Every year, as Spring Training winds down, a GM somewhere will look around and come to the conclusion that his teams needs, for lack of a better term, something extra. Perhaps an injury recovery is taking longer than expected, or maybe a rookie didn’t pan out quite the way everyone thought. This is usually the time to scour the growing free agent pool, as some veteran or expendable “quadruple A” guy will inevitably be given their walking papers when teams shore up their rosters. This is a perfectly acceptable way to find a 25th man — a bench bat or a lefty specialist. But if there’s nothing to be found in the recently-waived, or if a team has to make a move fast, a rare Spring Training trade might happen.

Dave Dombrowski needed to — or at least thought he needed to — make a move fast, when it became clear that shortstop Jose Iglesias would be out for a significant amount of time with stress fractures in both legs. He traded for Austin Romine, and then for Alex Gonzalez. The Gonzalez move, especially, came off as a bit of a head scratcher as Gonzalez was a non-roster invitee for the Orioles, and frankly, hasn’t really ever been good. But it’s fairly clear that Dombrowski was willing to take a bit of a hit in exchange for bodies he could install at short. While this particular move doesn’t seem that great, trades that happen during Spring Training aren’t usually impact trades in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

What do we have here? For an explanation of this series, please read this introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position. The author writing this post did not move your team down ten spots in order to make you angry. We don’t hate your team. I promise.

Also, keep in mind that these lists are based on rosters as of last week, so weekend transactions are not reflected in the rosters below. In some cases, teams have allocated playing time to different reserves than these depth charts show, but because they’re almost always choosing between near-replacement level players, the differences won’t move the needle much if at all.

This time last year, the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim were first and second on this list, respectively. This, of course, had mostly to due with the presence of Ryan Braun and Mike Trout. This year, Braun will be in right and Trout is expected to patrol center. This, along with the expected progression/regression of certain players has mixed up the top tier of the left field positional power rankings.

The departure of Braun and Trout from this list also flattens the peak a bit — whereas the Brewers and Angels were projected to receive more than five wins from their left field, the highest-projected left field in 2014 comes in at a shade above four wins. So, who grabbed the top spot?

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“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is the old adage — things that appear one way may, in fact, be another way. We are taught this as children in an effort to curb prejudice and stereotypes. We should get to know people before creating an opinion of them. But, in reality, we pre-judge all the time. We make hasty decisions using a less-than-optimal set of data dozens of times a day. If we didn’t nothing would get done.

I hate grocery shopping. This strikes me as odd since I love food so much, but buying it is something I loathe. The crowds, the lists, the doubling back to grab something you passed — it’s all terrible. So when I’m done shopping, I want to get out of there as soon as I can. And when I make my way to the checkout, I’m scanning to find the line that will get me out of the store the fastest. The length of the line has something to do with it, but there are other factors I’ve come to discover. If I line has an elderly woman in it, I try to avoid it since they are most likely to search for coupons and write a check. Solo parents attempting to herd multiple children while checking out tend to take some time. I look at the baggers — do they seem to be working at a normal pace, or are they lagging? Would it be quicker to do self-checkout and bag everything myself? All these thoughts and more flood my brain when I make it to the front of the store.

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Billy Heywood never actually managed the Minnesota Twins. Billy Heywood was a movie character, the titular character from the movie Little Big League. When you think about it, he was technically more of a manager than any of us will be, in that he got to wear a uniform and sit in actual major-league dugouts. The idea behind Little Big League is that Heywood is bequeathed the Minnesota Twins from his grandfather. The Twins stink and Heywood decides to fire the manager and instill himself into the position. The Twins start winning and all the players and Heywood himself find out a lot about themselves in the process. It’s a fairly dumb movie.

We are still quite a ways away from quantifying just to what extent a manager can affect a team, and perhaps further away from quantifying to what extent a manager who is a child can affect a team. There are so many variables, so many anecdotes from players about how managers can influence a winning attitude, that we really can’t put a number on most things. Some we can, like bunting, since a manager is largely responsible for calling those plays. He’s also responsible for initiating intentional walks.

