Like dozens of other players, Neil Walker is an established free agent still looking for work as the second week of March approaches. Given his solid track record of production and lack of attachment to a qualifying offer, that would normally rate as a surprise, but he’s just one of several middle-class free agents left out in the cold this winter. Despite being linked to a handful of teams, the 32-year-old switch-hitter hasn’t found a deal to his liking. If this report from the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo is accurate, it’s tough to blame Walker, whom the Royals allegedly sought to bring into camp on a minor-league deal with a non-roster invitation.

It would be inaccurate to call Walker a star: he’s never, for example, made an All-Star team in his nine-year major-league career, which began with the Pirates in September 2009. But Walker has been quite consistent, producing an average of 2.7 WAR over the past eight seasons, with very little variance. His low of 1.9 WAR was compiled in 110 games in 2010 after being recalled on May 25. His high of 3.7 was set in 2016, his lone full season with the Mets — that, despite missing all of September due to a herniated disc that required season-ending surgery. Though he missed five weeks with a hamstring strain in 2017 and was traded from the Mets to the Brewers on August 12, Walker turned in a typical Neil Walker season: 2.1 WAR in 111 games with a .265/.362/.439 batting line and 114 wRC+.

Indeed, Walker is a career .272/.341/.437/115 wRC+ hitter who’s been strong against righties (122 wRC+) and subpar but still playable against lefties (91 wRC+), with his recent season splits against southpaws all over the place amid smaller sample sizes. While never a threat to win a Gold Glove, he’s been only slightly below average at second base over the course of his career (-4 UZR/150, -3 DRS/150), sure-handed but a bit lacking in range. He was pretty typical at the keystone in 2017 (-2 UZR, -5 DRS) and branched out to gain experience at the infield corners, starting eight games at first base (which he’d never played in the majors) and four at third (which he last played in 2010, after spending 2007-09 there in the minors).

Read the rest of this entry »

Felix Hernandez’s 2018 season got off to a rough start, as he was drilled on the right arm by a line drive in his February 26 appearance against the Cubs. The Mariners say he’ll miss just one Cactus League start, but on the heels of two subpar, injury-shortened seasons, M’s fans can be forgiven for curling up into the fetal position.

Hernandez took the hill just 16 times in 2017 due to shoulder bursitis and was lit up for a 4.36 ERA and career-worst 5.02 FIP; his 17 homers allowed in 86.2 innings was more than he served up in four of his eight 200-plus inning seasons. His 2016 campaign, which was shortened to 25 starts by a right calf strain, featured a less-than-inspiring 3.82 ERA and 4.63 FIP, as well. His recent decline probably owes something to eroding velocity. Via Pitch Info, his four-seamer has averaged around 91 mph in the past two years, down from a high of 96 in 2008 and 93.6 as recently as 2014. The story is similar for his sinker. He’s not missing as many bats as he used to, and his home-run rate is soaring along with those of just about every other pitcher in baseball. In short, he looks more peasant than king.

Read the rest of this entry »

Miguel Andujar clubbed two homers against the Phillies on Thursday, running his Grapefruit League total to four, which isn’t the kind of thing one normally notes when the calendar reads “March 1” or any March date before the 29th, which is Opening Day this year. However, Andujar is a legitimate prospect, a 23-year-old third baseman with an apparent shot to make the make the Yankees’ 25-man roster this spring, and part of a large pool from which the team will fill its two open infield positions (second base being the other).

Andujar’s early power display has people excited. Today (Friday) is his actual birthday, and sooner or later, manager Aaron Boone, general manager Brian Cashman, and the rest of the Yankees brass will have to figure out how all the pieces fit together, so the situation merits a closer look.

Back in December, the Yankees traded starting second baseman Starlin Castro to the Marlins in the Giancarlo Stanton deal and dealt third baseman Chase Headley to the Padres in a salary dump. They also let July acquisition Todd Frazier, who relegated Headley to a part-time corner-infield role, depart via free agency. Though they entertained the possibility of bringing back Frazier, their reluctance to give him a multi-year contract led the New Jersey native to sign a two-year, $17 million deal with the Mets instead.

Those departures leave Andujar, mid-2016 acquisition Gleyber Torres, holdovers Ronald Torreyes and Tyler Wade, the recently acquired Brandon Drury — who has more major-league experience than the other four put together — and non-roster invitees Danny Espinosa and Jace Peterson battling to join first baseman Greg Bird and shortstop Didi Gregorius as the team’s regular infielders. All but the two NRIs have minor-league options remaining. Let’s meet the contestants.

Miguel Andujar, 23, R/R (Profile)

Signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2011, Andujar broke out in 2017, translating his raw power to game power, improving his pitch selection, and hitting a combined .315/.352/.498 with 36 doubles and 16 homers in 125 games split between Double- and Triple-A (58 games at the latter, his first taste of the level). He briefly and memorably saw major-league action, going 3-for-4 with a walk and four RBIs in his major-league debut on June 28, then getting sent back down for two-and-a-half months due to a roster crunch! He’s got a collection of above-average to plus tools, headlined by his arm (70 Present Value and 70 Future Value on the 20-80 scouting scale) and raw power (60/60), with his hit tool, game power, and fielding all grading out at 45/55.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Even if you’ve been living under a rock or taking a between-jobs vacation, you’re probably aware that the Royals lost their longtime first baseman and franchise staple, Eric Hosmer, to free agency. Earlier this month, the Padres signed Ol’ Hos to an eight-year, $144 million deal, no doubt because their new head of Research and Development lobbied for the move (even after having previously declared him one of the winter’s free-agent landmines).

