Morning Mound Visit: sabermetrics news - 3/5/19

FanGraphs | Sheryl Ring: Last week a video from TMZ Sports arose of Giants CEO Larry Baer clearly getting into a public, aggressive altercation with his wife in a San Francisco plaza. There in fact is a domestic violence policy that covers managers and executives, and MLB is investigating the situation. The Commissioner really has plenary power over the situation, meaning fines up to $500,000, suspensions, and the like. There may not be a precedent, but the powers are present.

The Ringer | Ben Lindbergh & Rob Arthur: A Reds employee passed an immense archive of past scouting reports, and it offers insights into how accurate and telling industry reports are and used to be. Overall Future Potential, or OFP, had a very small positive correlation to WAR, but what did matter was the language scouts used; words like “smooth” for pitchers and hitters described as having “power” were generally better than those who had descriptions like “wrapper” and “pull” hitter.

Baseball Prospectus | Matthew Trueblood ($): Even though the expansion of the game likely demands it, and the league does desire things like a shorter regular season schedule and more playoff games, expansion is very much on the table. But there are so many obstacles. For one, any team will likely cut into an existing team market, and international expansion is likely off the table for the foreseeable future. None of the teams created, then, would be even mid-market teams yet would still require a potential owner or ownership group to spend over $500 million just to get on the field, plus a stadium. The need is there, and you can see the vision for two more teams, but the logistics will be a nightmare (not to mention with the Rays and A’s stadiums in limbo).