General Manager: Frank Wren
Farm Director: Kurt Kemp
Scouting Director: Tony DeMacio

2006-2009 Draft Results:
First three rounds included
x- over-draft signees ($200,000 or more)

2009 1st Round: Mike Minor, LHP, Vanderbilt U
2. None
3. David Hale, RHP, Princeton

Perhaps looking for a “safe pick” since the organization lacked a second-round selection, the team nabbed Minor with the seventh-overall selection. The organization passed on the likes of Jacob Turner and Tyler Matzek, both of whom are talented, hard-throwing prep pitchers. Minor’s fastball is fringe-average at 87-89 mph and his best pitch is a plus change-up. His secondary pitches are still developing, but he’s a durable, left-handed pitcher with solid control and a proven track record. In his debut in low-A ball, Minor did not walk a batter in 14 innings and he allowed just 10 hits. He projects to be a solid No. 3 starter if everything clicks.

Hale is basically the opposite of Minor. He’s a hard-thrower with less polish – and he’s right-handed. He did well in his debut but he was a college pitcher performing in rookie ball. Hale allowed just seven hits and five walks in 16.0 innings.Because he has yet to fully develop his secondary pitches, Hale projects to be a late-game reliever.

Fourth-rounder Mycal Jones had a nice debut, albeit in rookie ball. The 22-year-old infielder hit .258/.337/.430 in 244 at-bats, while also showing solid gap power (18 doubles, .172 ISO) and good speed with 19 steals in 23 attempts.

2008 1st Round: None
1S. Brett DeVall, LHP, Florida HS
2. Tyler Stovall, LHP, Alabama HS
2. Zeke Spruill, RHP, Georgia HS
3. Craig Kimbrel, RHP, Alabama CC
6x – Adam Milligan, OF, Tennessee CC
10x – J.J. Hoover, RHP, Alabama CC

The club recovered nicely from the lack of a first-round pick by loading up on prep pitchers with its three selections before the third round. Both DeVall (hindered by injury problems) and Spruill have developed nicely so far. Spruill appears on the club’s Top 10 list, along with Kimbrel and Milligan. Stovall has shown flashes of potential – 36 hits allowed in 52.0 rookie innings in ’09 – but control issues are a huge red flag for him. He posted a walk rate of 9.69 BB/9 this past season. The left-hander is going to have make some big adjustments if he’s going to get out of A-ball.

Hoover has flashed excellent control in pro ball (1.67 BB/9) and he had a nice ’09 season in low-A ball. In 134.1 innings, Hoover allowed 135 hits and posted a strikeout rate of 9.92 K/9. He has a four-pitch mix with a fastball in the low-90s so keep an eye on him in 2010.

2007 1st Round: Jason Heyward, OF, Georgia HS
1S. Jon Gilmore, 3B, Iowa HS
2. Joshua Fields, RHP, Georgia (Did not sign)
2. Freddie Freeman, 1B, California HS
3. Brandon Hicks, SS, Texas A&M
x- Benino Pruneda, RHP, Texas JC

The best Braves pick in quite a few years, Heyward is easily the club’s No. 1 prospect and he could play regularly in the Majors in 2010 at the age of 20. Freeman is the second best bat in the system, so he joins Heyward on the Top 10 list.

Gilmore was used in the Javier Vazquez trade with the Chicago White Sox and he has been slow to develop. He’s maintained a respectable batting average throughout his career (with a small-sample-size hiccup in ’08) but he has not shown much power (.087 ISO in ’09) for a third baseman. His walk rate was also rather low at 6.3%.

Hicks received some attention after slugging 20 homers in ’08 but he has struggled to hit above .240 in his minor league career. The strikeout rate of 28.2% in double-A in ’09 is also a big problem. Pruneda is an under-sized right-handed reliever who posted a big strikeout rate (11.29 K/9) and a big walk rate (5.65 BB/9) in high-A. He’s also maintained a solid ground-ball rate in his career.

