Yesterday in these pages, the author — standing on the shoulders of the giant that is the Steamer projection system — attempted to identify the player most likely to serve as 2015’s edition of Yangervis Solarte. Surely, that post has already made household names of Buck Britton and Jose Martinez and Deibinson Romero.

For some people, identifying the next Yangervis Solarte is probably a less compelling endeavor than finding 2015’s edition of Mike Trout (which is to say, the best player in all of baseball), for example, or even 2015’s edition of Michael Brantley (which is to say, a player who unexpectedly produced among the league’s highest WAR figures).

The problem in each of those cases, however, is that 2015’s edition of Mike Trout is most likely just Mike Trout. And, while Michael Brantley was a more ordinary player before the 2014 season, he also wasn’t a freely available one.

No, the pleasure of contemplating Yangervis Solarte is that he began the 2014 season as little more than a $500 thousand investment by the Yankees and transformed into approximately a $10 million profit.

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Last offseason, the Yankees signed infielder Yangervis Solarte — who’d left the Rangers by way of minor-league free agency — to a decidedly more robust minor-league deal than is the standard in the industry. The result for New York was ultimately a positive one: not only did Solarte record the highest major-league WAR figure in 2014 of any player who’d departed his club the previous offseason by way of minor-league free agency, but the Yankees were able to parlay him (along with right-handed prospect Rafael De Paula) into a trade for Chase Headley.

As noted by Kiley McDaniel earlier this month, the Solarte signing wasn’t an anomalous one for the Yankees: they’d completed similar deals with reliever Jim Miller and catcher Bobby Wilson, as well. And while neither of those players did much of anything at the major-league level, the strategy was ultimately a very profitable one for New York based on Solarte’s production alone — profitable enough, as McDaniel notes, to fund 10 seasons of such an experiment.

“Who might be the next Solarte?” one wonders. It’s a question I began answering last week, only to drift accidentally into an extended meditation on Mark Minicozzi and the hazards inherent to formulating defensive projections for career minor leaguers. What follows, however, represents a more concise response.

Below are the top-five WAR projections assessed by Steamer to the 500-plus players to have been granted minor-league free agency earlier this month. Note that, pursuant to that extended meditation on Mark Minicozzi from last week, the author has made changes to defensive projections in such cases where logic dictated. So, for example, with regard to Luke Montz — whose published Steamer projection includes the catcher’s positional adjustment, but whose most recent defensive record includes just as many starts at first base — I’ve manually edited his overall projections to reflect his likely future defensive usage. The same is the case for Minicozzi himself, who has played much more first base and left field of late than second or third base.

Organizations listed are those to which the player most recently belonged. Hitter projections are prorated to 550 plate appearances — i.e. the amount over which an exactly average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Note, finally, that Dean Anna would have appeared among the top-five here were he not now a member of the Cardinals’ major-league roster.

5. Jared Goedert, 3B, Toronto (Profile)

Originally a ninth-round selection by Cleveland out of K-State in 2006, Goedert has recorded more than 3800 plate appearances as a minor leaguer, roughly half of them at Triple-A alone. So far as major-league plate appearances are concerned, however, he’s recorded a number a lot closer — and one might say precisely equivalent — to zero. It’s not shocking, probably, that he’s never found a role. He’s a below-average hitter and — it would appear from his profile — just a fringe-average third baseman. That said, there are players who aren’t demonstrably better — Danny Valencia is one name chosen nearly at random — and yet have received hundreds of plate appearances.

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This morning, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Cincinnati Reds. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Cincinnati’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Reds 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 Reds 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. Kyle Waldrop, OF (Profile)

Waldrop began the 2014 season by repeating at High-A Bakersfield and reacted precisely the way a club would want him to — which is to say, by exhibiting greater control of the plate and also producing better contact (or, at least a markedly higher BABIP, which is the best statistical proxy). He retained those improvements following a mid-June promotion to Double-A Pensacola, as well — which, that’s encouraging for a 22-year-old. Given his positional limitations, his future major-league value would appear to depend on the degree to which he’s able to convert his above-average raw power to games. Steamer, for its part, projects him to hit only 13 home runs per 600 plate appearances.

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Episode 505
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses mostly the recent baseball deals involving Jason Heyward, Russell Martin, and (vitally) Tommy La Stella.

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 37 min play time.)

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On Sunday — while much of America watched football, and at least one American (the author, in this case) shopped for boxed wines at a local discount grocer — the Atlanta Braves traded Tommy La Stella to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for right-hander Arodys Vizcaino and the right to spend about $800 thousand more internationally (without penalty) between now and July 2nd.

