When Kevin Towers took over the Diamondbacks as general manager, one of the first things he did was make a trade. In Mark Reynolds, he had a 27-year-old entering his first year of arbitration eligibility. The big righty had clear strikeout problems, and he wasn’t known to be an asset anywhere in the field, but what made Reynolds was his power. Strength was his defining characteristic, and to that point Reynolds owned a career 108 wRC+ while being worth about eight WAR. In short, he was simultaneously flawed and useful, and Towers gave him up to the Orioles in exchange for a couple relievers. One of them is all right.

Towers is still in charge of the Diamondbacks as general manager, and the most recent thing he’s done is make a trade. As had been rumored for a good while, Towers pulled the trigger on a deal to bring in Mark Trumbo. Trumbo is a 27-year-old entering his first year of arbitration eligibility. The big righty has clear strikeout problems, and he’s not known to be an asset anywhere in the field, but what makes Trumbo is his power. Strength is his defining characteristic, and to this point Trumbo owns a career 111 wRC+ while having been worth about seven WAR. In short, he’s simultaneously flawed and useful, and Towers got him from the Angels in exchange for Adam Eaton and Tyler Skaggs. Both of them could be quality young players.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine, if you will, that the Yankees signed Matt Garza. Alternatively, imagine that the Yankees signed Ervin Santana, or Ubaldo Jimenez. Those guys have been considered the three best domestic free-agent starting pitchers, and if the Yankees were to pick up one of them, it would be a major investment and it would be considered a major improvement to a rotation in some need. It would make headlines, and it would cost the Yankees three or four or five guaranteed years at something in the neighborhood of $15 million each. It would be a splash, the latest in what would be a series of offseason splashes for the front office.

The Yankees just recently signed a free agent who was more valuable than each of those guys in 2013. They signed a free agent who was more valuable than each of those guys between 2011-2013, and they signed a free agent who projects to be more valuable than each of those guys in 2014. I’ll grant that what Hiroki Kuroda doesn’t have on his side is age, but what he does have is ability, and for a year and $16 million, he ought to be Hiroki Kuroda again. Which is likely to be under-appreciated, again.

Read the rest of this entry »

The goal, always, is to win a championship, and indeed there’s nothing better than being able to win a championship, but such a triumph can come with certain consequences. Prominent among them is the common desire to keep a championship team together, even if other moves might be more useful. There’s also the tendency to over-favor a championship model, since, you know, the plan already worked once. But an advantage of winning it all can be that other people want to join the team, or that quality members want to come back. After the Red Sox won it all, Mike Napoli became a free agent. And late last week, Napoli re-signed, reportedly leaving money and years on the table to give the Sox a discount.

Consider that Napoli is 32 years old, and he re-signed for two years and $32 million. Curtis Granderson is 32 years old, and he signed for just about twice that much despite coming off a bad year. Carlos Beltran is 36 years old, and he signed for an extra year despite age leaving him a mess in the field. All three players were extended qualifying offers. It’s not directly comparable, but Tim Lincecum was given a slightly bigger contract than Napoli despite having allowed a billion runs over the last two seasons. Napoli’s getting up there, yeah, and the issue with which he was diagnosed a year ago hasn’t gone away, but as players in his situation go, he’s signed to something of a bargain deal that fits right within Boston’s organizational model.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was pretty weird when Alex Rodriguez left the Mariners for the Rangers. It was weird when Jose Reyes left the Mets for the Marlins, and it was weird when Albert Pujols left the Cardinals for the Angels. There have been unexpected big-money moves in free agency before, but this one feels like it might be unprecedented, given who the Yankees are, and given who the Mariners are and have been. It makes total sense, of course — Robinson Cano couldn’t turn down ten guaranteed years — but the fact of the matter is that the Yankees lost a superstar to a team that’s been an also-ran, a team criticized for not opening up its wallet. This is not what people expected would happen, as little as a month ago.

This is a page of 2014 Steamer projections. You’ll find Cano seventh in projected WAR, between Troy Tulowitzki and David Wright. No matter how you look at it, Cano, right now, is among baseball’s very best position players. The Yankees don’t have him anymore. Look at the rest of that first page of projections and you’ll notice most of the top WAR guys are unavailable. They are, rightfully, under control and difficult to acquire. The Yankees need to figure out life after Robinson Cano, but despite the sequence of events, the team has already started. Really, he’s already been replaced.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of baseball’s most compelling storylines during the 2013 season was the monster breakthrough campaign of Chris Davis. One of baseball’s most quietly hilarious storylines during the 2013 season was the very similar campaign of Khris Davis down the stretch. Last year, the Brewers didn’t have a whole lot going for them, but Davis shined rather unexpectedly, and the team liked what it saw. As an organization closer to rebuilding than contending, the Brewers want to see what Davis can do going forward, and with Carlos Gomez and Ryan Braun also around, it wasn’t hard to see coming that Norichika Aoki could end up on the outside looking in.

