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Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat — 1/15/16

9:05

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

9:06

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to baseball chat

9:06

Jeff Sullivan: As far as I know this is the only baseball chat

9:06

Jeff Sullivan: Right now

9:06

j6takish: Fun Fact : Jeff, you once wrote about Christian Guzmans rookie season. David McCarty’s rookie season was also worth -3.1war but he did it in an astounding 98 games/471 PA. Wow!

9:06

Jeff Sullivan: Here’s to the bad ones!

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Let’s Get Jonathan Lucroy to the Rangers

I’ve long been greatly interested in Jonathan Lucroy, so now I find myself greatly interested in his situation with the Brewers. The Brewers, as you know, are bad, and they’re prepared for being bad, and though Lucroy is decidedly not bad, he’s got just two more seasons of control, and he’s coming up on 30 years old. It makes sense for Lucroy to be on the market, therefore, and this is something I wrote about a month ago for Fox. It’s a complicated spot for Milwaukee, given Lucroy’s up-and-down year and concussion, but Lucroy should be able to bring back a haul.

The team I’ve heard connected most often is the Rangers, who are a clear contender, but who could use some more affordable help. Robinson Chirinos is a fine-enough catcher, but Lucroy is better, and he could also spell Mitch Moreland at first when there’s a lefty on the mound. The Rangers would love to have Lucroy on what’s left of his cheap contract. The problem to this point: from what I’ve heard, the Brewers have been asking for entirely too much. The ask has been a non-starter, so Lucroy remains where he’s been.

Yet, let’s make an assumption: MLB executives are reasonable people. So they can arrive at reasonable deals, and the Brewers surely understand there’s some risk in keeping Lucroy around into the year. What this post is about, then, is trying to find a fit between the Rangers and the Brewers. It’s not like the Rangers are the only interested team, but they might be the most interested. Let’s run through some possibilities, together. How might the Rangers and Brewers be able to pull something off?

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The Other Weapon In the Marlins Bullpen

Yesterday I wrote about Carter Capps, who last year was on his way to an almost impossible season before elbow trouble sent him off. The idea was to remind you of just what Capps was able to do over 30-odd innings, and in support of that, I noted that Capps had baseball’s most unhittable pitch if you set the minimum to 100 of a given pitch type thrown. That’s important — Capps’ slider is one of the very best sliders, on account of what he can do with his fastball.

But, we talked about how minimums are arbitrary. You can set them wherever you want, and, you know, 100 pitches is plenty, but you could look for more. For fun, why don’t we double the minimum? Here are the most unhittable pitches last year, for pitches thrown at least 200 times:

  1. A.J. Ramos changeup, 34.8% swinging strikes
  2. Will Smith slider, 29.5%
  3. Carlos Carrasco curveball, 28.3%

At the 100-pitch minimum, Capps had a lead of about six percentage points over Ramos. At the 200-pitch minimum, Ramos had a lead of more than five percentage points over Smith. Ramos isn’t a freak in the way that Capps is a freak, but you could just as easily argue Ramos is more impressive since he doesn’t do anything to challenge the rules. A.J. Ramos just pitches, pretty quietly, and pretty quietly, he’s thrown a changeup as good as almost anyone else’s.

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Dee Gordon’s Biggest Improvement

I’m not going to lie to you — I didn’t think much of Dee Gordon. Two years ago, I thought he was barely a big-leaguer. Even last year, when the Dodgers sent Gordon to the Marlins, I thought the Marlins were buying high on a utility sort. I was critical of the move when I wrote up the trade, and I felt pretty strongly, and now it’s been another year, and the Marlins have signed Gordon to a five-year deal worth $50 million. And now it’s not a case of the Marlins overpaying. It’s a case of Gordon having proven me wrong. The Dee Gordon that exists now is considerably better than the versions that have come before.

