Last week, we checked into which hitters might get a qualifying offer, and one of those questions has already been answered: J.J. Hardy, who I figured would receive an offer, has agreed to an extension with Baltimore. Now, it’s time to check out the pitchers, and this should be a little easier, simply because there won’t be as many.

In 2012, only two pitchers received an offer, Kyle Lohse and Rafael Soriano, and they both ended up beating what they would have made had they accepted, though it took Lohse a while to get there. Last year, Ubaldo Jimenez, Hiroki Kuroda and Ervin Santana were the pitchers to get hit with it. Kuroda ended up staying with the Yankees for $16 million, a small raise from what he’d made in 2013. Jimenez and Santana both had to wait until deep into the spring, and while Jimenez eventually got the big, multi-year deal he was looking for, Santana had to settle for one year and $14.1 million from Atlanta, or exactly what he’d have received had he accepted Kansas City’s qualifying offer. A.J. Burnett, to some mild surprise, did not get one from the Pirates.

So what about this year? Six pitchers seem worth discussing, and again, don’t expect to see Jon Lester, Jason Hammel, Brandon McCarthy, etc., here, because players traded during the season are not eligible to receive a qualifying offer. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re about to enter the third winter with the qualifying offer system in effect, and we’ve learned a few things so far. We know that of the 22 offers made in the first two years, exactly zero have been accepted. We’ve seen a few high-profile disasters, namely Stephen Drew and Kendrys Morales, and a few others (Kyle Lohse, Ervin Santana, etc.) who had to wait until spring training had already started to find a new home. Now, we know something more specific about this year’s offer. It’ll be worth $15.3 million, 8.5% more than last year’s $14.1 million, which is set by finding the average of the sport’s 125 best-paid players.

With that in mind, and with 26 of the 30 teams already looking ahead to 2015, it’s time to take a look at potential qualifying offers. Is this the year someone finally accepts one? You know the rules, probably. A team must extend an offer by the fifth day following the World Series, and a player has a seven-day window in which to accept after that. This really does get done pretty quickly, and probably too quickly. In February, Dave Cameron put forth an idea to improve the system, suggesting that removing the deadline for players to accept would limit the amount of offers put forth to questionable players. A valid idea, one I liked, and one that has not been accepted by the game, so here we are.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Game 1 of the NLDS, Don Mattingly left in Clayton Kershaw to absorb a beating in part because he didn’t trust his bullpen. In Game 2, he lifted Zack Greinke, only to watch veteran J.P. Howell give a lead away. In Game 3, he rode Hyun-jin Ryu as far as he felt was realistic (given that Ryu had missed weeks with a shoulder injury), then saw Scott Elbert kick it away. In Game 4, a short-rest Kershaw was outstanding up until the moment he wasn’t, with Mattingly trying to push Kershaw through that seventh inning in order to turn it over to Kenley Jansen.

Each of these decisions were defensible in some way. And each one blew up in Mattingly’s face. The manager is getting pummeled for that, because that’s how sports work, and there’s a non-zero chance he doesn’t survive the winter, fairly or not. But the focus on Mattingly’s choices perhaps overlooks a more crucial problem: Man, how bad was that bullpen? How does this even happen? Read the rest of this entry »

The story of last night’s NLDS Game 3 is almost certainly going to be about how the Dodger bullpen, which was known to be awful, was awful. After Pedro Baez in Game 1, and J.P. Howell in Game 2, it was Scott Elbert’s turn in Game 3. Other than Kenley Jansen, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is literally nothing Don Mattingly can do that isn’t going to blow up in his face. He could be the best manager in the world (well, probably not) or the worst, and we might never know, because the relievers he has at his disposal just keep on failing. (Yes, it was the right call to take out Hyun-jin Ryu, in his first start back from shoulder issues, when he did.)

Somewhat lost in that is the reality that if the Dodgers had merely managed to put up more than a single run against John Lackey and friends, they might not have needed to actually rely so heavily on the leaky pen. There’s a not-small part of that which is on umpire Dale Scott, but you can also only put so much on questionable umpiring. There’s a whole lot more you can put on things like… wow, did Yasiel Puig strike out seven times in a row? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not a stretch to say that heading into the ALDS, the biggest concern in Detroit was about the bullpen — specifically how first-year manager Brad Ausmus had chosen to deploy it late in the season. Baltimore ended up sweeping the Tigers in three games, and the bullpen was directly involved in two of Detroit’s losses. At least one Ausmus decision — lifting Anibal Sanchez for Joba Chamberlain in Game 2 — was enough to get the manager torched by analysts and fans. There were some unhappy, as well, about Ausmus’ decision to bring in Chamberlain in Game 1 and with his choice to pinch-hit Hernan Perez for Andrew Romine in the ninth inning in Game 3 (as though that were really a thing that mattered at all).

Ausmus’ inexperience was perceived as a weakness. He made unpopular decisions that went poorly, and now his team is headed home. Guess we know where to place the blame, right? This is some quality #narrative, of course. It’s not necessarily wrong, entirely, because Ausmus certainly made some choices that didn’t require second-guessing, since they’d been first-guessed in the moment. It’s just a little too simplistic, a little too convenient.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three months ago, the Oakland A’s had Yoenis Cespedes, Addison Russell, Tommy Milone, a seemingly insurmountable lead in the American League West, and joy in their hearts. (I don’t know, probably.) Now, they’ve had a summer-long collapse, a much smaller-scale collapse within the wild card game, and have some farewells to offer to short-term employees Jon Lester, Jason Hammel, Geovany Soto, Jonny Gomes and Adam Dunn, plus slightly longer-term employees Luke Gregerson, Alberto Callaspo and Jed Lowrie, all free agents.

I’d say “it’s going to be a winter of transition” in Oakland, except that’s always the case. A full 30 members of the season-ending 43-man roster (three players were on the 60-day DL) were acquired via trade; throw in nine more via free agency or waivers, and only four Oakland players were homegrown draftees. Even that’s overstating it, though, because two of those four (eternal prospect Michael Ynoa and injured starter A.J. Griffin) didn’t appear at all for the A’s this season. That leaves Sean Doolittle, who wasn’t even drafted to do the job he’s doing, and Sonny Gray. Otherwise, this entire A’s team was built via the non-draft machinations of Billy Beane.

Right now, the A’s have financial commitments to a mere five players next year, and two of them are minimal. What’s next for the A’s? There’s no shortage of answers to that question.

* * * Read the rest of this entry »

What are you going to remember from the AL wild card game? Be honest, really.

You’re going to remember Ned Yost. Hooooooo boy, are you going to remember Ned Yost. There’s going to be no shortage of post-mortems in Kansas City about Yost, for about 40 different reasons, surprisingly not all about bunting. (Argue about whether it was smart to take out James Shields [yes] for an on-one-day-rest Yordano Ventura [no] all you want, I’m still not over the early botched Eric Hosmer / Billy Butler double steal that was actually called on purpose.) You’re not going to forget Brandon Finnegan, either, or Salvador Perez, or Jarrod Dyson on the base paths.

You’re going to remember Bob Melvin and that eighth inning, too, inexplicably leaving Jon Lester in to rack up 111 pitches, get three men on base, and (along with Luke Gregerson) turn a 7-3 lead into a 7-6 nailbiter. You’re going to remember Jonny Gomes in left field, and what should be by all reason the last game that Derek Norris ever catches in the big leagues. I’ll remember thinking that for every time we laugh and make jokes all while understanding that managers know a million times more than we do, every single thing in this game happened. Yost was often brutal in this one. Melvin wasn’t necessarily better.

There’s so, so much to unpack there, and I’ve barely scraped the surface of what was one of the weirdest, greatest, worst, best, ludicrous baseball games ever. So much happened, in fact, that what no one at all is going to remember is what seemed for much of the evening like the biggest story of the night: Brandon Moss, who had hit two homers in the previous two months, hit two in the same playoff game. Let’s talk about that, a little.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three years ago, Edinson Volquez was one of the worst pitchers in baseball. Two years ago, thanks in large part to calling Petco Park home for the first time, he was just okay, putting up a 1.1 WAR season that is still his second-best WAR year ever. One year ago, he was one of the worst pitchers in baseball, but even that requires some further detail, because the Padres took the exceptionally rare step of DFA’ing him less than a week before the September roster expansion when they didn’t even have a full 40-man roster. When the Dodgers picked him up for depth a few days later, he didn’t make the NLDS roster, then never threw a pitch when he was surprisingly added to the NLCS roster.

On Wednesday, Volquez is going to start for the Pirates in the one-game, no-tomorrow NL wild card game against the Giants. Oh, baseball. You’re so great and terrible and weird, all at the same time.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday, Adrian Gonzalez had two hits, including his 27th homer of the season, and drove in three runs in the Dodgers’ season-ending 10-5 win over Colorado. Already all but guaranteed to lead the NL in runs batted in, the three he brought in yesterday ensured that he’d top Mike Trout and lead all of baseball for RBI for the first time.

Before you wonder why FanGraphs is suddenly acting as though RBI is a real stat that means anything, worry not. I think it’s useless. You, most likely, do too, and we all already know why, because it’s largely based on opportunity and teammate performance, and that adds far too much noise to consider it useful as an individual stat. If you’re not an everyday player, you won’t have an impressive RBI total. If your teammates don’t get on base ahead of you, you won’t have enough chances to rack up those RBIs. Relying on it as an indicator of talent can cause more harm than good, too, like when Brandon Phillips was seen as having a great 2013 last year in the midst of his decline because the Reds offense was lucky enough to have Shin-Soo Choo leading off rather than Drew Stubbs (2012) or Billy Hamilton (2014).

It’s barely been one paragraph, and I’ve already probably spent far too much time even talking about why this is a flawed stat. You already know this. Unfortunately, we can probably agree that the majority of general baseball fans don’t quite agree with that, if only based on how many references to “RBI” I saw regarding Gonzalez on Twitter. Gonzalez himself, more understandably, took note as well: Read the rest of this entry »

Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball, and I’m not even going to waste your time backing that up with evidence. It’s true. You know this to be true. We’ll accept that and move on. There’s no shortage of reasons why Kershaw is so good, but a pretty good shorthand is that there are four things a pitcher can do that are of the utmost importance, and he’s great at all of them. He gets strikeouts (first in K%), limits walks (seventh in BB%), avoids the longball (third in HR/9), and keeps the ball on the ground (14th in GB%). If you can do all that, the rest of it doesn’t really matter.

It helps, of course, that has three dominant pitches. His fastball ranks second in baseball in our pitch values. His slider is the best. His curveball is fifth-best. This is completely unfair, and that’s part of the reason his walk rates are so low. Since he’s got three pitches that are basically unhittable, he has little reason to nibble around the corners. Only three pitchers have a higher Zone%; only three pitchers have a higher first-pitch strike percentage. (Unsurprisingly, Phil Hughes leads both lists.)

Read the rest of this entry »