Archive for December, 2011
Top 15 Prospects: Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox top prospects list has undergone an upheaval over last season’s like no other. Only one player in the Top 10 (Ryan Lavarnway) appeared on the list a year ago, which accounts for an unprecedented amount of movement. The list lost just one prospect to graduation (Josh Reddick) while the other eight players either lost value or were surpassed by more promising talent. The good news for the system is that it still has a fair bit of depth and some of the players who stumbled in 2011 could rebuild their prospect value in ’12.
1. Xander Bogaerts, 3B/SS
BORN: Dec. 1, 1992
EXPERIENCE: 2 seasons
ACQUIRED: 2009 international free agent
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: Off
SCOUTING REPORT: Given his young age, Bogaerts’ season was a massive success. He displayed an advanced approach that should lead to him hitting for average down the line and he has good bat speed, which generates above-average power. Defensively he plays a solid shortstop but he’s expected to slow down and shift over to third base before he reaches the Majors. An interesting side note: Bogaerts’ twin Jair Bogaert spent 2011 playing for Boston Dominican Summer League team (He hit .288 in 47 games).
YEAR IN REVIEW: Bogaerts played the 2011 season in low-A ball at the age of 18 – although he spent the first half of the year in extended spring training. He showed uncanny power for his age with an ISO rate of .249, as well as impressive patience (8.4 BB%). He still has rough edges in his game and struggles with breaking balls, which helped lead to a strikeout rate of 24%.
YEAR AHEAD: The infielder could spend 2012 in high-A ball as a teenager, if Boston wants to continue to be aggressive with him. He’ll look to curb his strikeouts while ironing out the rough edges in his game. If he keeps up this pace Bogaerts could be playing in the Majors by the time he’s 21 years old.
CAREER OUTLOOK: Bogaerts has the potential to develop into a middle-of-the-order threat with 30+ home runs a possibility. He should remain on the left side of the infield but it probably won’t be at shortstop. The Aruba native will be a fun prospect to watch in 2012 and I imagine Boston considers him virtually untouchable.
How Good Is Gio Gonzalez?
Yesterday, the Nationals gave up four prospects, including three of their top 10 guys, for the right to acquire Gio Gonzalez from the Oakland A’s. This follows on the heels of the Mat Latos trade, essentially establishing current market value for a young starting pitcher with four year of team control. However, with Latos, the only nitpicking you can do about his performance to date is that he’s pitched in Petco, because other than that, he’s been pretty fantastic. Gonzalez’s track record is a little more spotty, starting out poorly before turning in two good seasons the last couple of years, but maintaining a walk rate that’s among the very worst in baseball.
Even while succeeding, Gonzalez simply hasn’t shown much of an ability to throw strikes on a regular basis, and those command problems have drawn unfavorable comparisons to the likes of Oliver Perez and even my own analogy to Edinson Volquez. However, rather than just continuing to point out the flaw in Gonzalez’s skillset, I thought it’d be useful to look at this pitcher type in general.
So, using the sweet, sweet custom leaderboards here on FanGraphs, I compiled a list of all starting pitcher seasons over the last 10 years with a minimum of 100 innings pitched and then filtered by walk rate (>=10%), strikeout rate (>=20%), and ground ball rate (>=40%). The resulting list gave me 38 pitcher seasons from 25 different pitchers. We can safely say that these guys have produced results at one time or another in a pretty similar fashion to how Gonzalez has pitched over the last couple of years. Here’s the list of those pitcher seasons, sorted in alphabetic order. Read the rest of this entry »
Joe Saunders: A Fit for the New-Look Marlins?
So far this season, the Miami Marlins nabbed a trio of marquee free agents while also being heavily connected with eventual Angels’ signees Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson. After a quiet couple of weeks, the team might be in on another deal, albeit this time with a less sexy name: Joe Saunders.
Saunders makes some folks cringe because he was the big-league player the Diamondbacks got in the Dan Haren trade. Baseball fanatics know that Tyler Skaggs — who also was acquired in the deal — is a very well-regarded prospect; but to the casual fan, the trade looked like a Haren-for-Saunders salary dump. Saunders’ performance did little to quell that sentiment: He posted only 1.9 WAR in almost a season-and-a-half before Arizona non-tendered him this fall. Read the rest of this entry »
Oakland’s Gio Haul: A Cynic’s View
What a difference two weeks can make.
