The Arizona Diamondbacks outfield roulette continued today, as they announced they’d shipped a pair of low level minor leaguers to Chicago in exchange for Tony Campana. Yes, the Diamondbacks just traded for another outfielder, despite the fact that their OF is already one of the most crowded in baseball. With Adam Eaton and Gerardo Parra in the fold, it doesn’t seem entirely clear why Kevin Towers felt that the organization needed another speed-and-defense center fielder.

What is clear, though, is that Campana can help a big league team even though he can’t hit. In fact, Campana might be one of the most interesting bench players in baseball.

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By December it became clear Sandy Alderson would trade R.A. Dickey before his Cy Young Award could collect a spec of dust. The only questions remaining were where the knuckleballer would land and who the Mets would receive in return.

It came as little surprise that Alex Anthopoulos was lurking — fresh off acquiring much Miami’s talent less than a month earlier. It was certain the Mets would require Travis d’Arnaud to make a deal, but would they demand another player, too? Noah Syndergaard and Aaron Sanchez vaulted up prospect lists this season as pitchers in the Lansing Lugnuts’ rotation, and their success created a divide among analysts. Syndergaard or Sanchez? Sanchez or Syndergaard? Who was atop Alderson’s list? Was Anthopoulous correct when he deemed Sanchez “untouchable?” Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of projection systems floating around the nerdy baseball universe. Here on FanGraphs, we host a lot of them, including ZIPS, Steamer, Oliver, Marcel, and the Fans projections, and then there’s other systems like CAIRO and PECOTA that are hosted elsewhere. Of all the baseball projection systems, PECOTA is probably the most famous because it was created by Nate Silver, and Nate Silver is now pretty famous for his post-baseball career. So, when PECOTA releases their annual projections, mainstream writers pay attention. And Chicago writers, particularly, like to talk about PECOTA’s projections, mainly to remind everyone how wrong they’ve been about the White Sox.

For instance, here’s a piece by a local radio anchor that trots out all the usual ad hominem attacks about geeks and their numbers. And here’s another one of this year’s entries, which just gives up on factual information completely:

What is it about the White Sox’s rosters and farm system that Baseball Prospectus doesn’t like?

To answer that question, I decided to do research on who writes these inaccuracies year after year. What I found shocked and disturbed me.

It’s Nate Silver.

My whole world of reality collapsed at that moment.

How could it be the guy I religiously read for pinpoint accuracy in politics? How could it be that Silver is an accuracy genius in politics, but yet when it comes to the White Sox he transforms into the accuracy of a Republican pollster?

After composing myself, I discovered a possible reason. Silver lived in Chicago for many years near Wrigleyville and is rumored to be a Cubs fan.

Maybe being a Cubs fan is a weighted bias even Silver’s methodology can’t overcome.

I’m not here to defend PECOTA — BP can do that if they’d like — but I will just insert some facts into the discussion. Like, for instance, that Silver grew up in Michigan as a Tigers fan, not a Cubs fan. Or, that Silver hasn’t been in charge of the system since 2009, and the code has been essentially rewritten since he left. And, of course, it would be remarkably silly for any forecaster to create a system that intentionally downgrades the projections of a specific franchise, since that would simply make the system less accurate and hurt his own credibility. The idea that PECOTA has some kind of anti-White Sox bias because Silver went to the University of Chicago and attended some Cubs games is worthy of the tin foil hat brigade.

That said, I do think it’s interesting that the White Sox have regularly outperformed PECOTA’s expectations, and I think it’s worth actually investigating, as opposed to what Michael Tomaso did. So, let’s investigate the White Sox overall performance since 2005.

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

1. Some Brief and Mostly Important Disclaimers
2. The Top-Five Rookie-Eligible Hitters, According to Steamer
3. The Top-Five Rookie-Eligible Pitchers, According to Steamer

Some Brief and Mostly Important Disclaimers
Last Thursday, in celebration of the final post in our team-by-team release of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for 2013, the present author — using his (by now famous) ability of “being able to sort leaderboards” — identified the rookie-eligible hitters and pitchers (meaning fewer than 130 at-bats or 50 innings in the majors) with the best projections, where “best” was equivalent to “highest projected WAR” and nothing else.

What follows is the product of an almost identical exercise — except for, instead of ZiPS, the author has sorted the Steamer projection leaderboards, instead.

Below are the the top-five hitters and top-five pitchers who most aptly fit the aforementioned criteria. Alongside each player’s name are listed his 2012 line (for the level at which he spent the most time) and his 2013 projection. Finally, the author has appended brief comments to each entry to give the impression that he has not merely assembled a List of Numbers.

Note: Steamer utilizes playing-time projections from the FAN Projections here at the site.

The Top-Five Rookie-Eligible Hitters, According to Steamer
By the criteria outline above, here are the top five rookie-eligible hitters for 2013, according to Steamer.

5. Jackie Bradley, OF, Boston
2012 Line: 305 PA, .357/.479/.523 (.405 BABIP), 180 wRC+ at High-A
2013 Steamer: 408 PA, .256/.335/.387 (.303 BABIP), 1.7 WAR
Notes: Sophomore year at South Carolina was excellent; junior one, less so. Taken by Red Sox 40th overall in 2011. Has been excellent as professional. Received similarly optimistic projection (1.7 WAR) from ZiPS. Will begin season at Triple-A, it seems.

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Red Sox prospect Rubby De La Rosa is in pitching purgatory. Fully healthy since late in the 2012 season, the right-hander with an electric fastball is nowhere to be found on 25-man roster projections. I don’t expect this to last long since De La Rosa has the arsenal to force his way onto the staff. For now, however, the Dominican will be forced to wait his turn.

It seems like an eternity ago, but De La Rosa’s debut in Dodger blue was impressive. His 3.55 xFIP in 60 2/3 innings included ratios of nearly a strikeout per inning and ground ball rate approaching 50-percent. He walked too many batters — A carry over from Double-A, but De La Rosa was only 22. Time and ability was on his side. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam preview the Nationals’ season with Paul Sporer and Daniel Rathman, and Pete talks to Adam Kilgore, who covers the Nationals for the Washington Post (at 19:51).

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Episode 307
FanGraphs prospect analyst and proprietor of ROTOscouting Mike Newman is forced by the host — largely against his will — to discuss the college game and its relevance to his (i.e. Newman’s) process as a prospect writer.

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 47 min play time.)

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This is, as you may have surmised from the title, the third in a series on trades that players have vetoed, as is sometimes their right. You can find the first two parts here and here.

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Look over last year’s league bunting statistics and you might find yourself raising your eyebrows. You see a .393 batting average and you figure people should just bunt like all of the time. Of course, that ignores all the sacrifice bunts, and the failed bunt attempts, and most importantly the game-theoryness of it all, but there were nearly 600 bunt hits. That’s a lot of bunt hits. What might draw your eye is that there were 586 bunt singles. What might draw your eye next is that there were two bunt doubles. We have this statistic called ISO, and it’s slugging percentage minus batting average, and last year the league ISO on bunts was not .000. This is a strange thing to know.

What is a bunt double? We’ve all joked about bunt doubles and triples and homers, but few have probably ever seen a real bunt extra-base hit. It seems imperative that we review last year’s two, and we’ll even separate them, for reasons you’ll shortly come to understand. What we find is a true bunt double, and something of an honorable mention. Prepare yourself to read a little about Juan Pierre and Quintin Berry.

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