Baseball is starting.

Selfishly, I’m excited. I love the game. And we need it here at FanGraphs. We can get ready for Opening Day with transaction analyses, prospect rankings, and various pre-season activities. But once the snow melts and temperatures warm (at least here in Midwest), we need games so we can talk about individual moments and the broader standings, and keep the content machine grinding away.

Behind that hum of activity, though, there’s still a pandemic. The overall state of COVID-19 is starting to improve in the US if you look at the numbers. Vaccinations are beginning to roll out, albeit not at the rate anyone would like, and important metrics like the positivity rates and total cases are in decline in most places relative to where they were at the end of last year. While those recent trends are likely cold comfort to those grappling with the disease every day, it does feel like there is finally light at the end of the tunnel.

But even with the situation improving, the pandemic is far worse than it was when everything shut down last March. Baseball is still starting up, however, and for scouts, it’s time to go to work. I ran around with a lot of these people during my time with the Astros and in my prior media days. I got to know many of them, and learned so much from talking with them. And because travel comes with the job, their health is in peril, perhaps even more so than that of the players and personnel who accompany a big league team. Due to the nature of their work, they’re not protected by any kind of bubble system, or mandatory testing schedule. It’s hard for it not to feel kind of gross.

The range of plans for dealing with scouting in the midst of what is still very much an active pandemic is wide. For some, it’s business as usual, with their amateur group blanketing the country as it did before we worried about packing masks and hand sanitizer, as if all of this never happened, or more importantly, wasn’t actively happening. Most teams have some sort of restrictions in place, trying their best to keep scouts local, and limiting plane rides only to cross-checkers; others have gone as far as to trying to limit air travel and hotels for all staff as much as possible. But seeing players remains priority one. Read the rest of this entry »

I was exposed to many aspects of front office operations during my eight years with the Astros, but one thing I never touched was arbitration.

I consider it one of my greatest career achievements.

With hearings and rulings in the news, I’m reminded of how much everyone hates the damn thing. Teams hate it, players hate it, agents hate it, and maybe that’s actually proof it works in its own way, but the most frustrating aspect is that nobody really understands the logic behind the rulings themselves. In private conversations, some executives have suggested to me that one “might as well flip a coin.” An agent called the entire process “archaic.” Another team executive called it a “colossal waste of time.” Contacts from both sides relayed stories of being quite sure that they had won or lost after the hearing, only to end up with the opposite ruling from the three-person panel. Both sides have stories of waiting for results, dreading them when the last two cases have been in their side’s favor because they fear the next result being a simple make-up call.

The whole thing seems rather, well, arbitrary.

Adding to the frustration is the cost of the hearing itself, in terms of time, money, or both. Many teams utilize outside counsel to handle the hearing process, while others keep it in-house, assigning a group of people within baseball operations to spend weeks of manpower on the process. They travel to Arizona or Florida, staying up until all hours of the night preparing their PowerPoint deck and going on several late-night runs to Kinko’s. They do it because they have to, but does all that work have any effect on one’s chances of winning or losing the hearing? I never saw any direct evidence that it did. Read the rest of this entry »

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It was bound to happen once the odds shifted in favor of baseball starting on time, but the offseason has ramped up quickly over the last week. Some of the top free agents have come off the board, and a five-player trade, some smaller signings and all sorts of 40-man roster shuffling took place. Buried among it all was a quick move by the Cardinals on Thursday, as they sent outfielder Dexter Fowler to the Angels per Jon Heyman, with St. Louis picking up all but $1.75 million of his 2021 salary.

It’s not a transaction that really moves the needle for either team in terms of the standings. And it’s not a transaction that creates any kind of real financial flexibility for future moves. Instead, this is a deal that illustrates how one player may fall on different points on the insurance vs. opportunity spectrum depending on which uniform he’s suiting up in.

