I get asked a decent amount of questions on Twitter, and while I try to answer as many of them as I can, I don’t really have enough time to get to all of them, unfortunately. However, a question I received yesterday contained the magic formula to not only getting his question answered, but getting a longer answer in the form of a full length FanGraphs post:

@d_a_cameron When using fangraphs custom leaderboards, what stats do you typically use? Anything that doesnt appear normally?

Why am I answering @jjdouglas1’s question here? It’s quite simple, really – this is his profile picture.

Read the rest of this entry »

If there was any question about the valuation that MLB teams put on quality young arms, it’s been answered this winter – the returns garnered by San Diego and Oakland when they moved Mat Latos and Gio Gonzalez illustrated that a team willing to move a good young pitcher under multiple years of team control could do very well for themselves and accelerate a rebuilding process by getting pieces at several positions that could be long term answers. So, given the prices those two arms have commanded, it shouldn’t be a big surprise that Theo Epstein is exploring the market for Matt Garza, looking to see if he can pull off a similar deal to replenish the Cubs organization with the kinds of young players they need to build around for the future.

However, Garza’s a different asset than Latos or Gonzalez, as his longer track record in the big leagues also means that the Cubs are selling a pitcher who is only going to be under team control for half as long as the other two. Additionally, since Garza qualified as a Super-Two, he’s already on his third trip through arbitration, and his salaries have escalated more quickly than most players that are two years away from free agency. So, while the Padres and A’s were marketing four years of a good young pitcher, several of those years at prices that were just a fraction of what similar pitchers would cost to acquire via free agency, the Cubs are shopping two years of a pitcher whose salaries are somewhat depressed relative to his market value, but aren’t really that much lower than what a team could buy a decent free agent starter for.

So, it stands to reason that the Cubs will get less for Garza than what other young arms have been going for this winter. How much less? Well, let’s look at just what kind of trade value Garza should actually have.

Read the rest of this entry »

When the calendar rolls over to January, teams traditionally start to go bargain hunting in the free agent market, shopping for players in the open box section of talent. Some of these “previously owned” goods are more damaged than others, but most of them come with significant health questions, and they’re often guys who underwhelm with mediocre physical abilities. Especially on the pitching side, the bargain bin is generally full of soft-tossing contact pitchers with below average strikeout rates, often coming off some kind of recent arm surgery.

It’s generally hard to get too excited when your team starts shopping for one of these blue light specials. Paul Maholm? Jeff Francis? Kevin Millwood? No one rushes to buy season tickets when these signings are announced. However, last year, no area of free agency provided a better return on investment, and honestly, it wasn’t even close.

Read the rest of this entry »

While we’ve spent the last few days talking about the Hall of Fame, and this post is somewhat inspired by discussions about Edgar Martinez’s worthiness for enshrinement in Cooperstown, this isn’t really a post about whether or not he deserves induction. I get why people are hesitant to vote for a guy who spent most of his career at DH, had a relatively short career, and who played in an era that saw offensive records shattered left and right. I might not agree with their conclusions, but Martinez is a bubble candidate, and legitimate cases can be on both sides of the coin.

However, one of the arguments that I’ve seen more often this year is that Martinez simply wasn’t a great enough hitter to overcome his lack of defensive value. This argument was laid out most plainly by Jeff Fletcher in his explanation of why Martinez is not getting his vote. He looked at Martinez compared to his contemporaries, and sums up his stance with this line:

So if I’m going to vote him in based solely on his bat, he’d better be an absolute slam dunk offensive HOFer…

The argument that a career DH needs to be an elite, premium hitter for induction is valid, and a standard I would argue for as well. I just disagree with Fletcher that Martinez was not that kind of elite, all-time great hitter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we talked about Alan Trammell’s case for Hall of Fame induction, and if you’ve been surfing the baseball newspapers lately, you’re probably come across arguments for or against most of the other bubble candidates on this year’s ballot. While there’s certainly value in discussing the credentials of guys Edgar Martinez and Larry Walker, we’ve also been having those conversations for several years now, and the facts haven’t changed since the last time we reviewed their candidacy. So, today, I want to turn my Cooperstown-related focus to the guys that are still playing.

Given what we know today, which active players are going to end in the Hall of Fame? And which ones should, but look unlikely to get the necessary support? Is anyone currently playing likely to get inducted that doesn’t actually deserve it? Let’s take a look at the current crop of players and where they’re likely to end up, at least with what we know at the moment.

