Now armed with Shohei Ohtani, things have changed for the Angels. It was clear coming into the offseason that the team could use some help at second base. But with Ohtani in the fold, there’s been some extra urgency, as it’s become much easier to see the Angels making a charge for the playoffs. Earlier on Wednesday, according to our projections and depth charts, the Angels’ second-base situation was tied for the worst in the game. To address that, they’ve traded with the team that was ranked in eighth. The move:

Angels get:

• Ian Kinsler

Tigers get:

• Wilkel Hernandez
• Troy Montgomery

Hernandez is 18; he’s a lottery ticket. Montgomery is 23; he’s also a lottery ticket. Neither is a premium prospect, by any stretch of the word. The Tigers were never going to extract a high price for a guy in his mid-30s entering his walk year. Kinsler did just see his WAR drop by more than three wins. That, though, probably overstates the reality of what happened. And Kinsler seems like a solid upgrade for a team attempting to get a firm grip on one of the wild cards.

Over the past three seasons, Kinsler has seen his wOBA go from .335 to .356 to .313. When you see something like that for a 35-year-old, you get worried that maybe the wheels are coming off. And yet, by expected wOBA, Kinsler has gone from .314 to .328 to .326. There’s no difference at all between 2016 and 2017, and he looks the same by his contact rate. Kinsler didn’t lose his bat-to-ball skills. He didn’t lose any exit velocity. Kinsler, surely, isn’t at his peak, but it doesn’t seem like he’s coming off a major decline. He’s something like a league-average hitter. He does a little bit of everything across the board.

And then, in the field, over the past three seasons, Kinsler has rated as the best defensive second baseman by DRS. He ranks as the fourth-best defensive second baseman by UZR. He was strong again in 2017, and while I’ll concede that the defensive metrics can miss something with defensive alignments no longer so traditional, Kinsler would appear to be a plus in the field. He’ll even still steal the occasional base. Kinsler hasn’t been a sub-2 WAR player since debuting in 2006.

Kinsler isn’t going to last forever, and he’ll never be mistaken for a Jose Altuve, but for a modest cost, the Angels probably just got better by a couple of wins. And they should have the flexibility to do something at third base or in the bullpen, if they can’t address both. Only a month or two ago, the Angels seemed like they were trapped in between. Now they look like the fourth- or fifth-best team in the American League, with an expanding gap between the haves and the have-nots. Sure, it might not have worked without Ohtani. But Ohtani has landed. He’s on the Angels, and he’s made the picture all the more rosy. Thanks in part to Ohtani, a move like adding Kinsler could push the club into a playoff spot. Billy Eppler is rather enjoying this holiday season.

With two important players coming to Major League Baseball from Nippon Professional Baseball this season — Miles Mikolas and Shohei Ohtani, of course — we’re hearing a lot about how differently baseball is played in Japan. While it’s true that they take Mondays off and starters generally pitch just once a week, it’s also true that some of the differences between the two leagues are probably overstated.

Part of that might have something to do with the metrics on which we dwell when discussing the two leagues. Home runs certainly receive a lot of attention. Velocity readings, too. But what about other aspects of the game?

Curious, I decided to look through the lens of plate discipline and batted-ball spray to see how similar Japan’s league is to America’s leagues, major and minor.

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Shohei Ohtani has decided to sign with the Angels. I don’t think many people were expecting an Ohtani announcement on Friday. And I don’t think many people were expecting Ohtani to go where he’s going. There’s a lesson in here, perhaps, the lesson that you should never assume another person’s motives. Yet that lesson also isn’t very helpful. The Ohtani sweepstakes were essentially unprecedented. We’re not going to see many cases like this in the future. By and large, we know how baseball decisions get made. We knew hardly anything about this one. Even though the Angels were there as one of the seven finalists, they were mostly written off, right up until they won.

The Yankees were seen as a favorite. Endorsement opportunities, and everything. They were eliminated early. The Mariners were seen as a favorite. History of Japanese players having success. No dice. The Giants were in there, having recently won a bunch. The Dodgers and Cubs were in there, being presently very good. The Rangers and Padres were in there, with Ohtani pursuits dating back several years. I don’t know what it was that might’ve allowed the Angels to stand out. Ohtani has indicated only that he felt the closest bond with them. That made the difference. You might want to think it was Mike Trout, but, according to Ohtani, it was the team connection.

There’s nothing there to analyze, I don’t think. Not in any meaningful way. Ohtani didn’t go for the most money. He went for what felt right in his heart. That’s the very definition of personal, and what matters most to Ohtani might not matter much to other people. In this case, it doesn’t matter what matters to other people. Something about the Angels spoke to Ohtani’s desire. That’s the whole story. We all have our own things we feel connected to. Those connections might not always seem outwardly to make the most sense.

Now the Angels have a talented young pitcher, who is also a talented young hitter. You’ve been hearing about Ohtani for years, so I don’t need to give you the summary. You know what he’s about. He’ll have to be managed carefully, and there’s certainly some amount of risk, but had Ohtani been an unrestricted free agent, he would’ve signed for something like $200 million. He’s about to earn, instead, the league minimum. Right now, Ohtani is probably one of the 10 or 15 most valuable players in the league. The Angels just…got him. They picked him up and put him on the roster. For all 30 teams, this was a one-time opportunity. It’s the Angels who now get to look a whole hell of a lot better.

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Congratulations to the Angels and the good people of Anaheim, Shohei Ohtani has chosen you.

