| 9:04 |
: Hello friends |
| 9:05 |
: Welcome to Friday baseball chat |
| 9:05 |
: Do you see new signee Danny Valencia getting playing time in Baltimore? |
| 9:05 |
: Surprisingly yes. Wouldn’t be shocked to see him open as a platoon partner for Colby Rasmus |
| 9:05 |
: In the outfield |
| 9:05 |
: In the major leagues |
Again, I don’t know how we define a “super-team era,” but it sure feels like we’re in one. At the moment, seven teams are projected to win at least 90 games in the season ahead. Just about every division appears to have a clear favorite, with the exception of the AL East, and that one’s only unclear because two teams are really good. There’s an argument to be made that having so many strong teams has slowed down the market. After all, what hope could the other teams have?
And yet, there’s an opening. It all comes down to setting a goal. If you’re one of the non-super-teams, you can do only so much to climb into the tier. It’s tremendously difficult to turn a decent team into a great one over the course of one offseason. But what if the goal is to simply make the playoffs? Five teams from each league make it every year. Each league doesn’t have five obvious favorites. From one point of view, the playoffs are nearly random, and once a team makes it in, anything can happen. And, you know, when the best teams are winning so many games, the barrier for playoff entry can actually be lowered.
Felix Hernandez will play a crucial role in determining the fate of the Mariners’ season. Felix isn’t what he used to be, and no one expects him to return to that level, but we at least know that he should still have the stuff. The changeup and curveball are there, if he wants to miss bats. The issues have been more mechanical. Felix hasn’t had the command he needs to succeed at his velocity. There’s much attention, then, being paid to his delivery. A week and a half ago, he threw for the first time in spring training. He said the following about his session.
“I threw everything, curveball, changeup, sinker and one slider,” he said. “It was OK. I was better from the stretch than from the windup.”
Why?
“I was more balanced from the stretch,” he said. “I was moving all over the place from the windup.”
Perfectly standard, unremarkable quote from early spring. Felix had some rust to knock off. He felt better out of one of his deliveries than out of the other. But, well, hold on. Why does he have two deliveries? Why do so many pitchers have two deliveries? You’d think that maintaining one would be complicated enough.
Pardon our inconsistency. On the one hand, we love having projections. Projections allow us to have an idea of what the future could bring. Projections let us think we know what’s going to happen, and we believe in them because they’ve proven themselves. On the other hand, we love the exceptional. That which doesn’t follow, that which takes us by surprise. We don’t want to actually know the future. We want for the world to mostly make sense, I suppose, but no one wants to close the door on the unpredictable. It’s the surprises that bring life to the living.
Tim Lincecum is back. Tim Lincecum is signing a major-league contract, having been inked by the Rangers. When Lincecum last pitched in the bigs, he might’ve been the very worst pitcher at the level. His ERA soared over 9, and the Angels couldn’t bring themselves to give him ten starts. If you want to get right down to it, the last year Lincecum was an effective major-league pitcher was 2011. That year’s best players by WAR were Jacoby Ellsbury and Matt Kemp. It’s been a long time since Lincecum was Lincecum, but hope blows on the embers of a dying fire. Baseball is better with Lincecum in it. There’s renewed reason to think he could surprise.
Recently, Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen rolled out a bunch of original content as the core of FanGraphs Prospects Week, and the highlight was probably their 2018 top-100 prospect list. Baseball America has also been rolling out its own prospect lists, and toward the end of January they published their organizational rankings, running down which teams have the most and least talent on the farm. It’s obviously important to have an idea what’s going on below the majors, because that’s where the next wave is stationed. Teams are going to need their young reinforcements. It’s hard for a team to be sustainably good if it’s thin on young, high-level talent.
I don’t have much to add to the organizational reports. All I’d like to say is this: Young players already in the majors are also important. When a prospect graduates and establishes himself in the majors, he disappears from the prospect lists, as he ought to. But that very same player is still immensely valuable, because he’s proven himself to be of major-league quality. To get to the point, I’d like to try something. Below, I’ve ranked every team in baseball, based on all their players 25 and younger. This is something of an experiment, but I’m still satisfied with the results.
Logan Morrison is signing with the Twins. It’s a one-year guarantee, worth $6.5 million, but there’s also an $8-million vesting option for 2019. Morrison turns 31 years old in August. It’s only natural to compare him to Yonder Alonso. Alonso turns 31 years old in April. He signed a couple months ago with the Indians, for a two-year guarantee, worth $16 million. There’s also a $9-million vesting option for 2020. Within the same market, Alonso did a little better than Morrison did. Maybe that’s not surprising — they’re different players! But then, are they, really?
