April 14th, 2020: Realignment Plan, Old Yankee Stadium, 2020 Draft, Chapman

I've enjoyed Kyle Higashioka's shutdown diary. In the latest entry he wrote about doubting himself when he was a minor league backup catcher stuck behind Gary Sanchez and John Ryan Murphy, among other things. Higashioka turns 30 next week and he's finally in position to have a set big league role. Pretty cool. Been a long road for him. Anyway, let's get to today's thoughts.

1. MLB's Realignment Plan. First it was the Arizona Plan. Now it's the Realignment Plan. Bob Nightengale reports MLB and the MLBPA are discussing a plan that would eliminate the American League and National League this year, and realign the six divisions. MLB would be split into the Grapefruit League and Cactus League, with each team playing games at their Spring Training site (with no fans). The six five-team divisions would be based on geography. From Nightengale:

GRAPEFRUIT LEAGUE

NORTH: New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Pirates.
SOUTH: Boston Red Sox, Minnesota Twins, Atlanta Braves, Tampa Bay Rays, Baltimore Orioles.
EAST: Washington Nationals, Houston Astros, New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals, Miami Marlins.

CACTUS LEAGUE

NORTHEAST: Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies, Oakland Athletics.
WEST: Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Indians, Los Angeles Angels.
NORTHWEST: Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers, Kansas City Royals.

Not gonna lie, Cardinals vs. Cubs in the World Series would be really neat. Personally, I am 100% cool with a plan that puts the Yankees in a division with the Blue Jays, Phillies, Pirates, and Tigers, and the Rays and Red Sox in a division with the Braves, Twins, and each other (and the Orioles). According to FanGraphs, New York's four division rivals under this plan have a combined .407 projected winning percentage, or 66 wins in a 162-game season. Tampa's have a .519 projected winning percentage, or an 84-win pace. There is no shame in coasting to a title in a weak division. The Dodgers do it pretty much every year. In all seriousness, the Realignment Plan runs into the same problems as the Arizona Plan, plus more. For starters, is it really possible to isolate all those people (players, coaches, support staff, etc.) and keep them safe during the pandemic? Are they going to keep players away from their families for a few months? I have a hard time believing the MLBPA will agree to that without significant concessions, and maybe not even then. Also, there are 15 teams each in the Grapefruit League and Cactus League. Unless MLB is planning to give one team in each league an off-day each day (plausible since it's one off-day every two weeks), either there will have to be daily split squad games (nope) or daily doubleheaders in which one team plays two different teams. That could be fun! I'm not sure it's feasible though. Sharing facilities with such a quick turnaround is no way to contain the virus. And we're talking about playing games at Florida's Spring Training sites in the summer. It rains literally every day in Florida during the summer. That's going to create scheduling headaches. Beyond the weather, the single biggest issue with this plan is Florida's response to the pandemic. Their plan has been to blame everything on New York and implement protective measures three weeks too late. I'm not sure it'll be safe to play games in Florida anytime soon. MLB will be shut down until at least mid-May and it is only mid-April. I imagine we'll hear about many other possible plans to bring baseball back these next few weeks. Rob Manfred and his people are doing exactly what they should be doing, and that's consider all options. The Arizona Plan is one. The Realignment Plan is another. I know it's easy to think there won't be baseball this year, I've felt that way plenty, but we're a very long way from that becoming reality. It's only April. The regularly scheduled championship season doesn't end until late-October. MLB will do whatever possible to make money this year -- they're not punting an entire year's worth of revenue unless absolutely necessary -- and it'll be a few months until their backs are really up against the wall. The Arizona Plan and Realignment Plan might be unrealistic, but every option has to be on the table. (If you're interested, R.J. Anderson ran a simulation using the Realignment Plan and the Yankees beat the Padres in the World Series.)

