red Sox have not shopped Triston Casas. That’s a myth that got started early after the 2024 season with a Ken Rosenthal speculated trade possibility. It was not based on any information about what the Red Sox were actually doing; it was just a guess at something they might try to do. But it got reported a lot. Then other prognosticators gave their dreamt-up trade scenarios involving Casas. And those got re-reported. Before long, a “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” mentality that developed among reporters, who started saying that they must be shopping Casas, given all this buzz about it.
But the Red Sox stated that no such thing was happening. They had to tell Casas that they had no idea where all these rumors were coming from, and that they intended to keep him.
At one point we did learn that Seattle had asked for Casas as part of a return for a pitcher that the Red Sox wanted, but the Red Sox essentially shut that down by saying Masataka Yoshida would have to be part of any trade involving Casas. That’s it. That’s not shopping Casas, but for some reporters it was enough to convince them.

    So the latter part of Daniel Fox’s sentence is a lie.

    No moving Devers

    There is no plan to move Devers to first base. Most people think that if Devers is moved, he would actually move to DH. There’s no reason to think he would be an improvement defensively over Casas at first, so this idea makes little sense.

    Also, Devers has clearly been promised by the team that he can stay a third baseman. He is highly opposed to playing anywhere else. They’ll likely need to keep him where he is.

    No overflow of lefties

    There is no overflow of left-handed hitters. The roster the Red Sox are most likely to open the season with would have more right-handed hitters than left-handed ones. For much of last year that was not true, because their two injured right-handed-hitting middle infielders (Story, Grissom) were replaced by left-handed hitters (Hamilton, Valdez). This helped cement their reputation as being to left-handed. But after Story and Grissom returned, all it took was one added right-handed bat to make them more right-handed than left. That happened when they signed Alex Bregman.

      But the real issue isn’t the number of right-handed hitters, it’s the number of players who hit left-handed pitching well. And when it comes to that, it turns out that Triston Casas has been the second-best on the current team at hitting lefties over the past two years, behind only Rob Refsnyder. And the best among regular starters. The idea of making the team better against lefties by removing Casas is absurd. A much better way would be to remove Masataka Yoshida or Wilyer Abreu.

      Daniel Fox managed to pack a lot of wrong ideas into that sentence quoted above. It’s bad enough to add to the Hall of Shame.

      Alex Bregman’s contract at first appeared to be the biggest overpay in recent history – but it isn’t

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      In my article from last December, Did the Mets overpay for Juan Soto?, I shared an analysis of all the signings of the biggest free agents (3.0+ WAR) going back to 2018. I compared the expected annual WAR of recently signed position player free agents (or free-agent-eligible players who were extended) to the average annual salary they got in their contracts. (I used the average of bWAR and fWAR, and because some players missed parts of seasons, I adjusted everyone’s WAR to a 150 game season.) I plotted the values of millions of dollars per WAR for each player against the year in which they signed or extended. I adjusted everything to 2024 dollars.

      Juan Soto was the biggest overpay according to that plot.

      After making that plot, and noticing a strong age-related trend, I made another plot that adjusted for age at the time of the signing. This was a plot of millions of dollars in annual salary per WAR over expected. Soto was not the highest on this plot, but near it, and he seemed to reset the market a bit. Most players this offseason have signed at “the high end of normal”.

      And when I then heard that Alex Bregman had signed with the Red Sox for $40M a year, I added him to the plot, and said “Alex Bregman just blew all that out of the water”. But, I was wrong.

      Here is the age-adjusted plot as I initially updated it, with Christian Walker, Teoscar Hernandez, and Alex Bregman added.

      Yikes. This isn’t even close. Everyone else is within $2M/WAR of their expected value, whether above or below. Bregman was more than $3.5M/WAR over.

      However, I then learned that much of his salary would be deferred, making his salary in terms of 2024 dollars around $31.7M per year. When I updated my charts with this new number, things became reasonable again. Here is the corrected version:

      He’s near the top, but no longer an extreme outlier – almost not an outlier at all.

      Things look even better for Bregman in the non-age-adjusted plot. Here is the initial, non-age-adjusted plot, with Bregman, Walker, and Hernandez added. Bregman’s contract had been the biggest overpay even without the age adjustment …

      … but after switching from the nominal $40M AAV to the Competitive Balance Tax value of $31.7M a year, he’s down into the pack:

      And given the very short term of the contract, being older at the time of signing matters less, because they’re all prime years.

      If you want to see the numbers behind this plot, here is the updated chart of data that I worked from, with Christian Walker, Teoscar Hernandez, and Alex Bregman added.

