Archive for January, 2015

Evaluating the Prospects: Atlanta Braves

Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, YankeesBraves & Athletics

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

Amateur Coverage: 2015 Draft RankingsNovember Update2015 July 2 Top Prospects & Latest on Yoan Moncada

The Braves’ off-season reload has been well-documented, trading veterans Jason Heyward, Justin Upton and Evan Gattis, along with some smaller deals. 8 of the top 13 prospects on this list have been acquired this off-season, along with their 4th best young big league asset. This targeting of high upside pitching turned a below average system into my 6th ranked system.

It’s a confident bet on the organization’s ability to develop young arms, some with specific issues that the team thinks Roger McDowell can fix along with a bet that the Braves’ pro scouting is better than the competition. Judging from the success the club has had in waiver claims and in the minor league portion of trades, that belief appears to be well-founded. We’ll likely see one or two years of the Braves not being playoff contenders, but the 2017 team is being set up to possible start another long run of success, just as the club’s new stadium is set to open.

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Substitution Rules

In September of 2013, Billy Hamilton made his MLB debut. As a pinch runner. It’s wonderful to see Billy Hamilton be a pinch runner. A few days before his 20th birthday, Tim Raines made his MLB debut as a pinch runner, and all six games in his September callup was as a pinch runner. He played 15 games the next season, 7 of which was as a pinch runner. (The season after that, 1981, is when he established his star.)

I see nothing but positive about this kind of development. The only reason we see it in September is because of the loosening of the roster rules. Now, rather than expanding the rosters during the season, or declaring a 15- or 20-man roster on a game-by-game basis, what would happen if we changed the substitution rules?

Say you bring in Hamilton to pinch-run for the catcher. At the end of the half-inning, the manager currently has two choices: (a) choose whether to bring in a new catcher and knock Hamilton out of the game or (b) double-switch Hamilton into the game, with a new catcher. In either case, the original catcher is knocked out of the game. But, what if we add a third option: (c) allow the manager to keep the original catcher while knocking Hamilton out of the game. The substitution still knocks one player out of the game, but now the manager gets to decide which of the players involved gets the boot.

And you can extend that to pinch hitting as well. And if you do that, you can also do away with the DH. You can now bring in a pinch hitter for your starting pitcher in the second inning, without knocking out the pitcher (but you do lose the PH): You simply let the PH hit, and then that guy is out of the game, while the pitcher remains. And the same applies for a defensive substitution: at the end of the half-inning, you decide which of the two players is knocked out of the game.

You still have to worry about your bench and when to allow your pitcher to bat or not. But, you now give the manager a bit more flexibility. And if he wants to have a speedster on the roster, without thinking he’s burning through two roster spots (i.e., knocking out both the original catcher and Hamilton), he’s only burning through one.

What we have here is a rule that:
a. has no roster impact (you always lose a player)
b. is unobtrusive (no one is really going to notice anything)
c. allows the DH to disappear from the rulebook
d. gives the manager great flexibility

Downside? You tell me.

UPDATE: Based on one or two comments, I don’t think I was clear enough: at the end of the half inning, the manager chooses which player he loses for the game. In the above situation, if he goes for option c, he’d knock Hamilton out for the game, and the original catcher is allowed to stay. The same applies for a fielding sub: Hamilton could have come in as a defensive sub in the 8th inning in CF. At the end of the half-inning, the manager decides whether to knock Hamilton out of the game, or knock the guy he had replaced out of the game. There is NO “re-entry”. Someone will get knocked out of the game, just like it is today.


Maybe the Last Key for Carlos Carrasco

By this point you might feel like you know enough about the Carlos Carrasco story. Carrasco is coming off what looks like a breakthrough season. It was also his age-27 season, and previously, he was mostly regarded as a bust. He first showed up in the Baseball America top-100 before 2007, when the No. 1 prospect on the list was Daisuke Matsuzaka. Carrasco was one of the headliners of the Phillies’ trade for Cliff Lee. That was before Lee got traded to the Mariners for what’s turned out to be busts. And that was before Lee got traded to the Rangers for whats’ turned out to be busts. Carrasco had a delayed emergence, is the point. He’s why it’s hard to ever give up entirely on a former top prospect.

Yet it’s worth remembering that 2014 wasn’t a total victory for Carrasco from start to finish. It was only down the stretch that he seemed to put all his pieces together in the right places, and before his final stint in the rotation, he looked like just a pretty good reliever. There was something that clicked upon Carrasco’s final return to starting, and it seems to me it bodes well for his future in the role.

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FanGraphs After Dark Chat – 1/28/15

5:34
Paul Swydan: Hi everybody! I’m flying solo tonight. Jeff is having some computer trouble. Sorry to postpone last night, but after three hours of the snowblower vibrating my hands, the last thing I was up for was rapidly typing for an hour. Hopefully you understand.

But I’m here tonight, and starting at 9 pm ET we can talk all the baseball talk you can talk. Or something. See you soon

9:00
Paul Swydan: OK, let’s do this.

9:00
Comment From Rated Rookie

9:00
Paul Swydan: This was more or less me yesterday.

9:01
Comment From DC
Whatcha think about me trading a $17 Carlos Gomez for $17 Hanley and $5 kris Bryant? These values would be set for 3 years.

9:02
Paul Swydan: I think that if you can make up the steals elsewhere then this is a no-brainer.

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Just What Happened to Casey Janssen?

