It’s time to find some hidden gems.

The annual Rule 5 draft is just a few weeks away now that every Major League Baseball team has firmed up its 40-man roster for the winter. For about 10 years now — first as an unpaid blogger and later as a prospect scribe for FanGraphs — I’ve written about the draft and have seen its popularity grow even as the available talent has dwindled due to new roster rules that now allows clubs more time to evaluate their own prospects before having to make the difficult decision to protect or not to protect.

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Jacoby Ellsbury has shown the ability to be one of the league’s most dynamic offensive players in the cost-controlled portion of his career.  No one would dispute his ability to hit for average or his base running prowess.  Add on top of this his ability to play center field, and you have a marquee player that would make any MLB team better.  As Jeff Sullivan pointed out a couple weeks ago, the perceived disparity between Ellsbury and other speedsters like Michael Bourn lies in the history of his power tool and its potential going forward.  

To me, the questions that must be answered for prospective employers are: 1. Can Ellsbury stay healthy? 2. Is the power still there? and 3. Is the power predicated on getting consistent at bats, or did something change in his body or swing to cause the sudden loss (and appearance) of power?.  I will not try to predict the future of Ellsbury’s health; that’s the job of the trainers and doctors who can see him in person.  Here I would like to analyze the chances of Ellsbury putting up another 30+ home run season by observing the subtle differences in Ellsbury’s swing this year compared to his last fully healthy season in 2011.

First, let’s look for some clues in the batted ball data available for a comparison.  Below are the graphical representations of all the homeruns hit by Ellsbury in 2011 and 2013, courtesy of ESPN’s Hit Tracker:
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If there’s any baseball story that’s just never going to end this winter — other than, “Jack Morris should/shouldn’t be in the Hall!” and “Alex Rodriguez fights with MLB!” — it’s almost certainly going to be “the Dodgers have too many outfielders, who will they trade?”

It’s been a slowly building narrative for more than a year now, and now that Yasiel Puig has proven himself to be a quality major league player and top prospect Joc Pederson is just about ready to join him, it’s deafening. That means Matt Kemp is going to the Blue Jays… or the Rangers… or the Mariners… or the Red Sox… unless Andre Ethier goes to the Mets or an unlikely Puig trade blows up the baseball world else first. It’s both a fun and frustrating time of year, where every report that one team may possibly have communicated with another about some player sends fans into a frenzy. Read the rest of this entry »

Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com is reporting the Los Angeles Dodgers have signed Dan Haren to a one-year, $10 million deal that has a vesting 2015 option if Haren works at least 180 innings next season. Last month, when we did our crowdsourcing for Haren, Carson Cistulli presented the following Haren facts:
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Ben and Sam discuss Jhonny Peralta’s contract with the Cardinals, and whose responsibility it should be to publish PED users.

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Jhonny Peralta got four years and $52 million from the Cardinals to be their shortstop, or so reports Jon Morosi. That’s the longest contract given to a free agent after a suspension for performance-enhancing drugs — a fact that has made some in the game angry. But that’s only one of the reasons this signing is so interesting.

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Just two days ago, Bradley Woodrum reviewed the remaining catchers on the free agent market along with the teams looking to sign a catcher. He concluded that there were four starting catchers available for seven jobs. Now it’s three catchers for six jobs after the New York Yankees signed Brian McCann to a five-year contract yesterday. And Kudos to Woodrum for predicting this signing in his article.

This is what we know of the deal thus far. It is a five-year contract worth $85 million that contains a no trade clause and some kind of vesting option for a sixth season. Details on the option year are still unclear. If reached, the option will bring the total value of the deal north of $100 million.

In many ways, this move is a match made in heaven. McCann is one of the best defensive catchers in the league, he combines a good feel for the basics of the position with excellent pitch framing skills. Per Woodrum’s article, McCann’s saved 65 runs over the last three seasons via pitch framing. In addition to his defensive reputation, McCann carries a loud bat that is typically 20 percent above league average. That’s not catcher average, it’s league average.

Steamer projects McCann to compile 3.6 WAR over 402 plate appearances. With the designated hitter role now available to him, McCann may see as many as 600 plate appearances (barring injury). If we’re being thoroughly pessimistic, we can call that 600 plate appearance projection about 3.5 WAR. Add another 1.5 WAR for catching contributions not currently included, like framing, and McCann projects as a roughly five WAR player in 2014.

