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Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 6/14/17

12:01
Dave Cameron: Happy Wednesday, everyone.

12:02
Dave Cameron: With the draft almost in the rear view mirror, the summer trade season is about to get started.

12:02
Dave Cameron: Should be an interesting six weeks leading up to the deadline.

12:02
ChiSox: Do you see STL, PIT, MIL going for it at the deadline?

12:02
Dave Cameron: STL yes, PIT and MIL no.

12:02
Grate: How does draft pick compensation work now? Do you think the Reds would be better off trading Cozart or getting compensation for losing him this offseason?

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The Orioles Rotation Is Terrible

On May 10th, Jeff wrote a post here called “Well, the Orioles Are Doing it Again“, recognizing that the Orioles were once again winning a bunch of games despite a fairly pedestrian BaseRuns record. At the time, the Orioles were 22-10, outpacing their BaseRuns expected record of 16-16, as they had clutched their way to the best record in baseball.

A little over a month later, the Orioles are 31-31. They’ve gone 9-21 in their last 30 games, and they’re now a half-game out of last place in the AL East. But this isn’t a case where their reliance on winning close games has come back to bite them, with the one-run bounces going against them. They are still outpacing their BaseRuns expected win total by six games. They’ve won 9 of their last 30 games because they’ve played like a team that should have only won 9 of their last 30 games. And they’ve played that poorly because their starting pitching is awful.

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The Siren Call of the Two-Way Star

The 2017 MLB Draft kicks off tonight at 7 p.m. ET, and the Minnesota Twins will have the first pick from what is generally considered to be a pretty a mediocre class. And how the rest of the draft goes depends on how the Twins answer one pretty simple question: can a high-end MLB player really contribute as both a hitter and a pitcher?

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So What Do the Mets Do Now?

The Mets were supposed to be good. Heading into the season, we projected them for 87 wins, a bit behind the NL’s elite trio, but solidly among the top teams that were expected to contend for a playoff spot. With Yoenis Cespedes back in the fold and a strong pitching staff led by a dynamite rotation, expectations were high.

Then, everyone got hurt. Seth Lugo and Steven Matz couldn’t make it out of spring training, thinning the team’s expected rotation depth. Lucas Duda and Wilmer Flores went down at the same time in April, leaving the team without a real infield. Cespedes got hurt a week later, then Noah Syndergaard’s arm started hurting a few days after that. Travis d’Arnaud injured his wrist in the first week of May. Jeurys Familia developed a blod clot not long after. Asdrubal Cabrera hurt his thumb.

Even the guys who aren’t officially hurt might not be healthy. Matt Harvey‘s stuff has backed up to the point that he doesn’t really miss bats anymore, and now looks like a back-end starter. Robert Gsellman’s spin rates have nosedived, and his effectiveness has gone with it. Jose Reyes isn’t hurt, but given his 53 wRC+ and below-average defense at third base, the team would be better if he were.

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How Good Is Zack Cozart?

As usual, Mike Trout is at the top of our WAR leaderboard. That will only be true for a little while longer, however, as Trout’s lead is down to just one tenth of one win, and he’s unfortunately on the shelf for the next couple of months. Based on the current trajectory, at some point in the next week or so, Zack Cozart will usurp Trout at the top of that list. For all the great performances we’ve seen in the first half of 2017, it’s the Reds 31 year old shortstop who is currently stealing the show.

While the Reds are currently fringe Wild Card contenders, sitting at 28-30, the reality remains that they are very likely to be sellers instead of buyers over the next two months. The team is clearly prioritizing the future over the present, and with a league-worst pitching staff, it is unlikely that the Reds will manage to stay close enough to the win-now teams in the NL to incentivize the front office to dramatically shift course in an effort to take advantage of a stronger-than-expected first half. And as a team looking towards the future, the most obvious trade chips are impending free agents, which is a class Cozart also falls into. When you’re a rebuilding team with a player headed towards free agency who is nearly leading everyone in WAR, a trade seems inevitable.

So as the Reds and the rest of baseball head towards the July 31st trade deadline, perhaps no question will loom larger than this one: how good is Zack Cozart now?

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Jean Segura and the Mariners Are Betting on Each Other

Back in November, the Mariners decided to bet on Jean Segura’s 2016 breakout, swapping prized young starter Taijuan Walker and shortstop Ketel Marte for Segura and outfielder Mitch Haniger. While Jeff and I both took to Haniger as perhaps the most interesting player in the deal, Segura was the headliner for most people, as a 26 year old coming off a +5 WAR season is something you don’t often get to add to your roster. And to this point, Segura hasn’t disappointed.