2. Ways MLB can experiment. This is guaranteed to be unlike any other season in baseball history. It's going to be shortened, it's probably going to happen without fans in the stands, and the rules figure to be adjusted to accommodate location and a shortened schedule. There is no sense in even pretending this will be a normal season. MLB can use that to its advantage and experiment with different rule changes, and I don't mean simple stuff like a universal DH or a pitch clock. I mean go far outside the box and see what sticks. Might be nothing! But at least the league will have tried. The shutdown gives MLB carte blanche to try things it otherwise wouldn't even consider. Here are five things MLB can experiment with during the shortened 2020 season. (I'm not necessarily advocating for these changes. I'm just laying them out there as possibilities.) (I'm probably going to turn this into a CBS post at some point, so consider this an exclusive preview.)

Ties!

Ewww, gross, but worth considering. In every extra-innings game, there's a point where it goes from "woo bonus baseball!" to "let's get this over with already," and with a condensed schedule, the last thing anyone needs is long extra-innings games. If the score is tied after nine innings, call it a tie, and be done with it. Ties are rare in baseball but not unprecedented -- there was a tie as recently as 2016 -- so embrace them for a year. Turn the standings into a points system with two points for a win and one point for a tie (three points for a win might be better), with wins serving as the first tiebreaker. This system would change the way teams use their bullpen -- the road team would use their closer in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game, right? I hope they're smart enough to do that -- and that's fine. We can claim it adds strategy. Viva la ties.

Seven-Inning Games

With a condensed schedule, overtaxing players is an obvious concern, especially pitchers. Chopping two innings off each game means two fewer innings pitchers have to cover and two fewer innings fielders have to spend on their feet. They already play seven-inning games during doubleheaders in the minors and there's talk they could do the same in the big leagues this year. Maybe it's worth taking it one step further and adopting seven-inning games full-time. This would drastically change pitcher usage -- the horses like Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom would still get theirs, but most other games would devolve into bullpen games -- though that's not necessarily a bad thing. Again, we can claim it adds strategy. The potential sticking point: the television networks won't want to pay nine-inning carriage fees for seven innings of baseball.

Mercy Rule

I am opposed to a mercy rule. These are professional players. Play the game until it's over and the other team can run up the score as much as possible. Don't like it? Too bad. Stop them from scoring then. With a shortened season and a condensed schedule though, cutting back on unimportant low leverage innings may be worthwhile just to keep guys healthy and fresh (and not potentially exposed to the virus). I don't know what the ideal mercy rule cutoff point would be -- a 10-run lead after seven innings seems easy enough (win probability is 99.8% at that point for the team with the lead) -- but surely MLB and the MLBPA could find common ground. Imagine a team with a 10-run lead using their closer in the seventh inning to preserve the 10-run lead and ensure the mercy rule kicks in? That'd be something. Like I said, I'm opposed to a mercy rule. If MLB were ever going to experiment with one though, now's the time to do it.

Quick Counts

A few years ago the MLB: The Show video game added the quick counts feature to a) make the game more realistic, and b) increase the pace of play. The feature enables the game to randomly generate the count before each at-bat. Could be 1-1, 3-0, 0-2, whatever. Luck of the draw. Without it, it was practically impossible to draw walks or elevate the opposing pitcher's pitch count, and it made the game a bit unrealistic. MLB is rightfully concerned about pace of play and bringing quick counts into the real world would help move things along. I'm willing to hear an argument that the quick counts should be tailored to each player individually -- Masahiro Tanaka (career 4.9% walk rate) should get fewer three-ball counts than Aroldis Chapman (career 11.5% walk rate), etc. -- but I say don't bother. Have a random number generator spit out the count before each at-bat and remove any semblance of bias. Players will hate it -- every single player, hitter or pitcher, will believe they are getting a disproportionate number of bad counts -- but that's too bad. Quick counts would speed up the game and maybe even cut down on strikeouts because high strikeout pitchers and high strikeout hitters would ostensibly see fewer two-strike counts than their talent typically provides them. Also, quick counts means pitchers would throw fewer real pitches to complete innings, at least in theory, and that would help keep them healthy. 

