MLB Notebook: Baseball's official historian gets ready to embrace the quirks of a 60-game season and the records that could be set

No sport reveres its past or treasures its records more than baseball.

Some statistical achievements need to further embellishment to fans: .406 is pretty self-explanatory.

For the longest time, so did 715, then 755.

That adherence to the past, that embrace of the numbers, has some worried with the start of the 2020 MLB season set for Thursday. Some traditionalists worry that the game's record books will be cheapened by the small sample size, that some achievement allowed by the shorter schedule will be given equal historical weight.

John Thorn, you should know, is not among them.

Thorn is Major League Baseball's official historian. And if he's not worried about what we're about to witness and how it will subsequently be viewed in historical terms, then maybe you shouldn't worry, either.

"Our reverence for baseball's unchanging past and memorial records is largely misplaced,'' said Thorn, "because it's absent context. So when we think of say, Babe Ruth's 60 homers in 1927, we do not, typically think about how weak the pitching was, how Ruth typically got four, five and sometimes six at-bats against the same starting pitcher...There are kinds of wrinkles in the game -- minor changes that have major affects.

"So people now complaining about the extra-inning rule, with a man starting on second base, with the truncated scheduled, with the Braves and Cubs not meeting for the first time since 1876...Baseball gives the illusion of being unchanged. And yet, it is changing all the time. Some of the smallest rule changes can turn out to have incredibly large affect.''

In a shortened season, so-called "counting'' numbers -- i.e. homers, hits, doubles, etc. -- aren't going to be impacted. The home run leader, in fact, could, for the first time since 1918, may not reach the 20-homer plateau.

But "rate'' numbers -- batting average, ERA, slugging percentage -- could be a different story.

"The rate statistics are indeed susceptible to freakish outcomes,'' said Thorn.

And if the 2020 season delivers baseball's first .400 hitter since Ted Williams in 1941?



"Oh, I think that would be fun,'' Thorn said. "We have to approach this plague year, this awful year, with a welcoming of experimentation. It is an opportunity to strange things to happen in a strange year. We can turn up our noses at it and say, 'Well, that doesn't count.'  Or we could say that sometimes duress can produce positive outcomes, interesting outcomes.''

In fact, Thorn believes the possibility -- maybe even likelihood -- that a hitter flirts with a .400 season over a little more than two months might be a positive.

" I think the danger is to make too much of it,'' said Thorn. "Short bursts of accomplishment are worthy of attention and admiration in and of themselves. Some fans will turn their backs on the entire season because they like the marathon and don't want baseball to be a sprint.''

In his official capacity with Major League Baseball, Thorn has not been told of any plans to mark this year's records with any sort of asterisks.

"No asterisk has ever been applied to any statistical achievement,'' noted Thorn. "What they did (for the 1961 season) in the Elias Record Book, at (commissioner) Ford Frick's insistence that Ruth not be wiped out of the record book, they created two lines: one for A 154-game season and one for (Roger Maris) in a 162-game season.''

Thorn envisions this unusual season as a "golden period for relief appearances,'' with their value increased, both because of the shorter schedule as well as managers wishing to protect starting pitchers who haven't had the usual amount of time to build arm strength.

"If any pitcher wins 10 games, or wins the Cy Young, it's likely to be a starter and not a reliever,'' he said. "But that's one man's opinion.''

(For context, adjusted qualifiers will be in place for rate numbers, so a hitter will still need 3.1 plate appearances for each scheduled game to be eligible for the batting title and pitchers will need one inning per scheduled game -- 60, in this case -- to qualify for the ERA title).

Again and again, Thorn comes back to the concept of context. This will be a vastly different season in every regard, but that much will be obvious to those studying its outcomes.

"Anyone who looks at the season's outcomes 20 years from now,'' said Thorn, "is going to have to have some sense of historical context, just as, if we look at the 1930 season, or the 1968 season or the 1894 season -- which were all anomalies in either hitting or pitching -- you have to know a thing or two. And baseball fans are good at that.

"There's always something. People regard stats as facts; they're not. They're signposts, they're pointers, they're symbols. And they're brilliant because they encompass a great deal of information. But the more information you bring to the stat, the more context you bring to it, the more it sings to you.''

Thorn may be somewhat of a traditionalist, but that doesn't mean he's railing against what we're about to see. Instead, he's perfectly willing to embrace it.

"I think there's no choice,'' he said. "The idea that someone has been a baseball fan your whole life but this year, you're not going to be a fan makes me question your previous fandom. I think, relax, go with it. There will be strange outcomes, there will be things that seem unjust on their face. But it's always been so.''

