Episode 303
Eric Nusbaum and Craig Robinson — having spent the week on assignment at the Caribbean Series in Hermosillo, Mexico, for Sports on Earth — are the guests on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 30 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

There’s plenty of debate out there — you’ve seen some of it — regarding the size of the Major League Baseball active roster. You might also know it as the 25-man roster, because the roster is to include 25 men. There are people who want a 26th man, and a 27th man, and there are people who want to eliminate the 25th man. As is, there’s the related argument over whether the last spot should go to a bench bat or a seventh reliever. Most teams (all teams?) opt for seven relievers, much to a stathead’s consternation. But between a bench bat and a reliever there exists a compromise: a bat/pitcher hybrid. In theory, this is a stathead’s dream. In reality, there’s been Brooks Kieschnick. There aren’t many people who can hit well and pitch well, relative to the greater population.

Kieschnick is gone, leaving behind a .760 career OPS and a 4.59 career ERA. He hasn’t actually appeared in the majors since 2004, but now we could be seeing the passing of the torch:

Read the rest of this entry »

In case you needed another reminder to never believe what a front office lets the public hear, here’s what Billy Beane told Jane Lee of MLB.com just six days ago:

The talent is still there, insists Billy Beane. That’s why the A’s general manager was so patient with a struggling Jemile Weeks last year.

That’s why the second baseman, hitting just .220 over 113 games, wasn’t demoted until August. And that’s why Weeks, who turned 26 last week, will be considered very much a part of what manager Bob Melvin deemed the “open competition” for the second-base position this spring.

Three days later, the Athletics acquired Jed Lowrie in exchange for Chris Carter, Brad Peacock and Max Stassi. Now Weeks is buried on the depth chart — either Lowrie or Scott Sizemore is likely to start at second base (with the other starting at third base). Adam Rosales, Josh Donaldson and Eric Sogard all have MLB experience at one if not both of the positions in question, all with the potential to keep him off the roster. Weeks, therefore, has an uphill battle to climb if he is to break camp with Oakland instead of Triple-A Sacramento.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels have spent the last few off-seasons pursuing superstars and signin some of them, but even with the wallet open, they cannot fill every position in that manner. Prior to the 2011 season, one of their primary targets was Adrian Beltre, who ended up going to Texas. The Angels got revenge by taking C.J. Wilson and Josh Hamilton away, but I would imagine the Rangers are not regretting the signing of Beltre one bit, as he has spent his post-Seattle years building a potential Hall of Fame resume.

The Angels would love to have Beltre, too, but they have not exactly been hurting at third base. Alberto Callaspo, while not a Beltre-level superstar, has been pretty good for them the last couple of years. Callaspo was going into his last year of arbitration, but the team and player instead agreed on on a two-year deal for just under $9 million. The deal clearly fills a need for the Angels. Of more interest is how Callaspo demonstrates how it can take a little while for a player to get slotted into the right position in the field and can become a usable hitter despite only having one good skill at the plate.

Read the rest of this entry »

A league-average hitter swings at about 46% of the pitches he sees. That much hasn’t really changed over at least the last decade. Roughly 5% of the time, a league-average hitter will end up in a 3-and-0 count. Roughly 7% of the time, a league-average hitter will swing at the next pitch. There’s nothing inherently wrong about swinging in a 3-and-0 count — the pitcher, often, will try to throw something straighter and over the plate. Often, then, there’s potential damage to be done. But a good deal might be learned about a hitter by examining his behavior in 3-and-0 counts. You can get a sense of a hitter’s eye, and you can get a sense of a hitter’s passiveness. Or, you might prefer, pickiness.

Joe Mauer is far from a league-average hitter, in both results and approach. For his career, Mauer has swung at about 37% of the pitches he’s seen, and last year he had the lowest swing rate in baseball. He swung at just about 8% of all first pitches, tied for the lowest rate in the league and against an average of 27%. Of all of Mauer’s career plate appearances, 9% have proceeded to a 3-and-0 count. In 3% of those plate appearances did Mauer offer at the next pitch. Joe Mauer has the eye to swing 3-and-0, but Joe Mauer has not often swung 3-and-0.

Read the rest of this entry »

Play the player-profile game again tomorrow — in this case, at 1:00pm ET. We’re giving away a free annual subscription to FanGraphs+ to the first reader who guesses correctly the identity of that day’s mystery player. (Limit one copy per customer).

FanGraphs+ is here, and it’s time for another edition of the Player-Profile game. Come on down!

If you can guess which player is the subject of the following player cap, without looking through your current subscription to FG+, you can win a braaaaand new caaaaaar! Or a subscription to FG+. Yeah that second thing. You can’t have a car.

From the mind of Michael Barr, and yes we’re making this one tougher, you guys are too good at this:

The ball seems to detonate out of [Player]’s hand. He has a delivery that’s anything but smooth, yet watching him touch 100 mph looks pretty effortless. [Player] doesn’t have a defined role other than late-inning reliever, but take a chance on him in holds leagues in case he settles into the eighth-inning guy. If he does, watch the strikeouts and holds pile up while you wait for his closing opportunity to arrive.

Table of Contents
Today’s edition of the Daily Notes has no table of contents, it appears.

Caribbean Series Information Post, Game Day 6
The Caribbean Series — featuring the champion from each of the Dominican Winter, Mexican Pacific, Puerto Rican, and Venezuelan Winter Leagues — began Friday in Hermosillo, Mexico, and continues through February 7th.

What follows is an assortment of information regarding that Series after five games.

Scores
Here are the results from Tuesday’s games, with links to the relevant box scores:

Game 1: Puerto Rico 4, Venezuela 1
Game 2: Dominican Republic 11, Mexico 6

Standings
The Series is played in a double round-robin format, with each team playing every other one twice. After the completion of same, the top two teams will meet in a championship game with a view to acquiring capital-G Glory.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yahoo! Sports reporters Jeff Passan and Tim Brown reported late on Tuesday that they had obtained records of now defunct anti-aging clinic Biogenesis and that three of the documents contained the name of Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun. Last week, the New Times of Miami reported that Biogenesis and its founder Anthony Bosch had allegedly provided performance-enhancing drugs to other MLB players, including Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz, and Gio Gonzalez. Rodriguez, Cruz, and Gonzalez have denied receiving PEDs from Biogenesis or Bosch.

According to Yahoo!, one of the documents includes Braun’s name among a list of other players, including Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Melky Cabrera, Francisco Cervelli, and Danny Valencia, but without any notation about drugs or other substances banned by MLB. Another document has multiple references to Chris Lyons, one of several attorneys who represented Braun in 2011 and 2012 in his appeal of a positive drug test. That appeal was ultimately successful when the MLB arbitrator, Shyam Das, found that the urine sample obtained from Braun had not been handled in accordance with the process set forth in MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program and was, therefore, invalid.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Marlins traded away a bunch of their players. They didn’t trade away Giancarlo Stanton, though, so someone will hit some home runs in Miami. Will he be the only one? The ZiPs projections for the Marlins came out last week and they suggest he’ll really be the only power source in Miami this year. It even looks like he could be legendarily lonely.

Read the rest of this entry »