At face value, and perhaps even below face value, the motivations for the trade are somewhat obscure — insofar, that is, as Chicago very famously has a surplus of promising young infielders while Atlanta, now more than ever, lacks a reliable option at second base. That said, it’s probably wise to proceed with any further consideration of this deal under the assumption that all the actors in it are behaving rationally, as Chicago and Atlanta — in particular with the elevation of John Coppolella’s influence in the latter’s front office — have smart and well-informed decision-makers.

In terms of incentives for making such a trade the Cubs have the most glaringly obvious one. Because they far exceeded their international spending limit in 2013-14, they’re forbidden during the present international signing period from offering more than a $250 thousand bonus to any one prospect. Despite that, however, they were still assessed bonus slots — one for $2.3 million, one for $458 thousand, one for $309 thousand, and so on — like all the other 29 major-league teams. These slots, logic would appear to dictate, have value to the Cubs only as a tradeable asset. Otherwise, they would merely disappear come July 2 of this next year.

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Episode 504
Kiley McDaniel is both (a) the lead prospect writer for FanGraphs and also (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he considers his White Sox organizational prospect list in some even further depth.

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 58 min play time.)

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Yesterday afternoon, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Chicago White Sox. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Chicago’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the White Sox 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 White Sox 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. Trayce Thompson, OF (Profile)

As he had in 2013, Thompson spent all of 2014 in the Double-A Southern League. In roughly the same number of plate appearances as 2013, he recorded roughly the same walk and strikeout rates, roughly the same number of home runs, and roughly the same slash line. Despite the similarity between those two seasons — and seeming lack of development — Thompson’s projection for 2015 is about half a win greater than it was for 2014. Reason No. 1: Steamer puts more emphasis on recent performance, and an adequate season in the high minors is more valuable than a slightly better one in the lower levels. And No. 2: Thompson is still ascending towards his peak, so the any age curve adjustment is bound to help him.

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Last offseason, the Yankees signed infielder Yangervis Solarte — who’d left the Rangers by way of minor-league free agency — to a decidedly more robust minor-league deal than is the standard in the industry. The result for New York was ultimately a positive one: not only did Solarte record the highest major-league WAR figure in 2014 of any player who’d departed his club the previous offseason by way of minor-league free agency, but the Yankees were able to parlay him (along with right-handed prospect Rafael De Paula) into a trade for Chase Headley.

As noted by Kiley McDaniel earlier this month, the Solarte signing wasn’t an anomalous one for the Yankees: they’d completed similar deals with reliever Jim Miller and catcher Bobby Wilson, as well. And while neither of those players did much of anything at the major-league level, the strategy was ultimately a very profitable one for New York based on Solarte’s production alone — profitable enough, as McDaniel notes, to fund 10 seasons of such an experiment.

“Who might be the next Solarte?” one wonders. On Tuesday afternoon, the St. Louis Cardinals signed one possible candidate, infielder Dean Anna, to a major-league contract despite the fact that Anna enters his age-28 season with just 25 major-league plate appearances ever. The projections offer some logic to St. Louis’s decision: despite that limited major-league track record, Anna’s projected to produce an 89 wRC+ and slightly above-average second-base defense — a combination of skills which, when taken together, produce a nearly league-average major leauger. That’s a considerable value for a league-minimum contract.

This post was originally going to be called something like The Top-Five Minor-League Free Agents by the Projections — written with a view, that is, towards identifying those minor-league free agents most likely to receive that Solarte-type money and produce the Solarte-type production. In fact, it’s quite possible I’ll publish a post along those lines next week. But what becomes clear as one inspects the issue more closely is that, while the computer math of a projection system like Steamer is capable of translating without too much difficultly a player’s minor-league batting numbers to a major-league environment, producing a defensive projection for that same player is more difficult. And those defensive projections, if taken without any sort of healthy skepticism, can alter one’s understanding of a player’s value.

In particular, this is true of those players who’ve lingered long enough in the minors to have reached free agency. For, while an 18-year-old shortstop prospect is likely to remain a shortstop into his age-19 season, those players who began their careers a decade ago have very possibly become a different sort of player.

Consider the case of Mark Minicozzi, for example. Selected by San Francisco in the 17th round of the 2005 draft out of East Carolina University, Minicozzi made every one of his minor-league starts in the Giants system between 2005 and -07 at either second, third, or shortstop. Following a elbow injury, however, he was released by the organization and spent the entirety of the next three seasons in the independent Atlantic, Can-AM, and Northern Leagues — after which he was re-signed by the Giants in 2012.

Now, he enters his age-32 season with a decidedly different physique and set of skills than that 23-year-old version of himself originally drafted by San Francisco. And while he’s made starts at both second and third base as recently as 2013, he made the majority of his defensive appearances in 2014 at first base and left field.