The 1-2-3 Hitters Bat Every Inning

Drawing casual fans back to baseball may be difficult when the shutdown ends. Whenever sports return, the NBA and NHL are poised to jump right into their playoffs, and it could be right at the start of the NFL season. MLB will be fighting for eyeballs and what better way to get everyone's attention than to give Mike Trout and Francisco Lindor and Aaron Judge as many at-bats as possible? In basketball, the Lakers can give LeBron James the ball pretty much whenever they want. Connor McDavid can be on the ice in every big situation for the Oilers. Down a run in the ninth? Well, if the 7-8-9 hitters are due up, too bad. The "everybody gets a turn" aspect is part of what makes baseball great, but doing away with it for a year could be worthwhile. Start every inning with the top of the lineup. A team with a top heavy lineup would really benefit. The Angels would be able to stack Trout, Anthony Rendon, and Shohei Ohtani at the top of the lineup and limit how often their lesser hitters come to the plate. There is a fatigue/injury risk component to consider -- sending guys to the plate nine times a game day after day will be taxing -- and I suppose that helps the teams with more offensive depth, because they'll still have a great top of the lineup even when one of their studs needs a day to rest. Teams in other sports can force-feed the game to their best players. Baseball teams can't do that, but maybe they should? (Tom Verducci has been pushing for a "bonus batter" for years now. The idea is that once a game, a team can send any hitter to the plate, even if he's already been removed from the game. The Angels could give an at-bat with the bases loaded in the eighth inning to Trout or Rendon rather than someone at the bottom of the lineup. Could be a good compromise between maintaining the status quo and letting the 1-2-3 hitters bat every inning.)

3. The old Yankee Stadium. Over the weekend the NY Yankees Throwbacks account tweeted out a video of Brett Gardner's first career hit. It was a fairly routine line drive single to right, the sorta hit we've all seen countless times, but it was at the old Yankee Stadium, and that got me thinking: how many active players played a game at the old ballpark? This is supposed to be Year 12 at the new Yankee Stadium, so these players are a dying breed. As I researched the answer, I came to realize there are different degrees of "active." Here's the list. We'll talk about it more in a second:

Everyone in the table is currently under contract with a Major League team. Most players listed are assured a big league job this year though some are on minor league deals and haven't played in the show in a few years now (Blanco, Snider, etc.), but they're still getting after it. Pedroia got into six games last year and is on the Jacoby Ellsbury plan now. He'll sit on the injured list and keep collecting paychecks even though he is not expected to play ever again because his knee is a wreck. He's not really active, but he did play last year, and is under contract through 2021. Morrow was in Spring Training with the Cubs before the shutdown. He's trying to come back after losing last year to injury. Robertson is rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and who knows what the market will look like for a 35-year-old reliever coming off a major injury after this season. Every player listed as an unsigned free agent played in the big leagues last year except Santana, who spent the season in Triple-A. Imagine having that guy's career (15 seasons, nearly 2,500 innings, +26 WAR, and $112M in contracts) and riding buses in the minors at age 37? Some guys just love baseball. Decent chance those unsigned free agents never sign another contract. They might be done. Like done done. Also, Jose Bautista deserves a mention. He did not play last season but is hoping to come back, possibly as a pitcher, and he played five games at the old Yankee Stadium. Bautista could again qualify as active at some point, I suppose. As for the overseas group, Jones spent last year with the Diamondbacks and signed a two-year deal with the Orix Buffaloes in Japan over the winter. His MLB career is probably over, but a comeback isn't impossible. Everyone else in that group either played in Mexico last year or has signed to play in Mexico this year. (Mexico isn't really overseas, but you know what I mean.) Yes, Cantu and Aybar and Mitre are still kicking around. Cantu hit .283/.364/.488 for the Diablos Rojos del Mexico last year. Aybar hit .319/.412/.496 for the Acereros de Monclova. Mitre had 6.10 ERA for two teams in Mexico last season. In his defense, it is an extreme hitter's league. Also, Mitre looks like this now:

I don't expect any of the overseas players to make it back to the big leagues, but they are still playing, so we can't rule out a return just yet. Eyeballing the table, I count 34 players I would consider "active," meaning they have a very good chance to play Major League Baseball in 2020, assuming the season starts at some point. There are 1,200 players on 40-man rosters at any given moment and only 34 active players have played a game at the old Yankee Stadium, and many of those 34 only played a handful of games. One series as a rookie or something like that. Pretty crazy. Cano and Votto still have four years remaining on their contracts and I guess that makes them the favorites to be the last active player to have played in the old Yankee Stadium. Verlander says he wants to pitch until he's 45, so maybe it'll be him. Some of the relievers seem like they'll pitch forever (Clippard, Miller, Smith, Soria), so it could be one of them who outlasts everyone else. My official guess: Cano will be the last active player to have played a game in the old Yankee Stadium. I don't see the Mets releasing Cano before his contract expires. Possible? Sure, but unlikely. I don't see the Reds releasing Votto either, but he is the type who may walk away if he can't play the game at a high level, which he hasn't done lately (.261/.357/.411 and 101 wRC+ in 2019). Simply put, I think it's more likely Cano finishes his contract than Votto, making him my pick to be the last active player to play a game in the old Yankee Stadium. Cano is the last man standing, Votto is the runner-up, and Miller is the dark horse to outlast everyone. It has been foretold.

4. 2020 draft prospect: C.J. Van Eyk. We don't know when the 2020 amateur draft will take place just yet --  MLB can hold it anytime between June 10th and July 20th -- but there will be a draft this year, and I'm gonna break down potential Yankees targets the next few weeks. We've already covered Nick Bitsko and Pete Crow-Armstrong. Van Eyk had a chance to go in the top three rounds out of high school in 2017, but a forearm injury hurt his stock, and he followed through on his commitment to Florida State after falling to the 19th round. The right-hander has been healthy with the Seminoles the last three years and had a 1.31 ERA with 25/12 K/BB in 20.2 innings prior to the shutdown this spring. MLB.com ranks Van Eyk as the 19th best prospect in the draft class. Baseball America (subs. req'd) has him 43rd. Quite the divide there. The Yankees hold the 28th overall pick. Here is a snippet of MLB's scouting report (here's video):

Van Eyk has a solid three-pitch mix that he knows how to use extremely well. He's been up to 95 mph, usually working in the 93-94 mph range, with his fastball and commands it well to both sides of the plate. He really knows how to spin his curveball, a breaking ball with almost 12-to-6 action that has really good late downward bite. He throws it in the upper-70s more often than not, but can add and subtract as needed. His changeup is his third pitch, and would be more effective if it had more sink, but he does throw it with good arm speed to fool hitters.

The Florida State ace might be the most complete pitcher of the college crop in Florida because of his willingness to pitch in with his fastball, his ability to throw his breaking ball at any point in the count and his feel for mixing his pitches to keep hitters off-balance.

Unless MLB shortens the draft less than expected, the Yankees will have only three picks and a $3.7M bonus pool this summer. They can't trade for Competitive Balance Lottery picks either, so that's it. Three picks and $3.7M. As tempting as it may be to punt the last two picks and reallocate the bonus pool money to a top talent in the first round, I think it's more likely the Yankees play it straight and select an appropriately ranked player at each pick, if that makes sense. Van Eyk is a polished college starter and a bona fide end of the first round talent. The Yankees have a knack for helping prospects add velocity, and if they can help Van Eyk take his fastball from 93-94 mph to 96-97 mph, there could be another level here. He could have untapped potential given his three-pitch mix and pitching know-how. Polished college starters are not the sexiest demographic, I know, but in the build-a-pitcher era, dudes like Van Eyk are prime candidates to become better than expected with pro instruction.