He perhaps has also chosen wisely.

Ohtani’s agency, CAA, released a statement Friday afternoon saying their client of international interest and acclaim had made his decision after meeting with seven finalists this week. The Angels had made trades to acquire $2.3 million in bonus pool money.

Statement from agent Nez Balelo on Ohtani's decision to join the #Angels pic.twitter.com/NIc3APCbtS

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 8, 2017

An American League destination always seemed to make the most sense due to the DH role for a player who desires to hit and pitch, who desires to be a historic and unique figure within the game. While there seem to be some indicators that Ohtani preferred a small, West Coast market, he chose the No. 2 team in the nation’s No. 2 market.

With Ohtani and Mike Trout now on the roster, the Angels are a must-see attraction in 2018 and beyond. Read the rest of this entry »

When Travis Sawchick asked you which question was most important on Shohei Ohtani’s questionnaire, you answered overwhelmingly that the team capable of keeping him healthy — or of convincing Ohtani that they’d keep him healthy — would win out. Travis went on to use a metric, Roster Resource’s “Roster Effect” rating, to get a sense of which team that might be. The Brewers, Cubs, Pirates, and Tigers performed best by that measure.

Of course, that’s just one way of answering the question. Health is a tough thing to nail down. To figure out which team is capable of keeping Ohtani the healthiest, it’s worth considering the possible implications of health in baseball. Roster Effect, for example, considers the quality of the player and seems to be asking: which rosters were affected the most by poor health? That’s one way of approaching it. Let’s try a few others and see who comes out on top.

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Not every team approaches the offseason looking to get better in the same way. That much is obvious: budget alone can dictate much of a club’s activity on the free-agent market. A little bit less obvious, though, is how the present quality of a team’s roster can affect the players they pursue. Teams that reside on a certain part of the win curve, for example, need that next win more than teams on other parts. That can inform a team’s decisions in the offseason.

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It was a little over three years ago that I first took a look at this question. The article was a hit!

Now I think it’s time to run the numbers again. People change. Situations change. Statistical projections change. Mike Trout is fantastically good. He is probably the best player in baseball, and he’s under contract with the Angels for another three seasons. Albert Pujols used to be fantastically good. He’s not so much anymore. He was just one of the worst players in baseball, and he’s under contract with the Angels for another four seasons. You know where this is going. You’ve probably wondered about this before, even though the hypothetical is stupid and unrealistic.

Trout isn’t going to get traded. Aside from everything else, he has no-trade protection. Pujols isn’t going to get traded. Aside from everything else, he also has no-trade protection. But let’s say the Angels wanted to make a trade. Let’s say they wanted to package the two players together. Does Pujols’ negative value outweigh Trout’s positive value? Would the Angels trade these players, combined, for nothing? Again, this is stupid. Let’s dive in.

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When I talked to Mike Rizzo in Orlando earlier this week, he told me the Washington Nationals have an eight-person analytics department that includes “three or four employees” who have been added in the last two years. The veteran GM also told me they have their own “Scouting Solutions, which (they) call The Pentagon.” In Rizzo’s opinion, his team has gone from behind the times to having “some of the best and brightest analytics people in all of baseball.”

A pair of uniformed-personnel changes further suggest an increased emphasis on analytics. Dave Martinez has replaced Dusty Baker as manager, and Tim Bogar has come on board as the first base coach. According to Rizzo, their saber-savviness played a role in their hirings.

“It was part of the process,” related Rizzo. “Davey is a 16-year major league veteran who can appeal to a clubhouse of major league players — there’s a respect factor there — and he’s also coming from two of the most-analytical organizations in baseball, in Tampa Bay and Chicago. He’s bringing that love of analytics and the implementation of those statistics with his thought process. Read the rest of this entry »

Every Major League Baseball organization has players who fly below the radar. They add value — or are projected to do so in the future — yet are underappreciated, if not unnoticed, by the vast majority of fans. The same is true for coaches, and even some managers, particularly at the minor-league level. Other behind-the-scenes personnel, such as scouts, are largely invisible. Given their contributions, many of these people deserve more accolades than they get.

With that in mind, I asked a cross section of general managers and presidents of baseball operations if they could point to a person in their organization who stands out as being under the radar. With a nearly across-the-board caveat that it’s hard to name just one, all gave interesting answers.

———

Chaim Bloom, Tampa Bay Rays: “I’ll go with two guys who we feel strongly about that are actually no longer on the radar, because we just put them on our big-league staff. That would be Kyle Snyder and Ozzie Timmons. They were with us in Durham for a while and have played a huge role in the development of a lot of our young players. One of the reasons we’re excited about what’s coming was on display with that club. They won a Triple-A championship with a very young team.

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“The best for the group comes when everyone in the group does what’s best for himself and the group.”

–American mathematician John Nash

Shohei Ohtani is fascinating for a number of reasons. We start with the dual talent, of course.

While injury limited him to just five starts as a pitcher in 2017, he struck out 29 and allowed only 13 hits in 25.1 innings — as a 22-year-old. He produced a .332/.403/.540 slash line in 230 plate appearances. In 2016, he went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA over 20 starts in the NPB. He struck out 174 and walked 45 in 140 innings. He also OPS’d 1.004 with 22 home runs in 323 at-bats in 104 games.

He was named the league’s best pitcher and best DH.

While Clay Davenport’s deadly accurate statistical translations don’t appear to be available for 2017 NPB play, Davenport’s 2016 translations are available to the public.

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