The Diamondbacks had two of the first seven picks in last June’s amateur draft, and to say that scouting director Ray Montgomery is excited about those players is an understatement. You can’t blame him. Right-hander Trevor Bauer, who was taken third overall out of UCLA, is already close to big-league ready with the potential to become a perennial all-star. Archie Bradley, a 19-year-old right-hander, came out of Broken Arrow, Okla., with a high-90s fastball and an equally good chance to become a dominant front-line starter.

Montgomery gave scouting reports on both pitchers. He broke down their deliveries, their repertoires and their mindsets.

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Montgomery on Trevor Bauer: “I think you can start with the fact that prior to us re-signing Joe Saunders, Trevor was going into major-league camp with designs on that fifth-starter spot. That says a lot about his talent.

“He’s a four-pitch guy. He’ll tell you that it’s six pitches, but I think that four is what he’ll end up throwing once he moves into the upper echelon. They’re all average to above. He works off his fastball, which is plus-plus at times.

“He throws a plus fastball, a plus-plus curveball, a tick-above-average slider — which is almost a cutter — and a split-changeup. The fifth is kind of a screwball, which he calls a ‘reverse.’ Basically, it’s a changeup with screwball action and he’ll throw it to both right- and left-handed hitters. He throws variations of his pitches, which sort of accounts for what he means when he tells you it’s six. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 138
Chris Harris and Chris Thomas are the editors of the internet site BaseballCardPedia, the only free and editable encyclopedia dedicated to baseball cards. In this episode, Chrises Harris and Thomas discuss the BaseballCardPedia project and provide a primer of sort for anyone interested in becoming part of The Hobby.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min. play time.)

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As pointed out by MLB Trade Rumors, Joel Sherman mentioned in an article this morning that the Yankees are attempting to trade A.J. Burnett in order to free up some roster flexibility. As he spells out:

They know no team will take all of Burnett’s remaining two years at $33 million. But if they could save, say, $4 million this year and next year, it would provide some wiggle room to finish off their roster heading into spring training. (Sherman, NY Post)

The Yankees would like to sign two more players in order to round out their bench, but according to Sherman, only have about $2 million in wiggle room at the moment. Ignoring the whole “The Yankees actually have a budget?” thing, what are the odds the Yankees actually manage to deal Burnett? And should teams actually want him, even if it’s at a discount?

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As many of you know, last July I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. I spent a good chunk of the summer in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy, and most of the end of 2011 was spent either getting treatment or recovering from said treatment. It wasn’t much fun — but after four rounds of chemo and an overwhelming amount of support from friends and the amazing online baseball community — I was given a clean bill of health in January and am now happily living in remission. We’re only a month out from my last biopsy, but the leukemia has yet to return, and my odds of beating this thing get better every day.

So, now that I’m back to living something that resembles a normal life, my wife and I have decided to fight back against the scourge of blood cancers. She’s a physician assistant in oncology and sees the effects of these diseases are on a daily basis, and so we’ve teamed up with four of her co-workers (and one husband of a co-worker) and are running in The Flying Pig half-marathon in Cincinnati on May 6th.

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Major League teams are getting smarter. In prior years, we would have had easy pickings like the Barry Zito contract, the Carlos Lee signing, and even last year’s Vernon Wells acquisition. This year, there were some guys who got too much money, but there weren’t many instances of teams just paying through the nose for guys who just aren’t very good. I considered cutting this list down to just five transactions, honestly, as a few of the back-end ones have a decent chance of turning out okay for their respective teams, or the costs just are small enough that they aren’t really going to negatively effect the franchises in a big way. There were only a few deals this winter that I’d say teams are really going to regret long term. But, I said we’d do 10 of each, so here we go.

Like yesterday, the criteria is expected on field production, cost to acquire, and the impact the move will make in both the short run and long run for the franchise. These moves represent transactions where the team gave up something of legitimate value and, in my estimation, aren’t likely to get enough back in return to justify their investment.

