Archive for 2013
Cleveland Indians Top 15 Prospects (2012-13)
The Indians system doesn’t have a ton of depth but both Francisco Lindor and Trevor Bauer offer high ceilings. The club also has some really intriguing sleepers such as Danny Salazar and Anthony Santander. The organization has done an outstanding job of finding value in the Latin market.
#1 Francisco Lindor (SS)
| Age | PA | H | 2B | HR | BB | SO | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA |
| 18 | 567 | 126 | 24 | 6 | 61 | 78 | 28 | .257 | .352 | .355 | .328 |
Lindor is one of the more well-rounded offensive prospects in the game. He has plus makeup, which helps his tools play up. He’s a four-tool player whose only questionable tool is his power, which will likely top out around 15 in a full year. The switch-hitter also walked almost as much as he struck out in 2012. When I asked a contact to tell me what Lindor does well at the plate, he mentioned the prospect’s consistent middle-of-the-field approach from both sides of the plate.
Daily Notes: Semi-Adequate Preview of Weekend WBC Games
March 1, 2013
Table of Contents
Today’s edition of the Daily Notes has no table of contents, it appears.
A Semi-Adequate Preview of the Weekend’s WBC Games
Pools A and B of this year’s edition of the World Baseball Classic begin this weekend in Japan and Taiwan, respectively. While much of the first weekend’s action will be taking place during that time of the night during which the present author, at least, is “very unconscious,” the prospect of real-live baseball is attractive.
That being the case, he has produced the following, i.e. a Semi-Adequate Preview of the Weekend’s WBC Games.
Participants
As noted above, this weekend’s collection of games includes only teams from Pools A and B — with the competition’s other two groups to commence play on Thursday.
Here are the eight teams scheduled to compete this weekend and those teams’ most notable players (with considerable help from Experts on the Internet).
Pool: A (Fukuoka, Japan)
Nation: Brazil
Notable Players: No fewer than nine member of affiliated baseball, including White Sox right-hander Andre Rienzo (ranked seventh among that team’s prospects by Marc Hulet), 27-year-old Royals outfielder Paulo Orlando (who’s regarded by Steamer as something slightly better than replacement level, actually), and nearly 23-year-old Tampa Bay third baseman Leonardo Reginatto (who posted a 1:1 BB:K in ca. 13 plate appearance during qualifying).
With Passbook App, MLB Takes Dynamic Pricing To Next Level
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday that 13 teams will accept mobile tickets this season via Apple’s Passbook app. Passbook is “designed to store membership cards, tickets, coupons and boarding passes — a bit like a digital wallet.” Fans who purchase tickets via MLB’s AtBat app can send that ticket information directly to Passbook, which stores the ticket bar code for use at the ballpark gate.
Via GigaOM, here’s what it would look like on your iPhone.
The Giants, Mets, Red Sox and Royals participated in an MLB-Apple pilot program at the end of last season. During that two-week trial period, 12% of single-game tickets purchased through AtBat were stored in Passbook. Apple was criticized for Passbook’s lack of usability when the app was first released last September, so the 12% participation rate was encouraging. The app was updated to increase usability with the release of Apple’s new iOS 6.1 software.
MLB identified seven additional teams that will accept tickets via Passbook this season, including the Twins, Orioles, Brewers, A’s, Pirates, Tigers and Cubs. Two more teams are expected to join before the start of the season on March 31.
Umpires are Improving
Fact: one of the most exciting areas of study right now is catcher defense, and catcher pitch-framing. A little bit of the shine is off, but we’re still making discoveries, and the whole thing is exciting because at last we’re able to put some numbers to something that’s long been suspected or known. Previously, we were left with guesswork and anecdotal evidence. Now we have an understanding of who’s good and who’s not good, and though it’s all still evolving, more and more people are aware of it, and more and more people are talking about it.
Yet conversations about pitch-framing are seldom just about pitch-framing. Practically every time it comes up, the conversation turns to whether or not this ought to be left to skill. Sure, some catchers receive better than others, and it can make a meaningful difference. But why should it be that way? Why can’t umpires just call consistent strike zones for everybody? Why can’t we just have automated, perfect strike zones, to even the playing field? And so on and so forth. It’s exciting that we’ve identified pitch-framing as a talent, but people are split on whether or not they want this talent to keep having an effect.
