Let’s acknowledge that we can’t quite figure out Ervin Santana or Ubaldo Jimenez. I’ve been trying, off and on, for months. Jimenez is a prize of the free-agent market. As recently as 2012 he was below replacement level. Santana is another prize of the free-agent market. As recently as 2012 he was also below replacement level. These guys were good, then bad, then good, and they stand as fine examples of how domestic veterans aren’t always more predictable than international free agents or minor leaguers. For multiple reasons, it’s not a complete shock that neither of them has signed yet.

But let’s just simplify things with an assumption: let’s assume Santana and Jimenez will be pretty good in 2014. Not aces, but fine starters. I think it’s safe to say that’s how they’re perceived by the market, and it’s not like anyone’s ignoring them because they’re bad. It’s just a matter of finding the right price tags, and it shouldn’t be much longer before we know where they’re both going. They’re sought after, and they represent immediate upgrades. So there’s an important question: who would they upgrade the most?

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Oliver Perez has had a pretty fascinating career path, and while I hardly need to bring you through his entire history, it’d be remiss to start an article about him without at least touching on his backstory briefly. Drafted by the Padres, he was shipped to Pittsburgh in the Brian Giles trade, where he put up one shining age-22 season — 4.4 WAR, 239 strikeouts in 2004 — before posting an ERA north of 5.00 in four of the next six seasons.  Most of that time was spent with the Mets, where he was so awful (other than a solid 2007) that they cut him just before camp ended in 2011, despite still owing him $12 million for the season. Perez spent some time in the minors for Washington that year, never appearing in the bigs, and considering how long it had been since that wonderful 2004, it wasn’t hard to think of his career as being over.

Except, it wasn’t. Perez resurfaced as a reliever in Seattle in 2012 and was good enough that it shocked our resident Mariners fans into writing posts titled “Oliver Perez Is Good Now. Seriously.” (Cameron, 2012) and “Oliver Perez. Pitcher You Want.” (Sullivan, 2013). His reputation was so terrible that the mere fact that he was in the bigs and adding any kind of value was seen as a jaw-dropping event. Read the rest of this entry »

I think it’s safe to say Stephen Drew’s in a pretty weird position. He’s a free agent, and he’s 30, so he’s not super old. He spent last year playing with the eventual MLB champion. By our numbers he was worth 3.4 wins, and he was worth 3.4 wins in 124 games, as a team’s regular shortstop. It’s easy to make a case that Drew ought to be highly desirable, but here he is, available at the end of January, and no one seems to want to give him more than two years. If reports are to be believed, Drew’s got himself a pretty weak market.

And more than that, increasingly there are rumors that Drew would be willing to play other positions. That is, Drew would be willing to not play a premium up-the-middle position, to make himself more marketable. According to Peter Gammons, a year ago Drew wasn’t quite so flexible. This could be interpreted as a sign of desperation, as teams just aren’t really looking for shortstops anymore. Desperation or not, if the rumors are true, Drew starts to look a little different. But what could be expected if Drew were to shift to second or third base?

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I was on vacation last week, so in my absence, Jeff Sullivan handled the write-ups relating to Masahiro Tanaka signing with the Yankees. When the news broke on Wednesday, he wrote a couple of posts about it, and in typical Jeff Sullivan fashion, the second post was explicitly “not an evaluation of the Masahiro Tanaka contract.” Jeff’s takes are smart and nuanced, and you should read them, but I also think the Tanaka contract is worth an evaluation, especially because it is so different from most free agent contracts.

In general, most free agent deals are not that difficult to evaluate. The majority of free agents are already on the downside of their career, so there’s a tension in the negotiations between the player trying to get as many years as possible and the team trying to limit their obligations to an aging player who is expected to be get worse in every subsequent season. In recent years, it seems that negotiations have mostly shifted away from bidding in annual average value into almost entirely bidding on years, where the signing team is the one who guarantees one year more than the rest of the bidders. Negotiations for free agents can be pretty accurately described as a push and pull between teams and players over the number of guaranteed years the player is going to receive, with most everything else being secondary to that agreement.

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Tom Glavine is going into the Hall of Fame for a reason. The long-time Atlanta Braves lefthander was a great pitcher. He won over 300 games and was an All-Star 10 times. A pair of Cy Young awards adorn his mantle.

Paradoxically, some of the numbers Glavine put up over his 22 seasons are atypical of the elite. One reason is that his stuff was anything but electric. Glavine didn’t overpower hitters. Not that he needed to. A master of nuance, he consistently induced outs with impeccable command.

Glavine talked about the secrets to his success, including the subtle adjustments he made to his approach, late last week. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Toronto.

Batters
It’s very possible that the depth-chart graphic below doesn’t accurately represent how certain players will be deployed by manager Rick Renteria in 2014. Because even maybe Rick Renteria doesn’t know how he’ll deploy those players, is mostly why.

Of particular interest are the third-base and also center-/right-field positions. In the case of the former, Luis Valbuena appears to have received the most enthusiastic projection from ZiPS: 1.9 WAR in just 481 plate appearances. Pairing him with the right-handed-batting Donnie Murphy might bear some metaphorical fruit, according to the forecasts here. That said, the presence of both Mike Olt and Christian Villanueva — two promising young players, either of whom could benefit from major-league plate appearances — also complicates matters.

In the outfield, a combination of Justin Ruggiano, Nate Schierholtz, and Ryan Sweeney are all available for some combination of center and right field. Ruggiano’s projection (1.7 WAR in 433 PA) is the most encouraging; however, any of three, regardless of handedness or platoon ability, might be superior to expected left-field starter Junior Lake.

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Ben and Sam discuss Jon Lester and whether the Rays and Red Sox have figured out how to make players reluctant to leave.

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The FanGraphs community exists in an echo chamber. As far as echo chambers go, it’s not a bad one. We expect baseball teams to (mostly) make objective, rational decisions. But we do have our own pre-conceived ideas about what makes a decision objectively rational. We also have a lot of contrarians in our midst, which prevents an echo chamber from becoming stodgy and outdated. Bill James is a noted contrarian as are many other sabermetricians. That basic instinct – it’s almost an assumption that conventional thinking is wrong – has helped our little closet industry grow to one that front office personnel read on a regular basis.

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Look, I’m not one of those people who thinks that baseball season starts with pitchers and catchers reporting. There’s a whole lot of time between that date and the date at which meaningful things start to happen. But I’ll grant that we consume baseball differently upon pitchers and catchers, that it means the start of daily baseball-y updates, and the first team’s pitchers and catchers report on February 6. That’s less than two weeks away. It’s sneaked up on us, because even now there’s a lot left to happen in the offseason. We just all had to wait for Masahiro Tanaka to pick a damned hat.

The offseason’s most important decision left is the Rays’ decision to either trade or keep David Price. I don’t really even have to think about that to assert it with confidence — such a trade would make a good Rays team worse, and it would presumably make another contender better. There’d be a significant total change in 2014 playoff odds. But there’s another big decision left, and it’s bigger than Ervin Santana and Ubaldo Jimenez making up their minds. It’s a decision that affects the Pirates, and the Pirates only.

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