The Yankees take care of their own. Or something. Former Yankees, Rangers, Yankees (again), and Dodgers outfielder and designated hitter Marcus Thames has apparently retired, as the High-A Tampa Yankees announced that he will be their hitting coach in 2013. Thames was never a superstar. He was not even everyday player over even one full season in the majors, as the most plate appearances he ever received in a single season was 390 in 2006. However, he was surprisingly productive despite his limited playing time. During 2006, he hit 26 home runs for the Tigers on their way to the World Series. Thames was a good example of how hitter with a limited skill set can carve out a surprisingly long career, which included his share of dramatic hits.

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

1. FAN Projection Targets: Basically Every Brewers Starter
2. Action GIF: Mark Rogers’ Slider
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Australian Baseball League

FAN Projection Targets: Basically Every Brewers Starter
As is made apparent by the very recently released 2013 ZiPS projections for the Milwaukee Brewers, the starting rotation for said team contains a considerable amount of uncertainty — due either to a change of roles in the not-very-distant past (Marco Estrada, Mike Fiers) or injury (Chris Narveson, Mark Rogers).

In situations like this, where information not included in the ZiPS algorithm might be of some import regarding a specific player, it’s possible that the Wisdom of the Crowds might have some advantage in producing an able projection for said player.

To that end, the author encourages the readership to complete FAN Projection ballots for the following five pitchers — all candidates for Milwaukee’s rotation in 2013.

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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 Milwaukee Brewers. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Cubs / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Rangers / Royals.

Batters
Milwaukee’s is not a stars-and-scrubs offense, per se. It is, however, a stars-and-something offense — owing largely to the presence, first, of left-fielder Ryan Braun and then, second, everyone else on the team, none of whom are as good as left-fielder Ryan Braun. A year after winning the NL MVP award (in 2011), Braun posted the second-highest WAR in the National League last season. Unsurprisingly, he’s projected to be quite good in 2013, as well.

Elsewhere, the team is almost uniformly average. ZiPS is skeptical about Aramis Ramirez‘s capacity to approximate what was actually a career year in 2012. On the other hand, young shortstop Jean Segura’s failure to play any better than replacement level after arriving in Milwaukee (by way of the Zack Greinke trade) doesn’t appear to entirely mar his projection for 2013.

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Jed Bradley isn’t making excuses. The Milwaukee Brewers pitching prospect knows he underperformed in his first professional season, and he’s spending the winter doing something about it. A 22-year-old lefthander, Bradley logged a 5.53 ERA for Brevard County, in the Florida State League, after being drafted 15th overall in 2011 out of Georgia Tech.

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David Laurila: Do your numbers accurately reflect how you pitched?

Jed Bradley: I think they’re pretty indicative. It was not a great year. I did start out strong. Coming out of spring training, I felt great. My velocity was down, but my pitches were working well and my command was on. I don’t think I gave up an earned run over my first 20 innings.

After that, the five-day rotation and the growing pains of my first year really set in. I didn’t know how to handle a lot of it. I did too much in between starts, whether it was throwing, running, or the weight room. I kind of stretched myself too thin, and it caught up to me.

A lot of times you have to learn the hard way. I would get on the mound multiple times between starts, and I played way too much catch — both long-toss and short stuff. I wasn’t very cognizant of the effect that would have over the course of a 142-game season. I guess my mindset was more about the number of reps, as opposed to a quality number of reps. When they say, “Save your bullets,” that saying is around for a reason.

DL: According to Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook, you were throwing 96 mph in instructs [in 2011]. Was that accurate?

JB: I don’t know how that could be true. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a little concerned about the overall depth of the Brewers system but the Top 15 list filled out a little bit better than I expected it to. There are a number of pitching prospects that appear capable of developing into solid big league starters, which should be welcomed news in Milwaukee considering how thin the big league staff is at this time.

#1 Tyler Thornburg (P)

Questions about Thornburg’s ability to remain a starter have been raised since he entered pro ball. He’s a shorter right-hander and has some effort to his delivery but, to this point, he’s been durable by providing more than 130 innings in each of the past two seasons. The Texas native is a hard thrower. As a starter, he works in the 89-94 mph range but has hit the upper-90s as a reliever. He flashes a good changeup and a solid curveball.

Thornburg, 24, has steadily moved through the system since being selected in the third round of the 2010 amateur draft out of Charleston Southern University. He made 13 starts in double-A and then another eight in triple-A in 2012. He also made his MLB debut with eight appearances (three starts) but an ideal situation would allow the right-hander to return to triple-A to open 2013. With the big league rotation as thin as it is, though, Thornburg has a decent shot at opening the year in the starting rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss the rejected trade that would have made Justin Upton a Mariner.

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Episode 292
Dayn Perry, contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and author of two books (one of them serviceable), finds that the New Year has improved his stupid life by zero percent.

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 41 min play time.)

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The Brewers signed Kelvim Escobar to a minor-league contract with a spring-training invite. You know the story with these no-risk pseudo-commitments. Teams sign interesting names to these contracts every year, and this offseason we’ve seen Jeremy Bonderman get a deal, and Scott Kazmir get a deal, and Dontrelle Willis get a deal. I’m probably forgetting others. These contracts frequently go to players who used to be something, on the off chance that they might be something again. Most often, the players don’t contribute much, and they’re forgotten about until the next round. Minor-league contracts are great for winter conversation, and by and large irrelevant come April and May.

Escobar, sure enough, used to be something, like the others. He’ll get a chance to make the Brewers’ bullpen out of camp, if he pitches well. With Escobar, whether he’ll pitch well is the second question. Whether he’ll pitch is the first question. Escobar has been through more injury problems than most, and it’s somewhat incredible that he’s racked up more than 1,500 big-league innings. Though he hasn’t added to that total in a while, there was a time that Escobar was able to throw on a regular or semi-regular basis.

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Major League Baseball announced expansion of its drug testing program Thursday, as the league and the players union have modified the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program to provide for unannounced, random blood testing for HGH (human growth hormone) during the regular season. From the league’s press release:

Today’s announcement marks another significant step in the progression of Baseball’s HGH testing policy, which continues to be the strongest in American professional sports. Since July 2010, Major League Baseball has conducted random blood testing for the detection of hGH among Minor League players. As a part of the 2012-2016 Basic Agreement, the parties agreed to blood testing for hGH during 2012 Spring Training, during the off-season, and for reasonable cause, making Baseball the first sport to deploy this kind of testing at its highest level. Under the new agreement, all of those aspects of the Program will continue, and there will be in-season, unannounced, random blood testing.

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