If we assume that the cost of a win will be around $6 million, then the Yankees are paying for 14 wins over the guaranteed portion of the contract. While catchers do tend to age more rapidly than other position players, McCann is entering his age 30 season, so he’s relatively young. At this point in his career and given that we project him to about five wins in 2014, he may be able to earn the entirety of the contract over the first three seasons.

There is also the consideration of home stadium. McCann is a pull hitter and drives most of his home runs out to right field. Per Fangraphs’ own park factors, McCann is moving from a stadium that is league average for left-handed home runs (100 park factor) to one that inflates home runs by 14 percent (114 park factor). Below is an overlay of the two stadiums.

And here is McCann’s spray chart from 2013, so you can visualize how many warning track shots might have found their way over the wall.

This information is not accounted for in the earlier projection that we discussed. Since McCann’s offense game is particularly well tailored to his new home park, it should mean that the Yankees will get an even greater return on their investment.

From the Yankees perspective, this deal may indicate a lesson learned. Last offseason, the Yankees were attempting to cut costs and refused to offer Russell Martin a reasonable, two-year contract. He eventually signed with the Pirates and helped them reach the postseason for the first time since the height of the Roman Empire 1992.

Meanwhile, the Yankees received almost no offense from the four catchers they employed and missed the postseason. It’s worth noting that they missed the postseason by more than just one good catcher, but that was one of the black holes on the roster. Third base, shortstop, first base, right field, and designated hitter were also varying degrees of terrible. Really, it’s amazing that they won 88 games, but I digress…

With McCann off the market, other clubs looking for starting catchers will have to choose between Jarrod Saltalamacchia, A.J. Pierzynski, Dioner Navarro, and a variety of backup quality options. Reds catcher Ryan Hanigan also remains available on the trade market. The Red Sox are the most tangibly in need of a catcher at this point.

There is some speculation that the signing could affect negotiations with top free agent Robinson Cano, but that strikes me as unlikely. With the paucity of reliable catchers on the market, the Yankees needed to strike quickly to plug that void. I have little doubt that they would have acquired McCann with or without Cano.

It feels as though this match was inevitable. The Yankees had every reason to value McCann more highly than any other team. They have a hungry fan base that supplies massive revenue, a dearth of quality internal options at the position, and a home stadium that maximizes McCann’s offensive potential. Of teams interested in catchers, only the Rockies can match the Yankees on that latter point, but they can’t come close on the revenue side. All told, this deal smells like a winner for both team and player.

Humans have had a long and storied relationship with tools. From rocks and sticks to pocket knives and sonic screwdrivers, we have depended on tools to make our lives easier and more efficient. But a recent study shows that our use of tools might also have a lot to do with how we use our hands. A study from the University of Sussex shows that our (humans’) penchant for right-handedness has a lot to do with what part of our brain thinks about how to manipulate tools. Our left hemispheres do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to how we interact with tools. This is how humans and their close cousins came to be right-hand dominant species. This also could help explain how humans developed speech, as the constant working of our left hemispheres — the side responsible for speech — caused them to get stronger.  However, the study shows that this dominance only manifests when the subjects were dealing with inanimate objects. When dealing with animate objects — like other animals or themselves — no real dominance was shown.

There are a lot of studies about handedness in humans — how it affects their personalities, relationships, careers, etc. From what I found, there really aren’t many on just how many people are left-handed. Perhaps that has to do with the fact that they don’t pass out a lot of grant money for just counting stuff. However, there seems to be a general consensus that about 10% of humans are left-handed. By left-handed, of course, I mean left-hand dominant. Many people fall somewhere in the middle along the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory.  I’m right-hand dominant, and very much so. I do everything I can think of as a righty, though I’ve been told I sweep like a lefty when curling. I know many people, and you may too, who switch it up, though. They may write and eat left-handed, but throw and bowl and play pool right handed. They may use their right to pick up the phone, but their left to open a door. Again, a lot of it comes down to what we’re interacting with. This is the point when I talk about actual baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

In the World Series, broadcasts from both TBS and Fox kept telling us how good of a center fielder Jon Jay was. In between plaudits, Jon Jay would inevitably get a poor jump, take a bad route, or just drop an easily catchable ball, sometimes all in the same game. It became something of a running joke, as Jay appeared to be a defensive disaster in the postseason, even while the networks kept insisting that he was terrific with the glove.

Well, the Cardinals clearly weren’t swayed by the rhetoric, and today, they’ve acquired Peter Bourjos from the Angels to be their new center fielder. And now TBS and Fox can properly say that the Cardinals have one of the best defensive center fielders on the planet, because Peter Bourjos is what Jon Jay was supposed to be.

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