Overall, it’s not like the player profile has changed that much. Gordon puts the bat on the ball, and he puts the ball on the ground, and his legs take him toward first faster than some cars take people to work. Gordon will forever be built like someone who could fit in a suitcase, so you can’t expect any kind of power, but the selling point is his mobility. He can move as a hitter and he can move as a defender, so his game is almost about pure athleticism. Gordon has all the same general skills — he’s just added some polish, and in order for that process to occur, he had to leave Los Angeles for Miami. Only there did he meet the man who could get the most out of his tools.

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Projecting Baseball’s Freakiest Pitcher

We don’t talk a whole lot about minimums, even though we’re always using them. Sometimes the minimums are obvious, but other times, they’re completely arbitrary. For example, let’s use a minimum of 60 innings pitched last season. Going from there, you could say the Yankees have assembled something hilarious, when you sort pitchers by strikeout rate:

  1. Aroldis Chapman, 41.7% strikeouts
  2. Andrew Miller, 40.7%
  3. Dellin Betances, 39.5%

If you were to just bump the minimum down to 50 innings, though — which would be perfectly defensible — then you get an intruder to spoil the party.

  1. Chapman, 41.7%
  2. Miller, 40.7%
  3. Kenley Jansen, 40.0%

Adjusting minimums is one of those ways you get to sort of manipulate the statistics. If not that, directly, then you get to manipulate statistical arguments. And, you know, while we’re playing around with minimums, why don’t we just drop the minimum to 30 innings, for fun, and-

  1. Carter Capps, 49.2%
  2. Chapman, 41.7%
  3. Miller, 40.7%

You forgot about Carter Capps. Un-forget about him. See, at the end of this post, I have a question for you. I want to know your guess for Capps’ 2016 strikeout rate. It’s a simple and straightforward poll, but before we get to that, we need to talk about Capps so you remember fully what he’s all about.

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A Thorough Consideration of Ian Kennedy

You probably didn’t wake up today thinking “today I’d like to read something about Ian Kennedy.” That’s fine. You probably didn’t wake up yesterday thinking “today I’d like to read something about Wei-Yin Chen” or “today I’d like to read something about the Marlins,” but both those things got folded into the same post. It’s the middle of January. This isn’t the time of year when people are thinking about baseball. Even when people are thinking about baseball, they’re only very infrequently thinking about Ian Kennedy. Even he knows he’s not the most high-profile starting pitcher around.

It’s just — okay: Posts have to be written. They might as well be written about what’s going on. And at the moment, Kennedy remains a free agent, with reports indicating his market has heated up. At any moment now, Kennedy could officially end up with a new employer, and he’s going to get a mid-eight-figure deal. Maybe it’s going to come from the Royals. Maybe it’s going to come from the Orioles or somebody else, but a deal will materialize. Right now Kennedy is of some interest, so it’s time for him to be thoroughly considered. The following will be conducted with points and counterpoints.

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Wei-Yin Chen, the Marlins’ New Mark Buehrle

There’s a pretty dramatic difference between the two leagues. Anything, of course, could go on to happen, but the American League and the National League are looking at some wildly different 2016s. In the AL, you’ve got a whole gradient of could-be or would-be playoff squads. No single team appears to be dominant, and no single team appears to be a non-contender. Everyone should have some kind of chance, and there’s currently no obvious favorite. In the NL, meanwhile, there are two tiers. There are the clear contenders, and there are the others, those being the teams either admittedly rebuilding or the teams that should be. People talk about “tanking” as an industry problem. The bad teams are all clustered together.

In between the two NL tiers, there are, I think, two clubs caught in the middle. Two clubs that would fit in the AL picture, two clubs that could end up going either way depending on certain breaks. One of them is the Diamondbacks, who have spent the offseason trying to beef up. And then there are the Marlins, who have too many good players to be bad, but too little depth and reliability to be great. The Marlins want to be a contender, though. Believe it or not, Jeffrey Loria hates to lose. So now the Marlins have addressed a team weakness on the free-agent market, spending pretty big to lure Wei-Yin Chen. Chen is no one’s idea of a major splash, but he is, at least, a healthy starting pitcher, which is something the Marlins have sorely lacked.

