Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the Arizona Fall League attendees have been seen enough that the scouting community has a well developed opinion on each player before they arrive in the desert. Even that year’s draftees (such as Nick Howard and Trea Turner this year), while new on the pro scene, were heavily-scouted, top-of-their-class players who many have seen at least a time or two and have some sort of background with. This year saw three reasonably high-profile Cuban prospects get Fall League reps in Raisel Iglesias, Rusney Castillo and Daniel Carbonell who had scarcely been seen on domestic soil by scouts.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox had too many hitters before they signed both Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez to lucrative contracts, and now, they have perhaps the deepest line-up in all of baseball. But they still don’t have any pitching, and they simply don’t have enough spots in the line-up to spread around between their talented hitters. Rarely has a team’s need to make a trade (or two) been so obvious.

However, finding a natural trade partner for Boston’s needs is a little tricky. Their most obvious trade chip, Yoenis Cespedes, has the right-handed power that a number of teams seek, but because he’s only under contract for one more season, the teams that will be most interested in acquiring his services are teams that are trying to win in 2015. And teams that are trying to win next year are unlikely to part with the kind of pitching that the Red Sox covet; after all, if you’re trying to win next year, you probably want to hang on to your frontline pitching, since you’ll need it yourself.

There is one contender who has signaled a willingness to move a frontline starting pitcher: the Washington Nationals. With both Jordan Zimmermann and Doug Fister set for free agency after next season — as well as shortstop Ian Desmond, center fielder Denard Span, and relief ace Tyler Clippard — the Nationals are in a position where it might make sense for them to degrade their 2015 team slightly in order to make sure they don’t experience too steep off of a drop-off after next season. Zimmermann, in particular, would likely return a significant trade package, given his recent excellence and reasonable price tag.

But the Nationals simply don’t have any need for Yoenis Cespedes, or really many of the other pieces Boston might use to try and land an ace. Their outfield is stacked as it is, and their only real glaring hole is in the middle infield, where they need a second baseman for 2015 and likely a shortstop for 2016, after Desmond hits free agency. The Red Sox aren’t trading Xander Bogaerts or Mookie Betts for a rent-a-pitcher, however, and so the Nationals don’t really seem to match up with the Red Sox that well.

Perhaps there’s a way to make a deal work between the two teams, however, if we can identify a third team that covets the right-handed power the Red Sox have for sale, and has an extra talented middle infielder to send to the nation’s capital. Enter the Seattle Mariners.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Whether or not the deal for Pablo Sandoval was a good deal, the Giants are now faced with the unenviable task of finding a replacement in a bad market for third basemen. The good news is that they probably have close to $100 million they can spend on finding a solution. What might be their best way forward?

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam end the holiday week with listener emails about Red Sox spending, the least similar teams, clubs doubling down on position players, and more.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Lately, Tony has written some pieces touching on the Fenway park factors. Though he’s provided detail, you already had some understanding of how the park plays. The Green Monster is unlike pretty much anything else in the game today, and it changes what happens to balls in play. To right field, and to center field, Fenway is more or less fair, if not a wee bit pitcher-friendly in places. To left field, though, and especially to left-center, balls that would be outs elsewhere clang off the Monster for singles or doubles. Every so often, the Monster will claim a would-be dinger, but that’s little consolation to pitchers; if they give up a ball headed to left, it’s probably putting a guy on base, and maybe in scoring position.

There’s nothing subtle about the Green Monster. You can’t miss it. It’s right there, casting a shadow over everything, and what it does makes absolute sense. Of course it leads to more singles. Of course it leads to more doubles. Of course it makes that part of Fenway hitter-friendly. Pitchers know all about it when they go to work, so I got to wondering, does that in any way change the way the pitchers pitch? I’m going to go ahead and spoil the rest of this article: yes. You already know how. The remainder is just going to confirm your suspicions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you heard? The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2015 is now available for sale. You can check out the table of contents and read some excerpts from the book. When you finish that you can purchase it from our independent publishing platform, Createspace, in print form, or from Amazon in print or Kindle form.

