Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Kansas City Royals.

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 Royals 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 / Chicago NL / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York NL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto.

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If you had told me at the start of this week that Logan Forsythe was going to headline a seven-player trade, I’d have said that you just must be bored because nothing has been going on. After all, how often do seven-player trades happen? I mean, that’s just crazy talk. That it did actually happen, and that the headliner has compiled a grand total of 1.7 WAR is cool, in an odd sort of way. The trade is also rare in the sense that it both fills distinct needs for both clubs, but also is a bit of a challenge trade.

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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 Toronto Blue Jays. 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 NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay.

Batters
From their top-five position players (Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Brett Lawrie, Colby Rasmus, and Jose Reyes) the Blue Jays are projected to extract 16.4 wins, according to ZiPS. A convenient number, that, for the sake of constructing an Intriguing Narrative, on account of it’s precisely the number of wins produced by all Toronto field players in 2013. If the club can manage to surround their five best hitters with not-worse-than-replacement-level players, the reasoning goes, then they’ll be at least as valuable as last year.

General manager Alex Anthopoulos et al. do appear to have taken steps towards this end. J.P. Arencibia and Emilio Bonifacio, for example, were among the club’s most grievous offenders last year, combining for a negative win. And while, owing to regression, neither would likely be expected to perform so badly in 2014, neither will have the chance, it appears, as they’re now employed by Texas and Kansas City, respectively. Second base remains an issue, however: ZiPS projects Ryan Goins* and Maicer Izturis for a collective 0.5 WAR in over 900 plate appearances.

*Note: the author accidentally credited Goins with a 2 WAR in the depth chart he tweeted yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon. Apologies.

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The Braves are going to arbitration with Jason Heyward over $300 thousand dollars. It’s a wonderful sentence, full of so many words that could set you off in a million different directions. And so I followed those strings, talking to as many people involved in arbitration as I could. Many of those directions did lead me to denigrations of arbitration, and of the file-to-trial arbitration policy that the Braves employ. There’s another side to that sort of analysis though. Arbitration is not horrid. File-to-trial policies have their use. This is not all the Braves’ fault.

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Now that Masahiro Tanaka has agreed to terms with the New York Yankees, it appears quite likely that offseason player movement will finally be allowed to resume. In fact, the Rays and Padres kicked off the post-Tanaka era yesterday with a pretty interesting transaction of their own. Seemingly next on the docket would be negotiations for the consensus next three best starting pitchers on the market — Matt Garza, Ubaldo Jimenez, and Ervin Santana. Let’s take a look at those three, and most specifically their 2013 batted-ball profiles, to determine the talent gap among them, and assess the level of investment of which each is worthy. Read the rest of this entry »

Now kids, I’m not a user of the Twitter, but I did follow a link to it in one of Eno’s articles last week, whereupon I came across an interesting question posed in a tweet by one @b_g_h: “Are hitters with low BB% also more volatile [because] of BABIP variance?”  There are different ways to address the question statistically, but it seemed to me that with an altered version of my pitching correlation tool, one could provide insight into issues like this, at least regarding pitchers.  A hitting version is waiting in the wings, don’t worry.  So, what I bring to you today is an interactive and downloadable spreadsheet that allows you not only to analyze the relationship between any two pitching statistics, but also to filter your data by any three statistics of your choosing. Read the rest of this entry »

Like many minor league/prospect columnists, I try to see as much live baseball and as many minor league players as I can. Typically, I catch four or five games a week during the minor league season. It can be a bit of a grind at times, but I keep at it for two reasons: First, I want to be able to have the best and most far-reaching coverage I can, and second, because I’m usually having an awesome time doing it.

Of course, some games are more fun to attend from a scouting perspective than others. It’s a lot more exciting to take in the raw power of Joey Gallo, the blinding speed of Terrance Gore, the sweet swing of Francisco Lindor, or the arm strength of Eddie Butler than it is to watch 23-year-old Appalachian League middle relievers throw 84-mph fastballs to 23-year-old Appalachian League utility players. As such, I try to optimize my time and attend games that have the best likelihood of featuring interesting prospects, especially the starting pitchers. Typically, this decision is informed by some combination of the statistics, draft/prospect status, and reported tools/stuff of the players in question–in a way, I’m using a crude version of the same ideas behind our own Carson Cistulli’s NERD scores.

It’s a tremendous feeling to see a prospect in person and have them live up to what their statistics and reputation suggest they should look like. I heard all year about Atlanta’s Mauricio Cabrera and his triple-digit heat, so it was great to see him in person and watch a radar gun read “100” when I finally managed to catch one of his starts in August. Likewise, it’s disappointing to see a player underperform expectations. However, the most amazing experiences I have at games come when a player who’s way off the radar–uninteresting numbers and no scouting buzz–suddenly commands the most rapt attention. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen, and today I want to share one of my experiences with the phenomenon and tie it in with some of our beliefs about the way players–in particular, relief pitchers–ascend to MLB relevance.

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On the one hand, I’d feel like an unoriginal hack for going over Grady Sizemore’s career history. It is, after all, familiar to just about everyone — or at least everyone reading this website. He’s kind of like an outfield version of Mark Prior or Rich Harden: unbelievable talent, unbelievable fragility. He was amazing in 2008. But Franklin Gutierrez was amazing in 2009. Sizemore’s just another guy who hasn’t been able to stay on the field, and he’s well past the point of people thinking it might be bad luck.

On the other hand, over the past couple years it’s not like Sizemore’s provided anything to write about. Since the start of 2012, Sizemore has as many big-league plate appearances as Barry Bonds and Eddie Collins. And so if you’ll indulge me, I think it’s worth the very briefest of refresher courses.

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Three years ago, Chris Dwyer was being billed as part of a pitching renaissance in Kansas City. Along with fellow southpaws Danny Duffy, John Lamb and Mike Montgomery, he was going to comprise a formidable rotation of homegrown arms. The Royals’ had the top-ranked farm system in the game, and pitching was a big reason why. As KC fans know all too well, things haven’t exactly worked out as planned.

That doesn’t mean Dwyer is a lost cause. Health issues helped wreck his 2012 campaign — Dwyer lost weight and several mph off his fastball due to a thyroid condition — but he came back strong in 2013. The 25-year-old logged a 3.55 ERA in 28 starts at Omaha, and capped off his minor league season by pitching seven scoreless innings in the Triple-A championship game. He made his big-league debut in late September, tossing three scoreless innings over a pair of relief outings.

Dwyer still has command issues — he walked 4.1 batters per nine innings in Omaha — but the talent that once put him on Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects list is reemerging. His ranking may have plummeted, but his chances of contributing to the Royals pitching staff are very much alive. Read the rest of this entry »