      I had Bregman’s expected pay per year at $24M to $25M, based on his trend in WAR values. So the $40M number was shocking. But the $31.7M sounded reasonable, especially given the short 3-year term for the deal, and the opt-outs. And the fact that the big contracts for Masataka Yoshida and Trevor Story would be due to come off the books at the same time – it makes it look as though the Red Sox are aiming to get back under the luxury tax threshold for 2028.

      What I didn’t factor in, though, is that Bregman is worth more to a team than his WAR indicates. He is the ultimate unofficial player-coach, on a team with so many young, new players who can use exactly that. He challenges young players to prepare in ways they’d never imagined before. He talks a ton to every player and has a lot of good advice.

      So what I’d initially called the “biggest overpay in recent history” by far, now looks like a completely reasonable contract.

      I’m sorry Red Sox, and Alex Bregman, for my previous harsh words on this.

      Did the Mets overpay for Juan Soto?

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      Two years ago I wanted to estimate the market values of some of the free agents coming out of the 2022 MLB season. So I did some analysis then comparing the expected annual bWAR of recently signed free agents to the average annual salary they got in their contracts. It gave me interesting insights on what to expect in free agent contracts that year.

      Just over a week ago I wanted to see if Juan Soto was about to be overpaid, based on the same analysis. I updated a lot of things about my previous analysis, and learned that yes, he was indeed about to be overpaid. But before I could publish this article about it, he actually did sign. So now I’m here to tell you that he was overpaid, and what I’m basing that on.

      It’s not based on Steve Cohen’s ability to pay. The owner of the Mets’ pockets are so deep, this kind of money barely affects him.

      No, this is about whether the average annual value of his contract is in line with other recent free agent contracts for the most talented players in the game, given his age and the value he provides.

      All the players used for comparison in this analysis are position players, with the partial exception of Shohei Ohtani. For him, I added his pitching WAR to his position player WAR.

      For the table and charts below, instead of using just Baseball-Reference’s WAR (bWAR) as I did the first time, I averaged it with Fangraphs’ WAR (fWAR). When adding in Ohtani’s pitching WAR, I weighted bWAR more heavily, as I trust it more (it considers all of the pitchers’ results, and not just 37% of them like fWAR does).

      I didn’t usually use all the WAR accumulated over the player’s entire career for this. It was always the last few years, as of the time of their signing. How many of those last few years to use was a judgement call -whatever span of seasons I felt best represented who the player was as a player at that moment. In the second and third columns of the table you can see the years I picked, and so can cross examine my choices if you want.

      To get WAR per 150 games, I got their WAR totals over the chosen years, divided by the number of games played, and multiplied by 150. I only used players for whom this value was at least 3. Below that, in my judgement, WAR starts behaving less like a cumulative statistic, and more like a rate statistic, and so the assumptions on which this analysis are based start to break down.

      The next column is the first year of “free agent” pay. I put “free agent” in quotes because I’ve included some players who signed extensions that overlap their free agent years. For those players, the year in this column isn’t the year the extension begins, but the year their free agency would have begun. We only consider the portion of the extension that overlaps what would have been free agent years, because the previous parts of the extension will usually provide much lower salaries, and that would skew these results. As it happens with the players in this list, this year is never more than a year delayed.

      In next to last columns, you’ll see me convert into 2024 dollars the annual amount paid to the player per WAR. In most cases I’m moving past amounts forward in time, but in the case of Shohei Ohtani’s almost entirely deferred $700 million contract, I’m first bringing that deferred money back to 2023 dollars, which results in the $460 million estimated value that they’re using for the purposes of the Competitive Balance Tax. Then I move that forward one year to 2024 dollars. When you do that, you get that the Ohtani contract is actually a pretty good deal. (This devaluing effect of deferred money makes it wrong to directly compare the dollar totals of the Ohtani contract to those of the Soto contract.)

      That last column is the one I’m plotting in the chart below. I got it by dividing the average annual salary of the contract by the player’s evaluated WAR per 150 games. So you have millions of dollars per WAR. This I plotted against the season after which they signed the contract or extension. Each data point is labeled with the player’s name, their age on June 30 of the first year of their contract, and their age on June 30 of the last year of the contract. The results are as follows:

      There are a few things to note here. One is that, over time, the range of values you get each year is about the same, once you make the inflation adjustments. That gives me confidence in comparing 2018’s free agents against 2024’s.

      So that makes it easier to look at this chart and decide yes, Juan Soto was overpaid. He’s a clear outlier.

