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Jeff Passan is one of the most aggressive advocates for FanGraphs in the mainstream media, regularly citing data and concepts from our leaderboards and helping to educate the masses about different ways of viewing baseball. He’s certainly not an old-school guy who wants to be left alone with his pitcher wins and RBIs, and he’s more than happy to embrace new ideas supported by data. But he still has some problems with WAR, and specifically, the defensive component that can allow lesser hitters to be listed as among the most valuable players in the game alongside some of baseball’s greatest sluggers. To get an entire sense of his argument, read the whole piece, but here’s a selection that sums up his argument:

Defense does have its place in WAR. Just not in its present incarnation, not until we know more. Not until we can account for positioning on the field. Not until we can find out the exact speed a ball leaves a bat and how quickly the fielder gets a jump and the angle on the ball and the efficiency with which he reaches it. Not until we understand more about fielding, which will allow us to understand how to properly mete out value on a defensive play, which may take years, yes, but look how long it took us to get to this point, where we know more about hitting and pitching than anyone ever thought possible.

The hackneyed Luddites who bleat “WAR, what is it good for, absolutely nothing” should not see this as a sympathetic view. On the contrary, WAR is an incredible idea, an effort to democratize arguments over who was best. Bringing any form of objectivity to such singularly subjective statements is extremely challenging and worthwhile work.

Which is why this at very least warrants more of a conversation among those who are in charge of it. They’ve changed WAR formulas before. They’ll change them again. And when they do, hopefully the reach of defensive metrics will be minimized.

I don’t agree with everything Passan wrote in the piece, but his criticisms of the metric aren’t entirely off base. It is easier to evaluate run scoring than run prevention. WAR is flawed and an imperfect model. Some of the assumptions in the construction of the model may be entirely incorrect, and as we get more information, we may very well find that some of the conclusions that WAR suggested were incorrect, and maybe not by a small amount. Just as the statistical community is quick to highlight the problems with pitcher wins and RBIs, it is fair for Passan to highlight the problems with WAR, especially if the purpose of that discussion is to help improve the model.

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I’m a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, which means that I’m part of the pool of writers who are asked to cast ballots for MLB’s postseason awards. The MVP and Cy Young are the two big ones that get most of the attention, and then there’s Rookie of the Year, which has more recently turned into the Prominent International Star Who Made His MLB Debut This Year award — Jose Abreu will be accepting that one for 2014, though they’ll probably stick with the shorter title for now.

There’s also a fourth award that BBWAA members are asked to vote on — Manager of the Year. It’s the one award that we’re asked to give out that doesn’t go to a player, and not coincidentally, it’s the one in which there is usually the least consensus. Last year, nine American League managers received at least one vote in one of the three slots listed on the ballot, which might not sound like a lot until you remember that there are only 15 managers in the American League, so more managers got votes than those who didn’t.

This is what happens when you ask a panel of diverse members to try and come to agreement on a subject that is inherently difficult to measure. This challenge is compounded by the fact that there is literally no criteria or guidance provided along with the ballot. For comparison, the MVP ballot contains the following instructions:

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

The phrase “wait ’til next year” is a popular one for fans of perennial losers, but no professional sports team shares a more lasting affiliation with the axiom than the Chicago Cubs; there’s even a movie about the team with that exact title. For the Cubs, winning has rarely been a this-year thing, and so the fan base has had to take solace in the future, even if that future has often brought just more losing. Well, Cubs fans, I have some good news, even if you’ve grown tired of hearing this; next year really might be your year.

Much has been written about the young talent coming up through Chicago’s farm system. Cuban sensation Jorge Soler is going to be the newest hyped prospect to reach the big leagues when he makes his debut today, where he’ll join Arismendy Alcantara and Javier Baez to form a trio of exciting young rookies. And these guys are just the first course, as even better prospects — third baseman/maybe outfielder Kris Bryant and shortstop/maybe second baseman Addison Russell are the cream of the Cubs crop — are not too far behind. The Cubs have so much young talent that people are actually stressing out over whether the team will actually have room for all of them on the roster at the same time.

Of course, prospect hype doesn’t guarantee Major League success, and Cubs fans have been burned by supposed waves of talent that didn’t pan out before. So what’s different this time? Well, for starters, this roster is a lot better than people might realize, even without factoring in all the prospects on the rise.

Yes, I’m talking about the roster of a team that is currently 59-72, good for last place in the NL Central. On the surface, this is just another terrible Cubs team in a long line of terrible Cubs teams, but once you dig a little bit deeper, you’ll find that this team has actually shown some real promise this year.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

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Tim Lincecum is headed to the bullpen. After a miserable start to the second half — opposing batters are hitting .331/.422/.622 against him since the All-Star break — the Giants have finally removed him from the rotation and will experiment with Lincecum as a relief pitcher. Of course, Lincecum famously dominated out of the pen in the 2012 playoffs, and ever since, speculation has mounted that this was going to be the path to Linecum’s career revival. Bullpens are full of failed starters, some of whom have gained significant velocity while pitching in shorter stints and have turned into lights-out bullpen arms.

The Giants would be thrilled if Lincecum turned into their version of Wade Davis, for instance; as a starter, he allowed a .341 wOBA over his career, but hitters have posted just a .222 wOBA off him in his relief work. Some guys just need the boost that comes from throwing 20 pitches instead of 100, and it’s not hard to draw a correlation between Lincecum’s decline in velocity and performance. If moving Lincecum to the bullpen gets his fastball back to the mid-90s, he might be able to reinvent himself in the new role.

However, Lincecum’s struggles present a perhaps unique challenge in turning him into an ace reliever. As I wrote for Fox a few months ago, almost the entire portion of Lincecum’s struggles can be chalked up to struggles with men on base. I think the tables that were shown in that article are worth showing again, though I’ve updated the 2014 and total lines to take into account the more recent data.

Lincecum, career, bases empty.

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After getting outbid for Jose Abreu, the Red Sox apparently weren’t going to let that happen when they had another shot at a young Cuban defector, and today, they’ve agreed to sign outfielder Rusney Castillo for a reported $72 million over six years. This beats Abreu’s total by $4 million, and is almost double the contract that Yasiel Puig got a couple of years ago. There’s little question that the massive success of those two players has forced teams to reevaluate their assessments, and as I pointed out on Wednesday, the international free agent market has been significantly underpriced of late.

Of course, the success of Abreu and Puig doesn’t mean that Castillo’s going to be a monster. Here’s what Ben Badler reports that scouts have told him about Castillo’s potential:

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Three years ago, the BBWAA opened their doors to FanGraphs; currently, four of our writers are members, including David Laurila, Eno Sarris, Carson Cistulli, and myself. Having that access has allowed David and Eno to do really interesting work in combining data with comments from the players, including Eno’s piece on Jacob deGrom from this morning, but being in the BBWAA also comes with other privileges, including voting on postseason awards. For the first time this year, I’ve been selected to represent the Atlanta chapter in the NL voting, and I’ll be casting a ballot for both Manager of the Year and Most Valuable Player.

As part of the conditions of being invited to participate, this means that I won’t be able to talk about who I’m planning on voting for until after the ballot is announced in November. However, I can talk about the questions I’m going to have to answer for myself when deciding how to vote, and no player is going to force me to come to a decision on what I feel is an unanswered question more so than Jonathan Lucroy.

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