When evaluating a hitter or pitcher’s statistical performance, the vast majority of what you need to know comes from the following rate data – strikeouts, walks, popups, line drives, hard and weak flyballs, and hard and weak groundballs. Put some of those on the good side of the ledger, the rest on the bad, and pretty quickly one has a feel for the present ability, and along with scouting data, the future projection of the player. Today, let’s focus on strikeouts and walks, and on quantifying their overall impact on hitters’ offensive production. How much must a hitter do to compensate for poor K and BB rates, and much additional margin for error is provided by strong K and BB rates. Read the rest of this entry »

The marriage of scouting and statistics is well past the honeymoon stage in most front offices, but there are times when it’s easier than others. A college player out of a big program in an established baseball conference? Talk to the nerds, get a stat translation, get a projection, pair it with the qualitative analysis from the scouts. Boom. Date night.

Not to push this analogy too far, but working with Cuban players is more like a seven-year itch in the pairing: Neither side is completely happy with what they’ve got. In the case of Jose Abreu in particular, the scouts have a few competitions, a handful of games against Liechtenstein perhaps, spread out over many years. They can do their best with video.

The quants? They’re in even more trouble when it comes to Cuba.

Doesn’t mean they can’t do their best. Now that we’ve got a few projections in hand for the new White Sox first baseman, let’s take a look. We know the stakes are high — Abreu is no Rey Ordonez, he’s got no glove value to fall back on and the requirements to be a major league first baseman are stiff.

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On some level, people have understood pitch-framing for a long time. Catchers have long been taught to try to reduce their movement with the pitch on the way, and there were good framers before there was good framing analysis. But before people started really talking about the various good and bad framers, there were some other popular theories regarding the variations in called strike zones. Among them was that home-plate umpires would be tough on rookie pitchers, while to veterans they’d extend the benefit of the doubt. For so long, this was just kind of accepted, even among players, and it’s not like there’s ever been an abundance of data to analyze. That is, until PITCHf/x, which continues to revolutionize things years and years after its launch. We’re all revolutionaries!

Because you can probably see where I’m going, I’ll spare you more needless introduction. In short, I wanted to go in search of the veteran benefit of the doubt, now that we have a full six years of pretty reliable PITCHf/x data. Really, I wanted to go in search of age bias, and I figure if such a bias exists, it shouldn’t be too hard to turn it up. All the information I needed, I got right here on our own leaderboards. And it turns out there’s definitely been something interesting going on. It’s been subtle, but overall it’s been present.

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Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Chicago Cubs.

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 Cubs 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.

Other prospect projections: Arizona / Baltimore / Chicago AL / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York NL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Toronto.

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The 2014 FAN Projection ballots are now open!

Before you can project any players, you’ll have to select the team you follow most closely towards the top of the screen. If you really don’t follow a team, just pick one. You’ll only have to do this once.

After you’ve selected a team, there are 9 categories for pitchers and 10 categories for position players. Pick the values in the drop-down boxes closest to what you think the player will do in 2014, hit the submit button and you’re done! If you made a mistake, you can always go back and change your selection at any time.

Please note that everything this year is a rate stat. You’re projecting 2B+3B, HR, SB, and Fielding as a measure of 150 games (basically a full season). The player’s previous stats are shown per 150 games in the projection ballot too. This will make changing playing time projections much easier as you’ll only have to change the games played portion.

That’s really all there is to it. You can filter players by team, or if you go to the player pages, you can project players individually. If you want to see all the players you’ve projected, you can click on the “My Rankings” button which will show you only what you specifically projected a player to do.

Fan Projections will show up on the player pages after there have been 5 ballots submitted.

If you do notice any issues, please let us know.

Pierce Johnson is learning to pitch. That’s bad news for opposing hitters, because the 6-foot-3 right-hander has big-league-quality stuff. It’s good news for Cubs fans, as Chicago’s north-side team drafted him 43rd overall in 2012 out of Missouri State University.

Johnson had an opportunity to begin his professional career three years earlier. In 2009, Tampa Bay took him in the 15th round out of Faith Christian Academy in Arvada, Colo. Johnson opted to go the college route, though, which included an opportunity to spend two summers pitching in the Cape Cod League. Now he’s one of the top prospects in a system loaded with high-end potential.

Johnson talked about his maturation as a pitcher — including the fine-tuning of his repertoire — earlier this month. Read the rest of this entry »

The system is strong although it’s somewhat top heavy. The Top 10 list starts to taper offer after No. 8 but I’d consider the overall depth to be above average. The Cubs feature one of the most enviable one-through-four group of prospects in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss Clayton Kershaw’s extension with the Dodgers.

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As we’ve talked about a whole bunch of times, the pitching market is at a standstill right now, as teams await a Masahiro Tanaka resolution. Free agents are waiting to maximize the size of their markets, and teams are waiting because they’d prefer not to be reduced to chasing one of the free agents instead of Tanaka. Tanaka, baseball has decided, is much better. Additionally, the trade market is quiet, especially the one for David Price, because while teams do of course see Price as an ace, getting him would require giving up players, and teams are more comfortable just giving up money. So Tanaka is the primary focus.

It stands to reason there could be one more run at Price after Tanaka makes a decision. Every team but one will be left without a new Tanaka on it, and there just aren’t many starters like that available. But where once a Price trade seemed like a foregone conclusion, here’s Buster Olney on Tuesday:

Increasingly, rival executives are convinced that David Price will remain with the Rays for the 2014 season. “Ninety percent chance he stays,” said one rival official. “The [trade] market hasn’t materialized.”

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