Episode 296
Prospect analyst Mike Newman considers, among other matters, the candidates for entering the season as 2013’s “top prospect” — and what significance that designation has, if any. Also: Mike Zunino‘s status in the wake of catcher John Jaso’s departure from Seattle. Also-also: teams with and without the requisite prospect packages for acquiring Justin Upton from Arizona.

impact a deep minor-league system can have on an organization’s ability to acquire major-league talent — not unlike what happened in the recent trade that saw Toronto acquire Mark Buehrle, John Johnson, and Jose Reyes from Miami.

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

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 45 min play time.)

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Brewers first baseman Corey Hart will miss the next three to four months — or about six weeks of the regular season — as the former outfielder requires surgery to repair a meniscal tear on his right knee. Hart thrived through a transition from right field to first base after Mat Gamel suffered a torn ACL attempting to run down a foul ball last year. Now, presumably, Gamel will get to take a turn as the injury replacement at first base in Milwaukee.

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There are a bunch of things we know to be true about Aaron Cook, or at least things we have no reason to question. Aaron Cook played for the Rockies, and he recently played for the Red Sox. More recently he was signed by the Phillies. He is a man, and he is a man of more than 30 years, and he is a man who grows reddish facial hair when he wants to, and even when he doesn’t. Aaron Cook knows many things about the game of baseball. Last season, Cook posted one of the lowest strikeout rates ever.

Strikeouts, of course, have never been a big part of Aaron Cook’s game — when he’s right, he gets a bunch of grounders. When he’s wrong, he also gets a bunch of grounders, but the overall results of everything are worse. Cook, in 2012, didn’t post the lowest strikeout rate in baseball history. He did post the lowest strikeout rate since the strike, at 4.9% of all batters. There were 411 batters, and 20 of those batters struck out. When Cook was in triple-A in 2012, there were 153 batters, and 16 of those batters struck out, so this was predictable to some extent.

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The World Baseball Classic is a cool idea. It is a bit hypocritical for me to write that, as I have not been terribly engaged by the WBC in the past, but I’m jumping on the bandwagon, such as it is. I am not here to convince you that you should love it, and I understand why many MLB fans would be almost impossible to win over. The WBC has its issues, one of which is the perceived lack of star power on the U.S. team. I do not want to enter that debate here. Writers like Craig Calcaterra and Drew Fairservice have done a good job of responding to that sort of hand-wringing. Fairservice makes another excellent point: it is up to the fans to turn the WBC into a thing that stars won’t miss.

I want to take a different tack on this by trying to look at things from the players’ perspective. In particular, I want to think about a certain subset of players — younger players still in their initial years of team control and without guaranteed contracts beyond this season — for whom the stakes are a bit higher.

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The Seattle Mariners offense has been awful the last few years. Historically awful, in fact. Over the last decade, the two lowest scoring teams have been the 2010 Mariners (513 runs) and the 2011 Mariners (556 runs). At 619 runs, the 2012 Mariners moved all the way up to just 17th worst in the last 10 years. After three seasons of offensive ineptitude, it’s not a big surprise that the organization has dramatically shifted their focus, and has spent the winter collecting defensively challenged hitters with power, including Michael Morse, Kendrys Morales, Raul Ibanez, and taking a flier on the remains of Jason Bay.

None of these guys are great players, but they provide the team with something they haven’t had much of lately, and combined with adjusting the dimensions of Safeco Field, it’s a pretty good bet that the 2013 Mariners are going to score more runs than the line-ups that they’ve put on the field the last three seasons. But, the question remains, will those additional runs scored lead to more wins?

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

1. The Pitching Stats for the Pitching Coaches
2. Video: Dave Righetti’s No-Hitter, 1983

The Pitching Stats for the Pitching Coaches
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, for reasons that remain somewhat unclear, we considered how well the league’s hitting coaches performed as major leaguers themselves. In today’s edition, we turn our attention to the pitching coaches — and to their corresponding major-league pitching careers.

As noted yesterday, there’s nothing to suggest — or, at least, not so far as the author is aware — that a player’s own personal pitching ability is a determinative factor in his ability to coach others well in that same art. Stated differently: this is a mostly trivial exercise the author is conducting.

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The Braves system is not as deep as it once was and the majority of the talent is found in the lower levels of the system. With that said, there are some intriguing pitching and up-the-middle infield prospects. The outfield depth is very thin.

#1 Julio Teheran (P)

It was an off year for Teheran but it’s important to remember that the Colombia native was just 21 years old and pitching in both triple-A and the majors. He posted a 5.08 ERA with 146 hits allowed in 131 innings for Gwinnet. His strikeout rate of 6.66 K/9 was a career low, and the result of poor fastball command. Teheran fell behind in counts too often and wasn’t able to set up his curveball.

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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 the projections for the New York Mets. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cubs / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Rockies / Royals / White Sox.

Batters
Because the author is consumed with sloth, he will not look at the 14 clubs previously considered in this series to verify it, but will instead state the following — namely, that there is a very good chance that Lucas Duda‘s projected defensive rating (-11 runs in left field) is the worst we’ve seen so far. It is also possible, if not likely, that Dan Murphy’s own defensive projection (-7 runs at second base) is the second worst so far by that measure.

Are there bright spots among the Mets’ starting field players? Okay. David Wright remains an All Star candidate, certainly. Ruben Tejada’s performance as a 22-year-old last season has bred encouragement for his future, as well. Furthermore, giving at-bats to players like Andrew Brown, Collin Cowgill, and Anthony Recker — that is, young-ish sorts who’ve demonstrated promise, but have little major-league experience — could produce gains. Otherwise, though, there is little cause for optimism from this squad in its present incarnation.

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Mike LaValliere was never the sexiest catcher in baseball. He didn’t make any All-Star teams and in parts of 12 big-league seasons [1984-1995] hit just 18 home runs. Nicknamed “Spanky” he ran like he was carrying a piano on his back.

But he was a damn fine backstop. The Pirates went to the playoffs in 1990, 1991 and 1992, and LaValliere was their primary catcher all three years. In 1987, his first year in Pittsburgh, he won a Gold Glove.

Originally signed as a non-drafted free agent, he broke in with the Phillies and also played for the White Sox and Cardinals. He caught a lot of good pitchers, and in this interview he talks about which of them had the best stuff, and which — much like himself — did the most with the least.

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David Laurila: How good of a hitter were you?

Mike Lavalliere: Put it this way, with my speed they were all legit. I didn’t have many infield hits, so the ones I got were earned. I was a guy without much power, although I did have a little gap power. I like to think my hits helped the team.

DL: You hit .300 [twice] and had a pretty good OBP [.351 lifetime].

ML: I had a pretty good eye and didn’t strike out much. Again, if I could have run a little better, I probably could have flirted with .300 a few more seasons. But without running well, you’re kind of limited offensively.

DL: How much would you be valued in today‘s game?

ML: Catchers nowadays have maybe a little more bang, without quite as much emphasis on their defense. If I were joining a team that had a bunch of boppers and didn’t have to rely on my offense, I think I could be a real good fit.

DL: Did being a catcher help your plate discipline?

ML: They’re two different animals. Read the rest of this entry »