Intentional walks are perhaps less of a lightning rod in our community than something like sacrifice bunts, but there is still a general idea that intentional walks are largely unnecessary, and can even be counterproductive at times, since they are allowing one of the things teams do not want — opponents on base. But as it happens, managers — or perhaps others in front offices that influence managers — appear to be getting smarter about intentional walks.

Foremost, a note on the research. I looked at play-by-play data from 1974 forward, the period in which we have the most accurate data of that kind. Obviously, this only entails an official four-finger, standing catcher type of intentional walks. There are certainly times when pitchers intentionally pitch around a player, but that isn’t really something we can look up definitively.

The first chart shows simply intentional walks per plate appearance. There was a sharp drop in the 90s, followed by a large spike in the early 2000s. The easy answer for that spike is that it was a reaction to the power surge showing among hitters that began in the late 90s — managers simply thought it to be more beneficial to put the big sluggers on base rather than have them hit. This, of course, culminated in 2004 when Barry Bonds was intentionally walked 120 times, accounting for almost 9% of the total intentional walks that year. We don’t know if that’s the reason for sure, but it seems like a fairly good bet. Nevertheless, that craziness has subsided, and we now see that IBB levels have leveled off back to the levels seen in the late 90s.

But something else has also happened, as the dirty cheaters who clicked on the other tabs have already figured out. Intentional walks are being used in more high-leverage situations than ever before. They now occur with more outs, tighter scores, and in later innings.

Without breaking down each base/out scenario, we can make a broad statement that intentional walks, if they make sense at all, usually make more sense in the later innings. Walking guys in the fifth or sixth is fairly poor strategy, in fact. Right now, we see that the average IBB happens in the 7th inning, and that is probably skewed a little low thanks the the NL’s always-make-the-pitcher-hit strategy.

More outs when putting a guy on is also a good thing — two outs being ideal, of course — since giving a free pass with fewer outs can lead to more runs for the batting team. In 2013, major league teams were averaging 1.5 outs when issuing a free pass. This ostensibly means that just as many teams issued a free pass with one out as they did with two. And while it’s historically high, that number hasn’t fluctuated all that much since 1974. Teams still need to work on this a bit, it seems.

The average score difference — about 1.38 runs in 2013 — is also trending downward, meaning the managers are using intentional walks when the games are closer. This also points to high-leverage usage. Teams are looking to keep the game close, or maintain their slim leads by bypassing the other team’s biggest threats. On the whole, if you’re going to just walk a guy, that’s probably the best time.

Without getting incredibly granular, it’s hard to make a mountaintop-worthy announcement that teams are figuring out how to use the intentional walk properly. There’s more research to be done here.We do know that the overall frequency of the IBB is down, which is good. We also know that when they do happen, they are happening in higher-leverage situations than five, ten, or 15 years ago. This is almost certainly good. I don’t remember if Billy Heywood every issued an intentional walk, but the fact that he was supposed to exist in a world just like ours save for the fact that a kid ran a baseball team, it seems safe to say he probably did. He may have done it in the fifth inning of a game his team was winning with one out and a man on. If so, that would have been a poor move. He may get a pass because he was 12 years old. Perhaps a petition campaign to teach run expectancies in elementary school is in order.