2006 1st Round: Cody Johnson, OF/1B, Florida HS
1S. Cory Rasmus, RHP, Alabama HS
1S. Steve Evarts, LHP, Florida HS
2. Jeff Locke, LHP, New Hampshire HS
2. Dustin Evans, RHP, Georgia Southern
2. Chase Fontaine, SS, Florida CC
3. Chad Rodgers, LHP, Ohio HS
9x – Tim Gustafson, RHP, Georgia Tech
19x – Duente Heath, RHP, Tennessee
22x – Cole Rohrbough, LHP, Nevada JC

A controversial selection at the time, the jury is still out on Johnson. He has massive power but you can drive a bus through the holes in his swing. The club appeared to have scored on both Rasmus and Evarts but their careers have been derailed by injuries. Evans missed all of ’09 due to injury, and Rodgers appeared in just seven games. The injury bug has certainly taken a huge bite out of this draft.

Locke was sent to Pittsburgh in the trade for outfielder Nate McLouth. Fontaine was flipped to Tampa Bay in ’08. Heath reached triple-A this past season but he’s struggled with control issues throughout his rise up the minor-league chain. Rohrbough looked like a huge steal after his ’08 season, but he took a step back in ’09 while posting a 5.77 ERA (4.34 FIP) and allowing 129 hits in 117.0 innings in high-A. His command and control both slipped, which led to a huge drop in strikeout rate to 7.69 K/9. He’s still just 22 so he could easily rebound.

Up Next: The Atlanta Braves Top 10 Prospects

There is something serendipitous about Austin Kearns being signed to a a minor-league deal by Cleveland GM Mark Shapiro. Both have long been admired for their potential, but both are widely perceived (at least in certain circles) as disappointments. Despite that perception (which is surely at least somewhat grounded in reality), both have had their moments — Cleveland’s 2007 ALCS run, Kearns’ 2002, 2006, and 2007 seasons. By signing Kearns and Shelley Duncan to virtually no-risk, minor-league contracts, is Shapiro showing he’s still capable of smart moves? Let’s see what Kearns and Duncan have to offer.

Austin Kearns is now 30 and and the apparent potential of the early 00s and the “rebound” of 2006-07 are a long way away. But the public emergence of superior defensive metrics shows that he was even more valuable in his good years than originally thought, and not totally worthless even in some of his bad years. Offensively, Kearns isn’t much. CHONE projects Kearns for a context-neutral .237/.338/.375, or 6 runs below average per 150 games. ZiPS is similar, projecting .237/.341/.377, which I translate to about -6/150. My own projection is right there: .247/.346/.376, -4/150.

That’s not good, but it’s also enough to justify a minor-league deal — even with CHONE’s average defensive projection for the corner outfield, that adds up to 0.7 WAR in only 452 PA. But UZR likes Kearns is much more than that, and Jeff Zimmerman projects Kearns’ RF UZR/150 for +10 in 2010. Putting it all together, per 150 games Kearns is probably around a 1.5 WAR player once we account for position. That’s excellent for a minor-league deal.

Shelley Duncan is an ex-Yankee International League superstar who is a pretty bad outfielder — CHONE’s TotalZone has him at -6 (there’s too little major league sample size to use UZR), and is probably more of a 1B/LF/DH type. One might dismiss his CHONE projection — .244/.329/.462, +12/150 — as overly optimistic given its reliance on MLEs, but ZiPS is also impressed with Duncan, projecting him for .252/.328/.460, about +8/150. Even if you don’t regard him as an above-average player as does CHONE, again, he’s a very valuable piece to have on a minor league deal.

Mark Shapiro’s team had a disastrous 2009 after a disappointing 2008. The team has revenue problems, as well. On the field, two spots in the outfield are set, with CF Grady Sizemore likely to be one of the better players in the league again after a inujry-plagued down year in 2009, and Shin-Soo Choo is a likely 3.5-4 WAR impact hitter in right field. But there are other holes that need to be filled and not much money with which to do so. Matt LaPorta is a good young hitter, but he might be needed to fill the hole in 1B (unless Andy Marte works out there). Left field was slated for the likes of Michael Brantley and Trevor Crowe — bench fodder at best. Perhaps they’d work out, but for next to nothing, players like Kearns and Duncan provide likely improvement as well much-needed right-handed bats (Sizemore, Choo, and Travis Hafner are all left-handed hitters) while adding practically nothing to the payroll. Moreover, Duncan can fill in at DH or 1B “just in case” Hafner gets hurt.

This isn’t to say that adding 30-year-old minor league outfielders like Kearns and Duncan makes Cleveland a contender (although it doesn’t take much in a weak AL Central), especially given the pitching situation by the lake. But smart, no-risk moves like this show that Mark Shapiro is paying attention and that he has something left in the tank.