Prior to going on the DL with a high ankle sprain, Segura was following up last year’s .319/.368/.499 line with a .341/.391/.462 mark, and given the switch from Chase Field to Safeco Field, that’s an even more impressive offensive performance; his 136 wRC+ is 10 points higher than the 126 wRC+ he put up last year. And so, with another few months of strong hitting in his track record, the Mariners have decided to bet on Segura once again, reportedly signing him to a five year, $70 million contract extension.

Given that Segura had one arbitration year left, this is really a four year extension, for roughly around $60 million over those four free agent years. Segura made $6 million in arbitration this winter, and assuming he kept playing well, he would have landed something in the $10 million range for his final arbitration year in 2018, so this deal pays Segura about $15 million a year for age 29-32 seasons.

On the one hand, that’s a pretty easy sell for the team, given what Segura is doing right now and what that kind of money currently buys you in free agency. This deal would put Segura in roughly the same territory as what Josh Reddick (4/$52M) and Mark Melancon (4/$62M) cost last winter, and while those guys are perfectly useful pieces to have on a roster, an everyday shortstop who can hit is more valuable than either one. If Segura had kept running offensive numbers like he has since the start of the 2016 season for the next year and a half, it’s hard to imagine him coming in under $100 million in free agency, so if Segura keeps hitting, this could be a significant bargain for the Mariners.

But Segura isn’t yet a free agent, and his true offensive level remains something of an unknown, so the team is definitely buying some risk in this deal.

Last year’s breakout was fueled by a significant power spike, as Segura posted a .181 ISO, up from .079 in 2015. He hit almost twice as many home runs last season as he did in the two years prior to that combined. 2016 was defined by non-HR hitters finding their home run stroke, and Segura was part of the wave of unexpected sluggers who started launching balls over the fences.

This year, though, the home run power hasn’t carried over that well. He has just four home runs and a .121 ISO that is closer to what he did in his Milwaukee years than in his Arizona breakout. Instead, this year, his offensive line is being carried by a .395 BABIP that is sixth-highest in baseball among qualified hitters. And while Segura is a fast right-hander who sprays the ball around the field (thus neutralizing the shift), his contact quality doesn’t support these kinds of results.

By MLB’s xwOBA calculation, which evaluates a hitter’s expected production based on exit velocity and launch angle, Segura has one of the largest deviations between results and expected results, with a .375 wOBA and a .310 xwOBA. In front of him are a couple of Astros, a couple of Reds, a couple of Rockies, a couple of Red Sox; players who hit in ballparks that are conducive to turning less-strong contact into hits, basically. While Safeco isn’t the pitcher’s paradise it once was, it’s still not a park that inflates offense, and that kind of gap between wOBA and xwOBA suggests that there’s a lot of air that could come out of Segura’s current offensive line.

Of course, there is more to batted ball data than just exit velocity and launch angle, and Andrew Perpetua has done good work with his xSTATS calculations, and his numbers agree that regression is coming, but not to the same degree. He has Segura’s expected line at .300/.347/.440, good for a .340 wOBA, well ahead of what MLB’s calculation suggests, and still quite excellent for a shortstop. And as Tony Blengino wrote over the winter, Segura’s 2016 numbers were mostly supported by his contact, so while he won’t keep running a .395 BABIP, there is a decent amount of evidence that he’s a significantly better hitter now than he was in Milwaukee.

The question now is really an order of magnitude. If he is anything close to what he’s done since last year began, he just left a lot of money on the table. If last year’s power spike was an anomaly and the true-talent BABIP is closer to .330 than .400, then the lack of walks would probably serve to make him an average-ish hitter, which is what ZIPS and Steamer both project going forward. An average hitter who can play shortstop is a nice thing, but defense peaks early, and Segura has graded as an average to below average SS to this point in his career, so it’s not unheard of that he’ll be a defensive liability at the position by the time the new years of the extension begin, and that he would profile better at second base for the duration of the contract.

Of course, Robinson Cano makes a move to second base impractical in Seattle, so Segura will play short for as long as Cano is his double-play partner. And that’s what makes this part of Segura’s decision a bit interesting; he might have just signed up to spend the remainder of his prime with a team with an uncertain future. The Mariners are 29-30 with an aging roster and no real farm system to speak of, and depending on how the next few months go, there was a chance they could have had to make a decision on whether to sell this summer and retool the roster again.