Remember Jake Fox? Jake Fox was a catcher/third baseman/outfielder for the Cubs/A’s/Orioles/Pirates. He didn’t really shine at any defensive position, and his hitting really wasn’t any better. He cracked a wRC+ north of 100 for the first time in 2009 as a member of the Orioles, at 104. He, to this point, has a career 85 wRC+ and has been worth -0.9 WAR. If you are a follower of one of the above-mentioned teams, you may remember Jake Fox. If not, you shouldn’t. That is, you shouldn’t unless you are hiding a dirty little secret. The secret being that you have been paying attention to Spring Training stats. Because Jake Fox would rake in Spring Training. Like, pretty much every year. Observe:

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As I approach the wrong side of thirty, I find myself shifting preferences when it comes to video games. While my earlier days were filled with shooters or the latest Madden game, I now play more low-key offerings. I’ll still throw in a Bioshock ever now and again, but my game playing time is for more serene these days. Less quick-twitch shooting, more strategy. I play a lot of Civilization V. I play a lot of Out of the Park Baseball. And lately, I’ve been playing a LOT of Kerbal Space Program.

Kerbal Space Program is a sort-of simulator in which you control an alien race that is trying to explore space. You build rockets, achieve goals, and push to discover as much as possible. It’s insanely fun. In fact, as I typed those last few sentences I had to fight a strong urge to save what I was writing and fire the game up again. You start off with small goals — break the planet’s atmosphere, achieve gravitational orbit, land on one of the planet’s moons, etc. But after all that is done, it’s time for interplanetary travel. This is where things get tricky. Not only do you need to design rockets that toe the fine line between needed fuel and mass, you need to check and double check every stage of your rocket to make sure things execute as desired. You don’t want to leave one of your adorable cosmonauts floating around in space with no fuel to get home. There’s a ton of planning and designing to do and when you’re confident you have what you need … you wait.

See, when you’re ready to go to another planet, you can’t shoot out of the atmosphere willy nilly and go. You have to be in proper alignment. If your destination is behind the sun relative to your location, you can’t point and shoot. The stupid sun is in the way. Also, there are gravitational forces at work. In order to conserve fuel, you need to have gravity work for you. Therefor, your destination must align perfectly with your point of origin in order to assure proper trajectory. In Kerbal Space Program, this means waiting. This also means the takeoff windows are fairly small. When the planets align, you have to be ready. This, of course, is a terrible and terribly long analogy for baseball and player development. I could go longer, but I won’t. Instead, I want to talk about Xander Bogaerts. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s this town in Wisconsin near where I grew up. To put it bluntly, it stinks. Not in the high school sports “you stink!” sense, the town actually smells bad. It is home to some paper mills, and the byproduct of paper mills is a certain odor. I don’t mean to make it as if the place smells like a garbage dump or sewer, but it’s pungent enough to cause a nose wrinkle. That is, it wrinkles the noses of the outsiders. The people who live there, the people exposed to it every day, they don’t notice it anymore. It’s the phenomenon known as the shifting baseline. When a town has smelled the same way for so long, people tend to shift their perspectives about how towns should smell. This idea, of course, applies to pretty much anything. But for this town in Wisconsin, it’s the smell. For the Minnesota Twins, it’s the middle infield.

The Minnesota Twins have put up some pretty poor seasons as of late. But they were pretty good not that long ago having made the playoffs six times between 2002 and 2010 (what they did in those playoff games is a different story).  They have employed Johan Santana when he was good, Francisco Liriano when he was good the first time, Joe Nathan, Joe Mauer, Torii Hunter, a pre-concussion Justin Morneau, and even squirreled some late-career heroics out of Jim Thome in the past few years. They were a mid-market team in a fairly week weak division, and some good development and some luck swung in their favor. Their middle infield has been an exception, however.

The middle infield for the Twins has been a veritable wasteland for the past 15 years. Players like Luis Rivas, Alexi Casilla, Matt Tolbert, Luke Hughes, Brendan Harris, Cristian Guzman, Juan Castro, Adam Everett, Eduardo Escobar, and Tsuyoshi Nishioka have been the Twins’ representation up the middle. They traded Carlos Gomez for J.J. Hardy. They then traded J.J. Hardy for two relievers who have yet to make the majors. Nishioka was supposed to be their next big hope, as they paid $5.3 million in posting fees to negotiate bringing him over from Japan. He stunk, broke his leg, came back and continued to stink. They sent him and his $3 million salary to Triple A for 101 games, in fact, to no avail. It’s been a rough going, is the point of this paragraph.

