For the third time in four years, Mike Trout finished as a runner-up MVP. Trout had a compelling case, but Josh Donaldson was a deserving winner. Even if you think Trout should have won, you’re probably fine with Donaldson winning. More than one guy can deserve it, after all.

Regardless, the outcome of an award vote doesn’t change what Trout’s achieved through his first four seasons. And what Trout’s done through his first four seasons is unprecedented. Already, he’s arguably accomplished more than any player in history through his age-23 season. Already, he’s had a top-10 all-time four-year peak, and those are the only years we’ve seen him have. The next question, naturally, is a biggie. Don’t lie — you’ve thought about it. Even if you’re a skeptic, it’s a thought that’s crossed your mind, if even for a fleeting moment.

“What if this guy is the best that’s ever done it?”

What if? Never hurts to wonder. Could Trout be the greatest? If he ends up as the greatest, what would that even take? What would that career look like? What could that career look like?

The all-time leader in position player Wins Above Replacement, according to our leaderboards, is Babe Ruth, at 168.4 WAR. Let’s have a little fun.
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*EDIT: After a strong showing from internet commenters, I added a couple changes to this piece. You’ll see that Austin Riley and Kolby Allard were both added to the list, as well as some notes under Ryan Weber’s report.

I’m going to leave the overall grades the same here, though AS WITH EVERYBODY overall grades may change by the time I get to the composite prospect list. I originally wanted to put three overall grades in these reports, then thought about leaving them out entirely because of their likelihood to change, before finally settling on putting a likely future value in for some comparisons. The innernets say no. I’m new here.

I’m reserving the right to change grades as I go along, this being the first time I’ve compiled reports on a volume this scale, though I have decided to put three values in for overall grades in the future lists. This should help clear up some of the questions people have about how I can agree that pitcher Mel Clark has a high ceiling, but only makes it on the list in the 45+ section. Enjoy!

The Braves have made some headlines this year with a number of trades to bring in young talent. While the short-term picture suffers with the loss of some popular, productive players, they are setting their future up with a lot of depth in their farm system. With a few players on the verge of contributing to the big league team, the next year or two may not be as bad as it could be trading away so much present value.

The big push of prospects could come from players at A-ball Rome and below. There are a lot of interesting talents who have entered the system in the last year or two that haven’t yet revealed how high their ceilings could be. The lower-level collection of players has a lot of risk involved, but the sheer volume of players with talent should ensure the Braves will reap the benefits of the work they’ve put into the farm.

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A few days ago, the Braves traded Cameron Maybin to the Tigers for a pair of promising-but-unproven pitchers. Predictably, the deal elicited mostly angst from Atlanta fans. Not Andrelton-level angst, but enough that yet a few more foam tomahawks hit the bottoms of wastebaskets. Put another way, the camel hasn’t collapsed, but his back is starting to sag something awful.

Youth movement in full swing, veterans are packing up almost as fast as the bandwagon is emptying. NBC Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra worded the exodus as such: “The last major league position player left in Atlanta, please turn out the lights.”

As for my own take on the Braves’ new world, let’s just say I’m highly intrigued. Regardless of how you define their strategy – retooling, tanking, whatever – these moves aren’t being made frivolously. Financial considerations aside, no small number of scouting and data-driven projections are driving the decisions. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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Yesterday, I published a post here examining the year-to-year correlations for a number of ball-in-play (BIP) pitching metrics. The results published there have some use on their own. As a practical application of that information, however, I’d like to take a look here at the nine potential free agent starting pitchers (besides Zack Greinke) whose teams faced a qualifying offer decision this offseason, and see how this analysis might impact their valuation.

Below, you’ll find two tables. The first, for reference, is a collection of all the year-to-year correlations from yesterday’s post. After that is a second table, featuring how each of the nine pitchers fared according to each metric. Comments regarding each pitchers in greater depth appear below that.

First, the correlation coefficients from yesterday’s post:

Correlation Coefficients, 2014-15 ERA Qualifiers

Metric	Coefficient
K%	0.81
BB%	0.66
Pop%	0.53
Fly%	0.76
LD%	0.14
GB%	0.86
FL/LD	0.37
GB AUTH	0.25
BIP AUTH	0.37
ERA	0.45
FIP	0.65
TRU ERA	0.72

Remember: a 100% correlation (1.00 in the above table) is obtained when the two sets of data are totally identical. The closer to 1.00, the higher degree of correlation between the two data sets.

Now what follows are the nine pitchers in question. Stats are presented as an index, where 100 is average, above 100 is above average, and below 100 is below average. Questions about the various metrics? A more thorough explanation can be found in yesterday’s post.

2014-15 QO Candidates – Key Stats Scaled to 100

Name	K%	BB%	POP%	FLY%	LD%	GB%	F/L PRD	GB PRD	BIP PRD	ACT ERA	ACT FIP	TRU ERA
Brett Anderson	77	82	12	60	72	145	127	96	98	95	101	102
Wei-Yin Chen	97	71	153	109	96	92	98	102	100	83	104	89
Marco Estrada	91	104	168	148	74	73	70	89	74	78	110	75
Yovani Gallardo	77	118	65	84	105	111	97	108	96	85	100	102
His. Iwakuma	108	56	59	93	88	114	111	110	100	88	93	82
Ian Kennedy	121	98	104	119	108	84	114	103	121	110	116	101
John Lackey	97	79	133	98	97	100	92	111	96	71	92	91
Jeff Samardzija	90	74	111	115	101	88	90	103	102	124	105	94
J. Zimmermann	98	63	154	106	103	92	122	101	105	94	96	95

*****

Brett Anderson (Profile)
Status: Accepted qualifying offer from Dodgers

Anderson’s key strength is his stratospheric grounder rate, the highest in the majors last year, over two standard deviations higher than league average. His walk rate was also a positive, over one half standard deviation lower than league average. Our correlation coefficients tell us that these are likely true talents, and should recur moving forward. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to his low liner rate, which was over two standard deviations below league average. As much of a ground baller as Anderson is, repeating his 66.3% grounder rate would be quite a feat, and any reduction likely will translate point for point in an increase in liner rate.

