Some of it depends on the philosophies of the front office, some of it depends on the market size, and some of it is pure luck of the draw. Every 40-man roster in baseball is built through different means, and each organization has its own unique quirks when it comes to roster construction.

This is a reboot of an exercise I did last year, with a couple fun additions. Relying mostly on RosterResource and our depth charts, I’ve got a couple spreadsheets containing every player on every 40-man roster, how they were acquired by their team, and their projected WAR for 2016, based on Steamer. Last year’s post focused mainly on the raw number of players, and the means by which they were acquired.

I’ve got a new version of that table, still sortable, and this year I’ve added international signings:

There’s some interesting information to be gleaned from this table, but not every free agent signing or trade acquisition is made the same. What we really care about is how each team’s key players were acquired. So, this year, I’ve added up the projected WAR of every player, and broke those down by the method of acquisition:
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I don’t believe I’m out of line when I say that, of life’s most enjoyable pleasures, many are to be used, collected, consumed, or practiced in moderation. “You can have too much of a good thing,” they say. Food and alcohol, for example. Both delightful. Both substances which, were I unaware of the consequences of surplus consumption, I would regularly consume in excess. Both substances, in fact, which I do regularly consume in excess, despite being completely aware of the consequences. Likewise, I’ve taken nary a vacation which I didn’t find overindulgent. Don’t get me wrong — a break from the norm for a bit of traveling is always welcome, but I’m perpetually exhausted by the degree of stimulation that comes with falling asleep and waking up in a new bed, having to process an unfamiliar environment and having to create and enact routines that differ from the ones to which I am accustomed. Perhaps I’m just outing myself as a homebody, but without fail, I long for the comforts of a familiar bed, environment, and routine approximately 24-48 hours prior to the conclusion of any extended trip.

I recently sought to find an example of overindulgence in a baseball. A player whose approach, for example, was perhaps hindered by too much of a good thing. It was sort of an offshoot of the post I wrote yesterday which concerned Miguel Sano’s surprisingly disciplined approach against breaking balls. In that post, I found, among other things, that Sano took plenty of early at-bat breaking pitches for balls, and so he found himself in plenty of hitter’s counts, and not only that, but he capitalized on his abundant hitter’s counts by amping up his aggression and attacking pitchers when he had the upper hand.

It’s a fairly fundamental strategy, but there’s a most extreme everything, and someone had to be on the other end. There has to be someone who finds themselves in plenty of hitter’s counts but, for whatever reason, actually becomes notably less aggressive and less attack-oriented when they hold count leverage over the pitcher.

So I ran some BaseballSavant queries and I produced a couple lists in a spreadsheet that showed me overall swing rate, and ahead-in-the-count swing rate, and I calculated the difference between the two. Some interesting names popped up near the top — Xander Bogaerts, Matt Carpenter, Anthony Rizzo — but something seemed off, and I realized an unaccounted-for variable in my search: not all batters are pitched the same when they’re ahead in the count. Certain hitters get far more or fewer pitches to hit when ahead in the count, and so their swing rates are partly dictated by the pitcher. To control for this, it would be wiser to search only for the difference between overall in-zone swing rate and ahead-in-the-count in-zone swing rate. This was a search that yielded a particularly intriguing result.

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Miguel Sano didn’t exactly sneak up on the league. The massive 22-year-old Dominican slugger had been considered a top-100 overall prospect in baseball for each of the last six seasons, a top-20 overall prospect each of the last four. He’d have been a perennial No. 1 prospect for most any organization in baseball, if not for the presence of super-prospect Byron Buxton. In the prospect world, Sano played Pippen to Buxton’s Jordan.

Last season, they both arrived. And for Sano, the debut couldn’t have gone much better. Sano batted 335 times in his rookie season. Set the playing time minimum low enough, to include Sano on our leaderboards, and he was a top-10 hitter in baseball. Immediately, Sano thrust himself into the company of Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Chris Davis, not only as one of the game’s premier power hitters, but as one of the most dangerous all-around at-bats in the league.

Pitchers who had faced Sano in the minor leagues already knew what to expect. Pitchers who hadn’t faced Sano before quickly learned what to expect. The most simple scouting report goes like this: true 80-grade power, the kind of power that necessitates lofty comparisons with Stanton. Proceed with caution.

And that’s exactly what pitchers did. A reputation as a feared hitter is the kind of thing most guys have to earn. Bautista, Davis, Encarnacion: they had to earn their reputations as truly premier power hitters, as the most dangerous at-bats in the game. It wasn’t simply assumed. Sano? Sano arrived with that reputation.

