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Remember when Billy Butler stole a base against the Angels in the playoffs? Of course you do. It was beautiful and it was absurd, and it psychologically cemented the notion that there was nothing the Angels could do to slow the Royals down. Even Billy Butler was having his way, however he wanted to. It was like the Royals flying their flag over the Angels’ conquered castle. And it had to be Butler. It felt meaningful because that’s something Butler just doesn’t do. There are reasons he doesn’t run, so when he ran, and when he got away with it, the Royals felt invincible.

Here’s an image sequence that should remind you of how the moment felt:

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The title of this post presupposes a few things — that new Brave Shelby Miller is broken; that Shelby Miller can be fixed; that Shelby Miller has not yet been fixed; that some teams are more likely than others to fix certain problems. We’re not going to leave those presuppositions aside, though. Let’s instead tackle them, one by one.

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Just like winter, hot stove season appears to be arriving early this year. Somewhat lost in all of the hubbub regarding Giancarlo Stanton‘s record-breaking deal is Russell Martin‘s five-year, $82 million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays. Though it is heavily backloaded, this still ranks as the third-largest catching contract currently on any club’s books — behind Buster Posey‘s nine-year, $164 million, and Brian McCann’s five-year, $85 million deals, which both run through the respective players’ age-34 seasons. Martin’s runs through his age-36 season. So how do the next five years look for Martin, and for the Blue Jays? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but one of my favorite tools on our site would have to be the Depth Charts, which combine Steamer projections and human-curated depth charts to output expected WAR totals.

What I’ve done today — last night, really, which I’m clarifying only in the event of some huge late-night signing that would invalidate all of this — is to sort that by division and graph it out. When you do that, you get this:

A few things stand out there, things like “should we just give the NL East to Washington now or must we wait until next year” and “just think about what the Phillies are going to look like after they trade Cole Hamels, Marlon Byrd, and whomever else.” If the Mariners look too high, well, Jeff already delved into that. If the Yankees look too low, well, name their infield or a single reliably healthy starting pitcher.

Obviously, what we’re looking at is a snapshot of things they way they are right this second, and that’s not how they’ll look when the season kicks off. To use just one example: No, I don’t imagine we’ll be looking at the Dodgers and Rockies as being nearly equal teams in April, because at the moment, the Dodgers have almost literally no shortstop and just three-plus starting pitchers.

You get the idea, though. A lot’s going to change, but in order for teams to effectively make those decisions, they have to adequately understand where they are right now. That’s what might stand out the most about this chart, actually, at least to me — just look at the American League East. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re used to making little adjustments all the time. Most commonly, it’s because of ballpark environment. A .350 wOBA in San Francisco is a hell of a lot more valuable than a .350 wOBA in Arizona. Sometimes you’ll also see adjustments for era, which is relevant now given increasing strikeouts and decreasing runs. There are raw stats, and there are adjusted stats, like, say, wRC+, but there’s one adjustment we seldom talk about even though it’s right there in front of our faces. What about the opposition a player actually faces?

It’s like strength-of-schedule, on the player level. No one debates the utility of strength-of-schedule measurements. Now, in baseball, what’s convenient is that the samples get pretty big so we can generally get away with assuming that things even out. Over broad windows, no one’s going to face exclusively awful opponents or awesome opponents. But in certain cases, it’s worth digging in when we have a suspicion. As such, I want to go into more detail on something I noted about Cole Hamels earlier.

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Last offseason, the Yankees signed infielder Yangervis Solarte — who’d left the Rangers by way of minor-league free agency — to a decidedly more robust minor-league deal than is the standard in the industry. The result for New York was ultimately a positive one: not only did Solarte record the highest major-league WAR figure in 2014 of any player who’d departed his club the previous offseason by way of minor-league free agency, but the Yankees were able to parlay him (along with right-handed prospect Rafael De Paula) into a trade for Chase Headley.

As noted by Kiley McDaniel earlier this month, the Solarte signing wasn’t an anomalous one for the Yankees: they’d completed similar deals with reliever Jim Miller and catcher Bobby Wilson, as well. And while neither of those players did much of anything at the major-league level, the strategy was ultimately a very profitable one for New York based on Solarte’s production alone — profitable enough, as McDaniel notes, to fund 10 seasons of such an experiment.

“Who might be the next Solarte?” one wonders. It’s a question I began answering last week, only to drift accidentally into an extended meditation on Mark Minicozzi and the hazards inherent to formulating defensive projections for career minor leaguers. What follows, however, represents a more concise response.

