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The Yankees haven’t had a very good season. They’re 81-75, and are likely going to finish 10+ games out of first place for the second year in a row; the first time that has happened since 1992. Fun piece of trivia unrelated to the rest of this post: their manager in 1992 was Buck Showalter, whose team is the reason they’re so far out of first place this year.

But this isn’t a post about Buck Showalter, or even about the Yankees lousy season. This is a post about the thing the Yankees did this year that went really well. At the trade deadline, they weren’t so close to the race that they could justify making big moves to add star players, but they’re also the Yankees, so they weren’t going to punt the season in July. This left them in the position of wanting to upgrade their roster without borrowing significantly from their future to do so, which meant that they had to go dumpster diving. Or, maybe phrased more politely, they had to target buy-low players in the midst of down years and hope that their early struggles weren’t predictive of future performance.

This low-cost upgrade plan began in earnest on July 6th, when the acquired Brandon McCarthy from the D’Backs. On July 22nd, they got Chase Headley from the Padres. On July 24th, they bought Chris Capuano from the Rockies. On July 31st, they acquired Martin Prado from the D’Backs, Stephen Drew from the Red Sox, and claimed Esmil Rogers off waivers from the Blue Jays. And then on August 28th, they signed Chris Young after the Mets cut him loose.

Over the course of a couple of months, they brought in eight new players, and the total cost was a couple of non-elite prospects and some cash. How has it worked out?

Here are the players PA/IP totals and WAR totals for their seasons before joining NYY, and then after. Since we’re focusing heavily on players who were regression candidates, we’ll use RA9-WAR instead of FIP-WAR, since a high runs allowed total is what allowed these pitchers to be available in the first place.

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We’re in the pennant race home stretch, when thoughts of hardcore and casual baseball fans alike turn to the individual and team hardware that will be presented in the coming weeks. Memories will be made, and the annual class of heroes and goats will be added to the game’s record. This year, in addition to the “official” MLB awards that will be handed out to the game’s best, Fangraphs is getting into the act, with its first annual Player of the Year Award. I am privileged to be one of the 11 voters, and rest assured, I will take my vote quite seriously. One player who is likely to fill a spot on my Top Ten is Giancarlo Stanton – a player who hasn’t had a single at bat since he was hit in the face by a Mike Fiers pitch on September 11. How should this and other factors, such as the offensive context of Marlins Park, affect the thought processes of award voters? Read the rest of this entry »

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Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

I wrote a four-part series on the hit tool as an entirely-too-long breakdown of the things I look for when I scout a hitter, but I knew there would be things I forgot to mention.  The one thing I forgot to bring up is something I mentioned in the also-entirely-too-long draft rankings; the different process I use to grade the current hit tool for amateur players.  Quoting from those draft rankings:

The present hit grades for Rodgers and for all amateur players going forward is a peer grade…rather than just putting blanket 20s on everyone’s present hit tool. A peer grade means how the player performs currently in games relative to his peers: players the same age and general draft status or skill level. Some teams started using this system to avoid over-projecting a raw hitter; some use the rule that you can’t project over 10 points above the peer grade for the future grade.  This helps you avoid saying players that can’t really hit now will become standout big league hitters. Obviously, some will, but it’s not very common and it’s probably smart to not bet millions on the rare one that will.

I said I would explain more about this, but I think I said basically everything here.  All but maybe one or two hitters in each draft class will have present 20 hit grades, but the context and amount of evidence will vary greatly.  The peer hitting grade helps tie this all together because, for a player with a short track record, scouts will find themselves projecting only on hitting tools when there isn’t much performance to grade. Using this system, it helps remind you to consider performance, but still weighing it appropriately given the sample size, competition level, etc.  I’m sure I’ll talk more about this with more specific examples as the draft approaches and grading conundrums present themselves.

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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.