No-brainer, first ballot, let’s not even bother arguing.

Albert Pujols (+87.8 WAR), Chipper Jones (+87.5 WAR), Derek Jeter (+74.4 WAR), Ivan Rodriguez (+73.4 WAR), Mariano Rivera (+39.0 WAR/+54.6 WPA).

Read the rest of this entry »

Hall of Fame ballots are due at the end of the week, so this time of year, a lot of attention turns to which players belong in Cooperstown. The expectation this year is that Barry Larkin is going to get in, making him the 22nd shortstop (minimum 50% games played at the position) to get enshrined. I’m in full support of Larkin’s induction, and think he’s an excellent candidate who should have gotten in a year ago. But he’s not the only shortstop on the ballot who deserves legitimate consideration.

This year will be Alan Trammell’s 11th year on the ballot, and given how little momentum he’s garnered since debuting in 2002 (going from 15.7% to just 24.3% last year), he likely has no real chance of getting elected by the BBWAA. Unfortunately for Trammell, he didn’t hit any of the big milestone numbers that make voters take notice, and he excelled in the areas that aren’t generally valued all that highly by the voters. With just 2,315 hits and secondary numbers that aren’t overly exciting, Trammell is generally seen as a Hall of Very Good guy, a quality player who just wasn’t quite great enough to get a plaque in upstate New York.

However, I think Trammell has a better case than is generally accepted, and his candidacy points out why looking at career totals is not the best way to evaluate a player’s Hall of Fame worthiness.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Nationals gave up four prospects, including three of their top 10 guys, for the right to acquire Gio Gonzalez from the Oakland A’s. This follows on the heels of the Mat Latos trade, essentially establishing current market value for a young starting pitcher with four year of team control. However, with Latos, the only nitpicking you can do about his performance to date is that he’s pitched in Petco, because other than that, he’s been pretty fantastic. Gonzalez’s track record is a little more spotty, starting out poorly before turning in two good seasons the last couple of years, but maintaining a walk rate that’s among the very worst in baseball.

Even while succeeding, Gonzalez simply hasn’t shown much of an ability to throw strikes on a regular basis, and those command problems have drawn unfavorable comparisons to the likes of Oliver Perez and even my own analogy to Edinson Volquez. However, rather than just continuing to point out the flaw in Gonzalez’s skillset, I thought it’d be useful to look at this pitcher type in general.

So, using the sweet, sweet custom leaderboards here on FanGraphs, I compiled a list of all starting pitcher seasons over the last 10 years with a minimum of 100 innings pitched and then filtered by walk rate (>=10%), strikeout rate (>=20%), and ground ball rate (>=40%). The resulting list gave me 38 pitcher seasons from 25 different pitchers. We can safely say that these guys have produced results at one time or another in a pretty similar fashion to how Gonzalez has pitched over the last couple of years. Here’s the list of those pitcher seasons, sorted in alphabetic order. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, the Arizona Diamondbacks were baseball’s biggest surprise, winning 94 games and the NL West title just a year after finishing 65-97. The team’s turnaround was driven by strong performances across the roster, but among the key factors in their success was the excellent defense delivered by their trio of outfielders. Chris Young (+14.1), Gerardo Parra (+9.6), and Justin Upton (+7.7) all posted UZRs that ranked among the best in the league at their positions, and the Diamondbacks posted the best team outfield UZR (+31.1) in the National League. With the help of their strong gloves, the team was able to post an ERA (3.80) that was 22 points lower than their FIP (4.02), the fifth largest positive differential in the game.

Well, today, the team decided to change course, signing Jason Kubel to a two year, $15 million contract that will see him take over as the team’s left fielder. By acquiring Kubel, the D’Backs have essentially chosen to displace the incumbent Parra, and in looking at the two players, it’s not actually clear that the team is going to get any better.

Kubel’s addition signifies that the Diamondbacks wanted a bit more power from the left side to balance out the right-handedness brought by Upton, Young, Paul Goldschmidt, and Aaron Hill. While Miguel Montero and a potentially healthy Stephen Drew offered some power from the left side, the middle of the team’s batting order still skewed towards RHBs, and Kubel will give the team more thump at the plate than Parra would have. However, if the team thinks they’re getting a monstrous offensive upgrade in making the switch, they’re likely overestimating the difference between them.

Read the rest of this entry »