On Wednesday, the Royals filled their positional vacancy by committing $140.5 million less than the Padres did, inking Lucas Duda to a one-year, $3.5 million deal with plate-appearance-based incentives — $100,000 for reaching 300 PA, and for each 25 PA interval up to 600 PA — possibly yielding another $1.3 million.

While Duda and Hosmer are both listed at 6-foot-4, swing left-handed, and crossed paths in the 2015 World Series — most notably when the latter’s wild throw home in the ninth inning of Game 5 allowed the former to score the game-tying run — there are obviously some differences between the two. Hosmer, a 2008 first-round pick out of a Florida high school, has dark hair but is viewed within the industry as something of a golden boy, while Duda, a 2007 seventh-round pick out of the University of Southern California, is blond but seems to have been treated like the proverbial red-headed stepchild.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2018 season is a big one for Clayton Kershaw. The three-time Cy Young winner isn’t just chasing the World Series ring that still eludes him, he’s trying to remain healthy wire-to-wire for the first time since 2015. At the end of the year, he’ll have the chance to reclaim his spot as the game’s highest-paid pitcher if he chooses to exercise an opt-out clause in the seven-year, $215 million deal he signed in January 2014.

Via the Los Angeles Times‘ Andy McCullough, neither Kershaw nor the Dodgers are tipping their hands as to what might happen beyond publicly agreeing that they’re maintaining an “open dialogue” regarding the soon-to-be 30-year-old lefty’s contract status. If he does opt out, he’ll co-headline a stacked free-agent class alongside Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, with Josh Donaldson, Dallas Keuchel, Craig Kimbrel, and Andrew Miller among the other luminaries. There’s no indication that Kershaw would rather pitch for another team besides the Dodgers, who drafted him with the seventh overall pick in 2006, but he may not get a better chance to hit free agency while so close to the top of his game.

Read the rest of this entry »

When we last saw the Dodgers’ rotation, Yu Darvish was being lit up like a pinball machine in Game 7 of the World Series due to a pitch-tipping issue that the organization somehow failed to identify. Though the Dodgers made a serious run at retaining the 31-year-old righty, the team was limited by its financial constraints, and Darvish opted to sign a six-year, $126 million deal with the Cubs instead. With exhibition season now underway, the defending NL champions’ rotation still appears as though it could use fortification.

Darvish, a July 31 deadline acquisition from the Rangers, isn’t the only starter gone from the fold. In a mid-December move designed to give them more financial flexibility, the Dodgers dealt the injury-prone Brandon McCarthy (16 starts, 3.98 ERA, 3.28 FIP, 2.4 WAR) and Scott Kazmir (a mere 12 minor-league innings due to hip and arm issues), two other players, and cash to the Braves in exchange for Matt Kemp. The trade has helped them shimmy under the $197 million competitive-balance-tax threshold, but their subsequent failure to offload Kemp and some portion of his remaining $43 million salary for 2018-19 doomed their pursuit of Darvish.

Nobody’s weeping for a wealthy team that’s lost 25 starts while retaining eight of the 10 members from a unit that compiled the majors’ third-best ERA- (82) and FIP- (88). Compared to 2015, when they used an MLB-high 16 starters, and -16, when they tied for second with 15 starters, that counts as stability, and yet in each of the past two years, just one Dodger has reached the 162-inning threshold to qualify for the ERA title. The Andrew Friedman/Farhan Zaidi regime has actively used the team’s depth and financial might to lighten the workloads of all of their starters. Not only did the unit’s 885 innings rank 10th in the NL last year, but only 742 times did a Dodger starter face a batter for the third time in a game, the majors’ lowest total.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers and catchers report to camps this week, and while overaged futility infielders 14 years removed from shoulder surgery have a few more days before going on the clock, here I am, too. For those unfamiliar, I’m Jay Jaffe, FanGraphs’ newest senior writer. I’ve spent the past 11-ish years writing about baseball full time, first for Baseball Prospectus and then Sports Illustrated, with a pit stop at the lamentably late Pinstriped Bible and, this past summer, a book called The Cooperstown Casebook.

At any given time, there are only a few hundred people who get to write about baseball for a living. In that regard, as in so many others, I’m a very lucky person. Luck is the residue of design, as Branch Rickey famously said long before I came along. (While old enough to be disqualified from prospect lists, I’m not that old). It’s a mantra I’ve repeated for decades.

I didn’t rise through the ranks of traditional baseball coverage; instead, as a biology major-turned-graphic-designer who one moonlit evening in mid-2001 decided that the world simply couldn’t live without my opinions about baseball, I started up The Futility Infielder. Thanks to some exhaustive coverage of the Hall of Fame balloting — a renewable wellspring I somehow had the good fortune to stumble across — I came to the attention of Baseball Prospectus a couple years later. After creating a catchy (and surprisingly enduring) metric for Hall fitness, I began a long run at BP, gradually transitioning out of the design world and into full-time writing. In May 2012, SI hired me to start up their new daily baseball blog, where I was free to apply the kind of analysis that I’d had been doing in parallel to so many other statheads, this time via a mainstream platform.

Read the rest of this entry »