Free For All Friday #8

Hello and welcome to Free For All Friday.

If you’re not a paid subscriber, you missed two newsletters this week. On Monday, I took a deep dive into what’s ailing baseball in Missouri with both the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals having miserable seasons. I also talked about how good the Cardinals have been historically, making it highly unlikely that the Cards and Royals would stink at the same time.

On Wednesday I penned an ode to the return of Joey Votto—his bat and his hijinks. I also looked at Wins Above Average for positions players aged 38+.

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Double Whammy

The Arizona Diamondbacks are for real. This weekend, the Snakes roll into Oracle Park for a weekend series against the San Francisco Giants. The D’Backs lead the National League West by 3.5 games over the Giants, by 4 games over the Dodgers, and by 9.5 games over the Padres.

A rookie star in the making is leading the charge for the D’Backs. Corbin Carroll if first among NL positions players in Wins Above Average at 2.9. He has the highest slugging percentage among qualified batters (.576). Carroll has stolen 22 bases, second only to the Braves’ Ronald Acuña Jr., who has 32, and ranks first in FanGraphs’ base running stat, which measures stolen bases and taking extra bases on outfield hits.

Carroll is having such a spectacular season that he might just be the first player since Ichiro Suzuki to win Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same season. Ichiro accomplished that feat in 2001 with the Mariners. The only other player ever to win both awards in the same year was Fred Lynn in 1975 with the Red Sox.

Gone Streakin’

The Cincinnati Reds enter Friday’s game against the Atlanta Braves with an 11-game winning streak. Keeping that streak going against the best team in the National League will be a tall order—especially because the Braves are on a winning streak of their own. Atlanta has won 7 games in a row. The Braves had an 8-game winning streak back in April; the Red Sox and the Astros had 8-game winning streaks in May. The Padres put an end to the Giants’ 10-game winning streak on Thursday afternoon. The Reds’ current streak isn’t the longest in the majors this season. That distinction still belongs to the Tampa Bay Rays, who started the season 13-0.

The Reds and Giants having 10+ game winning streaks at the same time got me thinking about how often that’s happened. I geek out on these things. There are so many games in each baseball season and so many seasons of organized professional baseball. I love to dig in to see if and when things repeat themselves—or not. And thanks to Stathead at Baseball Reference, you can find these nuggets if you spend the time (and I spent a lot of time).

To be clear, I was interested in 10 or more game winning streaks that completely overlapped, not where one team started a 12-game winning streak on the same day another team won the fifth game of a 12-game winning streak.

Before I started my search, I guessed that we’d seen simultaneous 10+ game win streaks maybe 10 times in baseball history. I was exactly right! It’s happened 10 times going back to 1901, including the Reds and Giants this season.

Let’s take a look.

Last year, the Mariners won 14 games in a row from July 2 through July 17. Within that 15 day period, the Orioles won 10 consecutive games.

It also happened in 2017. That season the Guardians started a 22-game winning streak on August 24 that lasted until September 14. The Diamondbacks also started a winning streak on August 24. Theirs lasted 13 games.

In 2013, the Tigers and Braves started long winning streaks on July 26. The Tigers’ streak lasted 12 games; the Braves’ lasted 14.

In 2001, the Mariners won 15 games in a row between May 23 and June 8. The Cubs started a win streak on May 19 and won 12 in a row. The Cubs last win was on June 2, the same day the Mariners won their 10th out of 15.

Two years earlier, in 1999, the Padres won 14 in a row between June 18 and July 2. In that span, the Reds had a 10-game winning streak.

In 1998, the Cubs and the Giants started consecutive win streaks on May 29. The Giants’ streak ended at 11; the Cubs’ at 10.

On September 12, 1996, the Mariners and the Pirates starting winning streaks. Seattle won 10 in a row; the Pirates won 11.

In 1982, the Cardinals won 12 consecutive games between April 11 and April 24. During that same time period, the Padres won 11 consecutive games.

You have to back to 1941 to find the next set of overlapping 10+ game winning streaks. The Cardinals and the Guardians (then Indians) started winning streaks on April 24 that ended on May 5. The Guardians won 11 games in a row in that span; the Cardinals won 10 in a row.

This one is crazy, even if doesn’t fit neatly in the definition I set out above. In 1906, the Cubs had three winning streaks of 10+ games separated by only two losses. The Cubs won 10 games from August 6 to August 18 and then lost on August 19; they won 14 consecutive games starting on August 20 and continuing through September 1, and then lost on September 2; and had a 12-game winning streak that started on September 3. They won 36 out of 38! In that amazing stretch, the New York Highlanders (now Yankees) won 14 in a row from August 29 to September 8.

Blocking scouts

Earlier this week, 17 former MLB scouts filed a lawsuit against Commissioner Rob Manfred, MLB and all 30 MLB teams alleging that they’d been fired and blacklisted from employment with the league due to their age.

The case was filed in federal district court in Colorado under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act and state anti-discrimination laws. The plaintiffs will ask the court to certify the case as a class action, which means that the 17 named plaintiffs would act as “representatives” of a larger group of former MLB scouts.

The core of the complaint alleges that the league and the 30 teams dispensed with the older scouts in favor of younger scouts who, because they lacked experience, were paid less.

The older scouts claim that MLB and the teams used two circumstances as pretext to fire or blacklist them from getting rehired: (1) that the move to advanced analytics across the league required hiring people with those skills; (2) that the COVID pandemic required eliminating their jobs because no scouting was taking place, but when the pandemic eased and teams began to evaluate young talent again, the older scouts weren’t rehired.

Age discrimination cases are difficult to prove. The plaintiffs must show hat they were qualified to do their jobs and met their employers’ expectations and that after they were fired, the job remained open or was filled by someone substantially younger. In other words, the older scouts will have to prove that “but for” their age, they wouldn’t have been fired or blocked from re-hiring.

If the case proceeds to discovery—and I expect that it will—MLB and the teams will have to turn over emails and other documents that discuss anything and everything to do with hiring, paying, and firing scouts during the relevant time period. And senior MLB and team executives will have to testify under oath. That’s when things get interesting. Until then, it’s difficult to assess the strength of the scouts’ claims.

Go watch some baseball and have a fun weekend.