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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When the Mets and Royals met in the World Series a few months ago, it was billed as an extreme clash of styles. The Royals were the best defensive team in baseball; the Mets were, well, not. They weren’t as bad in the field as their reputation may have suggested, but with Daniel Murphy, Wilmer Flores, and Yoenis Cespedes playing up the middle in the postseason, the Mets weren’t exactly the rangiest club around. And then, during fall classic, the Mets lived down to their reputation.
The Royals didn’t win the World Series solely because of the Mets defensive miscues — KC made a few of their own, in fact, and those were forgotten about because they won — but it’s hard not to remember the fielding lapses, and heading into the winter, the assumption was that the team would spend the off-season upgrading that weakness. Instead, however, the Mets have made an even bigger bet against the value of defense this winter.
They say you shouldn’t start out an article by insulting your audience’s intelligence, and it’s probably not a great idea to start out by pointing out that you’re about to insult your audience’s intelligence, either, so we’re just breaking rules all over the place. Watch your feet, people, there are rule shards all over the floor!
In any case, this is a baseball website. You know that. I know that. Together we know things! The thing is, this isn’t baseball season. I mean, it is in the sense that it always is — at least in part because of sites like this — but really right now it is football season. They’re having games now and everything. Lots of games and now they’re in the playoffs with only four teams remaining. This gave me thoughts: when was the last time a baseball team and a football team from the same city were both crowned champions in the same year? That depends on how you calculate these things. Oh, before I get into the specifics, figuring out if that can happen this year is what this article is about.
Ben and Sam banter about Yoenis Cespedes, then revisit the Josh Donaldson deal and answer listener emails about umpire inadequacy, the Ausmus-Matheny paradox, and what it would cost to pay minor leaguers minimum wage.
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Catcher defense is all the rage, at least for some. For those of us who care deeply about catcher defense, this year has brought us glimpses of Statcast and Baseball Prospectus’ recently gathering of enough data to extend their pitch framing, blocking, and throwing metrics back as far as 1950 in some cases. We’ve always known about catcher defense, but our ability to measure and understand it has improved greatly in the last five years, and more advances are likely on the horizon.
This ability to measure something affects our perceptions not just of that thing, but of all other things related to that thing. As Ben Lindbergh recently noted, Mike Piazza was known as a horrible throwing catcher during his career and that colored his entire defensive perception. Yet our modern metrics look back favorably upon his blocking and framing. It’s important to note that we didn’t just learn about blocking and framing in 2015. It’s not as if baseball fans couldn’t conceive of their value in 1997, it’s just that the only thing we had rudimentary numbers for at the time was his arm. We could measure that and see it most clearly relative to the other skills, so it did the heavy lifting in our minds.
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We have seen a lot of money thrown around this offseason, particularly on the pitching side. Players at the top end like David Price and Zack Greinke have received $200 million contracts while mid-tier pitcher like Mike Leake, Jeff Samardzija, Wei-Yin Chen, and even Ian Kennedy have received contracts approaching nine figures. On the hitting side, the market moved considerably slower, but Jason Heyward got nearly $200 million, including close to $80 million over the first three seasons before a pair opt-outs become available to him. Justin Upton still got more than $130 million with a favorable opt-out clause, and it appears that Yoenis Cespedes will do just fine as well after some talk that both he and Upton might have to take one-year deals. Describing this year’s class is one thing, but compared to the classes over the last decade, it might be the best we have seen.
A brief look at this year’s class reveals a collection of high-end players who produced strong 2015 seasons. Consider the players in the table below, sorted by projected contract value per FanGraphs Crowdsourcing and featuring both 2015 performance and the total dollar amount of the contract signed.
| Age | 2015 WAR | Contract | |
| David Price | 29 | 6.4 | $217 M |
| Jason Heyward | 25 | 6.0 | $184 M |
| Zack Greinke | 31 | 5.9 | $206 M |
| Yoenis Cespedes | 29 | 6.7 | |
| Johnny Cueto | 29 | 4.1 | $130 M |
| Jordan Zimmermann | 29 | 3.0 | $110 M |
| Justin Upton | 27 | 3.6 | $132 M |
| Chris Davis | 29 | 5.6 | $161 M |
| Alex Gordon | 31 | 2.8 | $72 M |
| Jeff Samardzija | 30 | 2.7 | $90 M |
| AVERAGE | 28.9 | 4.7 | $145 M |
Assuming Cespedes signs somewhere in the $100 million range, the average will still be right around $140 million per contract, an increase of more than 50% from the top ten free agents last year. Thanks to the efforts of Carson Cistulli, we can take a look at the free agent classes in each of the past five years, and compare the top ten free agents according to the FanGraphs crowd.
