Morning Mound Visit: sabermetrics news - 3/19/20

AP | Ronald Blum: The union and the league are jockeying over rules around what will happen with most of the big issues surrounding coronavirus, namely service time, transactions, and the draft. The union wants a full year of service time no matter what, while the likely outcome is giving a proportional service time based on the length of the season. There could also be a transaction freeze, as well as a postponement of the draft and international signing period.

FanGraphs | Ben Clemens: Yuli Gurriel is terrible at popping up on pitches in the middle of the zone, but that’s also a bargain he made. He’s excellent at hitting home runs on low pitches, so he’s sacrificed a few middle pitches for low ones in exchange.

Baseball Prospectus | Matthew Trueblood ($): Of the top six innings getters on the Mariners who threw more than 1000 pitches last year, they collectively had 90 whiffs on fastballs up in the zone. Matthew Boyd, for example, had 90 just himself. That means that they are missing the high heat that one would need to put together a great staff, aiming more for crafty pitchers during their rebuild.