Episode 518
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the reappearing guest on this hollow, empty edition of FanGraphs Audio.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.
Audio after the jump. (Approximately 46 min play time.)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Because I’m a baseball weblogger and because certain members of my family and community are aware that I’m a baseball weblogger, some of them have asked me — and others will likely ask me at some point this week — “Hey Carson Harrington Cistulli, what do you think about the Hall of Fame voting?”
Why they continue to refer to me by my full name remains a mystery. With regard to their question, however, my answer is generally something along the lines of “Hmph.” Not particularly satisfying, I recognize. So far as takes go, it is decidedly frigid.
As a member of the BBWAA, I’ll theoretically be invited to answer this question in an official capacity about eight years from now. (I don’t think that will actually happen, as all signs indicate that my admission to the Association was the product of a clerical error. For the moment, however, I’ll proceed as if it weren’t.) If and when I receive a ballot for the Hall of Fame, I’ll dedicate sufficiently careful scrutiny to such an endeavor.
After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Detroit Tigers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Oakland / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington.
Batters
While it might seem as though, at points during his MVP rivalry with Mike Trout, that this site’s authors made it their business to convince all of America about how Miguel Cabrera was a worthless trash heap of a ballplayer, that’s very clearly not the case. What he is, in reality, is one of the most talented hitters in baseball history. Indeed, among all qualified hitters ever, Cabrera has produced the 26th-best park-adjusted batting line (tied with Joe DiMaggio, for example). Even a couple years after Cabrera’s 30th birthday, ZiPS still regards him as an elite batsman.
One thing Cabrera wasn’t, really, was a talented defensive third baseman. Two years ago, for example, ZiPS projected Cabrera to save -6 runs (or concede +6 runs, as it were) at third base. Not excellent, that. By way of comparison, however, consider current third baseman Nick Castellanos’s projection at that same position: -12 runs saved (or +12 runs conceded, as it were). Even more not excellent, that. He’s forecast to produce an above-average batting line, but it would seem as though some manner of change — either moving off of, or steadily improving at, the position — is necessary.
On Wednesday, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the San Diego Padres. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not San Diego’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Padres system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.
Below are the top-five prospects in the Padres system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.
Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.
5. Austin Hedges, C (Profile)
| PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 415 | .206 | .251 | .301 | 58 | 0.3 |
For a player such as Hedges, whose value is tied much more closely to his defensive than offensive skills, Steamer’s projections are likely to skew towards the conservative side. For minor leaguers, Steamer’s defensive forecasts are based largely (if not entirely) on positional adjustment — which, that’s generous for catchers, anyway. As McDaniel notes, though, Hedges is a candidate to save a non-negligible quantity of runs beyond that. Adding five runs (0.5 WAR) to Hedges’ projections wouldn’t be entirely irresponsible.
Episode 517
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the official guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.
Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min play time.)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
At the end of last week, the present author examined the unusual career arc of former excellent right-handed pitcher Brandon Webb. Never regarded as a top prospect, Webb debuted at the beginning of 2003, led all rookies (including both pitchers and hitters) in WAR that season, and then proceeded to become one of the sport’s best pitchers over the next five years — despite a fastball that, whatever its other virtues, featured average velocity at best.
Certain readers expressed some interest in identifying who, among the league’s current pitchers, most resembles Webb — and, indeed, Dallas Keuchel (a name invoked by more than one commenter) appears to be the most obvious choice, insofar as he led all qualifiers in ground-ball rate by a wide margin while also producing an average fastball velocity of 89.7 mph (even as the league average among starters in 2014 was 91.4 mph). The strikeout and walk rates are both similar and, as for pedigree, Keuchel was a seventh-round selection out of college. Webb, meanwhile, was an eighth-round pick, also out of college. Keuchel, like Webb, never appeared among Baseball America’s top-100 prospects. So, really, except for handedness, the two feature decidedly similar profiles (except, one hopes, the injury profile).
For many similar reasons, Cleveland left-hander T.J. House, who posted a 60.5% ground-ball rate — distinguishing him as the only other pitcher with 50-plus innings as a starter to break the 60%-ground-ball threshold in 2014 — qualifies as a possible heir to Webb’s legacy. House, for his part, recorded almost identical strikeout and walk rates to Keuchel over his 10 starts this year and wasn’t selected until the 16th round of the 2008 draft.
So those are two active pitchers who possess more than a passing resemblance to Webb — and who, should they retain their health, ought to exceed by a considerable margin the production expected of players drafted in their respective rounds and throwing fastballs at their respective velocities and having been absent from top-propsect lists.
Of perhaps more interest for me, personally, is the idea of possibly identifying those Webb comparables who lack a body of work at the major-league level yet — or at least one as relatively substantial as either House or Keuchel.
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: PLEASE ACTUALLY WORK THIS WEEK!!!!
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HE MADE IT |
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: I was here last week! The site didn’t work.
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Happy Holidays and New Year to everyone! |
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It is alive! |
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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the St. Louis Cardinals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Oakland / San Francisco / Tampa Bay / Washington.
Batters
Cardinal batters produced the best strikeout rate and second-best defensive-runs figure in the National League last year. The club’s ZiPS projections suggest that they might approximate those sorts of results in 2015. Neither Matt Adams nor Mark Reynolds will be much help in that regard, but the rest of the team’s starters are all above-average by one, if not both, of those measures.
Nor will Jason Heyward change the club’s dynamic at all in this regard. He’s projected to save 18 runs in right field (which equates to about 10-11 runs above average overall after the positional adjustment) while recording walk and strikeout rates both better than league average. Less publicized acquisitions by the club — like of Dean Anna (14.9% K and -1 run at shortstop) and Ty Kelly (16.2% K and -1 run at second base) — also offer strong contact rates and average to above-average defensive skills.
By means that remain unclear at the moment, the present author found himself browsing within the baseball-related pages of reddit.com over the holiday. For reasons that are also obscure, I followed a link from that site (courtesy user jedisloth) to a piece from The Arizona Republic’s sports section dated April 2009. There, I was reminded — on Christmas, a day intended to be full of sweetness and light — I was reminded of former Diamondbacks right-hander Brandon Webb and the stupid and dreadful injury that would ultimately end his career.
What one learns from the experience is not to go around clicking links haphazardly on a day supposedly reserved for joy. What else one learns — or what I, specifically, learned — is a lesson about Brandon Webb and scouting and context.
Webb’s was a career that, if it ended suddenly, also began with a sort of remarkable suddenness, too — at least in terms of Webb’s success relative to the expectations that preceded him. Having been selected in just the eighth round of the 2000 draft and remaining absent from all of Baseball America’s top-100 prospect lists throughout his minor-league career, Webb debuted with Arizona in 2003, throwing 180.2 innings that season and producing a 4.4 WAR. He surpassed the 180-inning threshold in every subsequent campaign through 2008 — which season was of sufficient quality to earn him a second place finish in Cy Young voting only to Tim Lincecum.
After that, for all intents and purposes, Webb’s career was over.