Most Highly Rated Game
Kansas City at Cleveland | 19:05 ET
Yordano Ventura (172.0 IP, 99 xFIP-, 2.7 WAR) faces Danny Salazar (105.1 IP, 90 xFIP-, 1.6 WAR). Were the members of Cleveland’s 40-man roster to choose collectively a song that might best encapsulate the spirit they must necessarily adopt as a group in their attempt to qualify for the playoffs despite limited odds of doing so, “Livin’ on a Prayer” from Bon Jovi’s 1986 album Slippery When Wet would represent a reasonable option. Which odds are lower, though, one might ask: Cleveland’s actual chances of qualifying for those playoffs, or the probability that tonight’s starter Danny Salazar, born four years later in Santo Domingo, is familiar at all with that song? In either case, it’s both (a) tough and (b) so tough.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

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When the Yankees traded for Michael Pineda, they didn’t know he’d need surgery on his shoulder labrum. Had they known that, they certainly wouldn’t have agreed to the move. See, that’s because labral tears are big deals, the sorts of things that can end careers before they really get started. Anyhow, Pineda underwent the operation, and on the other end, the Yankees weren’t sure what they’d be left with. They didn’t know what a post-op Michael Pineda might turn into. If 2014’s any indication, he’s turned into Michael Pineda, only even more aggressive than before. He’s turned into the kind of guy the Yankees are thrilled to have on their payroll.

This easily could’ve been a disaster of a season. In the very early going, Pineda had that humiliating incident with the pine tar. Shortly thereafter, he dealt with an injury that knocked him out for months. Between April 23 and August 3, Pineda didn’t pitch in an official game, and it seemed like the whole year could be a wash. But Pineda was able to move back to the Yankees quickly from there, and a dominant outing Monday night only underscored the fact that Pineda’s re-established himself as a building block for the present and for the future.

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Back in early June, I wrote about Pittsburgh’s impending recall of Gregory Polanco, with the viewpoint that while he would be a welcome upgrade over Travis Snider and Jose Tabata in right field, he wasn’t going to single-handedly save the Pirates’ season, since he wasn’t a pitcher.

Or as I put it at the time:

They were the worst in April. They were the worst in May. If you prefer RA9-WAR rather than FIP-based WAR, it’s 27th. If you like FIP, they’re 29th. ERA has them at 15th, which is something. You’d have to do some serious contorting to make the argument that the Pirates have anything other than a considerably below-average pitching staff.

Which was true! Even taking into account a much better June, the first-half Pirates pitching situation wasn’t much to be proud of, ranking either last or in the bottom third, depending on whether you like your WAR based on FIP or RA9. Though the offense, even with Polanco’s fade and Andrew McCutchen’s absence, has generally been outstanding, the pitching wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain, especially compared to how good they had been last season.

It wasn’t hard to see why, really. Francisco Liriano had taken a step back, and Gerrit Cole hadn’t taken the expected step forward. A.J. Burnett was gone, and Edinson Volquez wasn’t exactly matching Burnett’s 2013. Wandy Rodriguez had been a disaster. So had Jason Grilli. Jameson Taillon blew out his arm, taking a possible reinforcement out. The Pirates haven’t been in first place since April 8, and with the Brewers surging, the season was quickly fading. At one point in late June, they were one game over .500 and eight games out.

GM Neil Huntington’s solution to the pitching crisis was, let’s say, muted. Rodriguez was released in May, and reliever Bryan Morris was sent to the Marlins for a competitive balance pick on June 1. Grilli went to the Angels on June 27 for Ernesto Frieri; Grilli has excelled in Anaheim, while Frieri contributed 14 awful outings and was released three weeks ago. John Axford, who had lost his closing job in Cleveland, arrived in an August waiver trade. That’s it. Really.

There was no David Price, or Jon Lester, or Jeff Samardzija, or Jason Hammel, though calls existed in certain areas — including here, probably — that said the Pirates would be the perfect home for any of them. If there was to be improvement, it was going to have to be with what they had laying around.

Now, there’s less than a week left in the season. The Pirates have allowed six runs in their last seven games, have had one of the best run prevention units in baseball in the second half, and are all but certain to play the Giants in the wild card game next week. They still have an outside shot at unseating the Cardinals for the NL Central division title. This is better. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss the Braves’ decision to dismiss GM Frank Wren.

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Episode 486
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses Frank Wren’s departure from Atlanta and his (i.e. Cameron’s, not Frank Wren’s) hypothetical AL MVP ballot.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 39 min play time.)

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