With that thought in mind, let’s consider his Steamer projection for 2015, prorated to 600 plate appearances:

Minicozzi’s projected batting line is nearly major-league average — and this oughtn’t be too shocking. Over a span of three seasons since his return to the Giants organization, Minicozzi has produced a batting line about 30% better than average relative to the various leagues in which he’s played. This year with Fresno — his first at the Triple-A level, incidentally — the 31-year-old Minicozzi produced reasonable walk and strikeout rates (13.2% and 22.4%, respectively) while also hitting 12 home runs and exhibiting above-average batted-ball skill (.371 BABIP) in 370 plate appearances. That he would profile as a slightly below-average major-league batter is entirely reasonable.

The question of Minicozzi’s defensive value is a more difficult one to answer, however. For while, as noted, Minicozzi played mostly first base and left field in 2014, he did make those starts at second and third base in 2013, and has, at points in his career, played exclusively those more difficult infield positions. It’s possible that his starts at less demanding positions are reflective of a loss of agility and athleticism — not an unreasonable proposition given Minicozzi’s age. (Defensive skills peaks quite early in player’s career.) That said, it’s also possible that the organization has moved Minicozzi to those less demanding positions to allow younger, more promising players their due repetitions at the position (second or third, for example) they’re likely to play in the majors.

The way Steamer handles Minicozzi, specifically, is to offer no projection of fielding runs saved (which is typical for Steamer of minor-league players) and to assess the positional adjustment of a second or third baseman (+2.5 runs per season). That explains the +2.2 figure in the defensive column (Def) of Minicozzi’s projection above.

From what we know of Minicozzi, projecting him to be a major-league-average second or third baseman — or a decidedly above-average left fielder, for example — seems ambitious. In the specific case of Minicozzi, it almost certainly is. Producing 4000-plus projections, however — such as are available by means of Steamer for position players alone — necessarily requires the employment of some assumptions — chief among them, what position the player in question is likely to play adequately. And while those assumptions might work well for the majority of players, it’s also true that in specific instances — such as the case of players like Minicozzi — that one will be required to apply some reasonable alterations.

For Minicozzi, as we’ve noted, a probably reasonable assumption is that he’s more well-suited to left field now. Applying the generic positional adjustment for a left fielder (-7.5 runs per season) to Minicozzi’s projected 2015 line (again, prorated to 600 plate appearances) yields this result:

Is that ultimately more accurate? I don’t know — although, it’s probably true that, in the case of an older minor leaguer, assuming that he’s closer to a replacement-level player than league-average one is probably smart. Ultimately, though, this post isn’t about Mark Minicozzi and his 2015 season. It’s about projections — and specifically it’s about how one needn’t entirely abandon a projection merely because one aspect of it (like the defensive part) appears not to fully depict the reality of the player’s situation. The projections are wildly useful as a starting point to a discussion about a player’s ability. In those cases where more major-league data is available, those starting points are decidedly accurate. In those instances where no major-league data is available, however, the projections still have their uses — so long as they’re complemented by reason on the part of the one considering them.

Yesterday, FanGraphs facilitated a crowdsourcing effort not unlike that other recent crowdsourcing effort which produced year and dollar estimates for the contracts likely to be received by this offseason’s top-55 free agents.

In the case of yesterday’s exercise, however, readers were asked not to estimate the values of the league’s free agents, but rather of those players who are both (a) candidates to be traded this offseason, and also (b) signed to contracts of disproportionate cost relative to the player’s likely benefit to a team in wins.

The purpose of the exercise: to estimate the actual market values (in dollars) of those same contracts for the actual years which remain on them. And the secondary purpose: to estimate, as well, the amount of “dead money” — that is, the amount a player’s club would have to cover to successfully trade away a player — present on each of those contracts.

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As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs once again facilitated this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project for baseball’s free agents, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2014-15 offseason market. The result: a single post featuring the league’s top-55 free agents, ordered by projected size (in dollars) of contract.

The numbers produced by the crowd are imperfect — demonstrating, most notably, a streak of conservatism wherein the most talented free agents (Max Scherzer, Hanley Ramirez, etc.) are concerned. Even with certain biases present, however, the crowd’s estimates are useful for cultivating an understanding of the offseason market as a whole.

What follows is similar exercise as that offseason free-agent one — designed, however, not to estimate the values of the league’s free agents, but rather of those players who are both (a) candidates to be traded this offseason, but also (b) signed to contracts of disproportionate cost relative to the player’s likely benefit to a team in wins.

The purpose of this exercise: to estimate the actual market values (in dollars) of those same contracts for the years that remain on them. So, for example, Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp is owed $107 million through 2019 — that is, over five years. The question of interest here — and certainly one of interest to those general managers who might consider trading for Kemp — is thus: Were you a GM, how much would you pay for five years of Matt Kemp? Something more than $0, presumably, but also probably something less than $107 million.

Below are 10 players with regard to whom that sort of question is a relevant one.

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