Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, will be released at FanGraphs this year. Below is the second set of 2013’s projections — for the AL West champion Oakland Athletics. Don’t hesitate to leave notes regarding format/presentation in the comments section, as the author frequently has no idea what he’s doing.

Batters
With his offseason acquisition of outfielder Chris Young (for Cliff Pennington and a minor leaguer), GM Billy Beane has created a good kind of the problem for the A’s: four of the team’s five best field players, per ZiPS — and four of the five team’s field players projected to record a WAR above 2.0 — are outfielders. Coco Crisp and Young both have positive career UZRs in center field; Reddick has the same in right. All three have pretty large sample sizes at their respective positions. Yoenis Cespedes has neither decent fielding numbers nor a sample that requires us to weight said numbers heavily. Still, based on the defensive reputations of all four players, it wouldn’t be shocking to see a lineup with Cespedes at DH and the other three playing the outfield.

Outside of that quadrumvirate — and newly signed Japanese shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima (about whom Jeff Sullivan recently made some shockingly intelligent comments) — ZiPS sees mostly pieces, but little impact.

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Because of what he does, we know a lot more about Hiroyuki Nakajima than we know about the average stranger. We don’t so much know anything about Nakajima’s personality, but we know about his performance at work. Yet because of what he does and what he’s done, we also know a lot less about Hiroyuki Nakajima than we know about the average major-league baseball player. It isn’t necessary to have profiles for every player who plays in Japan, but now that Nakajima has signed with a major-league organization, people want to know more. People want to know what Nakajima’s going to be, before Nakajima makes it evident with his performance what he’s going to be.

We know that Nakajima has signed with the Oakland A’s, for two years and $6.5 million. Nakajima was a free agent, able to sign with anyone. We know that Nakajima is 30, and right-handed, and a shortstop, and projected to be Oakland’s regular shortstop as long as he’s not terrible. We know that Nakajima has a killer bat flip. We know that my Firefox initially identified “Nakajima” as a typo and suggested “Nakedness” as an alternative. And we know Nakajima’s Japanese statistics. When attempting to evaluate a player you’ve never seen, or even a player you have seen a bunch of times, nothing’s more important than the numbers.

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Yesterday, the Chicago White Sox warmed the cockles of the present author’s heart by taking 29-year-old infield-type Angel Sanchez from the Angels in the Rule 5 draft. Because Sanchez can play the infield (including shortstop) and because he has some kind of offensive upside (owing to his excellent contact skills) and because he’s cheap (he still has just two years of service time and will likely make the league minimum), Sanchez will allow the White Sox to spend money elsewhere. Or, otherwise, to not spend money elsewhere and just keep that money and use it for whatever, like for a donation to an important New England boarding school.

Players who are chosen in the major-league phase of the Rule 5 draft (as was Sanchez) must be kept on the selecting team’s 25-man major league roster for the entire season after the draft — which suggests, if he’s retained by the White Sox, that Sanchez will fill some manner of utility role behind Gordon Beckham, Jeff Keppinger, and Alexei Ramirez.

Paying a player like Sanchez at or near the league-minimum salary would seem to give the signing time a competitive advantage. It’s also possible that that’s not the case at all. What the author found himself wondering — and what he attempted to answer by means of this post — is the question: “How much are utility infielders worth these days?”

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Early Sunday morning, Twitter was abuzz with news that the Dodgers and Fox Sports West had agreed to a 25-year broadcast deal valued between $6 billion and $7 billion. By Sunday afternoon, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times had confirmed the outline of the deal, but cautioned that the Dodgers and Fox were still negotiating, with a November 30 deadline looming.

As I explained last week in this post, the parties’ existing agreement gave Fox an exclusive, 45-day window in which to negotiate a new deal to govern the 2014 season and beyond. Hence, the November 30 deadline. If an agreement isn’t inked by Friday, the Dodgers must submit a final offer to Fox by December 7. Fox then has 30 days to accept or reject the offer. If Fox rejects the offer, the Dodgers are free to negotiate with whomever they want.

However the negotiations play out, it’s clear now that the Dodgers’ local TV revenue is about to enter the stratosphere. A 25-year deal worth between $6 billion and $7 billion would net the Dodgers between $240 million and $280 million per year. Per year. That’s more than any team has ever spent on player salaries in a single season — even the Yankees. And it’s nearly double the amount of local TV revenue pulled in annually by the team with the second-most lucrative deal — the other Los Angeles team (the Angels) — which entered into a 17-year deal with Fox Sports West worth $2.5 billion.