I’m not here to argue that Dexter Fowler is that good now. He wasn’t a star necessarily, but he spent a nice-sized chunk of the last decade firmly in the “very good” category. He got on base and had some sneaky pop, and from 2011-17 averaged a .370 OBP with an .800-plus OPS and a 116 wRC+. And while he was certainly athletic enough to be a good center fielder, but he’s never been a good defender. His jumps and routes have always been substandard, and his habit of catching the ball at his chest has driven fundamentals-focused coaches insane for 13 years now, though he at least does tend to catch it. I remember Fowler’s 2014 campaign with the Astros and how I’d wince every time the ball was hit his way. I’d hoped to find a video to illustrate this tendency, and it didn’t take long. I thought I might need to go through a few videos from MLB’s vault to uncover a good example, but it was right there in the first video provided, his last putout of the 2020 season.

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On September 4, 2020 in Kansas City, Alex Colomé had one of those nights where he just didn’t have it. It took him 40 pitches, only 23 for strikes, to get four outs and preserve a White Sox 7-3 victory over the Royals. With one out in the ninth, he missed a location with the second best of his two pitches. James McCann set up in and Colomé missed out with a 94 mph fastball, which Jorge Soler nailed with an exit velocity approaching 110 mph. If Soler had pulled the ball, it would have been in the seats, but he thankfully couldn’t get around on it; the ball went oppo, and a well-positioned Nomar Mazara easily jogged it down. Check out the end of the video as Colomé shakes his head, knowing he made a mistake, and maybe a couple, in terms of both location and pitch type.

Ten days later in Chicago, Colomé wasn’t especially sharp but kept runs off the board to finish up a 3-1 win over the Twins, who became his new team this week as he inked a one-year deal with a unique mutual option. With two outs in the ninth and looking to end the game, Colomé had the rare extreme miss with his signature cutter. Yasmani Grandal wanted one down and out, knowing Buxton couldn’t do much damage there, but Colomé delivered a center-cut meatball that the center fielder hammered. The good news was that the ball was a line drive to the left fielder. The bad news? That left fielder was Eloy Jiménez, who absolutely zooed the ball, resulting in an inside-the-park home run that was later reversed to a ground-rule double.

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From the moment the offseason officially started five days after the end of the World Series, the most predictable headline of the winter was “Nelson Cruz Signs One-Year Deal With the Twins.” It took three months, but last night it finally happened, with ESPN’s Jeff Passan reporting the signing and MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand adding that the deal will net Cruz $13 million.

Cruz, who turns 41 in July, is an ageless wonder, even though that number gives teams looking at eight-figure investments significant pause. Two years ago, he was a free agent after an exceptional run with the Mariners during which he put up a 147 wRC+ and averaged 41 home runs a season. He lobbied hard for a two-year deal, but most teams countered with one-year offers. It was understandable: Cruz has been defying the aging curve for years and has no value beyond the bat, so if Father Time suddenly catches up to him, he becomes a candidate for a quick release. Back in 2019, he was pushing 39 and coming off a declining season in terms of your standard triple-slash line, but the underlying metrics looked good, as his strikeout rate was actually declining, and his exit velocities were in line. Still, most models would not be especially kind to Cruz or any player entering his age-39 season. These are not the years when players start to slip a little; they’re the ones when players fall off the cliff.

Here at FanGraphs, Cruz ranked as one of the top 20 free agents on the market that winter, and I was shocked, surprised and frankly quite impressed to see that ZiPS still saw the good in the player, projecting a minor bounce-back 2019 campaign at .266/.348/.500. The Twins took the plunge by meeting Cruz halfway on his multi-year demand, paying him $14 million for the 2019 campaign with a $12 million option for the following year.

They were rewarded amply. Instead of falling of the cliff, Cruz instead rocketed higher, putting up a career-high OPS of 1.031 and making his 2020 option a no-brainer. The cliff avoided him again that season, and the production was similar.