But wait, there’s more! Because we’re giving folk, and since it’s the beginning of the holiday season and all, we want to give you a chance to win yourself a free copy of the book. So today and tomorrow (and yesterday), we’ll be running a trivia contest based on one of the articles in the book. The first person to post the correct answer in the comments will win a free physical copy of the book (sorry, no free Kindle version). It’s just that simple!

Today’s question comes to us from Chris St. John’s article entitled “Not All Fly Balls Are Created Equal.” In it, Chris developed a metric for the expected run value (xRV) of fly balls. A bit of explanation:

For example, say a ball is hit 400 feet to straight center and hangs in the air for 5.3 seconds. Of the balls hit with this trajectory and using the ranges given above, there were one error, 46 fly outs, 16 doubles, nine triples and 12 home runs. Using the run value for each, the expected run value (xRV) for this trajectory is 0.72.

Chris breaks down the trends, as well as the leaders and laggards for average xRV from 2012-2014. We’ll focus on the latter today. The question before you today then, dear reader, is this:

Can you name three of the bottom five players in average xRV from 2012 through 2014?

Keep in mind that you’re looking for players who have played with some regularity.

Good luck!

Reid Nichols is in charge of a Brewers system heavy on youth. The majority of Milwaukee’s top-rated prospects aren’t yet old enough to drink. Their ceilings are high, but they face long climbs to Miller Park.

Nichols has been the organization’s Director of Player Development – his official title includes Special Assistant to the GM – since 2002. His 13 years have featured numerous success stories, with the likes of Ryan Braun, Khris Davis, Yovani Gallardo and Jonathan Lucroy progressing through the minor-league ranks. As Brewers’ fans are well aware, other highly-regarded prospects have failed to meet expectations.

A big-league outfielder from 1980-1987, Nichols was the farm director – and for one year the first base coach – for the Texas Rangers before coming to Milwaukee.

——

Nichols on interdepartmental cohesion: “From my end it’s kind of been the same with the player development side. Our basic philosophy is to help make that bridge from the minor leagues to the major leagues as smooth as possible. Baseball is baseball. Nobody’s trying to recreate the game.

“I’m in the draft room with the projections of both of our rookie teams. I discuss that with our scouting director and the cross checkers, so they know who’s playing where. The first five to eight rounds, they pick the best player available. I stay out of that – they spend months working on their draft board – but I do tell them what we have and who is going to play. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox came into the winter with a clear need for starting pitching, and a lot of money to spend. Yesterday, they spent a big chunk of that money, adding $41 million in AAV to their payrolls for the next four or five years. And yet, today, they still have the same glaring need for starting pitching. Evaluating the wisdom of the Red Sox spending spree is an interesting challenge, because unlike most free agent signings, these feel like half of the transaction.

We can still evaluate the signings of Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez based on the production the Red Sox should expect going forward and the money that was surrendered to acquire that future production, but we don’t really know the whole picture here. The signings of two of the winter’s premier free agent hitters very likely mean that Yoenis Cespedes is getting traded, and I think Mike Napoli might be on his way out of town too. What the team gets back in trade, and how they choose to reallocate money that could be saved through those trades, will affect what else the Red Sox can choose to do this winter. They know they need pitching, and it seems essentially impossible that they won’t make further moves to address that need; moves that were made possible by these signings.

So without those pieces of information in place, I’m hesitant to draw any strong conclusions about the new contracts given to Sandoval or Ramirez. If the team trades Cespedes and Napoli for young arms, then spends the $25 million in savings on Max Scherzer, then these moves start to more clearly address the team’s need for a frontline starter. But we don’t know if they’re going to do that. We don’t know what they’re going to do, so we can’t be too strongly convicted about whether these signings were a wise use of resources.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »