After missing the playoffs for three consecutive seasons, the St. Louis Cardinals appear to be pushing some chips into the pot for next season by trading for Paul Goldschmidt. Derrick Goold reported the sides were closing in on a deal, while Jon Heyman first reported the deal as done. The Diamondbacks appear to be the first to report their return. Here’s the trade.

Cardinals Get:

• Paul Goldschmidt

Diamondbacks Get:

• Luke Weaver
• Carson Kelly
• Andy Young
• Cardinals 2019 Competitive Balance B Pick

We probably don’t need to talk a ton about Goldschmidt. He’s arguably been the best player in the National League since 2013, with a .301/.406/.541 hitting line good for a 149 wRC+ and 33 wins above replacement. Over the last three years, he’s put up a 140 wRC+ and five wins per season, and last year was no different. He struck out an unusually high amount the first two months of the season and had a terrible May (46 wRC+), but boasted a strong recovery on his way to typically excellent numbers. There’s nothing fluky in his Statcast numbers. He’s one of the top 10 hitters in baseball, and going into his age-31 season, he’s projected to be one of the top 15 hitters in baseball again. Steamer projects Golschmidt for 4.1 WAR while ZiPS puts him at 3.7. It’s pretty safe to say he’s a four-win player, which even with the higher expectations of offense at first base, makes him one of the top 25 or so players in the game, and the new best player on the Cardinals. Read the rest of this entry »

No offense to Josh Donaldson, Steve Pearce, and Kurt Suzuki, but it appears the first big domino has fallen in this winter’s free agent class. Patrick Corbin is reportedly set to sign a six-year contract with the Nationals, per Chelsea Janes. Jon Heyman has reported the deal is for $140 million and, as most Nationals contracts do, it includes deferrals, per Ken Rosenthal, which lower somewhat the actual value of the contract. The Diamondbacks will get a draft pick after the first round for their troubles.

This might not quite qualify as mystery team material, but the industry consensus seemed to be that Corbin was likely to sign with the Phillies or the Yankees, making the Nationals moving in a bit of a surprise. Now, it would be appropriate to say the Nationals didn’t need pitching given that they already have Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg at the top of the rotation. But it would probably be even more appropriate to say every team needs pitching, and signing a pitcher of Patrick Corbin’s quality does a lot to help the Nationals as they try to recapture the division after a disappointing season and the seemingly likely departure of Bryce Harper.

As for how Corbin will perform, our own Dan Szymborksi was kind enough to pass along the following ZiPS projections: Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago, the Cardinals and Marlins agreed to a trade that would have sent Giancarlo Stanton to St. Louis. Stanton exercised the no-trade clause in his contract, and ended up with the Yankees instead. The Cardinals continued to engage the Marlins, likely preferring eventual NL MVP Christian Yelich, but ending up instead with Marcell Ozuna, as he was who the Marlins made available at the time. Trading for Ozuna made sense, as waiting for Yelich carried the risk of him not becoming available at all. Most Cardinals moves make sense. But Ozuna was not the Cardinals’ first choice, and the trade likely wasn’t even Plan B. Last winter was not the first time St. Louis missed out on its top choice and resorted to lesser options. If they opt to do so again, they risk missing the postseason for a fourth straight year despite not having a losing season.

Let’s review. The winter of 2016 saw potential trade targets in Adam Eaton and Charlie Blackmon go unacquired; the Cardinals signed Dexter Fowler right after the Eaton trade. Three years ago, the team famously missed out on David Price and Jason Heyward and ended up with Mike Leake.

Ozuna struggled with shoulder problems most of the season, which limited his defense and eliminated the power surge that made him a very good player the season before. The Cardinals jettisoned Leake in the middle of 2017 and had to give the Mariners $17.5 million to do so. Fowler put up a solid 2017 but followed it up with a miserable 2018 that brought his two-year WAR total with St. Louis down to 1.3. He’s owed roughly $50 million over the next three years and would require a similar buyout to the one that sent Leake to Seattle in order to be traded. And those were the good Cardinals free agent signings. The club has used some of its payroll room and guaranteed around $56 million to Luke Gregerson, Greg Holland, and Brett Cecil, and received a 5.62 ERA and 0.4 WAR in 137.2 combined innings from that trio. Read the rest of this entry »

As we get closer to deals for Manny Machado and Bryce Harper, the time has come for warnings about mega-deals gone bad. You know about Albert Pujols, Chris Davis, Miguel Cabrera, and Jacoby Ellsbury as prime examples of why guaranteeing big money long-term to players on the wrong side of 30 is a bad idea. Robinson Cano’s current contract is not one of those examples. There were alarm bells when Cano signed his 10-year, $240 million contract with the Mariners five years ago, but he has more than held up his end of the contract by averaging more than four wins per season. If Cano hits his projections next year and continues a normal age-related decline, he could easily live up to the $240 million contract he signed.

Over the past five seasons, the Mariners have paid Cano just over $108 million and Cano, in turn, has delivered 20.7 WAR. According to our values at the bottom of Cano’s player page, his play has been worth around $160 million. He’s currently projected by Steamer for three wins next season. With standard aging curves, here is what Cano’s production and value are expected to be over the next five years.

Read the rest of this entry »

One year ago, Josh Donaldson was coming off of a very good season, hitting 50% better than league average on his way to 5.1 WAR despite missing six weeks early in the year with a right calf injury. If Donaldson had hit free agency then, he would have been the best position player on the market and likely would have bested J.D. Martinez’s contract despite being a couple of years older. But he didn’t, and after an injury-riddled 2018, the soon-to-be-33 year-old surveyed the market, and opted for a one-year, $23 million deal with the Atlanta Braves, per Ken Rosenthal.

Donaldson faced a difficult decision this winter. He could have tried to cash in on his previous success and get the highest guarantee possible. In our review of the Top 50 Free Agents, both the crowd and Kiley McDaniel assumed that route, and predicted three year deals with an average annual value between $18 and $20 million. It’s possible that Donaldson preferred the Braves for personal reasons, having grown up in Alabama. Holding out for a better deal would have included some risk for Donaldson if this year’s market proves to be slow like last year’s did. The middle ground with a player opt-out after one season might have made the most sense, but that also might have taken more time to develop and lessened the guarantee in the first year. The deal Donaldson did strike with the Braves is not devoid of risk, however. Read the rest of this entry »

Major league baseball teams closely guard their financial information. They have no problem talking about how much money players make, but they prefer to be more circumspect when disclosing the revenue teams take in or the scale of the profits owners make after those players have been paid and expenses accounted for. Because baseball’s ownership is a fairly insular group composed mostly of individuals and privately held businesses– and because there relatively few franchise sales to use as gauge–teams have been largely successful in preventing their financial information from going public. The Atlanta Braves present an exception.

Liberty Media, perhaps best known for its subsidiary SiriusXM Satellite Radio, purchased the Braves in 2007 for $400 million. Two years ago, they began offering stock in their separate divisions, which means the public can buy shares in the Braves as well as the real estate holdings around the stadium. It also means that, as a publicly traded company, the public is entitled to more information regarding the team’s finances than is typical. As I wrote in 2016, the club disclosed an $18 million loss in 2014 before depreciation and amortization. They were on the plus side in 2015 by about three million dollars before recording losses of about $20 million in 2016. During those three seasons, the team averaged 90 losses, with an average annual attendance of 2.1 million fans and a payroll just over $116 million per season. The financial losses in 2016 were largely attributable to a huge international signing class, most of the players from which were later declared free agents after MLB’s investigation into Atlanta’s signing methods.

But focusing exclusively on a team’s year-by-year profits obscures the financial reality of owning a baseball team because it doesn’t address the most profitable aspect of team ownership: the value of the franchise. Based on the calculations above, the Braves lost about $45 million from 2014 through the end of 2016. But Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei has admitted profits weren’t always the main consideration for the Braves, indicating that “historically, the measurement was we didn’t lose money.” Maffei’s remarks are consistent with statements from another team owner, Rogers Communications, which owns the Toronto Blue Jays, though the Blue Jays’ financials are harder to trace because Rogers owns a whole host of assets along with the baseball team. Per Forbes:

The media giant’s CFO, Tony Staffieri, said at a conference that Rogers wants to “surface value” from the Blue Jays, which he said is a “very valuable asset for us that we don’t get full credit for.”

For the Blue Jays, “surfacing value” would likely come in the form of realizing the profits from selling the team, as Rogers might not be getting “credit” if the team isn’t reaping huge profits. Then there’s the matter of Rogers also broadcasting Blue Jays games, which might further cloud the revenues from the baseball team. (The Braves used to benefit from some of that same confusion back when Ted Turner owned the club and TBS showed Braves games, but the financial model has shifted, and the Braves now have one of the worst local television contracts in baseball.) It is clear the calculus of franchise ownership is more complicated than mere gate sales. Read the rest of this entry »

Adrian Beltre has been many things to fans over the course of his amazing, 21 year career. Dodgers fans old enough to run for Congress got to see Beltre young and full of promise, including a 2004 season might be the greatest of all time by a third baseman. Since that year, only Mike Trout‘s 2012 and 2013, and Mookie Betts’s 2018 have topped the 9.7 WAR Beltre put up. Mariners fans had to settle for five years of Gold Glove-quality play at third base with a closer to an average bat, before a shoulder injury in 2009 forced him to take a one-year deal with the Red Sox. Boston fans watched one great year before Beltre moved to Texas and cemented his status as a surefire Hall of Famer.

