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 and blue for Community Research.
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The 2015-16 free-agent class was big, full of talent and ultimately resulted in seven $100 million contracts — along with another seven worth $50 million or more. This offseason led to more contracts (a total of eight, precisely) in the $50 million to $100 million range; however, among the entire class, only Yoenis Cespedes received more than $100 million.

As Cespedes himself could tell you, a player’s value can change significantly in a season. Despite having aged a year, Cespedes received $35 million more in guarantees this winter than he did last. While Cespedes had a strong 2016, though, many of his free-agent peers who signed big contracts last offseason have proven to be big disappointments.

First, let’s take a quick look at the contracts signed last year. The table below includes not only the actual amounts of the contacts themselves, but also an estimate of the value said player would have been expected to provide starting with the time he signed. To calculate this estimated value, I began with each player’s WAR forecast from last year’s FanGraphs Depth chart projections, started with $8 million per win with 5% inflation, and applied a standard aging curve. The rightmost column indicates whether the player in question was expected to outperform or underperform the cost of his contract.

There’s about a $94 million surplus among these deal. That said, there were also nine qualifying offers made to the players — which attached draft-pick compensation to the signings — while seven of the contracts included opt-out clauses. Those two factors might wipe out any surplus value.

At this time last year, the numbers indicated that Jason Heyward was a colossal bargain, a four-win player just entering his age-26 season. Heyward, as well as Ben Zobrist and Wei-Yin Chen, made Dave Cameron’s free-agent bargain list. Based on the projections, both Justin Upton and Alex Gordon seemed like decent bets to pay off. Cameron wasn’t buying on Upton, however, placing him among the free-agent landmines along with Jordan Zimmermann and Chris Davis.

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Back in December, Bryan Price opined in these pages that young pitchers should throw more, not less. The Cincinnati Reds manager was referring to the minor leagues — youthful amateurs are a different story — which is essentially finishing school for up-and-coming hurlers. In Price’s view, “throwing is the only way for them to learn the craft.” For that reason, they should “carry a heavier workload.”

Price uttered those words at a winter-meetings media session, which limited his ability to elaborate on, and clarify, certain salient opinions. With that in mind, I recently followed up with the former pitching coach to give him that opportunity. Injuries and causation was the first subject he addressed.

“I don’t see anything in our baseball community — our pitching community — that suggests protecting these kids by decreasing their workload leads to a lessening of the number of injuries that require surgery,” said Price. “We have yet to put a finger on how we’re going to cure, and completely avoid, the Tommy John issues, the ulnar collateral ligament issues. Perhaps it’s training methods, and kids playing year round now, as opposed to playing seasonal sports. That would be my guess, but I don’t know that as a fact.

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Personally, I prefer the DH-less game. I like when managers are forced to make more in-game decisions — in particular, when they must decide whether to allow a starting pitcher to take one last at-bat before exiting. I like that starting pitchers who are perhaps pitching too aggressively up-and-in are held accountable by stepping into the batter’s box. In an age of elevated pitching injuries, I like that the pitching spot allows pitchers a breather when working through the lineup multiple times. I like that each player who wields a bat must also wear a glove. And as a former beat writer, and as a fan of the game, I like that the game moves a little more quickly without the DH.

But it seems the adoption of the DH by the NL is inevitable, having become part of the game at the amateur level and every professional level besides the NL. Entering the most recent collective-bargaining cycle, it seemed like the DH-to-the-NL could be in play.

I bring up the DH today because Pedro Alvarez is still available. I bring up the DH today because the NL’s leading home-run hitters last season, Chris Carter, had so little appeal on the market this offseason that he considered playing in Japan before agreeing to a one-year, $3-million deal with the Yankees. I bring up the DH because Adam Lind (142 wRC+ in 2014, 119 wRC+ in 2015) settled for a one-year, $1.5-million deal with the Nationals in mid-February. I bring up the DH because, as Dave Cameron wrote earlier this offseason, the industry is not valuing bat-only players.

The players seemed to have largely kicked the can down the road in the most recent CBA. Their objectives seemed modest in nature, focused primarily on the qualifying offer. And the changes to QO compensation did mark a small victory for the union. Despite a declining share of revenues, players are nevertheless enjoying record average salaries. Perhaps the status is quo is good enough for the majority of players.

But if the union is seeking small victories, it’s a little surprising the DH wasn’t more of a focus. It didn’t seem to be a significant negotiating topic in CBA talks despite indications from Rob Manfred that there was growing interest from his perspective, and with Tony Clark suggesting that he was open to the idea when speaking with the St. Louis Post Dispatch back in 2015.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a bad highlight, then preview the Cardinals’ 2017 season with Will Leitch of Sports on Earth and the Royals’ 2017 season with Rany Jazayerli of The Ringer.

