By 5 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, if not sooner, we’ll know where Masahiro Tanaka is going to end up. For fans of the Cubs or Dodgers or Yankees or wherever it is he decides to spend the next five to seven years of his life, the reaction will be elation, wondering just how their shiny new toy will look slotted into their rotation for years to come. They’ll dream of pennants. They’ll marvel at his stat lines. They’ll do their best to ignore the assuredly absurd dollar amount it took to obtain him. (Update: Obviously written before word broke that the Yankees had agreed to terms with him.)

For everyone else, the reaction will simply be: Finally. Let’s get on with things already. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss Bobby Abreu, then answer listener emails about pushing PEDs, the best Barry Bonds stats, walk-up music, players becoming GMs, and more.

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Episode 416
Managing editor of FanGraphs and regular Monday guest Dave Cameron is on a pleasure vacation this week. Full-time employee Jeff Sullivan replaces him, adequately.

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 50 min play time.)

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Last week, FanGraphs CEO and founder David Appelman announced that the ballots for the 2014 FAN Projections are now available for the tender ministrations of this site’s readership. With a view to ensuring that all notable players are addressed sufficiently — and also to producing content while managing editor Dave Cameron is away this week on a pleasure vacation — the present author is highlighting certain players who are lacking in ballots.

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The lineage of closers can, in part, be traced back to Jerome Holtzman’s creation of the save statistic. Table 2-2.1 in The Book outlined how the use of pitchers in the ninth inning with no outs and none on has quadrupled in the past 30 years and doubled since the late 1980s. The other half of that puzzle is where exactly closers come from. Closers are rarely drafted for the role coming out of the amateur draft, with names such as Chad Cordero, Ryan Wagner, David Aardsma, Josh Fields, Huston Street, Chris Reed and Drew Storen being some recent exceptions.

The closer role is revered by commentators and fans for its importance in how teams win games. But where those closers come from remains mostly a mystery. What pitchers did while in the minor leagues, where they are drafted or where they are drafted from offers little clarity.

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Last week in this space, we attempted to quantify the impact of strikeout and walk rates on hitters’ offensive production. This time around, let’s do the same with starting pitcher performance, and then a dig a little deeper into pitchers’ batted-ball profiles in an attempt to assess the true-talent level suggested by the underlying data. Read the rest of this entry »

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For a team hoping to contend in the much vaunted AL East, the Baltimore Orioles have had a relatively uneventful offseason. However, uneventful does not mean that they’ve sat quietly like the Milwaukee Brewers (who have yet to sign a free agent to a major league contract). Baltimore has signed over half a dozen free agents, settled with a handful of arbitration eligible players, and even made a trade. Despite the apparent activity, the Orioles focus has been building depth at the bottom of the roster rather than adding to the core. Spring training will prove to be a crowded battle.

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Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Tampa Bay Rays.

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 Rays 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 / Toronto.

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