I posted Oakland’s 2011-12 Top 15 prospects list on Dec. 6 and have been forced to revise the ranking twice in the last 16 days. The first move sent young starter Trevor Cahill to the Arizona Diamondbacks, while the second – and most recent – deal flipped Gio Gonzalez (and an inconsequential minor league arm) to the Washington Nationals for four prospects.
There have been a lot of kudos over social media outlets for Oakland General Manager Billy Beane but, honestly, I don’t get the love. My personal reaction upon reading the news was: “Really, that’s it?”
I know Gonzalez is not the end-all-and-be-all of starting pitchers but I can see him becoming a reliable No. 2 starter in the Washington Nationals starting rotation for quite a few seasons. There has been a lot made about the positive impact of his home park, as well as Oakland’s defense behind him, but let’s consider his road FIP (4.40) is not terrible by any means and he’ll be facing weaker lineups in the National League.
Cards Spend Some Pujols Money on Carlos Beltran
by Eno Sarris
December 22, 2011
How do you replace a superstar like Albert Pujols? You spread the money around.
The Cardinals signed their second post-Pujols contract by hiring Carlos Beltran to patrol right field for two years and $26 million. The iffy-kneed Beltran enjoyed a renaissance last year — should his good health continue, the contract will prove to be a good value. And as part of a spread the wealth program, the World Champs have a chance to tread water despite losing their best player.
The Civil War Christmas Game, Hilton Head, 1862
One hundred forty-nine years ago, two teams made up of members of the Union Army faced off against each other in a Christmas Day baseball game in Hilton Head, South Carolina. The Civil War is widely credited as having been a factor in spreading baseball across the country, and historical records exist for a number of the games played during the war — Baseball Almanac notes at least five in 1862 alone. The Christmas Day game was probably the best-attended game of the war, perhaps one of the best-attended games of the 19th century. But we don’t know that for certain, or indeed much of anything about the game, not even its final score.
One reason for the confusion is the unreliable source at the heart of the story. The game’s most famous player was A.G. Mills, the namesake of the Mills Commission, which established Abner Doubleday as the “founder” of baseball and Cooperstown as its birthplace on the basis of virtually no evidence. Mills played in the game when he was an 18-year old private with the New York Volunteers, as James Mallinson of SABR writes. Mills later became a lawyer who helped established many of the league rules that banned teams from raiding each other’s players and strengthened player contracts. The Mills Commission itself was created as a force for patriotic propaganda, to establish as fact that baseball was invented in America, not in England, and Mills freely admitted he had no factual basis for Cooperstown as baseball’s birthplace: “None at all, as far as the actual origin of baseball is concerned.”
What Determines Reliever Leverage?
Tuesday, I began looking into how the differences between WPA and WAR may influence the seemingly odd (at least through the lens of fWAR) pattern of free agent spending on relief pitching. The discovery that one marginal WAR means nearly one marginal WPA for relievers as opposed to just half of one marginal WPA for hitters and starters partially explains why teams pay roughly three-to-four times more per marginal WAR for relievers. However, in order to accept this as a legitimate reason for MLB teams to do so, one has to give full (or nearly full) credit to relievers for the leverage of the situations they pitch in — this is how pitchers like Tyler Clippard (+5.01 WPA) can finish second in the entire league behind just Justin Verlander despite pitching a fraction of the innings.
Relievers cannot directly decide the situations they pitch in — that is up to management — but is there some sort of innate characteristic of relievers which tends to decide when they enter games?
Offseason Notes for December 22nd
December 22, 2011
That’s just how Ricardo Nanita rolls.
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Offseason Notes.
1. Assorted Headlines
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: Dominican Winter League
3. Prospecting: John Sickels on Miami
Assorted Headlines
Cubs, Reds Trade Pending Physicals, Includes Minor Leaguers
Yesterday, Jim Breen provided crack analysis yesterday on developing trade talks between the Cubs and Reds that would see left-hander Sean Marshall go to Cincinnati in return for Travis Wood. Per Bruce Levine of ESPN Chicago, that deal is done now, pending physicals — and includes two minor leaguers moving with Wood.