Below are the top-five WAR projections assessed by Steamer to the 500-plus players to have been granted minor-league free agency earlier this month. Note that, pursuant to that extended meditation on Mark Minicozzi from last week, the author has made changes to defensive projections in such cases where logic dictated. So, for example, with regard to Luke Montz — whose published Steamer projection includes the catcher’s positional adjustment, but whose most recent defensive record includes just as many starts at first base — I’ve manually edited his overall projections to reflect his likely future defensive usage. The same is the case for Minicozzi himself, who has played much more first base and left field of late than second or third base.

Organizations listed are those to which the player most recently belonged. Hitter projections are prorated to 550 plate appearances — i.e. the amount over which an exactly average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Note, finally, that Dean Anna would have appeared among the top-five here were he not now a member of the Cardinals’ major-league roster.

5. Jared Goedert, 3B, Toronto (Profile)

Originally a ninth-round selection by Cleveland out of K-State in 2006, Goedert has recorded more than 3800 plate appearances as a minor leaguer, roughly half of them at Triple-A alone. So far as major-league plate appearances are concerned, however, he’s recorded a number a lot closer — and one might say precisely equivalent — to zero. It’s not shocking, probably, that he’s never found a role. He’s a below-average hitter and — it would appear from his profile — just a fringe-average third baseman. That said, there are players who aren’t demonstrably better — Danny Valencia is one name chosen nearly at random — and yet have received hundreds of plate appearances.

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It’s funny. The team I know the most about is the team I try hardest not to write about for FanGraphs. I write about the Indians enough as it is for my job, and it’s nice to be able to write about other teams once in a while. But also, I don’t want my posts to be viewed as tainted with potential homerism. I’d like to believe I don’t let much, if any, bias slip into my writing, but it could be viewed that way. Nevertheless, here I am writing a post called “Where the Indians Are Baseball’s Most Valuable Team.”

But! I’m not the only one who is high on the Indians for 2015. A couple weeks back, Mike Petriello called the Indians his sleeper team for 2015, and when he claimed the post on our internal message board, he called them “your 2015 World Champion Indians.” That’s right, Petriello. I just put you on blast. You all should call him out on this when it doesn’t happen.

Then, yesterday afternoon, the always excellent Jonah Keri sent out a tweet that inspired me to write a post I’ve been considering writing for several weeks now.

Started working on favorite article series of the year, MLB Trade Value. Early reaction: Indians are in pretty good shape.

— Jonah Keri (@jonahkeri) November 18, 2014

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$325 million. That’s the number that gets your attention, and it should; the contract that Giancarlo Stanton signed with the Marlins is the largest in the history of baseball, and it will span the next 13 years. There are kids currently in first grade who could theoretically get to the big leagues in time to play with Stanton before this contract expires. The $325 million commitment is twice as much as Loria paid to buy the entire Marlins organization back back in 2002. The deal is staggering in both length and cost, but as Jeff Sullivan wrote last week, it’s an entirely reasonable contract for one of the game’s best players.

But there’s another fascinating aspect to Stanton’s contract: the $325 million figure might end up being nothing more than a mirage. Because of the leverage he commanded, and potentially some lingering distrust of the franchise after their last spend-a-bunch-of-money-then-trade-everyone fake out, Stanton’s representatives were able to negotiate an opt out clause into the deal, meaning that he can choose to void the deal after the 2020 season.

If Stanton continues to perform at an elite level, it’s entirely possible that he could void the last half of the deal and land a new contract for even more than this deal guarantees him next decade. After all, Stanton will have just finished his age-30 season when the opt-out decision comes due, and even at that age, elite players are landing 10 year contracts in free agency. Alex Rodriguez used this exact tactic in 2007 to opt-out of the final three years of his initial mega-contract, turning the remaining $72 million into a new 10 year, $275 million contract that the Yankees are still regretting.

Since that deal, the opt-out clause has become an increasing popular request for premium free agents, as Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, and Masahiro Tanaka — among others — have had opt-outs negotiated into their contracts. Greinke’s decision comes next winter, when he’ll have $71 million remaining on the last three years of his deal; assuming he stays healthy and pitches reasonably well in 2015, opting out should be a pretty easy call, given the market price for high quality arms.

And that is exactly why the game’s best players are increasingly asking for these options to be inserted into their deals. For the player, a large guarantee with an opt-out is the ultimate win-win, as they secure a significant paycheck even if their performance declines or they suffer an injury, but they aren’t stuck with a below-market salary over the long term if they play well, or if the economic status of the league improves after they sign their mega-contract.

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