Eric Hosmer signed with the Padres…wow, was it only last weekend? Eric Hosmer signed with the Padres last weekend. I wrote up the whole post, and then sat back, eager to look at the comments, given how Hosmer is so famously polarizing. And, yeah, those expected comments rolled in, just as you’d think, but there was also another comment that stuck in my head. Here is most of it:
Maybe it’s kind of obvious, when you think about it, but we probably haven’t given it enough consideration. With all the tools we have, it’s been easy to dream on Hosmer’s power upside. Similarly, it’s been easy to dream on Christian Yelich’s power upside. This is supposed to be the era of data-driven player adjustments, so you can imagine a version of Hosmer and a version of Yelich who are able to generate consistent loft. But this isn’t as easy as it seems. It’s not even necessary, and there’s always the chance a change could backfire. See, the thing about Hosmer and the thing about Yelich is that both of these hitters are already good.
I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been waiting for this ever since I saw a tweet a little over a month ago.
With Cole, Astros now project at 103.5 2018 wins. Easily the highest pre-season W projection NEIFI has ever forecast.
— NEIFI Analytics (@NEIFIco) January 13, 2018
I don’t know much about the NEIFI projection system, and I don’t have access to its archives. I don’t know how far back it goes. The tweet, though, stuck in my memory, and for weeks I looked forward to what numbers would show up right here. We’ve always had the Steamer projection system numbers on display, but only the other day did we get to include ZiPS. So, things are pretty much final, pending injuries and a few further significant free-agent signings. The Astros’ roster looks set. Maybe there’s a bullpen battle or two. Whatever. Here are the current projected standings.
The Astros are projected to win 101 games. That’s an extraordinary total, and no one is close. I’ll acknowledge right here that this isn’t very surprising. Also, the Astros just actually won the World Series, so, who cares? A great team is a great team. I get it, and you can close this window if you want to. I’m just wired to delight in fun facts. I come carrying further fun facts.
The 1997 Seattle Mariners hit 264 home runs. No team has ever hit more than that. That season, the next-closest team hit 239 home runs, and that particular team played half its baseball on the moon. The next-closest team hit 220. The Mariners hit more than their share of dingers. Didn’t win them a World Series, and, didn’t even win them an ALDS, but those Mariners still hold the single-season team record. It’s something to cling to, which is all anyone wants.
Last year’s Yankees led baseball with 241 home runs. Their lead was narrow, but they still had sole possession of first, and then those Yankees went and traded for Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton was last year’s player who hit the most homers. And that’s not the only factor here, because the Yankees might also get to enjoy a full season from a healthy Greg Bird. It doesn’t take much wonky analysis to figure the Yankees could give that single-season homer record a push. Might even knock it down! The Yankees are as set up as anyone, and, as you’ve probably heard, we’ve entered into an era of high home-run totals, anyway. Seems like it’s all lined up.
Indeed, I can verify this: The 2018 Yankees are positioned to break the home-run record. What’s a little more surprising is they’re not alone. In 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both eclipsed the home-run record set by Roger Maris. We could very well see something similar on the team scale.
It’s not that I advise always taking teams at their word. Teams have an interest in pushing obvious agendas, and much of what they put out there is essentially some kind of propaganda. Teams always have to be selling themselves, which means emphasizing optimism while downplaying any negatives. But I trust the Rays on what they say they’re doing. Over the weekend, the Rays added C.J. Cron while losing Corey Dickerson and Jake Odorizzi. They said they slashed payroll without getting meaningfully worse, and I agreed. That post was promptly followed by news of the Rays trading Steven Souza Jr. for prospects, but the Rays said that was a baseball trade, not a money move, and that it would be the end of the selling. I believed the Rays; it just didn’t feel like an actual tank-job. There was also the room to make an addition.
An addition has already been made. The Rays have plugged the Souza void by signing Carlos Gomez for a year and $4 million. Gomez is signing from out of the bargain bin, so this isn’t a franchise-altering transaction. And there’s always the chance that, tomorrow or next week, Kevin Kiermaier or Chris Archer is swapped for younger players. The Rays still could tank, if they wanted to. But Gomez will actually earn more in 2018 than Souza will. And I think this is just more evidence of how the Rays are forever attempting to thread the needle. What is Carlos Gomez, as a ballplayer? He’s just an older and more fragile Steven Souza. It’s not the worst exchange, given the four new prospects from the trade.