And now I will present to you some known facts about Shin-Soo Choo. Most recently, Choo became a member of the Texas Rangers, for $130 million and seven guaranteed years. It’s a big investment for a team that was looking to make a big investment, and now the Rangers are probably the favorites to win the American League West. They’d long been linked to Choo, they’d long had a need, and Choo’s probably a better investment than Nelson Cruz would’ve been. He’s a splash, big enough to take the Rangers out of the potential running for Masahiro Tanaka.

Choo draws a ton of walks. He’s got a career OBP of .389, and he can run and slug, too. At .350, he owns one of the highest career BABIPs in the history of baseball. Since 1950, 797 players have batted at least 3,000 times through age 30. Choo’s BABIP is tied for seventh among them, equal to Kenny Lofton and a point above Joe Mauer. When facing right-handed pitchers, Choo’s had an awful lot in common with former teammate Joey Votto. When facing left-handed pitchers, he’s been much much worse. Choo’s got a big platoon split. He really is a sort of higher-profile Andre Ethier.

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On Saturday, the Rangers agreed to sign Shin-Soo Choo to a seven year, $130 million contract. With Nelson Cruz and David Murphy departing via free agency and Craig Gentry traded to Oakland, they had a gaping hole in atheir outfield, and they signed the best outfielder left on the market. Given their position on the win curve, maximizing their 2014 roster potential is an understandable strategy, even though Choo is likely to be completely dead weight by the end of this deal. As I wrote at the beginning of the off-season, nearly every long term free agent contract will be a poor investment for the team by the end, as they are designed to be a value to the team in the first few years and a value to the player in the last few.

That said, even with the Rangers having ample revenues — thanks to their television contract — and being in a prime position on the win curve, this still looks like a pretty significant overpay to me, and a contract I think Texas will regret sooner than later. In fact, depending on how much money Nelson Cruz suckers someone into paying him, this might actually end up as my least favorite contract of the entire winter. And I think this deal looks particularly mediocre when you see what the Yankees did with the same resources.

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Conor Glassey spent five years working at Baseball America, covering the draft and contributing to their annual Top 100 prospect list. He now writes at his own blog and tweets from @conorglassey. This article was published on his own site last week, and is being re-published here with his permission.

After the surprising news of Robinson Cano signing a 10-year contract with the Seattle Mariners worth $240 million, it got me thinking: Did you know that Robinson Cano never cracked Baseball America’s Top 100 prospect list? You probably did because Larry Stone wrote an excellent article about Cano that mentioned it. After realizing that fact about Cano, I decided to take a look, position-by-position, at who else can make that claim.

By no means is this me being critical of BA’s rankings (in some of which I was lucky enough to participate). Dating back to 1990, Baseball America’s Top 100 list is the cornerstone of the industry, with the clout to back it up. Player rankings of any type aren’t easy to put together, but I have always felt (before, during and after my employment there) that Baseball America has the best process for their rankings. In many ways, BA’s annual Top 100 list is the culmination of the entire season of work—an exclamation point on another great year of covering amateur baseball and the minor leagues better than anyone else. But everyone can always improve and I’ve always felt that you learn more from mistakes than you do from success. This is an article I wanted to do during my time at BA, but never had the time.

Of course hindsight is 20/20 and this list isn’t about pointing out individual players that didn’t make any of the lists. Rather, I’m just trying to determine if certain player profiles are slipping through the cracks . . .

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Nearly five seasons ago, Jonathan Papelbon was awarded a $6.25M figure in arbitration, which at the time, was the largest deal in history awarded to a closer in the first year of arbitration. At that point in his career, he had saved 113 games with a 1.84 ERA and the arbiters rewarded him nicely for those figures. He would pitch three more seasons in Boston and left the Red Sox having been worth 16.4 RA9-WAR while converting 88% of his saves.

Philadelphia handsomely rewarded the closer with a four-year deal with a vesting fifth option. Thus far, Papelbon has been worth 4.4 RA9-WAR and has converted 86% of his saves. Yet, two years into the four to five-year commitment, the Phillies are reportedly looking to move him. A quick search of MLB Trade Rumors has Papelbon mentioned in rumors regarding the Orioles and both local and national writers hearing the team is actively attempting to move the closer.

GM Ruben Amaro Jr. has his work cut out for him as Papelbon is guaranteed at least $26M with the potential of a very achievable trigger option pushing the contract to a $39M value. That is well above the money that has been doled out to any free agent closer this offseason.

On Sunday, Matt Gelb of the Philadelphia Inquirer laid out some of the challenges in front of Amaro Jr.

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Major League Baseball is awash in money. Lots and lots of money. Forbes reported last week that gross revenue for the league and its 30 teams will top $8 billion this year. And that’s before the new national TV contracts kick in. Next year, revenue could reach as high as $8.5 billion. As Forbes noted, total baseball revenue in 1995 was $1.4 billion. When adjusted for inflation, that figure rises to a bit more than $2.2 billion. That means we’ve seen baseball revenue grow an astounding 264% in just 18 years.

In 2013, the big story in the business of baseball is the exponential growth in league and team revenues, all while attendance is fairly flat and national TV ratings are down.

The sub-headlines tell the real story: where is all this money coming from; who is it going to; and how is it being spent.

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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 Los Angeles Dodgers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Cleveland / Miami / Minnesota / New York AL / Philadelphia / San Diego / St. Louis.

Batters
It seems possible, given the ZiPS projections below, that Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez and Matt Kemp won’t quite be worth, on a dollar-per-WAR level, the nearly $65 million they’re owed collectively in 2014. That’s not ideal for the Dodgers, probably. The eight wins they’re forecast to produce, however, still count as eight real wins — and appear likely to be supplemented by contributions from players (Hanley Ramirez and Yasiel Puig, most notably) who are creating lots in the way of marginal value.

Of some interest to readers will be the projection for Cuban emigre Alexander Guerrero. ZiPS is optimistic (2.5 WAR in 665 PA); Steamer, less so (0.2 WAR in 630 PA). A street fight between rival systems, is what appears to be unfolding.

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Mark Appel learned a lot in his four years at Stanford University. The 22-year-old right-hander graduated with a degree in management sciences and engineering. Along the way, he aced Pitching 101. This past summer, the Houston Astros selected him with the first-overall pick in the amateur draft.

Appel isn’t your typical power pitcher. He possesses an overpowering arsenal, but he goes about his craft like a technician. That doesn’t mean he’s a finished product — he has just 38 professional innings under his belt — but it does suggest his time in the minor leagues could be short.

Appel talked about his cerebral approach to pitching — including the importance of knowing who you are — late last week. Read the rest of this entry »

The Houston Astros organization boasts both depth and some high-ceiling talent. The club has compiled its impressive collection of prospects through both solid scouting via the draft and shrewd wheeling-and-dealing via the trade market. Read the rest of this entry »

Until this afternoon, the Rangers had a fairly complete team, save for left field, which was a mixture of never-was’ and might-be’s. For a team that was struggling to keep up this offseason with its counterparts in the Bay Area and Orange County, that simply wasn’t going to cut it. A move needed to be made, and today Texas made their move by signing Shin-Soo Choo.

Currently, the starting left fielder on the Rangers’ depth chart is Jim Adduci. Last season, Adduci made his major league debut, and tallied eight hits in 34 plate appearances. Not bad, except when you consider the fact that it was Adduci’s age-28 season. With him fronting the group, the Rangers’ left field options ranked just 28th on our depth charts entering today.

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Strikeouts for pitchers aren’t overrated, and here’s why: there is no more fundamental indicator that a pitcher is or isn’t hard to hit. To get strikeouts, you have to throw strikes or pitches that look like strikes, and the batter has to not put those pitches in play. All that’s important for a pitcher to do goes into the generation of strikeouts. There are, of course, relatively ineffective pitchers who get strikeouts. There are relatively effective pitchers who do not get so many strikeouts. Strikeouts aren’t everything, because the name of the game isn’t “Get The Most Strikeouts”, but they are the closest to everything of any of the basic stats. Make people miss and you’re probably good.

So if you want to find pitchers people are buzzing about, follow the strikeouts. If you want to find young potential aces, follow the strikeouts. Yovani Gallardo seemed like a young potential ace. He’s still not old, and he’s still plenty talented. But people have been waiting for him for years. He has yet to post a full-season ERA- under 90. His runs have never quite matched his peripherals. And this past season was something of a worrisome mess. In 2009, Gallardo had baseball’s seventh-highest strikeout rate, essentially equal with Clayton Kershaw. He kept on striking out about a quarter of batters through 2012. This last year, his strikeouts matched Jordan Zimmermann and Edinson Volquez. His rate was still fine, but considerably worse, and it’s enough to make one wonder: what happens when a young starter loses strikeouts?

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