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

1. Contract Crowdsourcing: Corner Outfielders
2. An Observation Regarding Ichiro!
3. Elimination Playoff Game Event

Contract Crowdsourcing: Corner Outfielders
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. FanGraphs is asking readers to estimate the years and average annual dollar values likely to be received by certain notable free agents. We continue today with corner outfielders. (Click here for more on the contract crowdsourcing project.)

Other positions: Catchers / First Basemen / Second Basemen / Third Basemen / Shortstops.

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Billy Beane cares not for outfield log jams. Last season, Beane’s Athletics acquired Seth Smith for Guillermo Moscoso and Josh Outman despite already having Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick and Coco Crisp on hand. Saturday, Beane added another outfielder to the mix, acquiring Chris Young from Arizona in exchange for Cliff Pennington and infield prospect Yordy Cabrera.

The situations aren’t entirely analogous — the Athletics had DH at-bats to hand Smith but may not have those for Young (or another member of the Oakland outfield), but the general idea remains: when an asset can be acquired on the cheap, the Athletics will make it happen.

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The Toronto Blue Jays got a good defensive shortstop when they acquired Mike Aviles from the Red Sox as compensation for John Farrell. The 31-year-old came into the 2012 season with a utility-man reputation, having played nearly as many games at second base and more than a handful at the hot corner. Thanks to regular playing time at his best position, that has changed. To the surprise of many, hr was one of the best defensive shortstops in the American League this season.

Aviles talked about his defensive game in the final week of the Red Sox season.

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Aviles on playing shortstop: “Starting from high school on, I’ve played short. It’s been a position that’s come rather naturally for me, compared to the other positions I’ve played.

“Everybody has their own opinions, but I feel that I’m a pretty solid shortstop. I may not win any Gold Gloves, and you may not hear about me on ESPN, or see me do all kinds of crazy plays, but I can do the job. My main focus is to just get the out. I want to make the plays and have the respect of my teammates and coaches. That’s all I’m really concerned about. I don’t need a lot of attention.”

On metrics showing that he‘s a good defensive shortstops: “I do like hearing that. It makes me feel proud of all the work I’ve done, because I know I’ve had a rep of not being the best defensively. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 262
Advanced NFL Stats is more or less to gridiron football what FanGraphs is to baseball — with the caveat, perhaps, that football is fluid (as opposed to baseball, which is turn-based) and presents certain challenges for that reason. Brian Burke, the proprietor of said nerdly internet website, is the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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 52 min. play time.)

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Not very long ago, I published a post titled Getting and Not Getting the Calls: Final 2012 Results. The post examined the differences between actual strikes and expected strikes for individual pitchers and teams, based on the PITCHf/x plate-discipline data available right here. The results were interesting, to me, and hopefully some of you. It makes sense that some pitchers might be more able to get bigger strike zones. It also makes sense that some catchers might be more and less able to get bigger strike zones. It wasn’t a huge surprise that the Brewers came out looking good, and that the Pirates and Mariners came out looking bad.

Well, as it happens, that same methodology can be applied to both pitchers and hitters, so we might as well check to see how the data looks for individual batsmen and groups of batsmen. It’s less obvious how a batter might end up with a bigger or smaller strike zone, relative to the expected strike zone, but that doesn’t mean there might not be anything there, and it only takes a few minutes to make all the calculations so why not just proceed, that’s what I say. Below there are tables of names and numbers.

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Even as we prepare, via our contract-crowdsourcing project, for the commencement of free agency at the major-league level, a growing number of minor-league players have already — William Wallace-like, one imagines, while leading painted Scotsmen into battle — declared their freedom.

What sort of impact might this year’s class of minor-league free agents have? One never knows, of course. However, as Baseball America’s Matt Eddy noted earlier this week at that same site, a number of last season’s minor-league free agents turned out to be actually productive pieces on actual major-league teams.

Eddy identified 13 players who were signed as minor-league free agents last offseason and proceeded to provide some sort of value in 2012. Below are those same players, rendered into table form and sorted by WAR.

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Readers who have followed me to FanGraphs from my previous site would be aware of my affinity for Colorado Rockies third base prospect Nolan Arenado. In four-plus years, he may be the best corner infield prospect I’ve seen in person. Cue Twins Travis Harrison and his uncanny resemblance to Arenado in a number of areas. To be clear, Travis Harrison is more a mini-version instead of equivalent talent. However, this is certainly not a slight as it firmly establishes the Twins prospect as at least a future regular at the big league level. And while Miguel Sano is considered by many prospect followers as the third baseman of the future in Minnesota, contacts tell me a move to right field is in the cards for the young Dominican leaving Harrison an intriguing option.

Video after the jump

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Recently, in the American League Championship Series, the Detroit Tigers played against the New York Yankees. The Tigers played the Yankees four times, and now, the Tigers will play the Yankees no more times, having achieved the necessary four conquests. The Tigers now are just four more victories away from winning everything and nothing, while the Yankees are faced with a bleak winter existence of being privileged millionaires. These are important times in sports.

Prior to the beginning of the ALCS, many people examined the matchup between the Tigers and the Yankees and attempted to identify potential keys that might lead one team to triumph. Given that this was a playoff series, many of those keys were unoriginal, having been applied to other playoff series before. People have ideas about the playoffs, see, ideas that the playoffs are meaningfully different from the regular season. Over the course of this series, some of those ideas were validated, and some of those ideas were contradicted. Let us take this opportunity to review, thoroughly yet incompletely.

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Dante Bichette stormed onto the scene last season after surprising many by going in the sandwich round and tearing the GCL apart. He struggled to make as much contact this year in Low-A and his power evaporated. What I saw in a short look in the regular season is still what’s causing problems for Bichette currently.

Bichette has an active swing with a lot of early hand movement; his hands end up in a good position but all that activity makes it much easier for him to drift forward, fly open and generally be off-balance. This only needs to happen occasionally to get in a player’s head and cause him to overcompensate. I’ve seen Bichette locked in and while his swing is higher maintenance than many and his tools aren’t overwhelming, his pure hitting ability lets it all work. When he starts pressing, expanding his zone and getting pull-conscious, his swing breaks down and that’s what I saw too much of in instructs.

Bichette is a below-average runner that works hard on his defense at third base but he still looks a little too stiff to stick long-term. His instincts are fine, his footwork is improving and his arm is solid-average but his defensive ceiling is below-average. Bichette will likely move to right field and he has above-average raw power that will profile in right, giving him solid regular upside if he can get back to what works for him at the plate.

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The Cardinals have a pretty commanding 3-1 series lead on the Cardinals, but it is far from a done deal yet. Even if they do win the series in the next three games, the Tigers and their pitching staff, which just dominated the Yankees, are waiting. St. Louis potentially have 10 games left this season. While even over 10 games, one starting position player being out does not usually make much of a difference, it does make a difference. Given the stakes, teams obviously need to have all hands on deck. Matt Carpenter has done a nice job filling in for Carlos Beltran since the latter tweaked his knee earlier in the series. Beltran is hoping to start, but if he can’t tonight or in the near future, how much is it likely to hurt their offense?

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