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.
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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.
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.
The Indians outfield defense is going to be really good. As Jeff Sullivan noted, the addition of Michael Bourn makes the outfield defense very good as it pushes two good center fielders (Michael Brantley and Drew Stubbs) to the corners. That last part is what really struck me about the move. Over my roughly 17 years of watching baseball, I’ve always been told that a corner outfielder is a guy who can hit and hit for a lot of power, indicating that it’s an offense-first position. But during the past five years or so, we’ve seen players like Brett Gardner, Carl Crawford, Ben Revere, Brantley, and now Stubbs moved to a corner, seemingly indicating that teams are more willing to accept less power in exchange for more OBP, speed, and defense. So I decided to do a little investigating.
The first step was to look at how the offensive production of corner outfielders has changed in the recent past.
The impossible finally happened. Miguel Cairo retired. Cairo hung on for 17 seasons — he made his debut the season after Mariano Rivera. One would be hard-pressed to find one season in which he was much good. His highest seasonal WAR came in 1998 with the good ol’ Devil Rays at 2.7, and that was mostly due to 22 Total Zone fielding runs. That season and 1999 were the only seasons in which Cairo received more than 500 plate appearances, and he only got more than 400 in one other season — 2004 with the Yankees. Cairo could not really play shortstop, he was no defensive whiz at second, and as his career .264/.314/.361 (77 wRC+) line shows, he was, outside of a few lucky seasons, a pretty lousy hitter. Yet he hung on. And on. And on. And now he is going to be a working for the Reds. I think it is safe to say that teams liked and like having Cairo around.
Despite his limitations, over 17 years Cairo managed to have some very dramatic hits. In honor of his passing on to the next phase of his career of baseball, here are three of the biggest.
We’re still six weeks from opening day, but the first sports book over/unders were released the other day, and while this is not an endorsement of gambling, it can be fun and informative to look at how the Vegas proprietors see each team stacking up before the season. So, let’s take a look at the early numbers.
This is a story about the business of baseball. It’s a story about the women who make up 45% of all baseball fans. And it’s a story about MLB-licensed merchandise made for and marketed to those female fans.
Revenue generated from the sale of MLB-licensed gear goes directly to the league’s “central fund” and is shared equally by all 30 teams. This includes sales of all MLB-licensed products at ballparks, team-sponsored stores and online at MLB.com. Every T-shirt, every baseball cap, every sweatshirt, every key chain, every everything with an MLB team logo benefits the fund and, in turn, every franchise.
This is a story about the diversity of interests and tastes among women baseball fans. For myself, and my 9-year-old daughter, I prefer women’s and girls’ cut clothing in traditional team colors. We are Giants fans. That means lots of orange, black, grey and white T-shirts, sweatshirts and the like. I don’t like pink baseball gear. Or “PINK” baseball gear — the brand MLB cross-markets with Victoria’s Secret. Nor do I like rhinestones or sequins on my Giants shirts.
More than anyone else on staff, and possibly more than anyone else on the planet, I like to look at and think about pitcher Pace. I’ve written about it here on several occasions, because watchability is a major concern of mine. Of course we just want there to be baseball, but if we all had our druthers, there would more consistently be entertaining baseball, and Pace plays a part in determining entertainment value. There are times when it’s better for things to slow down, allowing tension to build. More often, we’d rather a guy go faster than slower.
As is, though, Pace is expressed in seconds. By definition, Pace is the average amount of time between each pitch, and while we can see major differences at either extreme, we’re still thinking about it in terms of seconds. Seconds feel insignificant. Drink a glass of water. That took you several seconds, assuming you followed my order. You’ll feel like it took you no time at all. Now drink several glasses of water. Practically drown yourself with water! That took you longer, assuming you followed my order again for some stupid reason.