And so when one Brian Dozier provided even the faintest hint of being close to decent, the Twins looked like they may have shaken their no-hit-infielder blues. Dozier was drafted as a college shortstop in the 8th round of the 2009 draft. He played multiple infield positions in the minors, but  got most of his work in at shortstop. When he was called up in 2012, he was deposited at short. It did not go well. He had a dismal 64 wRC+ while being so-so defensively. The Twins were struggling as a team, so they had no problem letting Dozier try and work things out during the season. It never happened. It seemed as if Dozier was destined to succumb to the destiny of Twins infielders past.

In 2013, Minnesota decided to place Pedro Florimon’s glove at short. Florimon can’t hit either, but the Twins saw his glove as at least some kind of asset at the position. Dozier was moved to second base, and, at least in comparison to past performances, flourished. His defense improved. He started hitting for more power, knocking 18 homers in 623 PA. He nearly doubled his walk rate. Everything was coming up Brian Dozier. By now, you’ve clicked on Brian Dozier’s player page and seen that his 2013 performance ended with a 101 wRC+. This is true. But for Twins fans, he must seem like a godsend. The baseline has shifted a little over the past 15 years.

These are the Twins second baseman since 1998 who have accumulated at least  400 PA in a season.

Dozier comes in tied for second in WAR, and tied for second in hitting. I’m going to repeat that for clarity; over the past 15 years of Twins second baseman, the second-best hitting performance came in at 101 wRC+.

So, what changed? What turned Dozier from a failed experiment at shortstop to a viable option at second? He turned 26 near the start of the 2013 season and had three full seasons in the minors, so it’s not as if he was rushed. Though he could just be a late bloomer, that’s not out of the question. He cut down on his overall swing percentage, with a 10% drop in swings at pitches outside of the zone. It could be that he needed more time against major league pitching to figure things out. Another component could come from his switching defensive positions.

While it’s hard to quantify, there are many stories of players turning things around offensively after switching to a position they were more comfortable in. If defensive metrics are telling a true tale, Dozier didn’t seem all that comfortable at short. One of his bigger problems was getting the ball to first. While errors certainly don’t tell the whole story, he committed nine throwing errors at short in 2012 versus just one at second in many more attempts in 2013. It could be that his arm just wasn’t strong enough, or it could be that his lack or range lead to hurried and off-balance throws. He seems to have decent enough range, but could also have been getting help from Florimon in reducing the ground he needs to cover.

It could be that the reduced pressure of playing second helped him at the plate. Perhaps not having to work as hard on defense allowed him more time in the cage, or just a clearer head in the batters box. It could be that these things are mutually exclusive, but it’s probably a safe bet that the defensive move helped his hitting at least a little.

Steamer, Oliver, and ZiPS project Dozier to regress offensively. Oliver sees a big jump in defense, but the others see it staying about the same. He’s only had one season at second, so it becomes hard to project, especially if the uptick in offense thanks to the defensive switch is a real thing. The Twins are on the upswing, but still have a good amount of things to address. Their bullpen was pretty much the only bright spot last season. They have some heavy hitters coming up in the system, and have switched philosophies slightly when it comes to pitching — looking to collect more hard-throwing pitchers rather than their usual low-velocity strike throwers. If Dozier can play well enough to keep his spot, he may be around long enough to see the team’s latest renaissance. If he does, the middle-infield baseline will have shifted for the first time in a long time for Minnesota.

