I think it’s safe to say we lean pretty heavily on projections here. Now, it’s important to understand we’re all always kind of making projections. The Padres acquired Wil Myers on the basis of a positive internal player projection. When we think about our favorite teams adding, say, Dee Gordon or Nelson Cruz, we’re considering what we expect them to do in the season or seasons ahead. Our enthusiasm for the coming year is based in part on a mental projection of the quality of our team. We all project, and the only real difference is that, around here, we lean on the projections by Steamer and ZiPS, instead of doing things in our heads. FanGraphs makes things really easy. What do the projections think about next year? There’s a tab you can click on. It’s a starting point.

But while projections are handy, it’s only natural to wonder: do they matter? How important are they, actually, with regard to predicting the short-term future? Tons of people have tested individual player projections, but here we also include team projections, based on manually-updated depth charts, and if there’s error in each given player projection, how much error might we see with team projections as a whole? It’s a perfectly reasonable question. It can’t even be answered conclusively, yet. There’s not enough data in the FanGraphs post archive. But I can give you at least a little bit.

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Right-hander Burch Smith has been traded from San Diego to Tampa Bay. “Will he start or not?” is a question a person might reasonably ask about that. What follows is an attempt to answer the question — in part, if not in whole.

At some point during during April or May of 2013, after the latter had produced some conspicuously excellent numbers with Double-A San Antonio, the present author developed a fascination with then-Padres right-hander Burch Smith — including that pitcher, for example, in multiple editions of the Fringe Five.

When Smith was finally promoted to the Padres, it was not unlike Christmas on May 11th. And even after Smith conceded six runs over a single inning in his debut, I remained curiously enamored of him.

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The Baltimore Orioles are good at many things. Their greatest skill is probably confounding expectations. The rest of the league zigs and then the O’s zag their way into the playoffs, twice in the last three seasons.

While the rest of their division — the rest of baseball, really — gears up for a run at the playoffs, the Orioles sat back. Their off-season to date can best be described as “somnambulant”, They lost Andrew Miller, Nick Markakis, and Nelson Cruz to free agency, declined some options and added, um, Wesley Wright? That’s it.

Considering the state of their disabled list at the end of the season, returning Matt Wieters and Manny Machado from injury (and Chris Davis from suspension) will go a long way to improving their club. But there’s another reason the Orioles haven’t rushed out to apply quick fixes to their club – the unlikely emergence of Steve Pearce.

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The Winter Meetings revelry has passed. We’re still waiting on a few big trades to finally ‘consummate,’ but the list of free agents is less attractive by day. Before you turn down a chance at glory with the guys left waiting for a team, it’s probably a good idea to look at how badly you need them. This is not dating advice, but it sort of feels like it.

To that end, I’ve taking our depth charts and calculated a quick stat for ‘neediness.’ By averaging team WAR over 13 roster spots — the portion of the 25-man roster usually used for offense — and then looking at the difference between that average WAR and each position WAR, I’ve found a way to show where the biggest remaining lineup holes are.

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Last month, not only did the Tampa Bay Rays cut Jose Molina, but, as Jeff detailed, no other Major League team was or has been interested in picking Molina up, even for the smallest of prices. As somebody who has always had their interests piqued by pitch-framing, this tiny morsel of a transaction nonetheless triggered a miniature existential crisis on the significance and value of pitch-framing. Have the estimates of framing value been, in fact, comically optimistic? Have savvier umpires begun to render this skill a moot point? Is there some other factor about the nature of the catcher position that we, on the outside, simply don’t know?

Some of those things may very well be true, maybe even all of them. But before we use the Rays dumping Molina as an example of the preacher turning pagan, let us consider yesterday’s big trade between the Rays, Nationals, and Padres. Somewhere amidst this flurry of new forwarding addresses, defensive-minded catcher Ryan Hanigan went from Tampa Bay to San Diego, while defensive-minded catcher Rene Rivera went from San Diego to Tampa Bay. The catcher swap was the minor part of the deal for the public, but perhaps the Rays don’t see it that way. In fact, if they still believe strongly in the value of catcher defense, perhaps the Rays didn’t even consider themselves as selling low on Wil Myers, given the potential value that Rivera might provide.

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Following yesterday’s historic announcement by President Obama that the United States will re-establish full relations with Cuba, many baseball fans have been speculating what impact this news is likely to have on Major League Baseball. Cuba, of course, is a baseball hotbed, producing a number of impact MLB players in recent years (Jose Abreu, Yasiel Puig, Yoenis Cespedes).

In the long-term, normalized relations with Cuba could potentially result in a significant influx of Cuban talent into U.S. professional baseball, while also opening up other lucrative business opportunities for MLB. In the short-term, however, yesterday’s announcement will likely have little immediate impact on professional baseball in the United States, and if anything, might even temporarily decrease the flow of players defecting to the U.S. from Cuba. Read the rest of this entry »

The main good thing about reaching the World Series is that it means you won your league. When you win your league, people like you a lot, and it’s a good feeling. Builds community. Another, bigger-picture good thing about reaching the World Series is that it brings in revenue, especially if you haven’t been real good for a while. New streams of money begin to flow, and preexisting streams of money flood their banks, as more people express interest in the product and other people express more interest in the product. Basically, if you get to the World Series, it’s a good thing for more than just the day or week of.

When the Royals came out of nowhere to come within a few runs of the championship, it stood to reason they’d reap an enormous benefit. An area love affair was re-kindled, as Kauffman Stadium became one of the loudest and most popular environments in the game. Estimates varied, but there was no question the World Series appearance would mean, for the team, some additional tens of millions of dollars. How much could that money mean, if re-invested in the roster? What would Dayton Moore be able to pull off, given greater financial flexibility?

The Royals re-signed Luke Hochevar for a couple of years, which seems like a good deal even given Hochevar’s operation. But lately the Royals have spent bigger money. They committed $17 million to Kendrys Morales. They committed $11 million to Alex Rios. And, most recently, they committed $20 million to Edinson Volquez. This is what the World Series has meant, in a way. It’s rather underwhelming.

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Trea Turner has his sights set high. The 2014 first-round pick wants to be more than the starting shortstop for the San Diego Padres [or, if last night’s reports are accurate, the Washington Nationals]. Turner wants to be a star.

He could have been a Pirate. Pittsburgh drafted Turner out of high school in 2011, and the now-21-year-old had no trouble picturing himself in black and gold. He told me the Pirates personnel he spoke to during the draft process were “awesome” and that he still keeps in touch with the area scout. Turner said he’d have “loved to be a Pirate,” but “needed to go to college and make myself better both mentally and physically.”

Turner enrolled at North Carolina State, and excelled. In three seasons with the Wolfpack he hit .342 and stole 110 bases. His junior year, he won the Brooks Wallace Award as the best shortstop in college baseball.

Along the way, he received plenty of attention from scouts. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben talks to Scott Drader of Metalhead Software about the development of their successful new video game, Super Mega Baseball.

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