Archive for July, 2014

Jon Lester and the A’s Fascinating Big Bet On 2014

Well, this was probably not what we thought a Jon Lester trade was going to look like. After speculating about which team would unload their farm system for a rental, the answer is none of them; instead, the A’s used Yoenis Cespedes to land the Red Sox ace, and picked up Jonny Gomes as a replacement for the right-handed slugger they just traded away. This is a fascinating deal from a lot of angles, but let’s focus on the A’s side of things for a second.

Very clearly, the A’s believe that they can win the World Series this year, and are aligning their roster to give themselves the best chance to do that. And this is probably the perfect storm for the a team in the A’s position to go for it; the Red Sox are bad, the Yankees are mediocre, the Phillies are awful, and the Cubs and Mets are still rebuilding. There is no $200 million behemoth standing in the A’s way this year, at least not unless the Dodgers get to the World Series, and it isn’t clear that the Dodgers are better than the A’s anyway. The Angels and Tigers are still around, but the Angels might have to play their way in through the Wild Card game, and the Tigers pitching staff looks a little less fearsome than it has in past years.

The A’s are in go-for-it mode not just because of their own roster this year, but because this is the kind of year in which it makes sense for a small-market team to push their chips and try to take advantage of the league’s parity. It’s why Jeff wrote that Lester to Pittsburgh would make sense. The door is open for a low-revenue team to have a parade this winter, and the A’s are responding to that opportunity by trying to kick the door in.

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Prospect Watch: Deadline Acquisitions

Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

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James Ramsey, OF, Cleveland Indians (Profile)
Level: Triple-A Age: 24.7   Top-15: 7th   Top-100: N/A
Line: (Double-A, Cardinals) 11.0% BB%, 23.5% SO%, ..300/.389/.527 (161 wRC+)

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NERD Game Scores for Thursday, July 31, 2014

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

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Most Highly Rated Game
Atlanta at Los Angeles NL | 22:10 ET
Julio Teheran (149.1 IP, 96 xFIP-, 2.4 WAR) faces Clayton Kershaw (112.1 IP, 51 xFIP-, 4.1 WAR). The latter continues to have recorded the best single-season park-adjusted xFIP among all qualifiers since 2002 — i.e. the first year for which that kind of metric is available. Here’s who’s second: the 2002 version of Curt Schilling (52 xFIP-). And here’s who’s third: the 2002 version of Randy Johnson (57 xFIP-).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Radio.

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The Other Thing about Aroldis Chapman

I understand the lot of you are preoccupied with thinking about the imminent trade deadline. I understand some might think I write about Aroldis Chapman too much. But Chapman is maybe the funnest pitcher in baseball, so I wanted to take a moment to share a fun fact that has to do with what people don’t talk about when they talk about Chapman and his unparalleled skills. You can go right back to thinking about the deadline in a few.

The Chapman story, of course, is about his fastball, of course. People who hardly know anything about baseball know that Chapman throws the baseball faster than anybody else. It’s the kind of fact that appeals to both die-hards and casual come-and-go sorts, and the heater makes every Chapman appearance a spectacle. After every pitch he throws, all eyes in the ballpark turn toward the radar-gun display. There’s injury concern when Chapman throws a heater slower than his body temperature. Chapman is crazy specifically because people can’t imagine squaring up a fastball at 100+ miles per hour. You think of Chapman and you think of whiffs, because the fastball seems downright unhittable.

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The New And Improved Jon Lester

As the grains in the hourglass slip away toward the trading deadline, Jon Lester has become the most focused-upon target of buyers. As recently as a month ago, this didn’t seem to be a particularly likely scenario, but the surge of the Tampa Bay Rays and the plunge of the Boston Red Sox has caused the wheel to spin from David Price to Lester. While Lester has been exceptional this season, his 2013 performance would be characterized as no better than solid, and he was one of the game’s biggest disappointments in 2012. What has happened to bring Lester from there to here, and is his current form sustainable going forward? Read the rest of this entry »


Effectively Wild Episode 504: Lester, Lackey, and the Red Sox as Sellers

Ben and Sam discuss Boston’s incentives to consider trading two of their top starters on trade deadline day.


Job Posting: Pirates Quantitative Analyst

Quantitative Analyst

Reports to: Director of Baseball Systems Development

Location: Bradenton Florida

Job Summary
This position will focus on creating and analyzing baseball data sets through the use of advanced statistical analysis with the tasks of creating, implementing, and maintaining predictive models to aid in the decision making process. The position will report to the Director of Baseball Systems Development and act as a resource to other staff on the proper use and implementation of statistical techniques and their suitability for baseball analysis.

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The Cardinals Will be Good for Justin Masterson

For some time, it’s been evident that the Cardinals could use some help in the starting rotation. They matched up well for all the big names, with the only question concerning the organization’s willingness to part with a major prospect. Word is, the Cardinals might still part with a major prospect for a big name, but midday Wednesday the Cardinals zigged and dealt for a guy who was good a year ago, a guy with a 5+ ERA.

Justin Masterson, who’s still on the disabled list, is going to St. Louis, and going to Cleveland is prospect James Ramsey. The Indians aren’t giving up, but they no longer had room for Masterson, and they turned him into actual value. Meanwhile, the Cardinals have at least addressed a short-term hole, improving without dealing from the top of the farm. At best, Masterson is an impact splash. At least, even the somewhat troubled version is a better fit with the Cardinals than with the Indians.

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Neil Weinberg FanGraphs Q&A – 7/30/2014

2:34
Neil Weinberg: Hey everyone, let me remind you of the guidelines.

My job here is primarily to serve as something of a Site Educator. This means that I’m responsible for providing resources to readers about our data, advanced metrics, and how to make use of the features available at the site.

My Twitter handle is @NeilWeinberg44 and if you want to get in touch about these kinds of questions at times other than 3pm on Wednesdays, that’s where to find me. It’s my job, so take advantage of it.

With that said, I will prioritize “how does this work?” and “what does this mean?” type questions during the chats, but feel free to ask regular questions about anything as well. Although if you’re here for fantasy advice or prospect talk, I’m probably less helpful than some of our writers. Deadline questions welcome too.

Think that’s it, queue is open and we’ll start at 3pm!

2:36
Neil Weinberg: Also, two points of business: 1) There is a gentleman fixing my car’s windshield, so at some point I will disappear in order to pay him. 2) I injured by right index finger over the weekend so my typing is a tad slower than usual. I’ll make up for both by chatting for a long time.

3:00
Comment From Chris
That’s what you get for parking behind Fenway.

3:00
Comment From Jobber
Did you injure your right finger in the same travisty that harmed your windshield?

3:00
Neil Weinberg: I now realize how alarming those two facts were side by side.

3:01
Neil Weinberg: And no, they were not the same incident. Burned my finger in a small grease fire, windshield was hit by a rock. Windshield is fixed…finger less so. Let’s chat!

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The Fringe Five: Baseball’s Most Compelling Fringe Prospects

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced last April by the present author, wherein that same ridiculous author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own heart to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above both (a) absent from all of three notable preseason top-100 prospect lists* and also (b) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on the midseason prospect lists produced by those same notable sources or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

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