Despite their penchant for dealing prospects for veterans, the Giants have amassed an impressive group of young arms that ranges from potential frontline starter to back-end innings-eaters (and everything in between). What the organization lacks, though, is a potential impact bat. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben and Sam talk about the idea that trying to win is costing teams money, then discuss what the industry says about this week’s transaction activity.
Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
They say that Tuesday was maybe the craziest MLB offseason day ever. There’s a good chance it was, although in fairness, after Tuesday, none of us can remember any days other than Tuesday. Pretty much every player in baseball up and went somewhere else, and the day was capped off by news the Yankees were guaranteeing Jacoby Ellsbury a hundred million dollars and then half of another hundred million dollars. Right there, even by Yankees terms, that indicates the organization believes pretty strongly in Ellsbury’s future. You don’t make that kind of commitment to a player whose ability and health you don’t believe in.
But Ellsbury finished the 2013 season hurt, and he was on the disabled list in September. In 2012, he made fewer appearances than Chad Durbin. In 2010, he made fewer appearances than Ben Sheets. What Ellsbury has is an injury history that’s cost him an awful lot of playing time, and it’s taken a toll on his reputation. It’s worth considering what all this says about Ellsbury, and more generally, it’s worth considering how we think about players who have and haven’t gotten hurt.
With the 22nd pick in the 2012 Rule 4 draft the Jays selected Duke University right-handed pitcher Marcus Stroman. Listed at only 5-foot-9 Stroman would be one of the shortest starting pitchers in the majors in recent memory. Is he a starting pitcher, though? He was a starter in college and made 20 starts for Double-A New Hampshire in 2013. Yet, questions remain about whether his future lies in the rotation or the bullpen.
I imagine that, for a front office exec, there’s nothing quite like the buzz you get from picking up another team’s non-tender and getting value from that player. Maybe it’s just ‘one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor,’ but in a business where one sector of the market has to continually work to find value in surprising places, it’s an important moment.
But is there much success to be found in the bargain bin? These are players that their own team has given up on — and we have some evidence that teams know more about their own players than the rest of the league, and that players that are re-signed are more successful. What can we learn from the successes and failures that we’ve seen in the past?
To answer that question, I loaded all the non-tendered players since 2007 into a database and looked at their pre- and post-non-tender numbers.
Not sure if you have heard, but Red Sox center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury is a member of the Yankees now. Ellsbury may not have repeated his monstrous 2011 in 2013, but he did have an excellent year and put his miserable 2012 mostly in the rear view mirror. We might argue over how good Ellsbury is, but he is pretty clearly good. Boston did try to re-sign Ellsbury, but the Yankees offered more. That’s the way it works, and good for Ellsbury.
The value of Ellsbury and his place on Yankees’ side of thing has been covered, but I want to look back on how the decision to sign Shane Victorino during the 2012-2013 off-season looks even better now for the Red Sox in light of Ellsbury’s departure.
| 11:59 |
: Going to start a few minutes late today; I’m pretty under the weather and didn’t get much sleep last night, so I’m trying to gain some level of consciousness before answering questions.
|
| 12:08 |
: Okay, coherence not guaranteed, but let’s try this.
|
| 12:09 |
Better deal for Yanks, McCann or Ellsbury |
| 12:09 |
: McCann, pretty easily.
|
| 12:09 |
I’m a NYY fan. How should I feel about Ellsbury? |
| 12:10 |
: Feel that he’s a good player. Be happy he makes the team better.
|
After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Philadelphia Phillies. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Boston.
Batters
Citizens of Philadelphia will be glad to see that their club’s first baseman, Ryan Howard — to whom is still owed no less than $85 million — isn’t projected by ZiPS to produce only a single win like last year. What’ll be less encouraging is how it’s because he’s projected to produce more like zero wins in ca. 400 plate appearances.
Fortunately, the club profiles as generally average almost everywhere else — with a number of starters apparent candidates to improve upon their 2013 campaigns. Domonic Brown, Ben Revere, Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Ruiz: all four receive here projected WARs better than their actual WARs from this past season. Difficult to ignore, as well, is the very encouraging projection for Maikel Franco, who recorded a 30:70 walk-to-strikeout and 31 home runs in 581 plate appearances last season between High- and Double-A. Some question remains as to whether Franco will ultimately play third or first base in the majors. Conveniently, however, those appear to be the parent club’s greatest weaknesses at present.
When the A’s acquired Craig Gentry from the Rangers earlier today, it seemed somewhat clear that another outfielder would have to be moved. With Coco Crisp, Josh Reddick, Yoenis Cespedes, and Seth Smith already taking roster spots, there was maybe not a lot of room for Gentry, even with a DH spot to utilize. Something had to give. For the time being, that something is Seth Smith. In a straight-up deal, the A’s sent Smith down the coast to San Diego in exchange for — you guessed it — a reliever.
Jim Johnson led all of baseball with 101 saves over the past two seasons. On September 27th, Dan Duquette told Roch Kubatko of MASN that, “Jim Johnson is one of our core players,” and it was the team’s intention to keep him despite the $10.8M projected salary for 2014. Fast forward to late last week when Buster Olney tweeted that the Orioles were willing to listen to offers on Johnson. After a flurry of rumors yesterday, Duquette decided to allocate his resources to balance the roster to make it more competitive.
Doing so creates a large hole in the back of the Orioles’ bullpen as Johnson also led all of baseball in games finished over the past two seasons. Johnson stepped in to fill the void left by Kevin Gregg’s ineffectiveness two seasons ago, and now someone else has the opportunity to do so. When Johnson did so, it was the easy choice as he had displayed the skills to do so while getting the ball to Gregg to attempt to save games. In looking at the current 40-man roster for Baltimore, there does not seem as clear a choice this time around.