#10 – Twins Sign Matt Capps for 1/4.75M

It’s a one year deal, so there’s no long term cost to the franchise. $5 million spent on another player wouldn’t have changed the Twins fortunes one way or another. But, still, it’s hard to understand why the Twins thought they needed to give Capps this kind of contract. He was a below replacement level reliever last year, watched his strikeout rate drop from 19.3% to 12.4%, and gave up home runs in a park where no one gives up home runs. And yet, only six relievers got larger contracts than Capps this winter. Darren Oliver got less. Francisco Cordero got less. LaTroy Hawkins got less. If the Twins wanted to spend $5 million on their bullpen, they could have gotten two or three decent arms for that. Instead, they got one mediocre arm who will continue to remind them that they could have still had Wilson Ramos instead.

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The Rangers have reportedly been discussing multi-year contract extensions with their many arbitration-eligible players this offseason, and yesterday they got one of those guys to agree to a deal. Ken Rosenthal and Jon Paul Morosi reported that Elvis Andrus has accepted a three-year contract worth somewhere in the $14-15 million range. The deal doesn’t include any option years.

Andrus was up for salary arbitration for the first time this offseason, so the new contract buys out all three of his arbitration years but no free agent years. The Rangers get some financial certainty through 2014 while Scott Boras still gets to take his young shortstop client out onto the open market at age 26, which could turn into a monster payday given his position.

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Even without his excellent secondary pitchers, Stephen Strasburg would probably be decent.

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Offseason Notes.

1. Table: Starting Pitcher xFIP by Fastball Velocity, 2002-11
2. Projecting: ZiPS for Miami
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Seattle Television

Table: Starting Pitcher xFIP by Fastball Velocity, 2002-11
Over the last couple days, I published a two–part piece looking both at (a) the accomplishment that is Michael Pineda’s combination of fastball velocity and control and (b) which pitchers from the high minors last season were capable of at least approximating Pineda’s 2010 in Double- and Triple-A.

As part of the second piece, I included a table that looked at xFIP by different “buckets” of velocity — from less-than 85 mph, increasing incrementally by 1 mph all the way to greater-than 95 mph. What might not have been entirely obvious is that the data sample included only the 612 starting pitchers from 2002 to ’11 who walked 7% or fewer batters.

So, below, I’m publishing another version of that table with the full sample of 1708 player seasons. This is xFIP by velocity for every pitcher, 2002-11, who threw 50 or more innings and made at least half of his appearances as a starter. The # sign is the number of player seasons, 2002-11, in that particular bucket; the xFIP is the average xFIP of all the player seasons in that bucket; and STD is the standard deviation of xFIP for the player seasons in that bucket.

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The Seattle Mariners organization is loaded with high-ceiling pitching arms and could field one of the most potent pitching staffs in the game within the next two to three years. The club has done a great job of building an organizational strength that will thrive in its home environment. The front office spent time this past off-season answering questions about its future offense with the addition of Jesus Montero, one of the most potent bats in the minor leagues. The organization has some other interesting position players but a lot of them are raw and years away from helping out at the big league level.

1. Jesus Montero, C/DH
BORN: Nov. 28, 1989
EXPERIENCE: 5 seasons
ACQUIRED: 2006 international free agent
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 1st (Yankees)

The Mariners organization acquired one of the top offensive prospects in baseball but it cost the organization dearly with pitchers Michael Pineda and Jose Campos heading to the New York Yankees. The Mariners front office suggests that Montero will continue to catch, although the general consensus remains that he’ll move to first base or designated hitter sooner rather than later. The right-handed hitter made his MLB debut in 2011 and showed the ability to hit for both power and average despite the fact he didn’t turn 22 until this past November. Despite his youth, Montero already has five years of pro experience, as well as two full seasons in triple-A. He’s ready for prime time and could be the Mariners best hitter in 2012 – as a rookie. The home ball park could hamper his numbers a bit but the all-star potential could be there for years to come.

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Over the weekend, I stumbled upon this article that quoted some thought-provoking numbers from agent Scott Boras. In the article, he voices his support for increased collegiate baseball scholarships and lays out a few statistics that his agency has unearthed:

• >>  79% of collegiate first-round draft picks reach the major leagues for at least one day.
• >>  62% of high school first-round draft picks reach the major leagues for at least one day.

That is a significant 17% difference, though not necessarily surprising. High school draftees come with increased risk. Generally, their skill sets remain more unrefined than their collegiate counterparts. Thus, predicting the future talent for those players becomes much more difficult. This uncertainty causes teams to miss on a greater portion of high school players.

So, what continues to draw teams into drafting a high school player over a collegiate player every year?

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