The Rockies officially signed Gerardo Parra the other day. It was an odd move, because it seemingly killed the team’s leverage to deal one of their existing outfielders, which is something that has been rumored to be in the offing all offseason. While that might be true, it doesn’t have to be true, because there is an easy solution to the logjam — playing Corey Dickerson at first base.
The Rockies have been searching for a first baseman for a couple of years. Over the past three seasons, the team has produced just 1.4 WAR at the position — 22nd in the majors overall. When Todd Helton retired, they went the veteran route and signed Justin Morneau. He helped improve the team’s performance at first base to 15th overall over the past two seasons, which is better but not spectacular. Morneau hit well when he played — a .316 average and 3.0 WAR aren’t too shabby — but he only logged 52% of the team’s plate appearances at first base the last two years. And now he’s gone.
In his wake, there are currently two main candidates for first base playing time, Ben Paulsen and Mark Reynolds. The Rockies quietly signed Reynolds to a $2.6 million contract last month. Reynolds has been around forever, but is just entering his age-32 season. If you’re wondering why a 32-year-old first baseman nets less than $3 million, well the answer is because he isn’t very good. Reynolds has been worth 0.3 WAR or less in four of the last five seasons, and in two of those five seasons — including last season — his value dipped below replacement level. He loses value in both defense and base running, which would be fine if he were a true masher. He isn’t. In fact, his wRC+ has topped 100 in any of the last three seasons, nor has his slugging percentage topped .400 in them.
As I write this, it’s looking increasingly likely that the Nationals will swing in and sign Yoenis Cespedes as a free agent. Reports are circulating that the Nationals have offered a five-year deal, and though that doesn’t mean anything’s finished, the rest of the market hasn’t developed like this. The Mets, according to other reports, are holding at three years, and if that were to keep up, Cespedes wouldn’t have much of a choice on his hands. Players love security, and Cespedes wants the biggest offer he can land.
An interesting side note is that, from appearances, the Nationals’ pursuit of Cespedes is ownership-driven. The owners have made such big moves before, and if Washington’s front office thought it was going to grab a high-profile outfielder, it probably wouldn’t have recently traded for Ben Revere. Adding Cespedes and Revere would leave someone out of a regular job, and that wouldn’t be an ideal circumstance. But it matters only so much how a move happens — what’s more important is what happens next. And the Nationals could soon have to deal with the Cespedes mystery.
| 9:00 |
: Hello friends
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| 9:01 |
: Welcome to baseball chat
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| 9:01 |
: Uncharacteristically on time this week!
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| 9:01 |
: Don’t get used to it
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| 9:01 |
: You sell your house to bet on baseball: which team do you bet on to win the AL pennant?
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| 9:01 |
: Red Sox
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The search for utopia is a futile one. For humans to truly appreciate happiness, we must always be reminded of our sadness. If happiness were a constant, it would become no longer desirable. A world without imperfections is a world impure.
And so to truly appreciate Clayton Kershaw is more than to simply watch a glorious seven-minute YouTube highlight video of Vin Scully calling every out of Kershaw’s June 18, 2014 no-hitter against the Rockies in Los Angeles. I mean, yeah, that’s a part of it — watching that specific video is actually one of the required steps; you’ve gotta watch the video — but by only observing Kershaw at his best, by choosing only to remember his triumphs, by only witnessing him accomplish that which leaves his peers in awe, we begin to lose context. For our admiration of Kershaw to be pure, we must always remind ourselves of his fleeting moments of fallibility, for they are what allow us to appreciate his greatness.
I’m a man of my word. And I’d sure like to continue enjoying Clayton Kershaw. So let’s watch him throw some trash pitches.