As the 2014 season approaches, the Cincinnati Reds are left with the unenviable task of figuring out exactly what to do with Billy Hamilton. After his September call-up, Hamilton electrified fans. In 13 games, he went 13 of 14 in stolen base attempts and scored 9 runs. He also managed to hit .368 in that span with a .105 ISO. If scouting reports and minor-league track records are to be believed, only two of those three stats should be taken to heart when projecting his future value. In 2013, in AAA, Hamilton had a .308 OBP and .657 OPS. He swiped 75 bags during that time, but the word is out on him — at this point, he just doesn’t have great hitting skills.

Hamilton will almost certainly be a part of the 2014 Reds roster, it’s the capacity at which he’ll be used that is up in the air. His speed (and its impact on his defense) is his asset, and putting him at the top of the lineup will give him the most chances to use that asset. This will also exploit his biggest weakness. Hiding his weakness by putting him at the bottom of the order will lose him a lot of opportunities to use his legs. I’m sure the Reds will wait to see how he fairs in Spring Training before making any decisions, but Hamilton’s status is currently in limbo.

“No one’s ever given me the time to show what I can do,” he says, a lean, tightly-muscled sprinter’s body slipping into uniform. “What people don’t understand is that it’s never a lack of opportunity, just time. I could hit .260 if I played every day up here. Maybe .270, .280 with a good hitting instructor. But a lot of the time, when a player’s called up, it’s those first few weeks that count. If you don’t get in the lineup, you become an extra man the rest of your career.”

It’s easy to imagine Hamilton saying such things toward the end of this April, but that quote is actually from 1979 and belongs to Matt Alexander, the most proficient pinch-runner in baseball history. He holds the records among pinch runners in appearances (271), steals (91), and runs scored (89). He appeared in 374 games, but logged a mere 195 plate appearances.  He only amassed 4.3 BsR in nine seasons, and stole bases at a 60% career rate. Yet the A’s and Pirates used him almost exclusively for pinch running. Alexander ended his career worth -.5 wins above replacement. His skills on the base paths just weren’t good enough to really make him an effective player in such a small role. Read the rest of this entry »

Though it can sometimes occur, we do not watch baseball for the violence. That is reserved for football — the bone-crushing hits, the gruesome tackles, the cringe-worthy collisions. Baseball is supposed to transcend that. It’s a game of athleticism, certainly, but it’s about grace and fluidity and unencumbered effort. This is not to say that baseball is without contact of course. There are the double-play-breaking slides at second, the collisions at home. Major League Baseball has taken measures to combat the latter, and, very recently, to take on another injury concern — players getting hit by batted balls.

We remember Ray Chapman certainly, who was struck in the head with a  pitch and remains the only player to die on a major league field. The baseball itself underwent fundamental changes after that incident in 1920. There’s also Mike Coolbaugh, the minor-league first base coach that was killed after being hit in the head by a foul boul. Major League Baseball has reacted to this as well, making base coaches wear batting helmets while on the field. On Tuesday, it was announced that MLB has approved a new type of hat geared toward protecting the heads of pitchers from line drives. This, on the surface, is a good thing. It’s a good thing on any layer, but if the goal is really to protect pitchers on the mound, it still might not be enough. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the old days, like WAY back in the old days, the running game was an integral part to baseball. I mean, look at the stolen base totals from the 19th century. Dudes were running wild. That was how the game was back then. Hitters didn’t (or couldn’t, more likely) rely on power nearly as much, and the pitchers threw a lot softer, making it easier on the potential thieves. Base stealing was incubated by the culture of baseball at the time. The way baseball is played now would seem entirely foreign to fans in the 1890s.

Since those high-flying days of the Grover Cleveland administration, aggression on the base paths died down. It saw its peaks and valleys, certainly, but swiping bags never quite reached that pinnacle of the early days of the game. The most recent influx of base-stealing came in the late 1970s through the 1980s. These were the times of Lou Brock and Vince Coleman and Rickey Henderson. And we applauded these speedsters. Running became a valued part of the game again. Though running saw a decline over the 90s as power came to prominence, it’s still a much speedier game than it was in those slow-poke days of the 60s. Read the rest of this entry »