Ben and Sam discuss why the league is looking less clutch and answer listener emails about time-released rumors, a cryptic comment by Buck Showalter, Rick Porcello’s salary, and more.
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Now that football’s officially over for a while, countless sports fans are going to look ahead to the baseball season, with 2015 promising to be The Year Of Mookie Betts. This comes on the heels of 2014, which at one time promised to be The Year Of Billy Hamilton. And, to be fair, it was in a sense The Half-Year Of Billy Hamilton, but then Hamilton fell on harder times, losing a Rookie-of-the-Year race he once had all but locked up. Hamilton is now presumably older and presumably wiser, and he remains a player of unusual intrigue, along with being an important player for a Reds team that steadfastly refuses to tear down and start over.
Hamilton, naturally, has things to improve on. Every player in baseball has things to improve on — Clayton Kershaw has things to improve on — but Hamilton’s things are bigger than Kershaw’s things. Kershaw, for example, might want to polish his changeup a little more. Or maybe not. It’ll cross his mind. Hamilton, meanwhile, wants to not suck at hitting. His own manager has some ideas.
| 9:37 |
: Hi everybody!
Jeff and I will be here at 9 pm ET to answer all of your base-and-or-balling queries. See you soon! |
| 9:00 |
: Hey guys, one minute and we’ll get started.
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| 9:04 |
: OK, here we go. Jeff is making more polls.
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| 9:05 |
: Glad to see BU is leading the Beanpot poll (of the four schools anyway).
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| 9:05 |
: I forget why he does this. This is from Fletch right? I need to whip out that DVD again soon.
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As I reported on twitter moments ago, MLB sent a memo to clubs detailing the new process for Cuban players to go from leaving the country to signing with an MLB team. The short version is that super prospect Yoan Moncada is eligible to sign now, after a maddening long delay.
For those new to this topic or if you just want a refresher, here’s a recap of my coverage of this Moncada saga from the start:
– October 3, 2014: Moncada is confirmed out of Cuba, but no one knows where he is. We assume his whereabouts will become clear soon as he’s the most hyped prospect to leave the island in years. Here I first quote the common “teenage Puig that can play the infield and switch hit” comp and break down all the implications about who can sign him, who is likely to pony up the big bucks, game theory implications and more.
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: Hello friends
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| 9:03 |
: Welcome to live baseball chat
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| 9:04 |
: Approximately nothing has happened in baseball for a couple of weeks, so this ought to be gripping
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Are you surprised that Shields still hasn’t signed? |
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: I think everybody is. I usually don’t worry about these things when they drag out, but there’s something about the calendar flipping to February
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| 9:06 |
: I think it’s in some way an encouraging reflection of the baseball market — teams are less willing to pay for what a player has already done. With Shields, you sell the durability, the innings totals, but teams now are genuinely afraid of what all that durability might mean now
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After a classic ending to football season featuring an absurdly controversial decision — it’s indeed a travesty that Falcor was passed over for Puppy Bowl MVP — the sporting nation prepares to turn its eyes to baseball. Amid the oncoming rush of “best shape of my life” stories common to the February sports pages, one high-end free agent, James Shields, remains unsigned. He’s certain to be locked up soon, but almost as certain to land a financial guarantee much less than he was seeking just a couple months ago. Who is James Shields, what is his value and whose uniform might he be donning in the coming weeks? Read the rest of this entry »
Ben and Sam draft 20 minor league free agents who might see major league playing time in 2015.
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Episode 527
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 the 2015 iteration of the Yankees and the baseball equivalent of passing from the one-yard line and, in greatest depth, some possibilities for addressing game length.
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 39 min play time.)
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There are all sorts of prescriptions for a good changeup. We talk about things like ‘velocity gap’ and ’tilt’ and ‘fade’ when we talk about how good a changeup will be. But what about the curveball? Can we spot a good one coming?
We can use our Arsenal Score work to identify good curveballs in general, just as we used to find bad changeups a couple weeks ago. Basically, by weighting grounders and whiffs on a pitch, we can assign it a score based on those easy-to-identify and important outcomes.
According to this metric, here are the best curves thrown at least 100 times last year.
| Pitcher | GB% | swSTR% | Arsenal Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brett Cecil | 56% | 29% | 5.34 |
| Mark Melancon | 55% | 25% | 4.19 |
| Nick Masset | 90% | 15% | 4.15 |
| Craig Kimbrel | 62% | 23% | 4.04 |
| Blaine Hardy | 91% | 14% | 3.75 |
| Vic Black | 78% | 17% | 3.72 |
| David Robertson | 60% | 22% | 3.69 |
| Carlos Martinez | 53% | 24% | 3.50 |
| Cody Allen | 53% | 20% | 2.35 |
This is all the excuse I need:
#Rockies sign SS Omar Quintanilla, a utility INF for 2005-09 teams, and re-sign veteran RH reliever Rafael Betancourt
— Matt Eddy (@MattEddyBA) January 30, 2015
I’ve developed a very minor obsession with Rafael Betancourt. If you’ve paid close attention over the years, you might’ve noticed, but I wouldn’t blame you for not paying close attention whenever I write about Rafael Betancourt. But here I am doing it again, because I don’t think I’ve talked about this for more than two years, and each time I do it, I have a little more data. Do you like fun facts? Betancourt comes with a couple awesome fun facts. They’re almost totally irrelevant, in the grand scheme of things, but then, what isn’t?