Archive for November, 2016

The Most Dominant Pitcher in the Minors*

The most dominant pitcher in the minors pitched in the majors. But he didn’t pitch much, as a September call-up, and he wasn’t very good, and you probably don’t know him. He gave up a home run. Walked four and whiffed five. About a hit an inning. He wasn’t handling high-leverage assignments. For all intents and purposes, his big-league work was almost invisible.

And yet, the most dominant pitcher in the minors was extraordinarily dominant, in the minors. He is but 23 years old, and he isn’t going away. He’s not about to change anyone’s offseason plans. He’s not about to get dealt in a blockbuster. He’s a prospect. He’s a prospect who’ll get an extended chance to build on what he’s already done.

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2016 Hitter Contact-Quality Report: NL First Basemen

The major awards have been handed out, qualifying offers have been accepted and rejected, and free-agent signings and trades have begun to trickle in. Let’s continue our look backward at the 2016 season in an effort to look forward. After reviewing AL first basemen and designated hitters, we continue our look at position-player performance utilizing granular exit-speed and launch-angle data with NL first basemen.

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Another Year in Catchers Playing Other Positions

It’s not uncommon for ballplayers and managers and other people associated with baseball to evoke the “unwritten rules” of the game. For some, these unwritten rules seem absurd, a sort of arcane code that frequently contradicts reason. In essence, though, these “unwritten rules” amount to what a social scientist might refer to as “norms.” And, discussed in these terms, they make a little more sense. Using the term “norms” instead of “unwritten rules” removes some of the connotations of the latter term, and let’s us think about the game without choosing sides.

One norm that’s rarely scrutinized is the existence of distinct positions. The pitcher and catcher are highly regulated by the official rules, of course; otherwise, though, the league doesn’t have a lot to say about what the positions should be and how the men filling them should operate. For that reason, some positions are fluid. Corner outfielders are largely interchangeable. Middle infielders have generally the same jobs. Most of what makes the positions different are the existing norms about how they should be played and what you need to do to succeed there.

But as I noted a moment ago, there are exceptions. Catchers have a very different job from everyone else and that job is typically understood to be more important and more demanding than the other positions. It’s harder to be a catcher than it is to be an outfielder, but the positions also require dramatically different sets of skills to the point at which you can’t really compare the two in a meaningful way.

That doesn’t mean we can’t try. On occasion, catchers are asked to play positions other than catcher despite the required skills being quite different. How do those catchers do when they move from behind the plate? Does it tell us anything meaningful? Last winter, I performed an exercise to determine the performance of catchers at other positions. This represents an update of that piece, for the 2016 season.

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Andrew McCutchen and Selling Low

Buy low and sell high. It’s the investing concept we’re all taught at a young age, and it makes everything sound so simple. If you buy assets when their value is about to go up, and sell them when it’s about to go down, then you’ll get rich. Super easy! Everyone should do it! Get excited!

Life, however, is more complicated than that. The high and low points of a trend graph are easy to spot when looking retrospectively, but when you’re in the midst of the graph, determining whether things are about to go up or down is more difficult. Forecasting isn’t as easy as buy low/sell high makes it sound.

So, with that said, let’s talk about Andrew McCutchen.

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Bud Black on Managing (and Run-Prevention) in Colorado

Bud Black has made a lot of tactical decisions at Coors Field. He’s done so from the visiting dugout, having previously served as the skipper of the San Diego Padres. His perspective will be different going forward. Following a year-long stint as a special assistant in Anaheim, Black is now at the helm in Colorado. The Rockies named the 59-year-old former big-league lefty as their new manager earlier this month.

Black was a pitching coach before becoming a manager, and run-prevention remains his area of expertise. He’ll have his hands full in his new position. The offensive environment at Coors is well known, and the Rockies pitchers allowed the second-most runs in the National League this past season. Their 4.92 ERA was also second from the bottom.

Black has ideas of what will work in Colorado. He’s receptive to analytics — a trait surely not lost on GM Jeff Bridich — so while he has no intentions of trying to reinvent the wheel, he’s by no means old school. His moves will sometimes qualify as conventional, but that’s a matter of pragmatism, not a cookie-cutter mentality.

Black, who was featured in this past Sunday’s Notes column, talked about the approach he’ll bring to his new job — the focus was on pitching — late last week.

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Black on managing in Colorado: “I have a little bit of perspective, because I’ve managed close to a season [at Coors Field]. I’m not sure of the exact number, but it’s probably 80-90 games. Even though they were three- and four-game series over the course of a nine-year period, I’ve experienced all types of ballgames there.

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Just How Awful Is This Crop of Free-Agent Starters?

After Jeremy Hellickson‘s decision to accept his qualifying offer, Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey’s respective agreements with the Atlanta Braves, and the Houston Astros’ acquisition of Charlie Morton last week, the starting-pitching market in free agency is pretty well depleted. If two 40-plus-year-old pitchers and two other pitchers who’ve produced a single above-average season between them can deplete a class, it’s probably safe to assume that the class in question is pretty dreadful. Last year, eight pitchers signed contracts guaranteeing at least $70 million; this year, we might not see any.

We can get a decent idea of how little there is out there by looking at the projections. Our Depth Chart projections call for 247 pitchers to record at least five starts next season. Of the top 150 — equivalent to five per team — only seven are free agents currently.