Aoki’s too old for a team like the Brewers, and he’s under contract only one more season. It made sense for them to try to ship him to a contender, and that’s precisely what they’ve done, as Aoki has joined the Royals. In Kansas City, Aoki should play more than he would’ve in Milwaukee, and he has a chance at seeing the playoffs. In exchange, the Royals gave the Brewers Will Smith. It’s a low-profile transaction, considerably lower-profile even than the earlier Dexter Fowler trade, but what makes the trade worth taking about are the signs of Smith’s progress as a young lefty.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past season was the season of the Red Sox, and in a lot of ways the Red Sox’s season was the season of Koji Uehara. From the emergency closer service to the relief equivalent of a perfect game to all of the playoff heroics, Uehara emerged as an important and unhittable star, becoming widely known to a nation that had almost entirely overlooked the earlier portion of his big-league career. One question we have now is, will Uehara be able to repeat? Another question is, how didn’t we see something like this coming? As a reliever between 2010-2012, Uehara issued 16 unintentional walks, with 183 strikeouts. The biggest concern was durability; in 2013, Uehara was durable. And amazing.

Given Uehara’s rise to fame and the Red Sox’s success, it would make sense for some other teams to try to mimic their model. There existed on the market a relief pitcher with an awful lot in common with Uehara, a guy who might be a bit underrated. Thursday, that pitcher found a new home. Because Edward Mujica has signed with the Red Sox.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, baseball analysis can reveal new truths, things that nobody had ever noticed before. Other times, it can simply confirm what’s already obvious. Meander through Phil Hughes‘ FanGraphs player page and you’ll realize that playing in Yankee Stadium did him zero favors. But you don’t need to know anything about FIP or HR/FB% to understand that Hughes could benefit from pitching in a friendlier environment. He’s going to do that in Minnesota, and while I don’t know exactly what the Twins’ thought process is, I presume it’s in the vicinity of, Hughes is talented, and fewer balls should leave the park going forward. Target Field is bigger than Yankee Stadium, so Hughes stands a chance of bouncing back.

Hughes debuted in the majors in 2007. Since then, 151 pitchers have recorded at least 250 innings both at home and on the road. Hughes’ home ERA is 0.86 points higher than his road ERA, the sixth-highest difference in the pool. His home wOBA allowed is .046 points higher than his road wOBA allowed, the first-highest difference in the pool. Driving this, primarily? Hughes’ home HR/FB% is six percentage points higher than his road HR/FB%, also the first-highest difference in the pool. Hughes allowed more than twice as many dingers in New York as in not-New York, and there’s nothing more damaging than a dinger. The Twins clearly believe that Hughes was at least partially sunk by the home-field bandbox.

Read the rest of this entry »

They say that Tuesday was maybe the craziest MLB offseason day ever. There’s a good chance it was, although in fairness, after Tuesday, none of us can remember any days other than Tuesday. Pretty much every player in baseball up and went somewhere else, and the day was capped off by news  the Yankees were guaranteeing Jacoby Ellsbury a hundred million dollars and then half of another hundred million dollars. Right there, even by Yankees terms, that indicates the organization believes pretty strongly in Ellsbury’s future. You don’t make that kind of commitment to a player whose ability and health you don’t believe in.

But Ellsbury finished the 2013 season hurt, and he was on the disabled list in September. In 2012, he made fewer appearances than Chad Durbin. In 2010, he made fewer appearances than Ben Sheets. What Ellsbury has is an injury history that’s cost him an awful lot of playing time, and it’s taken a toll on his reputation. It’s worth considering what all this says about Ellsbury, and more generally, it’s worth considering how we think about players who have and haven’t gotten hurt.

Read the rest of this entry »

When you’re a bad team, you might want to sign good free agents to try to get better. A tricky part is getting those good free agents to want to play for your bad team. Teams don’t get much worse than the current Houston Astros, and according to recent reports, they’ve tried with no success to lure quality players from the market. Thankfully for bad teams, free agency isn’t the only way to improve by addition. Players have to play for you if you trade for them, and later on Tuesday, the Astros picked up Dexter Fowler from the Rockies, at the cost of Jordan Lyles and Brandon Barnes. The Rockies will also send a player to be named later, but I doubt that that will be the interesting part.

Immediately, it seems a bit backwards. Some things we know: at present, the Astros are dreadful, far more dreadful than the Rockies are. Fowler is already getting expensive, and he has two remaining years of team control. Lyles is 23, and he has four. Barnes is 27, and he has five. You’d think it would be the Astros trying to acquire longer-term security, but I think this actually makes more sense for Houston than it does for Colorado. Even if the Astros still aren’t close to contending, it’s never a bad idea to add what you think might be undervalued.

Read the rest of this entry »