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The Most Volatile Hitter in Baseball History

Allow me to share with you an unremarkable batting line: .235/.308/.412. It doesn’t belong to Logan Morrison, but it might as well. This line belongs to another veteran, and it covers the last four years, and it’s worked out to a 98 wRC+. You can tell there’s seemingly nothing too special about the bat. To that, I’ll add that the player isn’t a particularly strong base-runner, nor is he a particularly strong defender. Some time ago, he had a $3-million club option declined, and that might just tell you enough. This is a player with some legitimate uses. This is a player with a fairly low value.

As far as 2016 is concerned, we’re talking about a role player. Currently a free agent, he’ll get a shot with someone in the coming month or two. He should be a weapon off somebody’s bench. But what’s most interesting about Ryan Raburn isn’t what he projects to be for the immediate future. What’s most interesting about Ryan Raburn is exactly how he’s arrived at such an uninteresting overall four-year performance.

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Team Ownership Ratings, By the Community

Just how good is a particular owner or ownership group, relative to the rest? It’s just about impossible to say. As fans, what we see is pretty well removed from what goes on at the ownership level, so it’s not like those executives can be evaluated like a pitcher with a sub-3 FIP. So we don’t know that much about who’s good or bad, really. But that never stands in the way of opinions. Oh, people have opinions, and those opinions aren’t based on nothing. A few days ago, I asked you all for your thoughts on your teams’ owners. What follows is the resulting information, based on many thousands of votes from presumably many thousands of participants.

The polls were simple. After each prompt, you could select from two positive opinions, two negative opinions, and one middle-of-the-road opinion. People don’t usually compare ownership groups, since situations are so different, but now we can at least try to do that, with numerical data. Of course, what you see won’t be infallible evaluations. This is opinion-polling, but I think it’s just interesting to see what people think, even if it turns out plenty of people are wrong. I love what crowd-sourcing can indicate, and I love that we get to do it. Thanks again for all your help.

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FG on Fox: Giants Bet on Denard Span’s Talent

For the Giants, it’s easy to say this has been an offseason of risk. They’ve invested a fortune in Johnny Cueto, suggesting they aren’t too worried about his most recent second half. They’ve invested a slightly smaller fortune in Jeff Samardzija, suggesting they aren’t too worried about his most recent second half. And now, as of Thursday, they’ve invested a smaller fortune still in Denard Span, suggesting they aren’t too worried about his 2015 injury problems. It’s simple to see how this could conceivably blow up in the Giants’ faces. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Deeply flawed most recent seasons.

Of course, there’s upside to the Cueto deal. Of course, there’s upside to the Samardzija deal. And now, take Span. There’s no getting away from the fact that he spent much of last year hurt, eventually undergoing season-ending hip surgery. But Span wasn’t extended a qualifying offer, so the Giants aren’t losing a draft pick. And it’s a three-year commitment with a $31 million guarantee. There are incentives, and if Span hits them — if he hits all of them — then, over the next three years, he’ll earn as much money as J.A. Happ. There’s upside to the pitcher contracts, but the upside with Span seems plenty more reachable.

Leave aside for a moment the Giants didn’t have a real in-house center fielder. Leave aside for a moment the market isn’t flush with alternatives. There are a few places where I think teams are a little too cautious with their money. I think teams are still too cautious with talented Japanese and Korean players, placing the major leagues on too high a pedestal. And I think teams are too cautious with players who have injury questions. We’ve seen, for example, the Dodgers work to accumulate a bunch of affordable arms with injury backgrounds. That’s taking advantage of what they perceive to be a soft part of the market.

Span fits in a similar place, except he’s a position player, and not a pitcher, so he doesn’t have the usual pitcher concerns. Everybody wants talent and health. It’s expensive to get them both. The Giants are placing a bet on Span’s talent, figuring better health is going to follow.

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