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Baseball America recently published their top-100 list of prospects, as have Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law and MLB Pipeline. Eric Longenhagen will be putting out his top-100 this spring, too. I submitted my contribution on Tuesday, when I put out KATOH’s top-100 prospects. All of these lists attempt to accomplish the very same goal: identifying and ranking the best prospects. But KATOH goes about it in a very different way than the others. While most others rely heavily on scouting, KATOH focuses on statistical performance.

On the whole, there’s a good deal of agreement between KATOH and the more traditional rankings. Many of KATOH’s favorite prospects have also received praise from rea- live human beings who’ve watched them play. Andrew Benintendi, J.P. Crawford, Michael Kopech, and Austin Meadows all fall within this group. However, there are other KATOH favorites who’ve received very little attention from prospect rankers. The purpose of this article is to give these prospects a little bit of attention.

For each position, I’ve identified the player, among those excluded from all top-100 lists, who’s best acquitted by KATOH. These players have performed in the minors in a way that usually portends big-league success. Yet, for one reason or another, each has been overlooked by prospect evaluators.

Of course, the fact that these players missed every top-100 list suggests that their physical tools are probably underwhelming. That’s very important information! Often times, the outlook for players like this is much worse than their minor-league stats would lead you to believe. There’s a reason people in the industry always say “don’t scout the stat line.” Although KATOH scouts the stat line in an intuitive fashion, it still overlooks the non-numerical attributes that can predict big-league success.

I performed this exact same exercise last year, as well, and I’m proud to say there were some successes. This time last year, Edwin Diaz was a KATOH guy who was unanimously omitted from top-100 lists due to his high-effort delivery and lack of a viable third pitch. Now, he’s coming off of one of the best reliever seasons we’ve ever seen. Zach Davies also appeared on this list last year as a soft-tossing righty. He promptly posted a 2.8 WAR season as a 23-year-old. He was especially effective in last year’s second half, posting a 3.40 FIP after July 1st.

Of course, I also touted Ramon Flores, Clayton Blackburn and Zach Lee in this space last year. One year later, those guys are flirting with non-prospect-dom. But let’s try to remain optimistic and not think about them right now. There will be hits, and there will be misses.

Bear in mind that this exercise excludes the KATOH darlings who still wound up on top-100 lists. For example, KATOH loves Jake Bauers, Manny Margot and Thomas Szapucki way more than most. Even though KATOH’s assessment of these prospects is more optimistic than most, they’re ineligible for this list because at least one well-respected outlet ranked those same prospects among the top-100 rookie-eligible players on the planet. The players below are the ones who are a bit further off the radar.

*****
C – Garrett Stubbs, Houston (Profile)

Why KATOH loves him:

Stubbs hit a slick .309/.397/.472 between High-A and Double-A last year while walking nearly as much as he struck out. For a catcher, that’s amazing, especially considering he opened the year as a 22-year-old. He also swiped 15 bases, which suggests he’ll provide additional value with his legs. Though he’s mastered Double-A, he’s still just 23, which is relatively young for a college bat.

Why scouts don’t (per Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook):

He projects as a near-average hitter with well below-average power… Stubbs’ size is the biggest impediment to him becoming a big league regular. No regular backstop today weighs as little as Stubbs, but he could still be a solid contributor even if limited to a part-time role behind the plate.

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Don’t hesitate to ignore all this introductory matter.

Over the last couple years, the author has published a periodic statistical report designed to serve as a mostly responsible shorthand for people who, like the author, possess more enthusiasm for collegiate baseball than expert knowledge of it. Those reports integrated concepts central to much of the analysis found at FanGraphs — regarding sample size and regression, for example — to provide something not unlike a “true talent” leaderboard for hitters and pitchers in select conferences.

What follows represents an updated report for the 2017 college campaign.

As in the original edition of this same thing, what I’ve done here is to utilize principles introduced by Chris Mitchell on forecasting future major-league performance with minor-league stats.

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Literally just an hour or two ago, Travis published this article, titled “Has the Fly-Ball Revolution Begun?” It was his latest piece in what’s unofficially a series, but I can’t help myself but piggyback, because it’s a fascinating subject.

A few years back, for the Hardball Times Annual, I wrote about how the information age had handed the advantage to the side of run prevention. Pitchers could better hone in on hitter weaknesses, and defenses could better prepare themselves for expected batted balls. Back then, I wasn’t sure how hitters could fight back. It seemed like theirs would be a losing battle, since their very job is to respond to whatever the pitcher is wanting to do.

Now we have Statcast. Even before Statcast, there was HITf/x, but there’s more and more accessible information than ever about exit velocities and launch angles. So the collective hitter response seems to be trying to hit more balls in the air. This is the developing push-back. This is how hitters are making up ground.

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The spring-training games have begun in earnest, all of the top-50 free agents have been signed, and a new page has flipped over on the calendar. This seems to be a good time to simultaneously look backward and forward to get a feel as to what might transpire during the regular season.

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