Like it or not, this is the time of the year that we write about players like Casey Janssen. There aren’t a whole lot of alternatives. Janssen himself just signed on with the Nationals, to some degree replacing Tyler Clippard at the cost of $5 million guaranteed with a second-year mutual option. The Nationals aren’t expecting Janssen to be as good as Clippard. The Nationals shouldn’t expect Janssen to be as good as Clippard. There’s a reason why Janssen came relatively inexpensively. The year he’s coming off — it was a decidedly unusual year.

There’s a ready-made excuse: Janssen took a quick trip during the All-Star break, and he returned from said trip with food poisoning that cost him a told amount of weight and an untold amount of energy. We’ve all probably experienced food poisoning at some point, and though we’ve experienced varying degrees of severity, it makes sense that it takes a while to get back to feeling 100%. And Janssen didn’t have to get back to feeling 100% as a normal person; he had to get back to feeling good enough to succeed as a pitcher in the major leagues. Janssen’s first half was better than his second half. We don’t know how much the illness damaged Janssen’s statistics.

But the food poisoning might explain only part of the picture. He was fine early on, and he was fine toward the end. Physically, I mean. Yet the numbers are strange, given Janssen’s record. It’s easy to focus on the strikeouts. It’s not just the strikeouts.

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Going Low and Away with the Brewers

Back in September, Jeff Sullivan wrote on this very weblog about The Three Most Distinctive Team Philosophies. On Tuesday, I published a piece exploring why Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Wily Peralta fails to record significant strikeouts totals despite possessing elite velocity. This is the result of those posts colliding.
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Avisail Garcia, Dayan Viciedo, and Giving Up on Potential

The Chicago White Sox have had an interesting offseason. Even if you share Jeff’s view that they aren’t yet a very good team, you can’t deny that they made some nice additions this winter. The Sox added Melky Cabrera, David Robertson, Zach Duke, Adam LaRoche, Jeff Samardzija, and Emilio Bonifacio to a roster that included superstars like Chris Sale and Jose Abreu and very good players Adam Eaton and Jose Quintana.

The problem for the White Sox, of course, is all of those nice additions were replacing talent vacancies. As Jeff noted, the Sox got better but becoming Wild Card contenders or challenging the Tigers for division supremacy was a tall order given where they started. Even after the spending spree, they have serious issues behind the plate, at second base, at third base, in right field, and at the back end of the rotation.

It’s a roster that’s moving in a good direction, but it’s still pretty rare to see teams with that many serious holes make a legitimate playoff push. There’s no doubt the Sox are working to build a winner in the relatively near future. You don’t have the winter they had without a focus on the next one to three seasons, which naturally seems to hinge on Avisail Garcia in the short term to some degree.

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Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 1/28/15

10:13
Dave Cameron: It’s a Wednesday, so we’re chatting. Because the wife is at the dentist, leaving me with both child and dog, there’s a chance we’ll start a little late today; I don’t know how well I’ll be able to work and care for two attention craving beings at the same time.

12:09
Dave Cameron: Alright, Mom’s home just in time for the kid to start screaming, so let’s talk some baseball while I ignore it.

12:10
Comment From mtsw
Any good reason to think Travis Snider is a better options for the Orioles outfield than De Aza or Lough? Does he make more sense as half a DH platoon with Delmon Young?

12:11
Dave Cameron: Why is it either/or? They didn’t DFA De Aza or Lough. Having three useful outfielders is better than having two.

12:11
Comment From David
Casey Janssen can’t replace Clippard because almost nobody can, but do you expect a rebound from him next year?

12:11
Dave Cameron: Yeah, he seems like a decent bounce back candidate. Probably more of a decent arm than a relief ace, but he could be a nice little addition.

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The Particular Upside of Robbie Ross

Toward the end of the day on Tuesday, the Boston Red Sox and Texas Rangers swapped Anthony Ranaudo and Robbie Ross. It doesn’t immediately seem like a trade of much consequence: Ranaudo’s a prospect with diminishing sheen, and Ross is coming off a pretty ugly experience as an attempted big-league starter. And, probably, it won’t be a trade of much consequence. Ranaudo seems like, if he’ll be anything, he’ll be a decent reliever. And Ross has looked like a lefty reliever who doesn’t do a great job of getting lefties out.

But — well, let me start with this. I’m about to focus on one side of this trade. I’ve heard all you guys complaining that we post too much content about the Red Sox. I understand where you’re coming from, and this isn’t going to make things better. But this isn’t about fitting into a pattern; I just find Ross to be more interesting, statistically, than I do Ranaudo. Ranaudo’s all scouting. Visual learners are going to like to talk about him. Me? I want to share something about Ross’ 2014 — something that might make him better than he seems.

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2015 ZiPS Projections – Seattle Mariners

After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Seattle Mariners. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York NL / Oakland / San Diego / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington

Batters
In the first year of his 10-year and $240 million contract with the M’s, Robinson Cano served as a one-man illustration of park effects, recording almost precisely the same batting-average and on-base figures as the previous season with the Yankees, but producing only half the home runs. (We’ll ignore for the moment that he actually hit more homers at Safeco than on the road, as that would disturb the narrative.) The result was a park-adjusted offensive line roughly approximating 2013’s. ZiPS calls for another five-win season in 2015 despite a home-run total somewhere below 20.

On the topic of park effects, offseason acquisition Nelson Cruz moves from a home field that inflates right-handed homers by roughly 8% to one that suppresses them by about 6%. That move plus age plus mere regression conspire to produce a forecast of 29 home runs for Cruz in 2015 after last season’s total of 40.

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