      But not so fast. Look at the ages that follow each name. If you focus on the first number, you’ll notice that the top of the chart is populated almost entirely by players who were 28 or younger in their first contract year, whereas below that almost everyone is over 28. Youth appears to be a factor in accessing higher dollars per WAR.

      We can get a clearer view of the age trend by plotting millions of dollars per WAR against age as of the first contract year. I have intentionally left Juan Soto out of the plots below, because the idea is to compare his result to what the market had done before him. (Ages are not rounded in this next plot; they are precise to the day as of June 30 of the first year of the player’s contract.)

      There is a trend there to be seen, which the R² of 0.33 confirms as a moderate relationship. But it is not as obvious to the eye as it might be. It is easier to see if we group together all players of the same age in years, and average their numbers. Here is what that looks like:

      A definite downward trend. Note that there are much fewer players contributing to the average at the extremes of age, especially just one each for the age 33 and 34 player groups. Those few players could really alter the slope of the fitted line. So I made multiple versions of both plots, some with those players at the extreme ends left out, some with Juan Soto put back in. The line was pretty similar in all of them. I picked one that had a slope that was in the middle of the pack, and I used that line in my next step. (For the curious, the line used is y = -0.3248x + 15.51 where x is the player age and y is the millions of dollars per WAR they make.)

      That line provided me the expected average value of millions of dollars per WAR that players of a certain age in their first contract year would make. I then just subtracted that from each player’s actual number to get an amount, in millions of dollars per WAR, above or below this average that the player made. Here is the new version of the first plot when redone in this way, to remove age as a factor:

      So that changes things a bit. Juan Soto is no longer an isolated outlier on the high end, but only the third worst overpay after Anthony Rendon in 2019 and Freddie Freeman in 2021. Yet it’s the 15-year duration of that overpay that will make it worse in the end. Freeman’s contract is 6 years long, Rendon’s 7. Neither contract goes past their age 37 season; Soto’s goes all the way to his age 40 season. He’ll surely have been relegated to a full-time DH well before then, and will rack up a great many years underperforming his contract.

      I’d like to do another analysis along these lines that considers the contract’s duration as well. Maybe by looking at overall contract value? Or perhaps overall amount of risk? This could get complicated – I’d probably have to get into aging curves to handle that properly. My point being that such an analysis would probably make the Soto contract even more of an outlier, more of an overpay.

      Another thing we can see on this chart that many people may find shocking is that Shohei Ohtani may actually have been underpaid. Because future dollars are worth less than today’s dollars, and he’s paid almost exclusively in future dollars, his $70M per year sounds like more than it really is. Plus, he’s been consistently producing over 9 WAR each of the last 4 years (only the first 3 of those counted in this analysis). Not even Mike Trout in his prime was that consistent. He produces more value than anyone else on this list. His 9.44 WAR/150 G is more than 50% higher than 5th place Juan Soto’s 6.21. Heading into the 2024 season, when he knew he wouldn’t be able to contribute with his pitching, Ohtani turned himself into an elite baserunner by putting in a lot of work on learning that craft. The guy just finds a way to excel and provide value, whatever his circumstance. If future injuries don’t tank his value the way they did for Trout, he’ll be worth every penny.

      As a Red Sox fan, there are a couple of other data points on this chart that are interesting to consider. One is Rafael Devers. I have always thought of his 2022 extension as a big overpay, 50% higher than what he should have gotten. But in this new chart, though he is still on the high end of things, I’d say he’s a little shy of being an overpay.

      Finally, there’s that Mookie Betts contract. We’ve now learned that had the Red Sox just offered him the contract that the Dodgers eventually did, he’d have signed and would still be a Red Sox today. But the Red Sox were really down on big contracts at that time, and wouldn’t offer Betts what he wanted. Well, here we see that Betts’ contract with the Dodgers is actually one of the biggest bargains in the game. The Red Sox were wrong in their offers, Betts was right to reject them, and my favorite team let my favorite player get away because they were just so excessively stingy. It’s hard to forgive that.

      They’ll have some chances soon here at a do-over, though. Jarren Duran is the real deal, and should get paid a lot. Not just for his great results on the field, but for how his constant hustle inspires his entire team to try harder. And I am expecting upcoming prospects Roman Anthony and Kristian Campbell to become as valuable as Betts was. The Red Sox can pay them what they’re worth, or they can offer what they’re comfortable paying, and watch them all walk. Please, Red Sox, learn the lesson from your mistakes with Mookie Betts. You could have a great team for the next decade if you just pay your stars what they’re worth.