The Boston Red Sox, as you might have heard, currently have an outfield glut. There is ten pounds of outfield meat in their five pound bag. Something has to give, and that something is likely Yoenis Cespedes.

When the Sox acquired Cespedes from Oakland in the Jon Lester trade, it felt more like a rental than a long-term investment in the player. Cespedes’ unique contract allows him to become a free agent at the end of the 2015 season, so Boston put themselves in an enviable position. They received an established big leaguer in exchange for their walk-year ace and got an up-close and personal look at a potential big free agent bat.

Whether or not a look under Cespedes’ hood informed their decision to sign both Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, that’s the route they went down. Now Cespedes is trade bait, the precious “right-handed power” commodity in a marketplace clambering for those skills. He’s headed into his age-29 season, he’s owed $10.5 million this year, and there’s going to be a line around the block to bid for his services. Where might he land?

Read the rest of this entry »

Barry Bonds. You remember Barry Bonds. If he’s been on your mind recently, I’d bet it’s because Hall of Fame voting is again upon us. Bonds is arguably the greatest player in the history of the sport and this is his third year on the ballot. It’s arguably the greatest player in the history of the sport’s third year on the ballot, because arguably the greatest player in the history of the sport wasn’t elected to the Hall of Fame in either of his first two eligible years. But I digress. Despite your personal opinions on Bonds, including recent allegations of him glassing, his numbers are staggering. Search pretty much any offensive leaderboard where a high number is a good thing and Bonds will have some of the highest numbers.

I’m gonna switch gears here, and I’m gonna switch tremendously. We were just talking about Barry Bonds and now we’re going to talk about Jose Molina. Has that ever happened before? It will all make sense in a minute.

The Tampa Bay Rays released veteran catcher Jose Molina on Thursday, ending their three-year stint with the pitch-framing aficionado and perhaps putting a fork in his 15-year major league career. Molina has remained a major league player far longer than many imagined largely due in part to the skill named in the prior sentence; he’s never really been able to hit, but his ability behind the plate has always made up for his lack of ability at the plate. This year, however, his offense dropped to a new low and seemingly tipped the scales. Jeff already wrote about all this when it happened and there probably shouldn’t be two Jose Molina posts in a week, but Jose Molina’s offensive performance in 2014 — similar to Barry Bonds in the early 2000’s — was of historical significance. It was just the type of significance for which one would rather not be recognized. But we might not have another opportunity to talk about this, so it’s now or never. I hereby submit Jose Molina as: Bizarro Barry.
Read the rest of this entry »

No, this is not the title of a new children’s book, or a remake of Kukla, Fran and Ollie. I’m dating myself with that one. After a relatively quiet weekend baseball-wise, it’s the big story of Thanksgiving week. The Boston Red Sox made a huge splash, diving hard into the position-player end of the free-agent pool, remaking a significant portion of their offense in the process. Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval are now set to move into the most distinctive offensive environment in the game, one defined by the presence of a large man-made structure in left field: the Green Monster. What does the Monster hold in store for the two newest members of the Red Sox? Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 507
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 mostly just one Monday’s transactions, including Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval and Kyle Seager.

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 36 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

A few weeks ago, I found myself messing around on one of the projections pages, and I happened upon something I didn’t expect: the Mariners were projected for the highest team WAR in the American League. I wrote all about it for Fox, and while people made their jokes about the Mariners only looking like a contender after the end of the season, I thought it was neat to be able to establish a sort of pre-offseason baseline. What the numbers say right now isn’t meaningless. At the start of the offseason, the Mariners looked solid. How they look at the end depends on their own moves, and on the moves of the others.

So, about those others. Consider the Mariners knocked out of first place, if only until the next domino falls. The Red Sox have reached an agreement with Hanley Ramirez, and he will play some position. The Red Sox have also reached an agreement with Pablo Sandoval, and he will play third base. Go into the numbers now and you see a new best team in the American League. It’s only based on projections, and it’s not even December, but last year the Red Sox finished in last, and that doesn’t look real likely to repeat.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I heaped swift and mighty judgment upon the Contract Crowdsourcers of 2013 for their (your) contract proposals that were considerably more fiscally irresponsible than the contracts that were actually proposed to the players at hand. Between the injuries that befell some of the players mentioned yesterday — rendering their one-year contracts more or less entirely useless — to the career-worst years that befell the healthy, it was a veritable carnival of inefficiency, disappointment, and waste.

I told you the bad news first. But there is indeed good news! Here are five instances in which The Crowd’s proposed contracts are, I would argue, more beneficial to the team than the contracts that the teams actually agreed to. In three of the cases studied below, The Crowd’s noted tendency to underestimate both the years and average salary given to upper-tier free agents played to The Crowd’s advantage — when it comes to free agents who disappointed in 2014, no doubt The Real-Live GMs would much prefer to have a lot less guaranteed cash remaining on the books. In the other two cases, The Crowd bestowed modest multi-year deals upon players that were ultimately thrived on one-year deals — and who will be hunting for increased compensation this winter.