Free Agent Starters
Name GS IP ERA FIP WAR
Rich Hill 23 138 3.36 3.50 2.9
Ivan Nova 29 168 4.10 4.03 2.3
Edinson Volquez 29 167 4.36 4.30 1.9
Derek Holland 29 170 4.33 4.45 1.8
Jason Hammel 28 155 4.35 4.30 1.7
Jorge de la Rosa 26 145 4.29 4.38 1.6
Doug Fister 28 158 4.51 4.52 1.4

For those clubs in need of a starter, there’s 38-year-old Rich Hill, a half-season of optimism courtesy Ivan Nova, and… zero other pitchers forecast to record an average, two-win season. Generally, free agents will not have youth on their side, as it takes six full years of service time to get to free agency, but this group is particularly long in the tooth. Nova is the only one under 30, while five of seven will play next season at age 33 or older — and that doesn’t even include the aforementioned Colon and Dickey.

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2017 ZiPS Projections – Washington Nationals

After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Washington Nationals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
Even without the benefit yet of having acquired new talent through free agency, the 2017 edition of the Nationals looks strong. There are promising young field players in Bryce Harper (5.1 zWAR), Anthony Rendon (4.1), and Trea Turner (4.4), while all five members of the likely Opening Day rotation earn a projection of 2.5 wins or better.

The club’s greatest weakness appears to come in the form of two previous strengths: Jayson Werth and Ryan Zimmerman. Expected to earn about $35 million between them in 2017, they’re projected to produce roughly zero wins. Of course, that’s oversimplifying matters: players are often compensated for wins on the back end of a deal that they probably supplied at the beginning of it. That doesn’t change the situation facing the Nats, however — namely, that left field and first base might offer little for the club this next season.

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How Can We Help Andrew Cashner Bounce Back?

Andrew Cashner just signed a one-year deal with the Rangers, the kind of deal you might call a pillow contract, an opportunity for Cashner to bounce back and get on the market with better numbers behind him. That’s the benefit for Cashner. As for the Rangers, they’re happy to get a relatively cheap veteran with some upside for the back end of their rotation.

The only problem with this scenario is that Cashner has spent two years trying to bounce back, and has met with poor results, even on the back of high-velocity stuff that looks like it should do better. There’s got to be a way to get more from 94 and a mullet.

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The Kyle Seager Appreciation Article

Baseball is a “What have you done for me lately?” sort of affair. The most notable and most discussed exploits tend to be those which differ most greatly from the status quo. A player who produces an unexpectedly excellent season is likely to receive more attention than one who’s quietly great. We don’t notice the everyday effectiveness of a player unless that effectiveness occurs in incredible volume, as in the case of someone like Mike Trout. Trout makes the historic an everyday, mundane occurrence, and it’s because of that stupefying feat that he’s finished either first or second in the MVP voting every full season he’s spent in the big leagues.

Kyle Seager has never finished first or second in MVP voting. He received one MVP vote in 2014. He came in 12th this year. He’s not an historic talent like Trout, and he may not even be the best player on his team, given the fact that he shares an infield with future first-ballot Hall of Famer Robinson Cano. He may not even be the best player in his own family. Perhaps you’ve heard of his brother, Corey. He just won the Rookie of the Year award in the National League and finished third in MVP voting. He hasn’t had the slow buildup in production that Kyle has. Corey appeared, looked around, planted his feat, and started mashing. Because of that, it’s easy to forget that there have only been six more valuable position players in the AL than Kyle Seager since 2012.

WAR Since 2012
Player WAR
Mike Trout 47.0
Josh Donaldson 32.0
Miguel Cabrera 28.2
Adrian Beltre 28.2
Robinson Cano 26.7
Manny Machado 23.0
Kyle Seager 22.4

The first six names are a who’s-who of MVP candidates and possible future figurative residents of Cooperstown, New York. The next three names on the list are also almost uniformly lauded: Dustin Pedroia, Ian Kinsler and Evan Longoria. It’s probably fair to say that Seager isn’t customarily evoked among these other players, yet there he is.

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Should Teams Believe in the More Selective Cespedes?

Baseball players are human beings and – here’s some bad news about the human race – human beings are flawed. Perfection in human form does not exist and, consequently, neither does perfection in baseball-player form. The greatest players the world has ever known still have weaknesses on the field (and off it, for that matter). Some weaknesses are unfixable – sorry, Ben Revere, but you’re never going to be a power hitter – but some weaknesses can be addressed. Players who make improvements can elevate their projected value, which can come in handy during free agency. This year, one free agent who has answered questions about a long-standing perceived weakness and stands to benefit financially is Yoenis Cespedes.

A year ago, Cespedes underwent a power surge. He’d always been a 20-homer guy, but, for the first time, he crossed the 30-homer threshold. He also set a career high in isolated power (ISO) with a .251 mark that ranked 12th among 141 qualified hitters. The great news for Cespedes is that he’s been able to sustain his heightened level of power this year by putting up a .251 ISO for the second consecutive season.

career-iso

The better news for Cespsedes, though, is that, in addition to strengthening an area in which he’d always shown some ability, he also demonstrated impressive improvement in an area of perceived weakness: walks and on-base percentage (OBP). From 2013 to 2014, Cespedes’ OBP hovered around .300; last year it increased to .328 thanks in large part to the influx of home runs (and their effect on his batting average). This year, however, Cespedes brought his OBP up to .354, a level he hasn’t reached since he posted a .356 OBP in his rookie season. The obvious cause of this impressive boost has been a dramatic reversal in his walk-rate trend.

career-bb

In 2015, Cespedes’ walk rate bottomed out at 4.9%; this past year, it soared to a new career high of 9.4%. One of the key questions facing teams interested in signing Cespedes this winter, then, is whether the boost is real. It goes without saying that a player with good power and decent OBP will be worth more to a team than a player with good power and poor OBP. Which type of player should teams expect from Cespedes going forward?

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