| 11:58 |
: And so it begins.
|
| 11:59 |
: OH GOD THERES NO QUESTION QUEUE I’M SCARED
|
| 11:59 |
: How was your weekend?
|
| 11:59 |
: Sleepy. I ate way too many cookies Friday.
|
| 11:59 |
: Why does ZiPS project K/9 rather than K%?
|
| 12:00 |
: ZiPS doesn’t explicitly project K/9 or K%. Probably easier for Cistulli to calculate since I don’t give him TBF in the base readout.
|
Miguel Sano didn’t exactly sneak up on the league. The massive 22-year-old Dominican slugger had been considered a top-100 overall prospect in baseball for each of the last six seasons, a top-20 overall prospect each of the last four. He’d have been a perennial No. 1 prospect for most any organization in baseball, if not for the presence of super-prospect Byron Buxton. In the prospect world, Sano played Pippen to Buxton’s Jordan.
Last season, they both arrived. And for Sano, the debut couldn’t have gone much better. Sano batted 335 times in his rookie season. Set the playing time minimum low enough, to include Sano on our leaderboards, and he was a top-10 hitter in baseball. Immediately, Sano thrust himself into the company of Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Chris Davis, not only as one of the game’s premier power hitters, but as one of the most dangerous all-around at-bats in the league.
Pitchers who had faced Sano in the minor leagues already knew what to expect. Pitchers who hadn’t faced Sano before quickly learned what to expect. The most simple scouting report goes like this: true 80-grade power, the kind of power that necessitates lofty comparisons with Stanton. Proceed with caution.
And that’s exactly what pitchers did. A reputation as a feared hitter is the kind of thing most guys have to earn. Bautista, Davis, Encarnacion: they had to earn their reputations as truly premier power hitters, as the most dangerous at-bats in the game. It wasn’t simply assumed. Sano? Sano arrived with that reputation.
In something of a curious trade, the Rockies flipped Corey Dickerson to the Rays for Jake McGee. Those two players were the headliners of the deal, but they weren’t the only two players involved. Also changing hands were third baseman Kevin Padlo and hard-throwing righty German Marquez, who head to the Rays and Rockies, respectively. Here’s what my fancy computer math says about the minor leaguers involved.
Kevin Padlo (Profile)
The Rockies drafted Padlo in the fifth round out of high school less than two years ago, but he wasted no time putting up gaudy numbers in the low minors. Padlo graded out extremely well by an embryonic version of KATOH and, nearly a year and a half later, his enticing combination of power, speed and youth still tips the scales. He placed 37th on KATOH’s newly-minted prospect list, with a projected 5.9 WAR through his first six years in the show.
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 Oakland Athletics. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles NL / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Texas / Toronto / Washington.
Batters
There’s always the sense, given the organization’s record of innovation and willingness to reconstruct its roster, that the A’s are likely to succeed then most when mediocrity appears to be the only possible outcome. If that sense is correct, then Oakland is likely to succeed very hard in 2016 — because the club, as presently constructed, is not well-acquitted by the projections.
Consider the following table, a version of which appears in the glossary entry for WAR and which provides a rough characterization for various WAR ranges:
| Category | WAR |
| Scrub | 0-1 |
| Role Player | 1-2 |
| Solid Starter | 2-3 |
| Good Player | 3-4 |
| All-Star | 4-5 |
| Superstar | 5-6 |
| MVP | 6+ |
By this rough taxonomy, Oakland currently employs only two batters classified as “solid starters” (Josh Reddick, Marcus Semien) and a third (Billy Burns) who profiles as precisely average. That triumvirate represents the exact sort of cost-controlled core a team like Oakland requires to win. Unfortunately, they’re surrounded not by stars, but role players.
It’s difficult, while examining the modest projections here, not also to consider for a moment the distinctly less modest one produced by ZiPS for Josh Donaldson. Last year’s American League MVP is expected to record more than six wins in 2016, at the cost of about $11.5 million. One needn’t be employed — or even have any training — as a rocket scientist to recognize what a benefit Donaldson would be to this club.
Episode 628
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the live-in-person guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.
This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 31 min play time.)
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