The Orioles front office doesn’t get enough credit for developing a solid, home-grown system that boasts some impressive talent — especially on the mound. The system lacks impact bats — outside of Jonathan Schoop — but the scouting staff acquired some intriguing hitters in the 2013 amateur draft. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben and Sam discuss BP’s Hall of Fame ballot, then review early scouting reports on the players BP would have voted in.
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It’s not so much that we’re in the offseason’s dead period — we’re just in its waiting period. There’s a lot of life left, but there likely won’t be any breaths until we get to Masahiro Tanaka’s signing deadline, at which point several dominoes ought to fall. That’s two and a half weeks away, and for the time being there’s not much going on. Dave and Carson talked on the podcast about how the things being written about these days are Tanaka and the Hall of Fame. As a change of pace out of desperation, I’m choosing to turn to the comfortable default FanGraphs fallback, that being Mike Trout, and how very good he is.
This is a question from my own chat earlier Tuesday:
Comment From Eddie
How many MLB outfields post less value than Mike Trout in 2014? Have to think the Cubs are on that list.
I was in love with the idea right away, and below, my subsequent investigation. I’d like to thank Eddie for the prompt, and for giving me another reason to re-visit Mike Trout’s unparalleled player page. Obviously, we can’t know anything yet about how the coming season is going to go. But we do have complicated mathematical guesses, which I’m happy to depend on for these purposes. By WAR, how many outfields does Mike Trout project to out-produce on his own during the 2014 regular season?
| 6:16 |
: HI EVERYBODY!
Welcome to the first FanGraphs After Dark chat of 2014!!!! I hear there’s some sort of big announcement tomorrow. Something about a Hall of something? Ah, it’s probably nothing. Anyway, Jeff and I will be here at 9 pm ET to cram as much baseball as possible into your ever-waiting gobs. So pop some questions into the queue and we’ll see you at 9! |
| 9:02 |
: Two minutes guys.
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| 9:03 |
: OK, let’s light this candle!
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| 9:03 |
Who is the best keeper for 2014 season? Josh Donaldson, Trevor Rosenthal, Patrick Corbin or Kris Medlen? |
| 9:04 |
: For strictly 2014, I will say Donaldson. Long-term I like Rosenthal, especially if he finds his way back to the starting rotation.
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| 9:04 |
: Donaldson, I always like taking the hitter, but it is a tough call.
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Last week, Grant Brisbee made the very salient point that the Atlanta Braves are essentially akin to a small-market team these days. Since the ballclub has stacked their team with homegrown talent, this has not been a glaring problem in years past, but this offseason we have seen them lose both Brian McCann and Tim Hudson. Which was bad, in a sense — the team has replacements at the ready, even if they might not be as good.
The real problem though — and it is no doubt a good problem — will come two-to-three years down the road. Justin Upton, Jason Heyward and Kris Medlen are set to become free agents following the 2015 season, and the next season, Freddie Freeman and Craig Kimbrel (and Brandon Beachy) are also due to become free agents. It’s pretty unlikely that the ballclub will be able to keep all five (or six, if you count Beachy). So, who should they keep?
Read the rest of this entry »
The Hall of Fame announces its results tomorrow, and the next few days will be filled with voters publishing their ballots online, giving you ample opportunity to shake your head in wonder at the thought process of some voters. But, instead of getting frustrated by decisions made by other people we have no influence over, I’d like to do something else while waiting for Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and maybe even Frank Thomas to be acknowledged as all time greats. So, today, let’s update a post I did a few years ago, and look at which players currently active are going to eventually end up in Cooperstown.
Before I started picking names, though, I was curious as to what the historical precedent was for active Hall of Famers in any given season. I noted a few weeks ago that, historically, between 1-2% of all players have been inducted in the Hall of Fame, but because the best players have long careers and end up crossing over eras, it would make sense that there are more than 8-15 Hall of Famers playing in any given season. So, with assistance from Baseball-Reference’s Play Index, I pulled the number of players in every season of baseball history who were eventually elected to the Hall of Fame.
I won’t reproduce the whole list here, since it covers 134 seasons even after you exclude the nine recent years in which no one has yet to be elected, but I will note that the most Hall of Famers ever in one season is 53, back in 1928-1929-1930. There were 52 in 1926, 1927, and 1932. In fact, there are only 15 seasons in baseball history where there were 40 or more active Hall of Famers in that season, and those 15 years are every season from 1923 to 1937. Here are those 15 seasons, with rank being their position on the all time leaderboard for seasons with most Hall of Famers active.
| 9:04 |
: Let’s do this thing. Less late than last week!
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| 9:04 |
: This looks like it might be my last chat with CiL classic 🙁 I’m afraid of sweeping change
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| 9:04 |
: Or even minor, barely-noticeable change. To be honest I haven’t bothered to investigate
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| 9:05 |
ruh roh….what changes are in store w/ CiL? |
| 9:05 |
: I don’t know. The screencaps make it look like big ones. Could be little ones but I like the current model! The classic model! Keep CiL Classic!
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| 9:05 |
Do you know when ZIPS projections will start appearing on player pages? |
For five years now, Bronson Arroyo has been better than his peripherals. Since 2009, only three pitchers have a bigger gap between their fielding independent numbers and their ERA, and those three didn’t come close to pitching as many innings. It’s tempting to say the free agent 36-year-old has figured something out… but what has he figured out, exactly? How has he become more than the sum of his parts? It has to be more than a whimsical leg kick.
Let’s use some basic peripherals to find comparable pitchers. His fastball struggles to break 90 mph, he doesn’t strike many out, and he doesn’t have great worm-burning stuff — but the control has been elite. Here are a few other pitchers that fit that sort of mold.
Read the rest of this entry »
If Stephen Drew were a better player, he’d be in greater demand. I guess you could say that’s the main problem with the free agent’s current market. The better a player is, the more that player is wanted, and I can’t believe this is a sentence I’m writing on FanGraphs. It’s the same with literally everyone. If any given player were better, he’d be in more demand and/or he’d be guaranteed more money. Remember, every player has room for improvement, and baseball is such an easy game! There’s no excuse for not being perfect, really.
Drew’s good, though. Good enough to be wanted by someone. He’s in his 30s, but he’s not old, and he’s a proven, everyday shortstop. He seems to be over his grisly ankle injury, and he was worth 3.4 wins for a World Series champion during a season in which he missed a few weeks. He can hit a little, he can field,and he plays up the middle. Given no other information, you’d figure that sort of player would be pretty appealing. Yet what we observe is that Drew’s market hardly exists. We can never be sure of the inside reality — and we don’t know how this is going to turn out — but for now, it looks more like Drew’s in pursuit of a team, rather than a team is in pursuit of Drew.
Ben and Sam discuss the remaining big-name free agents and talk about which might be best served by one-year deals.
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