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You’re familiar with the term “contract year” because there exists a belief that some players perform better the season before they hit free agency. Playing for a new contract allegedly serves as a motivator. Obviously, pre-free-agency performance matters, and the most recent performance matters the most. A player should want to go into free agency on a high note. A player should really try to avoid going into free agency on a low note. For like a whole bunch of reasons actually.

One guy who’s going into free agency on a low note is Jose Valverde. Just one year ago — just one year ago! — Valverde converted all 49 of his save opportunities and ran a near-2 ERA. He blew his very first save opportunity of 2012. His 2012 season wasn’t a disaster, but it was in the playoffs, when he allowed nine runs in four games. Teams are now going to be understandably nervous about Jose Valverde’s future prospects. Another guy who’s going into free agency on a low note is Brandon McCarthy. Doctors recently had to cut into his head.

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It’s the bottom of the eighth inning. Men are on first and third base, there’s one out and your team is down by one run. The opposing team has one of the best ground-ball pitchers on the hill, and the infield is playing back and is looking for a double play. All you need is a fly ball to tie the game and significantly swing your chances of winning.

So who do you want at the plate?

It’s likely that the opposing manager will either bring in a ground-ball specialist or just tell the pitcher to stay away from pitches that could be hit in the air to the outfield. Knowing who you’d want to hit requires an understanding of what pitches are the most likely to induce a ground ball — and what hitters manage to hit fly balls against those pitches most often.

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We already know that the three finalists for the 2012 American League Rookie of the Year Award are Mike Trout, Yoenis Cespedes, and Yu Darvish. We basically already know that Mike Trout will be named the unanimous winner later on Monday by the BBWAA. There is no particularly convincing argument for any of the other guys over Trout, unless you pretend like pitcher wins are the only statistic that exists. You’ll know if Trout does not win unanimously because in that event Twitter would go down on account of all the Internet rage. It doesn’t take a lot to make the Internet rage.

The award itself is something that matters only sort of. It would probably matter a great deal to Trout and to Trout’s family. It’s something that would immediately go on Trout’s resume, and it’s something that would be brought up in any Mike Trout Hall-of-Fame discussions. The recognition would boost Trout’s self-esteem but it would not give him a new house, and it would not give the Angels more wins. It certainly means little to the fans. I don’t think fans care about the awards because of the winners; I think they care about the awards because of the arguments for which they allow. On the surface, there’s not much room for argument in the 2012 AL RoY. But what follows is an argument in favor of Oakland’s Jarrod Parker.

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Earlier this week I posted about the Best Bunts of 2012 according to Win Probability Added (WPA). Nothing like that is really complete, however, without talking about the worst. So here, divided into some rather arbitrary categories, are some of the worst bunts of 2012.

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Extreme performances are exceptional performances, so it stands to reason that there are relatively few extreme performers. Granted, there are a lot of different ways in which one can be extreme or exceptional, but still, most players fall somewhere in the middle. It doesn’t make those players uninteresting on its own, but it also definitely doesn’t make those players more interesting. Extremes are interesting.

There are two Chris Youngs in baseball, and they’re independent of one another, linked only by profession and coincidence. Still, it’s fun to compare them on account of their names, and one notes that Outfielder Chris Young has a career 16.3 WAR, while Pitcher Chris Young has a career 16.3 RA9 WAR. It’s never been a secret that Pitcher Chris Young occupies an extreme. Two of them, in fact. Not only is Pitcher Chris Young extremely tall; he’s also extremely fly ball-prone. Since 2002, Young has posted the lowest groundball rate in baseball. I suppose one could argue Young is also extremely fragile.

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So much of what makes pitchers effective at the major league level is their ability to keep hitters off-balance. Sure, a 95 mph fastball with movement and a Lord Charles curveball help, but even these physical tools are only as effective as a pitcher’s ability to create uncertainly in the hitters mind from pitch to pitch.

One — admittedly crude — way of looking at this is whether a pitcher throws the type of pitch that’s expected in a given count. Does a pitcher throw fastballs in “fastball counts”, or do they throw off-speed pitches? Pitchers that throw counter to expectations are often said to “pitch backwards”. The Rays’ James Shields is someone that has been referenced as such a pitcher over the past few years.

But exactly how backwards does Shields pitch? And who are some other pitchers that fit into this category?

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