As you have surely heard, Randy Johnson announced his retirement last night. Matthew took the first look at this, noting that he retires as someone who could be a three-win pitcher next year. Here I am going to take a more backward-facing look. Johnson retires as the career leader in strikeouts per inning, and he did so facing almost entirely right-handed (opposite-handed) batters. In Johnson’s career he faced 14,963 RHBs and just 2,103 LHBs, but over 28% of those RHBs struck out. With the pitchf/x data from the past three years here, we examine how he was able to do this as a small retrospective of his first-ballot Hall of Fame career.

Over the past three years, those covered by the pitchf/x data, Johnson threw, for the most part, just three pitches: a fastball, which Dave Cameron noted has been losing speed for years and in 2009 averaged less than 90 mph; a slider, which in the same article Dave noted has not lost any speed since 2003; and a split-finger fastball, which functions like a changeup. Over the years covered by the pitchf/x data, since 2007, and against RHBs he thew the fastball half the time, the splitter about 18% of the time and the slider 32%. That he can throw his slider, which typically shows an extreme platoon split, that often to RHBs is incredible.

Against RHBs he threw his slider inside and low in the zone, while his splitter was outside and also low in the zone. Not only did he throw his slider to RHBs often, but he did so effectively. Opponents scored 1.4 runs fewer than average per 100 sliders Johnson threw to RHBS, and it got them (RHBs) to miss on 26% of their swings. This is not that far off the average whiff rate of 29%, which is overwhelmingly generated during same-handed at-bats. His splitter also had a 26% whiff rate against RHBs. That gave Johnson two solid pitches against which RHBs had a tough time making contact, and allowed Johnson to pile up strikeouts.

I tip my figurative cap to Randy Johnson and his amazing 22-year career.

With the rumored acquisition of Casey Kotchman, it looks like the former first round pick is getting one more chance. Heading into his age 27 season, coming off two highly disappointing performances, Kotchman is headed for a make-it-or-break-it year. He showed offensive ability in the minors, then had a good season as a 24-year-old in 2007.

But he hasn’t just stagnated, he’s regressed. His power has dried up, as he posted a sad .114 ISO last year, and he doesn’t hit for a high enough average to make that lack of power work. In fact, Kotchman is getting dangerously close to Ben Grieve territory.

Grieve, you’ll remember, was the hot shot top prospect of the A’s who came up in 1997 and made an immediate impact. In 1998, his true rookie year, he posted a .372 wOBA as a 22-year-old, showing both patience and power. He had two more good years, in fact, and looked like on of the better young hitters in baseball. And then he fell apart, and was out of baseball before he turned 30.

Austin Kearns is on a similar career path right now. Once a higly touted prospect, he experienced early career success, but has been terrible of late, and is now relegated to a non-guaranteed, minor league contract with the Cleveland Indians. If Kearns doesn’t show some life in his bat this year, he probably won’t get another shot.

Kotchman isn’t quite there yet, but if he doesn’t hit in 2010, he’ll probably never get another look as a starting first baseman. Defensively, he’s good – everyone knows he can pick it. But he’s great contact skills and a frame that should produce power, but it just hasn’t.

Seattle should be a good fit for him. Safeco Field is friendly to LH hitters, with a short porch down the right field line that turns line drives into home runs. He won’t have to hit 400+ foot shots to get them out to right in Seattle. But he’s going to have to hit 350+ foot shots more regularly than he has.

Right now, Kotchman is unfulfilled potential. He has the talent to be a good player, even if not a star. At 27, it’s time for him to show what he can really do. It’s time to put up or shut up. He won’t be viewed as a guy with potential for much longer. He either shows he can hit in 2010, or he might not be around much longer.

The market this winter just keeps getting more and more intriguing. Certainly, Adrian Beltre settling for a one year deal and Matt Holliday receiving a staggering seven year mega-deal created more than enough stir these past few days. Flying under this frenzy is the fact that the San Francisco Giants offered Adam LaRoche a two year, 17 million dollar contract.

And he rejected it.

Troy Glaus has a much better history than LaRoche, despite his injury issues, and only received a one year deal worth 2.75 million. Hideki Matsui, a DH with a significantly better bat in the AL (+13 points of wRC+ last year, +11 for career), received a one year deal worth only 6.5 million. Remember, a -5 1B is roughly equal, defensively, to a DH. And does LaRoche really think that he can get a deal similar to that of Bobby Abreu’s 2/19 contract anywhere else?

