The Giants were left at the altar by a couple of high profile free agents this offseason and did their best to improve the roster in different ways. Listen to Brian Sabean talk before the FanFest this weekend, and what they ended up doing was look at ways to “deepen the roster.”
That collection of names may not lead the Giants into the next decade, but the veterans are mostly capable of league-average (or so) work. That’s impressive depth, actually. Given that there’s a 65% likelihood that two starters are on the disabled list at the same time on the average team — and this team may be more likely than most to have starters get injured, given their collective age — it’s good that the Giants score well on our depth charts in different ‘depth’ metrics.
Below, see how the Giants rank when it comes to innings expected from their sixth and seventh starters, projected Wins Above Replacement from those slots, and WAR per 200 innings pitched from their sixth and seventh starters. Generally, the Giants look like a top-five team when it comes to starting rotation depth.
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 Philadelphia Phillies. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Batters
Were one to construct a Venn diagram depicting (in one set) those individuals who derive pleasure from baseball analytics and (in another set) those who employ the phrase “hot mess” with some frequency, one would likely find that the circles occupied by those sets don’t overlap. Largely, that, because the former demographic is composed mostly of 18- to 34-year-old males; the latter, Southern women who’ve been dead for half a century.
Were they to overlap, however, every one of those individuals who occupied both sets would feel compelled to describe the present iteration of the Phillies as a “hot mess” — for reasons that are illustrated by the ZiPS projections below. There are multiple examples of why, although the presence of Ryan Howard remains the most illustrative: with no fewer than two years and $60 million remaining on his contract, the 35-year-old Howard is projected to record a -0.1 WAR in 449 plate appearances.
Seems we’ve been talking about the Cubs more than usual this offseason. Which makes sense — the Cubs are really interesting right now. They’re really interesting right now, and it’s been a while since they’ve been interesting at all. It’s finally their turn. Of course we’re going to talk about them more than, say, the Mets or the Rangers. Sorry, Mets and Rangers.
Bullpens are all the rage in today’s MLB. Starting pitchers are being asked less and less to work deep into games, and so the importance of having multiple bullpen weapons to work the final few innings is at an all-time high. Used to be you’d hear about a team that “played eight inning games.” A team like the Yankees could let out a sigh of relief when they entered the ninth with a lead, because they had Mariano Rivera. Last year, we saw the emergence of the team that played six innings games, as the Royals let out their collective sigh of relief with a lead in the seventh inning as they watched Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland toy with hitters for three innings to close out games.
Everyone would like to have their own version of the Royals’ three-headed monster in the back of their bullpen, which brings us to the back end of the Cubs bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s safe to say that Dustin Pedroia has never been lacking for confidence. And remember, Pedroia’s confidence stands out among other major-league baseball players, who are already some of the most confident individuals around, by necessity. So it’s not just that Pedroia has 80-grade self-confidence; it’s that he has 80-grade self-confidence even out of the population pool limited to people with 80-grade self-confidence relative to the general populace. Pedroia is three standard deviations above the mean of those who are three standard deviations above the mean. Related: Pedroia’s 2014 ended with wrist surgery, and these days he’s feeling really good about things.
Episode 529
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 a proposal for abolishing the draft and the Padres’ signing of James Shields, nearly.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
Play the player-profile game every day this week at 11:00am ET. We’re giving away a free annual subscription to FanGraphs+ to the first reader who guesses correctly the identity of that day’s mystery player. (Limit one copy per customer).
As Eno Sarris announced earlier today, the newest iteration of FanGraphs+ is now available for the price of a cup of coffee that’s roughly twice as expensive as it ought to be.
As in recent years, we’re celebrating the release of FG+ by way of the player-profile game.
Said game is easy: the author offers the text of an actual player profile from the newest iteration of FG+, being careful to omit any proper names that might reveal the identity of the player in question. The reader, in turn, attempts to identify the player using only the details provided in the profile.
First reader to guess correctly (in the comments section below) gets a free annual subscription to FanGraphs+, worth its weight in whichever precious metal one cares to name.
Today’s entry comes to us by way of the Sarris himself.
Let’s ignore, for a moment, James Shields‘ actual major-league track record in what one might consider to be big games. We’ve all had fun at his expense, and the playoff ERA over 5 makes the nickname seem ironic. What’s interesting is that Shields has pitched a lot of big games in the first place. He debuted for a team that had never won more than 70 games, and the (Devil) Rays shortly blossomed into something of a second-tier powerhouse. And when Shields got dealt, he got dealt to a team that hadn’t been good since 1994.
The idea was to return the Royals to glory, and after a promising first year, in the second Shields got to start twice in the World Series. Now Shields has joined the Padres, signing for a four-year term, and the Padres’ hope is similar to what the Royals were looking to do: the organization wants to graduate from irrelevance. The Padres haven’t even been sufficiently relevant to be a laughingstock, but a whirlwind offseason has put the team on everyone’s radar, and in that way signing Shields is in large part symbolic. You don’t sign Big Game James unless you figure he’s going to start some. These Padres ain’t the Padres no more. Not the way you knew them.
While college baseball is slated to begin in earnest this week, the Junior College circuit already has, which means 2015 draft season has arrived. Near or at the top of everyone’s JUCO agenda is College of Southern Nevada righty, Phil Bickford. The 6’4” sophomore righty is already famous after spurning the Toronto Blue Jays’ multi-million dollar advances when he opted not to sign with the club after they made him the 10th overall pick in the 2013 draft.