In the charts below, the columns cYRS, cAVG, and cTOT refer to the number of years, the amount of annual compensation, and the amount of total compensation that The Crowd gave to the players. The columns aYRS, aAVG, and aTOT list what the player actually, non-hypothetically received. The complete results of the 2013 Crowdsourcing can be found here.

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, tomorrow and Wednesday, 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 Dave Studeman’s piece on WPA entitled “The Story Stat, Circa 2014.” In it, he tells us how he defines the “biggest” game of the year. To wit:

When I say “biggest” game, I mean the one with the most in-game drama. When teams swap leads, or just threaten to take a lead, win probability moves up and down a lot. When one team takes an early lead and cruises to a win, win probability basically moves in just one direction.

So I use swings in win probability to quantify how much drama there was in each game. Specifically, I take all the swings in win probability and divide by the number of innings in the game. (If not for this last step, all extra-inning games would be ranked ahead of nine-inning games.)

So, with that in mind, dear reader, the question before you today is this:

Which two teams were involved in the “biggest” regular season game of 2014?

Good luck!

There’s kind of a talking point here, about how much the qualifying offer cost Adam LaRoche a few years ago. Following a career year in 2012, LaRoche was extended a qualifying offer, and a market never developed, so he re-signed with the Nationals for two years and $24 million. LaRoche now is older, and he’s coming off a similar offensive season with seemingly worse defense, and with no threat of compensation attached, he signed with the White Sox for two years and $25 million. Imagine what he might’ve been able to get before, were it not for the draft-pick concerns?

A few things. Firstly, yeah, markets get depressed by qualifying-offer extensions. That’s just a part of things right now. Secondly, inflation. The $24 million and $25 million aren’t directly comparable. Thirdly, LaRoche’s contract with the Nationals was actually quite reasonable. He projected for about 2.4 WAR the next year, so his contract projected to pay him about $5.6 million per win, near the average at the time. As I look right now, LaRoche is projected for 1.5 WAR in 2015. So this deal projects to pay him about $10 million per win, well above the assumed average. It’s not that LaRoche was necessarily underpaid before; it’s that now he seems likely to be overpaid.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you focus on his age and overall production so far, the reported near-$100 million that the Red Sox are handing Pablo Sandoval for his next five years are reasonable. He’s a young man with an established bat at a scarce position. But if you focus instead on some of the aspects of his production, things look a little different. They look a little scarier.

First, read Dave Cameron on why even a sixth year wouldn’t have been crazy, given the right salary numbers. Basically, as the number of years go up, average annual value goes down. The sixth year might be the premium that gets the signature, but it’s not a sixth year at the same price as year one. Given that the salary pretty much exactly follows the breakdown that Cameron showed, this isn’t a terrible contract if you call Pablo Sandoval a 3.5-win 28-year-old third baseman. Even if it’s a little more than the median five-year $80 million contract the crowd wanted to give him.

But what if you call him other things?

Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into the 2009 draft, Baseball America wrote the following about Kyle Seager’s future while rating him as the 97th best prospect in the draft.

A three-year starter for North Carolina, Seager is an area scout favorite, not to mention a player opposing coaches respect immensely. National evaluators have a harder time pegging him because he doesn’t fit a neat profile. His best tool is his bat. He has a smooth, balanced swing and makes consistent contact with gap power. He ranked third in the nation in 2008 with 30 doubles and was on a similar pace in 2009. He has a patient approach but doesn’t project to hit for much home run power because of his modest bat speed and flat swing plane. While he’s a fringy runner, he’s a fine baserunner.

Seager played second base for his first two seasons and moved to third this year, where he has played good defense. Featuring an average arm and impressive agility, he’s an average defender at third, if not a tick above. Scouts who like him see a Bill Mueller type who doesn’t fit the profile but grinds out at-bats and outs in the field. His detractors see him as a safe pick with low upside and a future reserve or utility player.

Major League teams agreed with the assessment, and Seager went 82nd overall, sandwiched between Trevor Holder and Jerry Sullivan. He was a classic low upside guy, taken because he looked like he could provide some value with minimal risk, but no one expected Seager to turn into a star.

After three seasons (and some change) in the big leagues, though, it’s probably time to throw that profile out the window. In 2,200 big league plate appearances, Seager has now launched 70 home runs, or an average of 19 longballs per 600 plate appearances. For comparison, Pablo Sandoval has averaged 20 home runs per 600 plate appearances through his career, and has been the focus of a pretty significant bidding war for his services. The market recognizes Sandoval as a significant offensive force, and is paying him as such; given that, we probably have to recognize Seager as a legitimate asset at the plate as well.

Read the rest of this entry »