Joba Wants to Start. Yankees Want it to Stop.
When it comes to Joba Chamberlain and the Yankees, the phrase “star-crossed” comes to mind. On Wednesday, Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News quoted Chamberlain saying that he still believed he could be a starting pitcher. Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman responded with snark: Girardi said, “I’d like to catch one more game, too,” and Cashman said, “We’re down an outfield bat… see if he can play center.”
The next day, Joel Sherman of the New York Post slammed Chamberlain, criticizing him for “his look-at-me side” and called him “a 5-year-old,” and “a physical red flag.” “It seems very unlikely Chamberlain will be re-signing with New York after the season,” writes Mike Axisa. “That makes me sad.” How did it come to this?
Read the rest of this entry »
On Spring Training Game Pace
As the resident FanGraphs Game Pace Cares-A-Lot-About-er, I know it can be weird to talk about pace and watchability, because to prefer a faster pace could be interpreted as not really liking baseball that much. One could argue that a “true fan” cares only about the outs and the score and minds not the speed at which the conclusion is approached. But I know I can’t help what I care about, and I care about things like pace and duration. As such, I’ve gotten to wondering about how spring-training speed matches up with regular-season speed. Are the games this time of year longer? Are they shorter? Are they exactly the same? If there are differences, what might they mean?
So far in 2013 spring training, at this writing, 83 games have been completed. That’s not a whole lot of games, but that’s a meaningful sample of games, and it’s what I’ve examined. In every official MLB.com game box score, the length of the game is displayed toward the bottom. I’ve gone through and compiled all the data and performed some elementary math on it, as you do. As a potentially unwelcome spoiler alert, the results are not astonishing.
Job Listing: Indians Executive Development Fellow
Title: Executive Development Fellow (EDF), Baseball Analytics
The Executive Development Fellow (EDF) for Baseball Analytics will be exposed to all facets of the Indians baseball operations during this intensive, structured 12-month immersion into the organization. The EDF will participate in a comprehensive orientation program, regular feedback meetings and a cross-functional mentorship program to facilitate enhanced organizational and career development.
WBC Tapei’s Slugging First Baseman, Yi-Chuan Lin
The World Baseball Classic nears like an orange and pink dawn, a dawn that breaks once every three years — so like an Alaskan dawn. But Americans, in general, are not setting their alarm clocks. We and our brother Canadians have not taken to the tournament with the equal fervor of many foreign baseball fans.
I suspect one reason is limited knowledge of the foreign rosters. Outside of the main North American teams — the USA, Canadian, and DR rosters — we struggle to recognize more than a handful of players.
So let’s try to wrest away some passion from these non-American, non-Canadian types and learn a bit more about the other teams! Particularly, let’s examine Taiwan’s three best sluggers. Why Taiwan? Your humble author speaks a little Mandarin. Taiwan speaks a lot of Mandarin. It’s like a match!
The WBC, March Madness Style
Four years ago, I wrote a post on “Fixing the WBC” that revolved around one primary suggestion: move the timing of the event to mid-season. Many of the reservations that teams have about their players participating in the event have to do with the injury risks of getting away from a normal pre-season workout, and moving the event to mid-season — in that piece, I suggested just replacing the All-Star Game with the WBC and making the break a few days longer — would eliminate that primary concern.
However, it’s not a particularly realistic suggestion. The All-Star Game is a big money maker for Major League Baseball, and a sport as steeped in tradition as MLB isn’t going to simply cast it aside once every four years. While fully represented WBC squads playing meaningful games would almost certainly be more entertaining than any AL/NL All-Star clash, MLB’s preference is clearly for both events to be highly successful, rather than choosing one over the other. Just from a financial perspective, canceling the All-Star Game is probably a non-starter, so even if I think the WBC would work better mid-season, it’s probably not a feasible idea.
However, I do think that there’s one aspect of the mid-season WBC suggestion that could easily be ported over to the current timeframe and would make the event both more enjoyable and increase participation from MLB players: make the entire event a single elimination tournament, March Madness style.