The polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet has published today his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Miami Marlins.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Marlins or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

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Austin Brice is a legitimate prospect. The Marlins spent $205,000 to sign him out of high school in 2010, and he was ranked as the sixteenth-best farmhand in the Miami organization by Baseball America coming into the 2013 season, an area of prospect lists he will likely to continue to reside in this offseason. He’s just 21, has two pitches that flash plus, and has a prototypical pitcher’s body and smooth, easy, delivery.

He also has 190 career walks in 279 2/3 professional innings, including 82 in 113 frames in 2013. That’s a career 14.88% walk rate and a 15.16% mark in 2013, a number that was actually a step back from 2012 (14.08%) even though he was repeating the Low-A level (his ERA also shot up from 4.35 to 5.73, and his K-rate fell from 25.26% to 20.52%. Certainly, this past season did not bring the young righthander much good news.

Plenty of pitching prospects pair tantalizing stuff with frustrating inabilities to throw strikes, but Brice (whom I saw five different times in 2013, a virtue of living 45 minutes from NewBridge Bank Park) is an especially frustrating case because, as I said above, his delivery is one of his strengths. In this piece, I’m going to examine the root of his control problems and tie it to some more general and important lessons about the process behind throwing strikes.

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Andrew Heaney is one of the reasons the Marlins have a brighter future than you might think. The team has a plethora of talented young arms, and the 22-year-old southpaw is poised to join Jose Fernandez and his 23-and-under brethren in the Miami rotation.

Drafted ninth-overall in 2012 out of Oklahoma State, Heaney was impressive this summer in his first full professional season. In 19 starts between high-A Jupiter and Double-A Jacksonville, he went 9-3 with a 1.60 ERA. The NCAA’s strikeout leader in his final year in Stillwater, Heaney features a low-to-mid-90s fastball and solid command.

Heaney — who is further honing his skills in the Arizona Fall League, with the Glendale Desert Dogs — talked about his repertoire and approach earlier this week. Read the rest of this entry »

Ladies and gentlemen, The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2014 is now ready and waiting to be devoured. It is the 10th edition of the book. That’s a momentous sort of thing, and it wouldn’t be possible without all the painstaking work that Dave Studeman has put into it — and the site — for the past decade.

This is my second year working on the book, and it has been a fantastic experience both years. I won’t bog you down with all the gory details, but suffice to say that this year’s book is pretty spectacular.

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The Marlins organization boasts impressive pitching talent, as well as some up-and-coming hitting prospects. Three members of the Top 10 came from the 2012 blockbuster trade with Toronto, while a waiver claim from that same organization found his way into the 15th slot. Some strong drafting in the past couple of years has also helped improve the organizational depth. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss Deadspin’s offer to purchase a Hall of Fame vote.

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Just a few years ago, in 2011, the two Most Valuable Player awards were given to Justin Verlander and Ryan Braun. They were fine choices, both, but just according to WAR, the two best players in baseball that year were Jacoby Ellsbury and Matt Kemp. Ellsbury, at 27, was a nine-win everyday center fielder. Kemp, at 26, was an eight-win everyday center fielder. Both of them had the look of long-term franchise players, but both stumbled in 2012 and still haven’t returned to that previous level. Now, during the 2013-2014 MLB offseason, both Ellsbury and Kemp appear to be available. And they are, naturally, two of the biggest available names.

Ellsbury, of course, is available as a free agent, and Scott Boras has drawn parallels to the Carl Crawford contract. Ellsbury could be looking at something like six years and $130-140 million. Kemp is available as a trade target, as the Dodgers are said to be shopping Kemp, Crawford, and Andre Ethier in order to better accommodate Yasiel Puig and clear some payroll space. Kemp’s under contract for another six years at $128 million. The Kemp and Ellsbury money could be very similar. Somebody is going to pay that amount to Ellsbury on purpose. Kemp, though, probably can’t be moved without the Dodgers eating some cash. As similar as the two players might look, it’s probable that, at this point, Matt Kemp’s trade value is negative.

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Episode 399
David Temple is a contributor both to NotGraphs and (more recently) to the FanGraphs main page, and is proprietor of the very well-produced internet podcast Stealing Home. He’s also the guest 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 1 hr 04 min play time.)

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Earlier this week, I posted about the best bunts of the 2013 regular season according to Win Probability Added. You can read about the basic idea (and its limits) there. Now that we have looked at the best, why not a few of the worst?

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Here at FanGraphs, we have two different models of pitcher WAR: one based on FIP, and one based on runs allowed. These represent the extreme opposite ends of the viewpoints on how much credit or blame a pitcher should receive for events in which his teammates have some significant influence. If you go with strictly a FIP-based model, a pitcher is only judged on his walks, strikeouts, and home runs, and the events of hits on balls in play and the sequencing of when events happen are not considered as part of the evaluation.

If you go with the RA9-based model, then everything that happens while the pitcher is on the mound — and in some cases, what happens after they are removed for a relief pitcher — is considered the pitcher’s responsibility, and he’s given full credit or blame for what his teammates do while he’s pitching.

Both of these models are wrong. It is evidently clear that pitchers have some influence over the rate of which their balls in play are turned into hits, and the order in which the events they give up occur, but it also evident that they are not solely responsible for those two things. The quality of defensive support behind a pitcher, and the timing of when the defense either bails out or screws over their teammate, has an impact on a pitcher’s runs allowed total. The truth of nearly every pitcher’s performance lies somewhere in between his FIP-based WAR and his RA9-based WAR.

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