There’s been no sign in this market that a player with skills comparable to those of LaRoche can get a contract guaranteeing that much money over multiple years. Our fan projections have LaRoche as a 2.1 win player, which is currently showing up as 9.3 million dollars in value. However, the market so far this year doesn’t seem to suggest that teams are paying $4.4M per win. This year, the market seems to be settling in the range of $3.5M to $4.0M per win. Given that the fan projections are far more optimistic than CHONE’s projection of 1.2 WAR for LaRoche, 2/17 seems to be the best that LaRoche would hope to see, and likely would have been an overpay.

That makes this offer especially inexcusable from the Giants perspective. After seeing his team compile a horrendous .305 wOBA and come in producing 118 runs below the league average, Brian Sabean is likely feeling the need to improve the offense. Still, the team has Travis Ishikawa and Josh Phelps, who project similarly to LaRoche according to CHONE. That, and they non-tendered Ryan Garko, who projects as a superior hitter to LaRoche and should come much cheaper.

I would suggest that this offer could be a result of the insidious workings of the Mystery Team, but Adam LaRoche isn’t a Scott Boras client. Brian Sabean is so desperate to add offense that he’s willing to pay $8.5M per year for a minimal upgrade, and Adam LaRoche and his agent are so vain that they declined it. With the first base market tiny – it’s basically down to the Giants, Mets, and Orioles after the Mariners’ addition of Casey Kotchman – there are still plenty of options available aside from LaRoche.

It appears that Sabean and the Giants have realized that their offer is a poor offer even before considering the lack of competition and current talent on their roster, and “may have pulled their offer,” according to Buster Olney. If this is true, don’t be surprised if Adam LaRoche is kicking himself come April.

Commenter Derek mentioned last week that neither Dan Haren nor Brandon Webb had crossed our 30-ballot threshold, so this edition of our Fan Projection Targets goes out to him. Today’s targets, in no particular order, are: Dan Haren, Brandon Webb, and Billy Buckner. Now go project the hell out of them.

Haren cemented his place among the majors’ best starters last year, posting a 3.08 xFIP while topping 200 IP for the fifth consecutive year.

Webb, after having also having topped 200 IP for five consecutive years, pitched all of four innings last year while dealing with shoulder problems.

Though he had a 6.40 ERA last year, Buckner’s 3.95 xFIP suggests that he has the skill to succeed. He’s tentatively slated as Arizona’s fifth starter.

Franklin Gutierrez wasn’t the only former Cleveland Indian to receive an extension yesterday. Rays’ catcher Kelly Shoppach, acquired in early December, agreed to terms with his new club as well, signing at $5.5M over two seasons. Eligible for his second year of salary arbitration, Shoppach forwent the potential for more money in exchange for security. For their part, the Rays lock Shoppach in at a set rate and hold a club option over Shoppach for the 2012 season, taking away Shoppach’s first year of free agency.

Shoppach, who turns 30 in late April, has received sparse playing time over the past three seasons, spending most of his time on the bench while observing Victor Martinez. When he did play, he hit well; .245/.336/.467 with 40 home runs in 907 plate appearances. The knack on Shoppach is a large amount of empty swings, as detailed by his career 64.6% contact rate. Pitchfx data reveals that Shoppach has issues with anything that bends or curves. Last season he whiffed on close to a quarter of the sliders he faced, almost a third of change-ups, and almost a-fifth of curveballs. Such issues help explain his 37.3% strikeout rate throughout his career.

A modest walk rate and the ability for bleacher treats* are Shoppach’s two best qualities, right alongside being able to catch at a Major League competency. There are questions about just how well he catches — which does affect his value beyond the WAR figure we produce – however he is a league average hitter from the catcher position which makes him valuable despite his flaws. Heading forward, he should be around a two-win player. Wins are going for about $3.5M this off-season, meaning if Shoppach does produce at that level he’ll be worth two years worth of salary in one season.

As for the option, its cost is a little over $4M, bringing the total to three-years and $9.5M. There’s not much downside here for either side.

*As the Rays press release was quick to point out, Shoppach has hit as many home runs as Joe Mauer over the past two seasons and only eight fewer than the A.L.’s leader in catcher homers, Mike Napoli.

Courtesy of baseballprojection.com and Sean Smith, we’ve got the CHONE projections available in all the player pages, the sortable leaderboards!

