The Pirates completed a trade on Wednesday that sent Joel Hanrahan and Brock Holt to the Red Sox for Mark Melancon, Jerry Sands, Stolmy Pimentel and Ivan De Jesus. The deal increases organizational depth for the Pirates and gives them a solid reliever in Melancon. The deal also effectively makes Jason Grilli the new Pirates closer. Grilli, who was recently re-signed to a very affordable two-year, $6.75 million contract was probably the better bet to close in Pittsburgh even with Hanrahan present.

The subsequent trade of Hanrahan only enhances the value of the contract he signed. Grilli certainly would have been paid more money had he entered free agency as a closer or a reliever seeking closing opportunities. Given his numbers over the last two seasons, it wouldn’t have been crazy to suggest him as a legitimate closer candidate somewhere. Instead, even with strong interest from about half of the league, Grilli stayed in Pittsburgh on a team-friendly contract fit for a 7th or 8th inning reliever.

While Holt, Sands, De Jesus and Pimentel all play a role in this deal, the trade really benefits the Pirates by increasing the cost-effectiveness of their bullpen and allowing them to reallocate their savings to other areas of need. The Pirates essentially replaced their closer with a better and cheaper alternative, brought back another cheap reliever whose peripherals closely match that traded closer and signed a starter with the savings.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are projections for the Texas Rangers. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Athletics / Giants / Nationals.

Batters
Despite various trials and assorted tribulations, Josh Hamilton still posted the second-best WAR (4.4) among Rangers batters in 2012 — and averaged about 4.5 wins per season during his five years in Texas. Replacing Hamilton in 2013, barring any substantial acquisitions, will be a combination of David Murphy (in left field) and a platoon of Leonys Martin and Craig Gentry (in center) — although, because Murphy and Gentry received considerable playing time in 2012 (521 and 269 plate appearances, respectively), Martin is the only real new variable in the Rangers outfield equation.

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This afternoon we rolled out a new homepage.

The idea of the homepage changes was to better organize and highlight content.

The larger two stories at the top and then the four others further down the page are articles that we’re featuring. They may be brand new articles or articles that we don’t want to get lost in the shuffle when we’ve had a busy day.

Other than that, everything that was in the old layout is available in the new layout, except in a more condensed three columns instead of two.

The other main change is the site is now centered and a little bit wider than before.

With the changes, we’ve also implemented a new article search feature that lets you use the player search box to search for any article on the site across all our blogs.

If you’re wondering if there are more layout changes on the way, there will be a minor update to the article pages to center them and change the font size over the weekend.

I’ve seen that generally the reaction to the changes have not been positive. We’re always open to suggestions and if there are things you like or don’t like about the new layout, please use this thread as an opportunity to weigh in.

Update: For those of you experiencing the boxes around the comment icons and headers, those should be gone now. There was a formatting issue with IE browsers only.

Jason Grilli was just a guy Neal Huntington plucked out of the Phillies’ minor league system back in 2011, yet another nebulous asset added in the Pirates’ attempts to rebuild on the cheap. Two years later, a 34-year-old once with little but gas and a prayer could be Pittsburgh’s opening day closer. He turned 2011’s resurgence into a full breakout relief season in 2012 — although his ERA fell from 2.48 to a still sharp 2.91, Grilli’s strikeout and walk rates improved greatly; his FIP fell from 3.30 to 2.80 bolstered by an incredible 13.8 strikeouts per nine innings.

Joel Hanrahan has been shipped out to Boston. Grilli, rewarded with a two year, $6.75 million contract, is the heir to Pirates’ closer position. Can the new Jason Grilli hold up in the ninth inning?

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The Boston Red Sox are seeking a full-time Baseball Operations intern with a focus on analytics for the 2013 calendar year.

The internship will provide exposure to all departments within baseball operations. Responsibilities include overseeing daily updates to our baseball information system, monitoring the quality of external data feeds, maintaining databases and spreadsheets, providing technical support for info system users, maintaining our simulation database, operating ball tracking system(s), carrying out ad hoc data analysis projects for various baseball operations staff members, designing and conducting advanced analytical projects, reviewing new research from various external analytical sources, and supporting the department in other ways as needed.

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Episode 290
Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski on Twitter) is the progenitor of the ZiPS projection system, currently being released team by team in the electronic pages of FanGraphs. He’s also 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 55 min play time.)

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

1. Status Update: Javier Vazquez’s Status, Updated
2. Video: Javier Vazquez’s Most Recent Major League Start
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Puerto Rican League

Status Update: Javier Vazquez’s Status, Updated
Right-hander Javier Vazquez, 36, has made four starts since joining Ponce of the Puerto Rican League at the beginning of the month — most recently on Dec. 19 at Mayaguez, when he posted this impressive line (box): 6.0 IP, 27 TBF, 11 K, 2 BB, 6:2 GO:AO.

Vazquez has now posted this other, more different line during those same four starts: 17.0 IP, 23 K, 3 BB, 1 HR. His performance has given him the league’s best regressed kwERA despite a relatively small sample — which, because of the way SCOUT- (discussed below) is calculated, it’s actually more difficult to produce excellent numbers in a small sample like that.

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Ben and Sam answer listener emails about Ian Kinsler, how to decide when it’s time to change GMs, R.A. Dickey and the dome, and more.

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One of the very most important principles in the field of baseball analysis is the concept of park factors — having an understanding that the game can play differently depending on the environment. I don’t think this is unique to baseball, but it’s most evident in baseball, where a game in old Coors Field would be very different from a game in recent Petco Park. All decent analysis has to take park factors into account. Otherwise, you’re just leaving way too much off the table.

But most people, when they think of park factors, consider what happens to the baseball once it’s put in play. This park increases doubles; this other park reduces home runs. These are the easiest park factors to understand, absolutely, and they’re generally the easiest to explain. Fenway Park has the Green Monster, which does things. Coors Field is at elevation, which does other things. I don’t need to explain this stuff to you.

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

1. Kal Daniels’ Hastily Calculated and Alternate Career Path
2. Unnecessary Video: Kal Daniels Making a Catch Once
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Dominican Winter League

Kal Daniels’ Hastily Calculated and Alternate Career Path
As noted in today’s release of the ZiPS projections for the Washington Nationals, Bryce Harper’s closest comparable at the moment, according to ZiPS, is former Reds outfielder Kal Daniels. As also noted in that post, Kal Daniels was a pretty excellent ballplayer between his age-22 and -26 seasons, during which span he posted a 16.9 WAR over 1,970 plate appearances — i.e. over five wins for every 600 plate appearances.

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