Ben and Sam discuss the Hall of Fame voting and what their own ballots would look like.
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Episode 291
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron continues, in 2013, to analyze as much baseball as he did in 2012 — which is to say, all of it. In what follows, specifically, he analyzes the part of baseball concerning the recent signing by Texas of Lance Berkman. Also: center field in Texas and who’s playing it. Also-also: how Mike Trout is projected to have an eight-win season.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 42 min play time.)
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Everybody loves a long home run, because they’re impressive, because they’re difficult. Last year, there were 96 particularly long home runs, if we somewhat arbitrarily set a minimum distance of 450 feet. That’s according to the ESPN Home Run Tracker. Giancarlo Stanton was responsible for seven of them. Miguel Cabrera was responsible for four of them, Yoenis Cespedes three of them. Phil Hughes, three of them, from the other end. Josh Hamilton hit one of them, and Curtis Granderson hit zero of them. Robinson Cano hit zero of them. Jay Bruce and Mike Trout each hit zero of them.
Michael Bourn, much like Kyle Lohse, is a fairly high-profile player who remains an available free agent as we start to think about the middle of January. Bourn, like Lohse, will end up signed to a significant contract, but Bourn, like Lohse, has seen his market fail to develop as expected. One issue might be that neither Bourn nor Lohse is a superstar. Bourn contributes an awful lot of value in the field and on the basepaths, but he strikes out fairly often, and he doesn’t hit for much power. His nine home runs last season were a career-high, by four. Bourn is 30 years old.
A thing that happens every offseason is that available players are valued. Front offices for teams decide how much a given player deserves. Fans of teams will do something similar, as well. Fans will evaluate players, but, often, they will tend more toward the extremes. They will identify players they badly want on their teams, and they will identify players they want no part of. These are usually exaggerated responses, as the desired players aren’t that great, and as the undesired players aren’t that lousy.
Based purely on my limited, anecdotal observations, it seems like a lot of baseball fans want no part of free-agent starter Kyle Lohse. Lohse is still out there, ready to be signed, but a market doesn’t seem to have developed, and no team seems to be the frontrunner. No fan that I’ve seen is too broken up about this. Based on contract crowdsourcing, Dave Cameron identified Lohse as a poor free-agent value. Many fans feel similarly, to the point at which they aren’t particularly interested in Lohse at all. The gut response to Kyle Lohse’s name is “ugh, stay away.” Thus, I have decided here to come to Kyle Lohse’s defense, with an issuance of pro-Lohse propaganda. This player you don’t desire — he’s capable of many things.
Stuff tends to fall by the wayside during the holidays, even for baseball blogs. Still, Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui’s retirement deserves a some attention. Even for Christmas Week, it seemed to pass quietly. So, about two weeks after the fact, here are some briefs thoughts on Matsui’s MLB career and some of his biggest moments at the plate.
No bullpen took more losses (33) or blew more saves (29) than the Brewers’ relief unit last season. A total of 18 different relievers pitched to a combined 4.66 ERA, the worst mark in the big leagues. Unsurprisingly, GM Doug Melvin set out to remake the team’s bullpen this offseason, and that process started by jettisoning Francisco Rodriguez, Jose Veras, Manny Parra, Kameron Loe, and a handful of others. The only notable holdovers are hard-throwing right-handers John Axford and Jim Henderson.
Melvin has tackled his bullpen rebuild in a number of ways. It started with a pair of De Los Santoses late last season — Fautino was acquired from the Athletics (for George Kottaras) and Miguel was scooped up off waivers. Right-hander Arcenio Leon was claimed off waivers in early-November and a few days later minor league free agent Michael Olmsted was given a big league contract. Melvin acquired non-tender bait Burke Badenhop from the Rays in early-December, and in recent weeks he jumped into free agency to sign a pair of former Nationals southpaws: Tom Gorzelanny and Mike Gonzalez. Several others (Jim Hoey, Zach Kroenke, Frankie de la Cruz, Travis Webb) were given minor league deals along the way.
After watching Josh Hamilton sign with their division rival, the Rangers made a move this weekend to replace his bat in their line-up, signing Lance Berkman to take over as their DH for 2013. Much is being made of the fact that Berkman got $11 million after spending basically the entire 2012 season on the disabled list, but Major League teams have begun to make the correct shift towards paying for future production rather than past performance. That Berkman was injured for essentially all of 2012 only matters to the extent that it informs our understanding of his likely health and performance in 2013, and the reality is that projecting future playing time is still something of a black box.
Healthy guys get hurt. Injury prone guys stay healthy. Some guys are more likely to end up on the DL than others, but there’s still an awful lot of randomness in playing time distributions. It is much easier to project a player’s performance than it is to project his health, and Berkman hasn’t yet established a track record of injuries that should make us view him like we do Travis Hafner. At 37, we shouldn’t expect Berkman to be an everyday player, but as a DH with big platoon splits, he doesn’t need to be. He plays the easiest position on the field to run a platoon at, and with the Rangers depth, they can afford to have Berkman spend a few weeks on the sidelines if the aches and pains start to add up. For their roster, performance is more important than durability.
And if we just look at expected performance for 2013, there’s a decent chance that Berkman will put up offensive numbers that are not too different from what Hamilton would have produced.
I know the results from the latest Hall of Fame voting aren’t in yet, but it’s already clear that the process is deeply flawed. It was always imperfect, but its flaws are now deep, possibly mortal. The voting process is not equipped to handle the messy challenges of our day, and the Hall of Fame is suffering as a result.
Consider what is likely to happen when the results are announced on Jan. 9. The early betting was on Jack Morris and perhaps one or two other apparently clean players, such as Craig Biggio, earning enshrinement. The current guess is that no one will be inducted from this tremendous class of players, perhaps the best of all time. This would be a travesty.
The (arguably) greatest pitcher and batter in the history of the game won’t be admitted? The (unarguably) greatest-hitting catcher of all time won’t be admitted? What of some of the greatest home run hitters the game has ever seen?
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. Five Terribly Urgent FAN Projection Targets
2. Bias-Creating Video: Trevor Rosenthal, Maxing
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Venezuelan Winter League
Five Terribly Urgent FAN Projection Targets
In the not very distant past, Dark Overlord of FanGraphs David Appelman released for the benefit of the bespectacled readership this year’s FAN Projection ballots. Less than a week later, over 200 players have reached the eight-vote threshold required for their projections to appear on the main FAN Projection page.
Here, the present author imposes his tastes and biases onto the reader — in this case, by requesting that said reader project players (a) who’ve not reached the eight-vote threshold and (b) about whom he (i.e. the author, again) is particularly curious.