On Tuesday, Beltre announced he is retiring.

#ThankYouAB pic.twitter.com/wZO9K18yVJ

— Texas Rangers (@Rangers) November 20, 2018

 

Before heading to the Rangers, Beltre’s career matched up well with a handful of Hall of Famers, but also with a handful of players whose Cooperstown ambitions would ultimately fall short, as the table below shows.

He wasn’t necessarily thought of as such at the time, but in terms of offense and defense, Beltre was a modern-day Brooks Robinson. The great Orioles third baseman enjoyed an impeccable defensive reputation and aged well, averaging 4.4 WAR per season from his age-32 through age-37 seasons. And Beltre was up to the challenge, averaging 5.4 WAR during those same seasons. As offensive numbers around the league dropped, Beltre stayed the same. His .275/.328/.462 batting line when playing in the more cavernous ballparks in Los Angeles and Seattle turned into .304/.357/.509 when transplanted to the more hitter-friendly climes of Arlington. As strikeouts rose dramatically, Beltre struck out about once every other game. That consistency turned into one of the best third acts of a career we’ve ever seen.

There are only 10 position players since 1947 who accrued more WAR beginning at age 32 than Beltre has. Of those, only Barry Bonds, Edgar Martinez and Pete Rose haven’t been inducted into the Hall of Fame. The rest are inner-circle greats Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Mike Schmidt, Ozzie Smith, and Roberto Clemente.

And Beltre’s own WAR-based case for the Hall is impenetrable. Jay Jaffe’s JAWS has Beltre as the fourth-best third baseman of all-time behind only Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews, and Wade Boggs. Looking at FanGraphs’ third base Leaderboards, Beltre’s 84 WAR places him seventh with Alex Rodriguez, Chipper Jones, and George Brett joining Schmidt, Mathews, and Boggs, though Jones and Brett each lead him by less than a single win. Jay Jaffe tracked Beltre this past season as he became the all-time leader in hits for players born in Latin America, as well as internationally. He might not have an MVP, finishing second in 2004 and third in 2012, and his Rangers fell a strike short of a World Series win in 2011, but by any metric, Beltre is an all-time great, and that’s before you consider that he hit a homer off his knee in the World Series.

Beltre’s career is the rare sort in which a player’s statistical accomplishments actually match the personality and joy he displayed on the field. Jeff Sullivan wrote in 2016 that Beltre would be remembered “for being an excellent third baseman, for having an aversion to being touched on the head, and for sometimes playing through inconceivable pain.” Beltre’s age-defying statistical feats may be his true legacy, and those feats have been covered in some detail here at FanGraphs. August Fagerstrom wrote about it way back in 2015. I discussed his refusal to age when he signed a two-year extension in 2016 that would ultimately take him to the end of his career. Travis Sawchik and Paul Swydan each took turns in 2017 as Beltre worked his way to his 3,000th hit.

But for all that, Beltre’s ability to defy age with his bat and glove doesn’t measure up to his ageless spirit. There is his aversion to being touched on the head, his enduring and humorous friendship with King Felix. His dancing on the basepaths was a sight. He alternated between demanding space and ceding it with infield partner Elvis Andrus. There’s a giraffe named after Adrian Beltre at the Fort Worth Zoo, and Beltre-the-third-baseman has gone to see it. He’s given fake signs to the opposition. When told by umpire Gerry Davis to get back in the on-deck circle, he reacted as any 38-year-old would, and opted to move the circle itself; he was ejected from the game. On MLB Network Radio this morning, former Rangers manager Jeff Banister described Beltre dressing up like a clubhouse attendant and sweeping the dugout while on the disabled list.

When I think about what I hope and wish to see in a baseball player, I want someone who is a marvel with the bat and superlative with the glove. I want years of greatness combined with longevity. A toughness that shows off commitment. Someone who flashes moments of unique brilliance. A player with energy, whose love for the game seems boundless despite the money and routine that can sap that life from the best of us. Adrian Beltre might not be a perfect player, but he is one to me. I imagine I’m not alone.

If you have followed the works of Carson Cistulli for any length of time, you know he often quotes Emil Cioran. As a tribute to our departing managing editor, I have attempted to combine Cioran’s work with Carson’s spirit by replacing the word “life” in a few select quotes with our dear friend’s name. The results speak for themselves.