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So, what did everyone think of the Justin Upton deal? Took a long time to sign. Got a lot of money. Good player. Gonna hit a bunch — probably something like 25% better than league average. Might not be great in the field, but, hey, it’s certainly an upgrade over what they already had. Deal mostly makes sense. It’s just so weird that the Rays were the team that signed him.

You didn’t hear? Yeah, it was the Rays that got him. The Tigers? No, no no no no no. The Rays landed Upton. Big-time move for them.

OK, fine, they didn’t technically get Upton. Technically, Upton signed with the Tigers, sure. I’ll admit that. They didn’t get Upton, but what they did get was Corey Dickerson and Steve Pearce, and — hey, stop laughing! Hear me out, here. Dickerson, for his career, has mashed right-handed pitching. Problem’s been the lefties. He’s got a career 139 wRC+ against righties. Pearce, for his career, and especially lately, since he turned his career around, has crushed left-handed pitching. Problem’s been the righties. He’s got a career 123 wRC+ against lefties.

When the Tigers went out and signed Upton to a six-year, $132 million contract, they signed up for something like a 127 wRC+ in 2016, according to the Steamer projections we host here on the site. Makes sense. That’s the exact midway point between last year’s production in San Diego, and the previous year’s production in Atlanta. The Rays? The Rays got Dickerson from Colorado yesterday for Jake McGee, an injury-prone, yet very effective, left-handed reliever. As for Pearce, he was signed for one year and $4.75 million. And if Dickerson only batted against righties, getting two-thirds of the season’s plate appearances, and Pearce got the other one-third by only batting against lefties, Steamer projects that the duo would combine for something like a 124 wRC+ — just a shade below Upton’s performance and at a fraction of the cost.

Of course, it never works that way. Dickerson’s going to be forced into some playing time against lefties, and it’s inevitable that Pearce is going to face his share of righties. Neither one is as adept in the outfield as Upton, and because the Tigers have an everyday player in left field, rather than a platoon, they’ve got an “extra” roster spot, relative to the Rays. You’d rather have Upton than Dickerson and Pearce. At the same time, you’ve got to applaud the Rays for spending so little to acquire a pair of corner outfielders whose production, so as long as the players are used optimally, could rival that of Upton’s.

This is one of the ways in which small-market teams can keep up with their big-market brothers, and one of the reasons why clubs like the Indians, A’s and Rays are so often found near the top of the platoon advantage leaderboard. There’s something very compelling about the cost-effective nature of a productive platoon, as well as the brutal honesty. A platoon is an organization’s way of telling a player, “We know you’re severely flawed, but we’re fine with who you are, and don’t need you to be anything more,” which sort of flies in the face of the traditional macho, “strive for greatness” athlete persona.

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We’re born into this world kicking and screaming. Being just seconds old, we’re confused and afraid, and being just seconds old, crying is the only way we know to cope with these anxieties. Even now, we’re all still babies — just really big ones who have better learned how to productively deal with our stressors.

Adult life is a constant stream of setting goals and either reaching them, or not. Throughout the course of a day, we’ll set dozens, if not hundreds, of goals, most of which are instantly resolved. Folks tend to think of “goals” as these overarching narratives — “lose 10 pounds this month” or “read a couple dozen books this year” or “save up enough money to buy a new car” — but even thoughtless, menial tasks like make the bed or pay a bill are really just miniature, easily attainable goals, set throughout the day, that provide us small bursts of satisfaction when they’re achieved.

Things don’t always go our way, though. And when things don’t go our way, it’s human nature to produce a response. Noted psychologist Richard S. Lazarus defined stress as “nothing more (and nothing less) than the experience of encountering or anticipating adversity in one’s goal-related efforts.” While the newborn deals with its stress the only way it knows how — crying — we as adults have developed myriad ways to cope with our adversities.

* * *

To spin this into a baseball metaphor, a batter has a goal when he steps to the plate to begin an at-bat: to reach base safely. Then, even smaller goals are created, as snap decisions are made during the act of each pitch: the moment a batter decides to swing, his newest goal becomes to make solid contact. On the contrary, the moment a batter decides not to swing, his goal becomes to earn a called ball.

For instance, a batter sees a 3-2 pitch, and he has a decision: swing, or take. Either one will produce a different goal, a goal that will be resolved instantaneously. When the batter faces adversity in that goal he’s set — say, he takes the pitch, thinking it’s ball four, but the umpire actually calls strike three — a stress is born, and our ego produces a defense mechanism in an effort to cope with this stress.