Bickford attended Cal State Fullerton last year, then went to the Cape Cod League over the summer where his stock skyrocketed thanks to an uptick in stuff as Kiley McDaniel pointed out in his rankings. Bickford defected to the Junior College ranks at the College of Southern Nevada to take advantage of this ascent, as it meant he would be draft eligible in 2015. Bickford pitched at South Mountain Community College in Tempe on Saturday.
Phil Bickford, RHP, College of Southern Nevada
Delivery/Command/Feel to Pitch
Bickford’s body tapers down from his broad shoulders to his narrow but muscular lower half. His long arms always seem to be a bit bent at the elbows. He is a tightly wound, muscular kid, not the sinewy, smooth, projectable type of arm that is most associated with draft eligible high schoolers. Bickford uses his lower half fairly well during the delivery, driving hard off of the mound in a way that is more power than grace. His unwinds up through the hips and generates a good amount of torque before uncorking his pitches. The arm action is short as Bickford loads his arm with a bent elbow, similar to what you might see from quarterback, before unfurling out to about a 3/4 angle at release.
There is effort to the delivery but not so much that I would label it as violent. Despite that effort, Bickford repeated his delivery fairly well, especially early on in the outing, other than a few instances in which he varied his arm angle to alter the depth of his slider. Whether that was done consciously or not I don’t know, but it always made the pitch less effective. Bickford’s fastball command was a pleasant surprise as he worked in, out, up and down at will for the first few innings.
Stuff/Projection
The stuff was down a bit from Cape League ball which makes this a good time to remind everyone that it’s not even Valentine’s Day yet and there’s four months between now and the draft for players to grow and change. Bickford’s fastball sat 90-92 and touched 94 mph for his first few innings before throttling down to 88-90 as he finished up. The four seamers lacked movement, but the two seamers had appetizing sink and run to them. Both were vicious when Bickford was spotting them on the corners at the knees, which occurred half a dozen times or so in this outing. Projecting the fastball here is tricky, as Bickford has had some pretty vast fluctuation in velocity over the past few years. It’s hard to know where it’ll be when the cement dries.
At 6’4”, 210, there’s some room for him to thicken up and get stronger but not so much that it’s going to make a world of difference. The best case scenario in my summation is for Bickford to shake off what could simply be early season rust, get back to being the mid-90s chucking howitzer scouts saw on the Cape and add enough strength to maintain that sort of velocity throughout a season as he matures. Of course as he does that, he’ll have to also maintain enough flexibility and athleticism, two things he already appears a tad short on. His physical development and the way his stuff is impacted by it will be an interesting thing to follow over the next few years.
Bickford’s slider flashed plus twice and sat between 78-81 mph with a good bit of horizontal movement but not much depth. It was a consistently average pitch until he began to fatigue in the fifth inning. His slider utilization was about what you’d expect from a 19 year-old (Bickford doesn’t turn 20 until July 10th) with pretty uniform location in the zone. He’ll have to learn to use it in various ways, first and foremost to run it away from righties in the dirt as he matures. He did try to throw one backdoor slider to South Mountain’s only lefty in the lineup but missed off the plate away. Bickford’s changeup was miles behind today, but it’s still early in every sense of the word.
Based on what I saw Saturday (hedging a bit based on past performance) my projected long term outcome for Bickford is that of a hard sinker, slider, cutter (purely an educated guess based on the way Bickford’s hand naturally interacts with the baseball) mid-rotation starter. He looked good enough for me to put a mid-to-late first round grade on him which, in what looks like a bit of a down draft, could slot him in the 12-15 range. If the velo ticks up as the spring chugs along then we could be having a different discussion. Beauty is very much going to be in the eye of the beholder come June.
CSN RHP/DH Kayden Porter sat upper 80s with the fastball and had a loopy, below average curveball. He’s just a redshirt sophomore, so there’s time for the breaking ball to tighten up. At 6’7”, 275 lbs there’s not much projecting to do on the fastball. He might be someone’s late round flier if they want to take a chance on something developing on the mound or in the batter’s box as Porter has some pop.
CSN sophomore lefty Anthony Martine touched 91 and flashed a fringe average breaking ball but, while his arm was loose, he had trouble repeating any aspect of his delivery.
Matt Kemp, Wil Myers, Justin Upton, and now James Shields. No team has had a splashier off-season than the San Diego Padres, as new GM A.J. Preller overhauled the team’s roster to ensure that the 2015 Padres would actually be able to score some runs. This team now has an unmistakable identity — they might as well call themselves the San Diego Right-Handed Sluggers — and nearly as much star power as any team in the league. The organization is now a far cry from one whose best players were Rene Rivera and Seth Smith.
The Padres are now undoubtedly interesting. Are they going to be good, though? I remain a bit skeptical. As Mike noted this morning, their infield is still kind of dreadful, and while their outfield will hit a lot of home runs, they’re primarily one dimensional players who aren’t as valuable as their reputations. The pitching staff is deep — especially if Brandon Morrow and Josh Johnson figure out how to stay healthy — but not as strong up front as the other contenders in the NL.
Mostly, I see a lot of solid contributors, but very few players who are likely to be among the best players in the league. The Padres have imported three big names (and a former big time prospect) but I’m not sure any of them are going to perform like All-Stars in 2015. Given what Petco Park is likely to do to the raw numbers of Upton and Kemp, Joaquin Benoit might actually still be the team’s most likely All-Star representative.