• If someone incessantly drops the word “Cistulli,” you know he’s a sick man.
• Everyone must destroy Cistulli. According to the way they do it, they’re either triumphants or failures.
• If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of Cistulli which maintains itself without reason.
• One of the greatest delusions of the average man is to forget that Cistulli is death’s prisoner.
• The only thing the young should be taught is that there is virtually nothing to be hoped for from Cistulli.
• “What is truth?” is a fundamental question. But what is it compared to “How to endure Cistulli?”
• For a long time—always, in fact—I have known that Cistulli is not what I needed and that I wasn’t able to deal with it.
• Knowledge is the plague of Cistulli, and consciousness, an open wound in its heart.
• One disgust, then another – to the point of losing the use of speech and even of the mind…The greatest exploit of Cistulli is to be still alive.
• Someday the old shack we call the world will fall apart. How, we don’t know, and we don’t really care either. Since nothing has real substance, and Cistulli is a twirl in the void, its beginning and its end are meaningless.
• Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over Cistulli. For Cistulli is nothing but another word for this fear.
• By capitulating to Cistulli, this world has betrayed nothingness.
• To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and Cistulli, to leave behind you, as symbols of Cistulli’s drama, a trail of smoke and blood – all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.
• Sadness accompanies all those events in which Cistulli expends itself. Its intensity is equal to its loss. Thus death causes the greatest sadness.

• Cistulli is too full of death for death to be able to add anything to it.
• We do not rush toward death, we flee the catastrophe of Cistulli, survivors struggling to forget it. Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of Cistulli. We are reluctant, of course, to treat Cistulli as a scourge: has it not been inculcated as the sovereign good—have we not been told that the worst came at the end, not at the outset of our Cistulli? Yet evil, the real evil, is behind, not ahead of us.

• From the cradle to the grave, each individual pays for the sin of not being God. That’s why Cistulli is an uninterrupted religious crisis, superficial for believers, shattering for doubters.

• Cistulli is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

• The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the “meaning” of Cistulli.

• The only minds which seduce us are the minds which have destroyed themselves trying to give Cistulli a meaning.

• In theory, it matters little to me whether I live as whether I die; in practice, I am lacerated by every anxiety which opens an abyss between Cistulli and death.

• In relation to any act of Cistulli, the mind acts as a killjoy.

• The fact that Cistulli has no meaning is a reason to live – moreover, the only one.
• Cistulli inspires more dread than death — it is Cistulli which is the great unknown.

 

Earlier this week, I focused on creating objective measures by which to examine and value individual prospects and farm systems. Inherent in those objective measures is the knowledge that the rankings themselves are not. Prospect writers like our own Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel combine in-person scouting with their knowledge and experience of the game, information from industry sources, and statistical data to arrive at well-informed but still subjective rankings and grades. What follows is one study attempting to determine if there has been any historical bias based on the position of a player.

As with the prior studies, I’m using the Baseball America Top 100 rankings from 1996 to 2010. To get a sense of how players were ranked by position, here are the raw numbers for the number of players listed at any given position, with multi-position players listed at both positions.

It should come as no surprise to find pitchers and outfielders first given that they have more starting positions available to them. Generally, a pitcher isn’t going to make a prospect list if the person believes he will be a reliever because the value is less. That might be changing some now, but for the vast majority of Top-100 pitching prospects, the hope is that they will be starters. If we were to divide the pitchers by the five starting rotation slots and outfielders by the three starting spots, shortstops would then have the highest representation on prospect lists. After shortstops, we have pitchers and third basemen, with outfielders slotting in ahead of first basemen and catchers with second basemen way down the list. Conventional wisdom holds that ranking so many shortstops is acceptable because many will eventually slide down the defensive spectrum, taking up slots at third base or over at second, which makes up for the lack of prospects there. Read the rest of this entry »

There are 6,000 or so minor-league baseball players at any given moment. By definition, meanwhile, there are only 100 minor-league ballplayers on any given top-100 prospect list. That means there are also around 6,000 minor leaguers not on top-100 lists — all 6,000 of them still intent on reaching the major leagues.

And many of them do reach the majors. For half-a-dozen years, Carson Cistulli has highlighted a number of prospects who failed to make a top-100 list by means of his Fringe Five series, and some of those players — like Mookie Betts and Jose Ramirez — have gone on to become stars. There should be little doubt that prospects outside the standard top-100 lists have value. Determining how much value, however, is a different and more involved question.

When I attempted to determine a value for prospects who’d appeared on top-100 lists, I was working with a relatively small pool of players. Even 15 years’ worth of lists equates to 1,500 players at most. Attempting to determine the value for every prospect, meanwhile, would appear to be a much larger task. Does one look at the roughly 90,000 minor-league seasons over the same period? That seems daunting. Looking at Baseball America’s team-level prospects lists, which feature 10 players per organization, would provide a more manageable 200 prospects per season outside the top-100 list, but that wouldn’t quite get us where we need to be, either.

And yet, as I’ve noted, these prospects have value. On THE BOARD, for example, there are currently 689 prospects with grades (a) of at least 40 but (b) less than 50 (the lowest grade earned by players on a top-100 lists, typically). It’s these prospects in whom I’m interested. What follows represents my attempt to place a value on them, as well.

Read the rest of this entry »