With Segura getting full no-trade protection in this extension, he’s obviously off the market as a trade chip, and if you’re not moving Segura — who would have been one of their most valuable chips — then you’re probably not engaging in a rebuild that gets enough to justify moving other guys either. So while it’s not like the team can’t rebuild now that they’ve re-signed Segura, this seems to signal that the organization intends to continue pushing in on the short-term instead, but they almost certainly can’t run down Houston this year, and the Astros look like a behemoth in the division for years to come.

Perhaps Segura just really likes Seattle, likes the ballpark, likes the organization, and isn’t as concerned about whether he’s on a sustained winner. But 18 months from free agency, it seems like he might have had a chance to earn more money on a team with a more certain future, so him taking an extension now is certainly a risk on his part, as he could end up as an underpaid asset on a team without enough around him to win consistently. That’s not what you generally want.

But given Segura’s up and down career, it’s not hard to see the allure in taking a guaranteed $70 million. A little over a year ago, it was a question of whether he was good enough to start in the big leagues, but now he’s got a secure position for the foreseeable future. Both sides are taking some risk here, betting on the other to do their part to help the team win, and for the price, it probably makes sense for both sides. Now both the organization and their new long-term shortstop have to hope they can find some pitching to make this marriage work for a while.


Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 6/7/17

12:01
Dave Cameron: Well, looks like WordPress decided not to post the chat this morning.

12:02
Dave Cameron: Once I get that fixed and get the post up, I’ll give you guys a little bit of time to get some questions into the queue, and then we’ll begin a bit late today.

12:30
Dave Cameron: Alright, sorry for the delay this week everyone.

12:31
Dave Cameron: We’re working on getting the back-end weirdness resolved.

12:31
Dave Cameron: But let’s chat baseball for the next hour or so.

12:31
Grant: What do you think Jean Segura would’ve gotten on the open market?

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What’s Wrong with the Cubs?

It’s June 1st. The Cubs are supposed to be running away with the NL Central right now, like the Astros and Nationals are doing in their divisions. Instead, the defending champs are 25-27, in third place in the NL Central, and only a game up on the rebuilding Reds. For a team that was being hailed as a dynasty in the making, this isn’t how 2017 was supposed to go. So what’s the deal? Why did last year’s juggernaut turn into this year’s mediocrity?

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Giancarlo Stanton Is Changing

When Giancarlo Stanton got to the big leagues in 2010, he became the modern-day symbol of the hulking slugger. At 6-foot-6 and 245 pounds, he’s a gigantic human being, and he’s used that strength to hit the baseball like no one else. When he did hit the baseball, anyway. As part of the natural trade-off for his legendary power, Stanton also ran top-of-the-scale strikeout rates. From his debut through 2016, he struck out in 29% of his plate appearances, ranking behind only Chris Davis, Pedro Alvarez, and Mark Reynolds among regulars during that stretch.

The fact that he ranked behind only Jose Bautista in ISO allowed him to remain productive even with the strikeouts, and combined with a lot of walks and regularly high BABIPs, Stanton’s 141 wRC+ from 2010-2016 ranks 7th best in baseball. Stanton was a living example of the ability for elite power to offset contact problems.

But then, last year, that delicate balance seemed to break down. For about a month beginning in mid-May, Stanton struck out in 37 of 80 plate appearances, managing just one home run in the process. He hit .114/.215/.200 during that stretch, and people started openly wondering what happened to the game’s preeminent slugger. Had Stanton’s contact issues finally become too severe? Had the league finally figured him out?

Well, if pitchers had made an adjustment to neutralize the game’s most devastating ball-striker, Stanton apparently decided to adjust himself. And since that miserable month of flailing at everything, he’s become a pretty different hitter than he’d been previously.

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Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 5/31/17

12:01
Dave Cameron: Happy Wednesday, everyone.

12:01
Dave Cameron: Since we last spoke, I (most likely) tore my ACL and contracted a stomach bug that caused me to vomit during the recording of the most recent podcast.

12:02
Dave Cameron: Oh, also, Mike Trout got hurt.

12:02
Dave Cameron: This week sucked.

12:02
Dave Cameron: Let’s talk about happier things.

12:02
Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: The AL position player WAR leaders right now include Sano (3rd), Dickerson (4th), and Souza (7th). Mike Trout has been the best player in baseball by so far for so long that he can win MVP despite playing for the Angels. Not that Sano, Dickerson, or Souza will still be at the top come October, but how do the voters treat the players on small market non-juggernauts for the non-first place votes? Ortiz got sixth in MVP voting last year, which is farcical, but I can’t picture the Rays’ DH getting votes over names like Correa and Lindor even if you just extrapolate his numbers to a 7.5 WAR season.

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