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Two players -- one former and one who had been retired but returned -- were in the news this week, and are situated at opposite ends of the likability quotient.

Even before the season starts, the feel-good story of the 2020 season appears to belong to former Red Sox reliever Daniel Bard, who was told Friday that he had made the Colorado Rockies Opening Day roster, some seven years after he last appeared in a major league game.

For all of the 2010 season and most of 2011, Bard was one of the effective and dominant relievers in the game. In 2010, he appeared in 73 games and posted a 1.93 ERA with a 1.004 WHIP.  In 2011, through the end of August, Bard similarly excelled with a 2.03 ERA. Hitters had a .497 OPS against him.

But in September, something went horribly wrong for Bard. In 11 appearances, he allowed 13 earned runs and walked nine. His meltdown mirrored the hideous downturn the entire team experienced, going from certain wildcard winners to missing out on the playoffs in the last inning of the last game.

The next year, Bobby Valentine tried to convert him to the rotation and things only got worse. Bard developed the yips, with more walks allowed than strikeouts and gave up more than a hit per inning. A year later, he was out of the game.

There were comebacks -- all eventually aborted -- and surgeries (thoracic outlet syndrome). Bard tried to come back with the Texas Rangers, St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets before finally giving up in 2017. He took a job with the Arizona Diamondbacks as a mental skills coach last year before a January mound session tempted him to give it one more try.

On Friday, that comeback was completed when he earned a spot with the Rockies.

"I'm thrilled for him,'' said Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Ben Cherington, who was Bard's last GM when the two were with the Red Sox. "It's a terrific story of perseverance and I hope the story continues.''

"It's going to be a great story when he comes back and pitches well,'' said Colorado manager Bud Black.

Actually, it already is. Bard was always accountable and intelligent and an easy person for whom to root. Now, he's a big leaguer again.

Contrast that with the latest saga involving Alex Rodriguez.

On a conference call the other day, the man who was, much of his career the highest-paid player of the game, advised today's players that they've lost their leverage and should submit to a salary cap/revenue sharing agreement in next year's collective bargaining agreement.

There was no recognition, of course, that had such a stipulation been in play during his career, Rodriguez would have been unable to earn anywhere near what he did. But having pocketed some $441 million over the course of his career, that's no longer ARod's concern.

For someone so desperate to be liked, Rodriguez sure says and does a lot of things that do anything but endear him to others. Wonder how he'll be treated when he arrives at the ballpark -- this year, or next year, when the pandemic is more under control -- looking to chat with active players in preparation for his work in ESPN telecasts?

Of course, there's another insidious context to his remarks. Rodriguez is currently part of a group looking to purchase the New York Mets. Viewed with only the smallest bit of cynicism, it's not hard to imagine that Rodriguez said what he said as a way of conveying a wink-and-a-nod to Major League Baseball and 29 other owners: "Don't worry -- I'm not going to give out any crazy contracts like the one given to me.''

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The addition of Kevin Pillar means Ron Roenicke has improved depth options in the outfield this season. In the last two years, J.D. Martinez has been the primary backup outfielder, but, of course, he's rather limited in his range and better suited for full-time DH duties.

Pillar is capable of playing all three outfield spots, and there will be games in which he's in left or right field, in addition to his more accustomed spot in center.

But given that he's the lone right-handed bat among the regular outfielders, it seems likely that he'll get most of his starts when there's a lefty on the mound.

Alex Verdugo is capable of hitting lefties well (his .785 OPS against lefties is a tick higher than the .783 he has against righties). Over the course of his career, Andrew Benintendi has fared far better vs. righties (.830) than lefties (.696), but oddly that wasn't the case last year when Benintendi actually performed somewhat better against lefties (.796) than righties (.764), perhaps an indication that he's improving against southpaws as he gains more experience.

There's little doubt that among the three regulars, Jackie Bradley Jr. is the one who stands to sacrifice the most playing time to Pillar. Beyond his reputation for streakiness, Bradley's splits reveal an 81 point difference (.669 vs. .750) when it comes to facing lefties or righties.

So, assuming Pillar is in the lineup over Bradley against most lefties, how does Roenicke align his outfield, given all three other outfielders are capable of playing center?

"Off-hand,'' said Roenicke, "Pillar would go to center and we'd leave the other two (Benintendi in left and Verdugo in right), knowng the other two can both go to center if we need them there.''

Still, Pillar has asked to get playing time in right during intrasquad games to learn the expansive playing area and the odd angles that come with the position at Fenway. Center field in Fenway is a familiar area for Pillar thanks to his thice-yearly visits for years as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays.

All of which suggests that the outfield offers the potential for a lot of interchanging once the season gets underway.