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I obviously don’t have access to MLB Trade Rumors’ site traffic data, so it’s an educated guess that “[Team] Signs [Player] To a Minor League Contract” pieces are among their least trafficked pages. I get it. Big trades and big free agent acquisitions are exciting. Some vet trying to hang on and being given another chance? Not so much. That said, the world of minor league contracts for veterans is one that I was very close to during my time in baseball. The first time I was given the assignment of negotiating these deals, I thought they would be simple. I quickly learned they were anything but. Unless something dramatic and unexpected happens in terms of the labor negotiations between the league and the players, spring training is close. With an unprecedented number of free agents still out there, plenty of these types of deals are being negotiated as we speak, so it’s a good time to get into what it takes to get a deal over the line.

Opportunity

The crux of any minor league contract negotiation is opportunity. Players don’t want to be in the minor leagues. The focus is on playing in the majors, and which potential employer gives them the best chance to spend significant time in the big leagues. The reasons are obvious. They get paid like big leaguers, they accrue service time, and the perks (better per diems, charter flights, opulent hotels, palatial clubhouses) are phenomenal.

Agents don’t talk about money or contract clauses first, they talk about the possibility of their player being with the big league club. I would imagine that every Quad-A shortstop right now has his agent in touch with the Reds, while avoiding clubs like the Mets, Padres and others where the position is filled by a star-level talent who tends to stay on the field. Agents for these players become depth chart aficionados, studying every team’s situation across various position families to see where their player might slide in.

Personally, I always tried to be honest with agents and players with regards to said opportunity. Sometimes a team is offering the player a real chance to break camp with the big club; sometimes they are clearly a depth piece meant to bide their time at Triple-A until someone gets hurt or drastically underperforms. And yes, sometimes you do find yourself in direct contact with players. I always appreciated the conversations, and thought it spoke well of the player on a makeup level, as the individual was personally invested in the process.

Beyond the chances to play in the big leagues, clubs need to sell potential roster pieces on the additional benefits of joining the team. For the Astros, the player development system and the club’s ability to communicate data-based improvements was a big part of the pitch. Often players wanted to speak to someone more important than the negotiator, like the GM or field manager, just to hear assurances from the source themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

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Hi there. How are you? 2020, huh?

2,711 days ago (or at least that’s what Google tells me), I penned my goodbye to the internet. That’s a lot of days. A lot has happened since then, and while I imagine many of you know who I am, eight years is a long time in the world of baseball media. I’m sure for some of you, my name barely registers. And so a quick introduction (or a re-introduction) is in order as I embark on a new chapter here at FanGraphs.

Back in 2012, I’d already been writing about baseball, prospects, scouting, and player development for a long time. I was one of the main contributors at Baseball Prospectus, did a few things for ESPN, had a Sunday show on MLB Network Radio with Mike Ferrin, and did a weekly podcast with my dear friend Jason Parks. It was all a lot of fun, but during that final year in media, teams started calling me. It was weird, but I can’t say I wasn’t interested. I talked to a few. Some led to deeper discussions, some didn’t, and that summer I accepted a position as Coordinator, Pro Scouting with the Houston Astros (commas in titles always bug me, but it was a thing in Houston, as you’ll see…).

I lasted eight years with the club, which probably puts me in the 90th percentile in terms of executive time spent with one team. When I arrived, the Astros were rebuilding and were awful, but the team got better, and ultimately became a powerhouse that went to a pair of World Series, and even won one.

And my career grew as well. After a year, I was promoted to Director, Pro Scouting and finally rose to the role of Special Assistant to the General Manager, Player Personnel. During my time with the Astros, I was exposed to a wide array of baseball operations responsibilities. I did in-person scouting within the pro, amateur and international disciplines, and helped to establish our ability to analyze players using data and video. I was in the war room for both the draft and the trade deadline, in the suite during the winter meetings, attended a handful of GM Meetings and even got to conduct a few trade and free agent negotiations over the past few years. Read the rest of this entry »