Under The Knife 10/9/20

Free Friday: Playoff Look, Clevenger's Future, and CBA Whispers

The playoffs didn’t really feel like the playoffs to me, until last night. The late home run by Luke Voit had the tension that seemed missing from this year’s playoffs, dominated by velocity and distance. Now, we get a Game 5 in a series that deserves seven. We get not just a matchup of heavyweights, but of managers. We get two front offices with the heaviest analytical bent and the most voice at the table. Show these two teams to the Baseball Prospectus 2005 staff and we would have died on the spot.

Either of these teams is going to be an interesting matchup with the Astros. Dusty Baker’s “us against the world” is working on a team that really is disliked by much of baseball, rightly or wrongly. Brent Strom’s pitching wizardry is working enough, despite not having his top starter. The bullpen doesn’t look ideal for a Dusty team, but that three-batter rule seems to work to his advantage, both with this team and how it limits decisions. The only way to beat the Astros this year is going to be by beating them into submission, with power on both sides and that’s exactly the Rays and Yankees game.

Over in the NL, the Braves are a classic “year ahead of themselves” team. They’re super talented and super young, with discernible holes all over the field and rotation. Obviously, Ronald Acuna, Max Fried, and some others are the type of talent you build around, but the holes they have got papered over a bit by the short season. Missing a back end of the rotation didn’t hurt them. Travis d’Arnaud and Nick Markakis didn’t get exposed by overplaying.

That leaves Alex Anthopolous in an interesting position. Add in one or two players and this team goes from “really good” to “juggernaut” almost overnight. Picture the 2021 Braves - assume a normal season - with Marcus Stroman in the rotation ahead of Fried, a healthy Mike Soroka, plus Ian Anderson and Kyle Wright. (Please, give me that four man rotation.) Anthopolous is very familiar with Marcus Stroman, and vice versa, so it seems like an ideal fit.

Add a bat and the lineup looks just as good. Odd as it sounds, picking up someone like a Nelson Cruz at DH, would be a huge upgrade for the team and easier to find than a corner outfielder, where the best options are Nick Castellanos and Joc Pederson. The Braves have some prospects who could take a step forward as well, so I’d look for the power hitting DH instead of the outfielder.

That leaves the juggernaut Dodgers. The Braves have a puncher’s chance in this series, but for the first time, their lack of pitching depth might hurt them. Soroka’s Achilles injury now becomes their proverbial Achilles heel. The Dodgers can roll out pitcher after pitcher, even going to seven games, and slugger after slugger on their impossibly deep roster.

It also feels like a “monkey year” for Clayton Kershaw. He’s always been said to have more problems in the playoffs, but facing better hitters in short series can create some small sample size issues, even at a point where Kershaw’s playoff record is starting to look like a larger sample. If he continues to dominate, the aging warrior ahead of Walker Buehler and Dustin May, then the rest of baseball can pretty much just tip its cap and point to Cooperstown.

Mike Clevenger SP SDP (strained elbow)

“Bones banging together” is never a description you want to hear from your star pitcher, but that’s what Mike Clevenger said pitching felt like. With the Padres now out of 2020, they have to figure out what they have ahead of 2021 and Clevenger’s elbow is going to be key to that division. With an ace, that pitching staff is still a step below the Dodgers, but there’s enough power arms and depth to compete.

But if Clevenger’s arm isn’t going to make it through the season, that’s going to likely put more pressure on one of those young power arms to step forward and those are unpredictable and often flammable. What Clevenger is describing does happen. The ulna and the humerus do sometimes bang together when they go beyond their normal range of motion and it is usually described as exceptionally painful. Like scream and cry pain. It might feel that way to Clevenger and not to diminish his witness, but it’s very rare and therefore unlikely.

(By the way, is that Deivi Garcia in this video?)

Of course, the commentariat is saying he’s headed for Tommy John and will miss 2021. That’s very likely wrong. None of Clevenger’s issues have pointed to a UCL insufficiency and the MRIs that have been done along the way also show an intact UCL. A source tells me that when Clevenger was traded, the doctors used a sophisticated ultrasound to take a look at the ligament and they saw no issues at that point.

The Padres would be smart to grab Tom House this offseason and put him together with Clevenger. Tom’s just up the road from San Diego anyway and his kind of light tweaks are just the sort of thing Clevenger will need to adjust away from whatever it is that is causing this problem. Finding that balance between performance and sustainability is going to be the new balance point in pitching. For the Padres, finding that could mean the difference between a step forward in 2021 or another season of squinting to see the Dodgers in the distance.

New CBA Imminent?

Multiple sources tell me that while we’ve all been focused on the playoffs, the CBA talks have been moving forward at a good clip. The talks remain what most call “exploratory” - there’s no hard offer, no structure, but they’ve found things they like. There’s no salary cap or floor. There’s no real change in free agency. No reduced length in contracts or expanded arbitration.

Instead, the key seems to be that both sides recognize that in the long term, baseball is doing well. Yes, the next year, at least, will be painful, but if they can get past a group of owners that are willing to write off next year if we’re not back to fans in the stands, there’s a willingness to pro-rate salaries to adjust for changes, including the possibility that a normal season in ‘21 means even higher revenues as we all rush back to the ballpark.

The give from the owners is going to be higher salaries for younger players. Reducing free agency time or expanding arbitration isn’t a win for them, but escalating pre-arb minimums, getting rid of Super Two games, and pushing contracts into a One Baseball world could work. Yes, with MLB taking control of the minors, the kind of long term deals for top prospects that we’ve seen teams test in the past could become normal. Deals like what we’ve seen with Eloy Jimenez and Scott Kingery have incentive for both player and owner. It looks “win now” when it also makes financial sense for owners.

Also, an owner hasn’t had to eat one of these yet, because they’re currently rare. There’s sure to be a Jurickson Profar, not as a failure but as someone who’s emergence was delayed by injury. (I’m not sure why no one compares Profar to Matt Kemp. Similar injuries, similar return timelines. Profar might never be a superstar, but he’s still young.)

There’s other issues to be sure, but a small group of owners is ready to get this deal done as soon as possible and to move on to other business. Controlling the minors is a key - it controls a cost, as they’ve done with both the draft and international signings, but done right, could also be a huge influx of cash. Add in their own Commissioner and this new group of owners - Henry, Middleton, Lerner, and Attanasio - become the Selig, Reinsdorf, and Angelos of the 2020s.