This particular scenario is among the most surefire ways for a baseball player to produce a visceral reaction on the field. So, allow me to continue playing armchair psychologist as we (a) observe pleasing .gifs of professional athletes feeling wronged by bad calls and (b) lean on George E. Vaillant’s Ego Mechanisms of Defense: A Guide for Clinicians and Researchers to categorize the observed defense mechanisms in an attempt to better understand human behavior.

The Freeze

We begin with perhaps the most common — and varied — reaction: The Freeze. The Freeze comes in many forms. In the top example, for instance, our subject appears to exhibit patience (enduring difficult circumstances for some time before responding negatively), suppression (the conscious decision to delay paying attention to an emotion or need in order to cope with the present reality), and tolerance (the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves).

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Jordan Zimmermann woke up Tuesday morning, read the report from the Associated Press that MLB appears to be considering a raising of the strike zone, yawned, took another sip of coffee, and quietly went back to working on the day’s crossword puzzle from The New York Times.

According to the AP’s interview with commissioner Rob Manfred, MLB is “studying whether to raise the bottom of the strike zone from the hollow beneath the kneecap back to the top of the kneecap.” We know that offense is as low as it’s been in 25 years with strikeouts at an all-time high, and while that’s partially due to ever-increasing velocity and changes in approach, it’s also got plenty to do with a strike zone that’s larger than any we’ve got on record, with the brunt of the expansion found in the lowest sliver of the zone. MLB can’t change how hard pitchers throw or where they put it, so the logical step, if they’d like to inject some offense back into the game (though it did come back up for the first time in six years last season), would be to rein in the strike zone a bit. If a change is made, it likely wouldn’t come until the 2017 season at the earliest, as it’s a matter to be discussed in collective bargaining negotiations, the results of which wouldn’t impact the league until the current CBA expires on December 1, 2016.

Raising the floor of the strike zone wouldn’t much affect Zimmermann, who pitched above the waist more than any pitcher in baseball last year. But certain guys make their living down in the zone, around the very sliver that’s being discussed as turning from a called strike to a called ball.

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“Kyle Gibson?”

That was the first comment from my piece, yesterday, on Francisco Liriano, who embodies a league-wide trend of pitchers subtly altering their approach and hitters seemingly failing to adjust. You see, Gibson’s name was twice invoked in a group of unique pitchers, and, given the context of the groups, Gibson stuck out as something of a stranger in the room.

The first group looked like this:

• Carlos Carrasco
• Jacob deGrom
• Kyle Gibson
• Corey Kluber
• Max Scherzer
• Madison Bumgarner

OK, then.

The second group looked like this:

• Francisco Liriano
• Kyle Gibson
• Dallas Keuchel
• Wade Miley
• James Shields
• Tyson Ross
• Jeff Locke
• Jon Lester
• Gio Gonzalez

The second group is less illustrious than the first, but Gibson finds himself surrounded by some impressive company regardless. The first group, the distinguished group, is made up of the pitchers who most often got batters to chase pitches out of the zone in 2015. The second group is made up of the pitchers who worked out of the zone most often in 2015.

So, you’ve got Kyle Gibson, here, in both these groups, throwing pitches outside the strike zone all day long and getting batters to chase at them like Carrasco, and deGrom, and Kluber, and Scherzer. And you’ve got Kyle Gibson, here, who had one of the lower strikeout rates in baseball last year, and has K’ed fewer than six batters per nine innings over the course of his career, while his chase-inducing contemporaries like Carrasco, and deGrom, and Kluber, and Scherzer are striking out 10 batters per nine and overpowering lineups across the major league.

What gives? Where are all of Kyle Gibson’s whiffs? He already turned himself into a solid pitcher, a three-win pitcher, last season, racking up nearly 200 innings with an ERA, FIP, and xFIP all under 4.00. He’s proven himself as a quality arm. Take a quality arm and add some extra strikeouts, and you’ve got a dominant arm. And it seems like he should be getting those extra strikeouts. Yet, here we are.

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It’s been true for each of the last five years, that Francisco Liriano has finished each season with a higher strikeout rate than the one before it. It’s been true for each of the last four years, that Liriano has finished each season with a slower average fastball velocity than the one before it. The magnitude of these differences isn’t substantial — he’s gained a little more than 2% on his strikeout rate since 2012 and lost a little more than 2 mph — but the trends exist, and they’re headed in opposite directions.

We live in a world where older pitchers are holding their velocity better than ever before, and some are even gaining, despite what decades of convention have led us to believe. Velocity is up. Velocity is correlated with strikeouts, and strikeouts are up. Name a trait or outcome that’s positive for a pitcher — it’s probably up.

Yet clearly, something else besides velocity is working in Liriano’s favor.

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