5. Remembering a random Yankee: Greg Golson. Our series looking back at random Yankees continues today with Mr. Golson. We've already covered Juan Acevedo, Oscar Azocar, Colter Bean, Erick Almonte, Nick Green, Aaron Guiel, Brandon Knight, and Blake Parker. Golson joined the Yankees in a minor trade with the Rangers in Jan. 2010 and he spent most of that season with Triple-A Scranton, where he hit .263/.313/.414 (95 wRC+). He spent two weeks with the Yankees when Curtis Granderson was on the disabled list in May, and he rejoined the team as a Sept. call-up. When he replaced Nick Swisher for defense in the late innings, Golson joined Granderson and Brett Gardner to form the 3G outfield. Coverage everywhere. (It sounded much cooler before 4G and 5G.) On Sept. 14th, with the Yankees nursing a one-run lead in the 10th inning and sitting a half-game behind the Rays in the AL East, Matt Joyce lifted a routine fly ball to right with the speedy Carl Crawford at second base with one out. Golson's signature moment in pinstripes ensued (video):

Golson caught the fly ball and threw Crawford out at third -- flat-footed! -- to end the game and move the Yankees a half-game up in the AL East. I was at Tropicana Field that night and I knew Golson had a strong arm just from reading prospects lists over the years, but lordy, I didn't know it was that strong. Nothing in baseball takes your breath away quite like a great outfield throw. What a pick and tag by Alex Rodriguez too. "It was an incredible throw. He caught the ball flat-footed, so I honestly thought he had no chance. Who ever would have thought that Greg Golson would make a huge play in the middle of a great pennant race?" A-Rod told Mark Feinsand following the game. When you think of the team's best defensive plays of the 2010s, Golson's throw is right up there with the Air Hicks catch. It was a great play, obviously, but it was also almost completely unexpected because Golson was largely an unknown. Unbelievable, truly. Golson hit .263/.330/.385 (98 wRC+) with Triple-A Scranton in 2011 and returned to the Yankees in September. There were no great defensive plays this time though. Golson appeared in 33 games as a Yankee and 19 times he was a pinch-runner or defensive replacement who did not bat in the game. He went 9-for-34 (.235) in pinstripes and never played in the big leagues after 2011. The Yankees released Golson after the season and he spent 2012-13 bouncing around Triple-A and 2014-19 bouncing around the Mexican League and independent leagues. At age 33, he hit .267/.309/.341 in 54 games with the independent Lancaster Barnstormers last season. Golson was regarded as a smart and coachable player, so it's no surprise he interviewed with several teams after retiring over the winter. He joined the Dodgers in a pro scouting role in February.

6. Rapid fire thoughts. Remember when Alex Rodriguez was suspended the entire 2014 season, then came back and hit .250/.356/.486 (129 wRC+) with 33 homers in 2015? He said the year away from baseball allowed his aging body to heal. Not that he was coming back from a specific injury, just all the wear and tear that builds up over the years. A-Rod said he felt refreshed following the time away. I wonder whether players around the league will feel like that after the shutdown. Not everyone, obviously. The veterans who have been around a while and taken a beating over the years stand to benefit the most. The extra downtime could do wonders for their body and allow them to have a nice dead cat bounce when baseball returns in 2020, or even carry over into 2021. And maybe it'll help younger guys too. All the time away could get Giancarlo Stanton over the injury hump, for example. The shutdown sucks, no doubt about it. Healthier players is one potential silver lining ... There have been photos of an absurdly jacked Aroldis Chapman floating around social media the last few weeks. To wit (via Chapman's Instagram):

Naturally, the pics have been turned into "OMG look how big Chapman is!" articles because they get clicks and because there's nothing else to write about. I get it, but I feel compelled to note Chapman has always been this huge. This is not something that happened during the shutdown or even over the winter. He's always been that big. I'm not a BBWAA veteran but I'm not a rookie anymore either, and Chapman is easily the most muscular player I've ever seen in a big league clubhouse. It's not even close, really. Stanton and Aaron Judge are big but not in that way. Chapman's had that insanely muscular build since the day he arrived in New York in 2016. It's nothing new. I guess it's just now that the public is learning about it. (Underrated contender for most jacked non-Chapman player: Jose Pirela. Dude was built like a brick house when he was a Yankee) ... And finally, it dawned on me yesterday MLB will try to make up for lost revenue this year by putting ads on uniforms. I'm okay with it as long as the finished product doesn't look like Mexican League uniforms. It can be done tastefully. MLB will use the shutdown and the lost revenue as an excuse to put ads on uniforms, and then they'll never go away. You watch.

(Send your questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com.)