You’ll also note that there are WAR values generated off the CHONE projections for non-pitchers. Couple things to note about these. They use the CHONE defensive projections (which are based off Total Zone), but everything else is calculated in the same manner as the usual FanGraphs WAR. I am also not park adjusting the “Batting” component, which is the same deal as the “Fan” projections. I’ll probably do the WAR for pitchers sometime next week.

Randy Johnson announced his retirement today. There are thousands upon thousands of words that could, and should, be written about Randy Johnson. His career numbers are remarkable. The mark he left on the fan bases of Seattle and Arizona, huge. I don’t have the time or skill to do justice to either.

Instead, I just wanted to point that, personal reasons Randy might have aside, there’s little baseball reason for Johnson to be retiring at this point. The average Major League pitcher allows about 6% of his non-ground balls to go for a home run. Last season, Randy had twice that amount on his way to a 1.78 HR/9. That such an extraordinary rate was a completely new phenomenon for Johnson suggests that going forward, regression back toward league average would be reasonable to expect. Granted, it might have been the case of him simply not having Major League skill anymore, but given that none of Randy’s other stats struggled, I deem that unlikely.

The fastball velocity dipped a bit more, as to be expected as he ages, but his swinging strike rates didn’t dip and his batted ball rates actually improved a touch. Aside from the obvious health concerns impacting him in 2010, and they should not be trivialized, I am hard pressed to find a reason why he would not have continued to be useful as a starting pitcher.

Randy’s xFIP was 3.79 last season. His regressed tRA was above average. He was a four-win player as recently as 2008. If he was healthy, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to look forward to three wins or so. He’d also be 46 years old for most of the season. That he was as good of a pitcher as he was, and likely could be, at that age, is flabbergasting. It’s too bad that his health, or motivation, or whatever has pushed him to retirement, because, who knows, he might have held on into his 50s in a relief role should he have wanted one.

How things have changed in so short a period of time. The idea that the Mariners were this winter going to attempt to lock up Franklin Gutierrez to a contract buying out his arbitration years was known for months. However, how the news finally broke on the details of the contract speaks a lot to the information age in 2010. A Venezuelan reporter, Francisco Blavia, tweeted on the deal around noon Eastern Time. The news spread quickly, helped by the Mariners-focused presence on Twitter, and within just a couple hours we had confirmation from Ken Rosenthal. What advances await us this coming year in Twitter as a news broker?

Vague questions aside, lets look at this deal. Four years for $20.5 million, with a team option for a fifth year, is the word that came from Blavia and later confirmed.

Gutierrez obviously broke out with a 5.9 WAR season in 2009, powered by his super human exploits roving center field in Seattle. While that season was a new career mark for Franklin, Gutierrez was worth 1.8 wins over 301 PAs during 2007 and worth 2.3 wins in 440 PAs in 2008. On a per 600 PA basis, Gutierrez’s last three seasons, in order, then look like 3.6 WAR, 3.1 WAR and 5.6. Granted, just pro-rating the WARs out to full seasons isn’t exact, but just used as an example that Gutierrez’s 2009 season did not come completely out of nowhere statistically, even if PR-wise he was in Grady Sizemore’s shadow in Cleveland.

Even entering his prime years (Franklin turns 27 in February), expecting six wins going forward would be optimistic. Given his age, numbers and track record, though, I believe four to five wins per year is entirely reasonable. I am going to stick with four WAR to try to be conservative. Wins on the open market have been going at $4.25-$4.5 million per win for the last couple years up until this winter, but have been down to about $4 million now. So roughly $17 million per season is what Gutierrez would be worth on the open market.

Franklin was entering his first arbitration year, so this deal buys out all arbitration years plus a free agency year, and likely a second year as well with the option. Four years at the standard 40%/60%/80%/100% arbitration award weighting comes out to 2.8 free agent seasons. With a 10% discount for the security that the length of the deal gives the player, at a four-win projection, Franklin Gutierrez would be a touch over $40 million for this service time span.

Interestingly enough, Grady Sizemore received about the exact same amount of money ($20.7M) for the same four service seasons, but that was signed four years ago. Curtis Granderson signed a deal two years ago that pays him about $7 million more for these same years. Both of those are good contracts for their teams and this one should be no exception. Another fabulous move for Jack Zduriencik and Seattle.