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Ben and Sam discuss the latest gossip about the Mariners and Marlins, then do another career comparison of Mike Trout and Bryce Harper.

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Three winters ago, we got into a lot of arguments about James Shields. He was at the center of a very polarizing trade and people took sides. You remember it, so I won’t rehash things other than to remark on how funny it is that the James Shields-Wil Myers blockbuster has actually become the Wade Davis trade. Wade Davis! The guy who gave up 5.92 runs per nine in the season following the deal.

Life’s little insanities aside, Shields was very good for the Royals during his two seasons in Kansas City. He was worth 4.0 and 3.3 WAR, respectively, and helped push them over the hump and back into relevance. Would they have gotten there without him? It’s entirely possible, but he was a key player on the team during their renaissance and deserves some recognition for it. You will note, however, that Shields signed elsewhere after the Royals lost the 2014 World Series and then the team won the 2015 title without him.

One of Shields’ hallmarks, and one of the main reasons the Royals acquired him, was his consistency. You were pretty much assured more than 200 innings of good, non-elite run prevention and above-average fielding independent numbers. Shields was as predictable as a person could be in baseball. Then he signed with the Padres.

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If you were glancing at baseball news around the internet recently, you might have come across some announcements from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. A Forbes‘ article features a headline, for example, that reads “Manfred Announces 3-Year Deal With FOX To Have MLB Games Streamed In-Market“. At MLB’s own website one finds “Streaming deal a huge leap forward for MLB, fans“. Viewing the headlines alone, we might conclude, or at least be hopeful, that this is a really big deal — that MLB is finally getting rid of its blackout policy on MLB.tv, allowing fans to watch their local team without subscribing to an expensive cable television package. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening. In-market streaming is a small step towards making baseball more accessible to fans, but does not deal with the principal blackout problems that prevent getting MLB games any way you want them.

In-market streaming, in the iteration announced yesterday, is helpful to fans provided they already pay for a cable service broadcasting their team’s local games. As the Forbes article indicates, the deal is with FOX-owned cable affiliates. Half of the league is broadcast on a cable network owned by FOX, with the other half spread out between other owners like Comcast, Time Warner and DirecTV. While the other networks could reach a deal with MLB, Manfred’s announcement relates exclusively to the FOX-owned properties. In the chart below, the column on the left features the teams whose broadcasts are affected as a result of this agreement, while the column on the right shows teams whose rights are not managed by FOX and are therefore not part of this announcement.

15 Teams With In-Market Streaming for 2016

With In-Market Streaming	Without In-Market Streaming
Atlanta Braves	New York Mets
Cincinnati Reds	Philadelphia Phillies
Cleveland Indians	Chicago Cubs
Texas Rangers	Chicago White Sox
Detroit Tigers	Pittsburgh Pirates
Kansas City Royals	Houston Astros
Los Angeles Angels	Los Angeles Dodgers
Miami Marlins	Seattle Mariners
Milwaukee Brewers	San Francisco Giants
Minnesota Twins	Oaland Athletics
New York Yankees	Washington Nationals
Arizona Diamondbacks	Baltimore Orioles
San Diego Padres	Colorado Rockies
St. Louis Cardinals	Boston Red Sox
Tampa Bay Rays	Toronto Blue Jays

SOURCE: MLB.com

Depending on the cable provider, one might be able to stream games through portable devices if also signed into a home wifi that has also been purchased from the same provider, for example. For the fifteen teams part of this agreement, cable subscribers should have significantly more viewing options. Prior to this agreement, a fan, even if he or she were a cable subscriber and even if he or she paid for MLB.tv, would still be unable to watch games on a cell phone or tablet while located in the home market — nor could could one watch games at the doctor’s office, friend’s home, or while commuting on the train or bus. MLB.tv blacked out the games on own its platform, nor was the local cable provider was providing its own options.

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Bryce Harper was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player. This is because he was almost certainly the National League’s most valuable player. I don’t want to get into the argument about the definition of “value,” and there are some halfway decent arguments that might conclude Harper got topped, but Harper is a wonderfully deserving winner, and his win comes absent any real controversy. The voting was unanimous, I should probably say. Harper got every single first-place vote. Which meant zero first-place votes for Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto, who each had maybe the best seasons for a first baseman since Albert Pujols in his prime. The National League had some awesome players! Harper ran away with things.

This was the year Harper reached a new level. It was a level people long suspected would be achievable for a player with Harper’s skills, but you have to realize how uncommon it actually is for a player to perform around his ceiling. Mike Trout has spoiled us, but now Harper’s up there, too, having broken out. Here’s an easy way to visualize this: Before the year, at FanGraphs, we published player projections. Player projections are everywhere, and we had our own numbers. Then players subsequently posted real numbers. It can be fun to compare the actual numbers and the projected numbers, and here’s a table of the 10 hitters who batted at least 500 times and who beat their projected OPS figures by the most:

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

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