The Athletics held a starting pitching surplus early in the offseason. The Vin Mazzaro trade and failed acquisition of Hisashi Iwakuma led to the need for another starter, and that starter seems to be Brandon McCarthy, who agreed to a one-year deal worth a little over $1 million. The length of the deal is a bit misleading, as McCarthy will not be eligible for free agency until after the 2011 season.
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After a six week dance with New York and Texas, Cliff Lee has apparently decided to spurn them both and sign with the Mystery Team Philadelphia Phillies. If the Jayson Werth deal was a shocker, this one breaks the Richter Scale. It is perhaps the most surprising, and one of the most interesting, free agent signings in baseball history.
Once we get financial terms, we’ll be able to break down the costs and benefits of the signing. Until then, though, there’s one question staring us in the face – is the best rotation we’ve ever seen?
I’d like to solicit the help of our community in building a useful fantasy player valuations guide. When we have the parameters set, I’ll code it and put it up on FanGraphs.
There are a couple goals here:
1. Building a useful and easy to use fantasy player valuation guide.
2. Full transparency in how all the rankings work.
I’ve dabbled in this a bit, so I will first give a starting point:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That’s right, it is time for the hardcore fans who visit this site to show they can do better than some dumb computer program and project what players will do in 2011. The projection targets offered for your consideration this afternoon are three outfielders facing different sorts of questions going into the next season: the Tigers’ Austin Jackson, the Dodgers’ Matt Kemp, and the Orioles’ Nick Markakis.
This study is a start at looking at injury projections. It is far from perfect, but I hope to get the ball rolling to help to get some initial numbers for people to mull over. I am just looking at the chances of a starting pitcher going on the DL and will look at projected time lost later.
There’s been quite a lengthy discussion covering multiple angles at Dave’s post on the Carl Crawford signing with the Red Sox. From the unprecedented value of the contract for a player of that type to how the Boston lineup should look to what this means for the future of free agency, a variety of interesting debates stem from a transaction of this magnitude. The one thought that intrigued me most, however, was the argument that playing left field at Fenway Park could diminish the value of Crawford’s defensive range because of the Green Monster. The idea is that Crawford’s speed and range in the outfield may be better served at right field since the left field wall limits the ability for Crawford to chase down balls as many bounce off the wall that would be outs in other ballparks.
If you haven’t yet played around with the 2011 Fan Projections ballots, well, you’re missing out on some good fun. Well, as much fun as you can have while clicking drop-down boxes. I suggest putting on some music and clicking along with the beat. That should help you power through projections for the more known quantities. You might run into some trouble, though, when getting to a certain type of player.
This year, of the 45 players who produced 4 or more WAR, nine of them relied more on the fielding component than the batting. That makes them a bit tougher to project than your offense-heavy slugger. Player such as Albert Pujols and Joey Votto we can get a read on, because they’re probably going to produce gaudy offensive numbers. But the defense-heavy guys? It’s tough to imagine what we’ll see from them in 2011.
The selection of multiple seasons that was made available in the leaderboards section has now been rolled out to the team pages and My Team section sof the site.
Now it’s easy to find which Yankees player had the most WAR since 1996.
Or, which team had the worst offense since 2006.
After a couple of years of relatively cautious spending, Major League teams are opening their wallets again this winter. If you count the Troy Tulowitzki contract extension, we’ve seen three deals struck that guarantee over $100 million in future commitments, and Cliff Lee hasn’t even signed yet. The last time we saw this kind of aggressive spending in the market was 2006, when four teams spent in excess of $100 million to acquire new talent. Unfortunately for those with money this winter, that winter also serves as a reminder for why throwing your cash around can be a bad idea.
The four players who cost their teams $100+ million that winter? Alfonso Soriano (8 years, $136 million), Barry Zito (7 years, $126 million), Carlos Lee (6 years, $100 million), and Daisuke Matsuzaka (6 years, $52 million, plus a $51 million posting fee). None of those players have come close to providing a return on their investment, and are all essentially untradeable at this point.
The Seattle Mariners of 2010 are known for their offensive incompetence, and rightly so. The team managed a mere 3.2 runs per game and a paltry 80 wRC+, both league worst marks. Truly the lack of offense was the Mariners’ failure, but even the run prevention of the team – its supposed hallmark – was only average, with a 4.3 runs allowed per game ranking 14th in the majors and 6th in the AL. Their team defense ranked 5th in the majors in Defensive Efficiency Rating- good, but not the elite, potentially best-of-all-time defensive unit advertised beforethe season. On Sunday, the Mariners added Brendan Ryan, an elite defender at the shortstop position whose bat, although light, may be an improvement as well. In exchange, the Mariners sent right handed A-ball reliever Maikel Cleto to St. Louis.