Let’s go back in time nine months. Fresh off the Royals World Series victory, MLB teams were making plans for how to reshape their teams for 2016. And for many of those teams, those plans included making a run at one of the many quality players available in free agency. After some years of slim pickings on the open market, there was suddenly a pretty terrific crop of players available to sign, with the market being especially deep in starting pitching and outfielders. And with teams flush with cash, a lot of players changed teams this winter, getting big paychecks in the process.

Seven players signed deals worth at least $100 million in guaranteed salaries. Eight players signed contracts that gave them the right to opt-out of their deal at some point and re-enter the free agent market if their value goes up. Middle relievers and bench players made multi-year deals a standard for players who used to have to go year to year. This past winter was, by any definition, a league-wide spending spree.

But as we approach the end of the first year of these contracts, there seems to be one developing theme; the teams that spent the most money in free agency probably wish they hadn’t.

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The Cubs have had baseball’s best defense this season. They rank first in Defensive Runs Saved, with 58 runs above average, giving them a 10-run lead over the second-place Houston Astros. They rank first in Ultimate Zone Rating, with 50 runs saved, giving them a 15-run lead over the second-place Toronto Blue Jays. They’re turning a historically high number of balls in play into outs, and while a number of factors influence a team’s BABIP, Chicago’s elite defense is among the most important.

We’ve seen what a truly elite defense can do for a mediocre pitching staff over the past couple years, with the Kansas City Royals. We’re seeing what a truly elite defense can do with a great pitching staff right now, with the Chicago Cubs. But, while the 2013 Royals had the best defense on record during the current 14-year era of advanced defensive metrics, it’s not like that team reached the ceiling of what a defense can be. That team wasn’t built by a mad-scientist general manager whose only goal for the season was to experiment with the upper bounds of defensive performance. It was just a really, really good defense. I’d like to play the role of that mad-scientist general manager for a second, based off this chat question I received on Tuesday:

Apologies to Joe for making you wait. Hopefully you understand that your question was a bit complex for an instantaneous chat-room response. I’d like to think that your excellent question being rewarded with a full article makes up for the delay.

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Last night, Dansby Swanson, 2015’s first overall pick, debuted for the Atlanta Braves. After destroying High-A pitching to the tune of .333/.441/.562 in April, Swanson spent 84 games at the Double-A level. He hit a less exciting, but still respectable .261/.342/.411 at the latter stop.

During his brief stay in the minors, Swanson didn’t stand out in any particular area offensively, but was better than average across the board. He posted a healthy 11% walk rate this season, a .151 ISO, and made enough contact (recording an 18% strikeout rate) for it not to be a concern. Even his 13 steals indicate a guy who’s fast, if not exceptionally fast.

Swanson is a good hitter, but his bat alone doesn’t make him a particularly exciting prospect. What really sets him apart is that he’s a good hitter who also happens to play a mean shortstop. Eric Longenhagen noted yesterday that he thinks Swanson will be a plus defender at short. The data support that observation. In just 105 minor-league games at short this year, he’s been a +19 defender according to Clay Davenport’s model.

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When I started researching a post about the American League Cy Young Award, I was prepared to make a case in favor of Chris Sale. I know you’re not always supposed to go into these things with an outcome in mind, but, look! The rest of this post proves I wasn’t too biased. When I got a little into the work, I started imagining a somewhat contrarian argument in favor of Danny Duffy. That turned into my pursuit, until I became more convinced to support Corey Kluber. I was just about ready to begin a draft. Then I told myself, no, look at the numbers. The favorite should be Aaron Sanchez. I’ve assembled cases for all these guys. A few more, too. Start to finish, this wasn’t supposed to take more than a couple hours.

I wish I could give you something better. I wish I could give you a reason to lean toward one name. Truth be told, there are plenty of those reasons, but many of them point toward different names. It’s the middle of August right now, and there’s roughly a quarter of the season left. That’s going to settle the Cy Young race, because at least as far as I can see it, right now there’s just a multi-way tie.

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Kevin Kiermaier missed a good chunk of the season after breaking his glove hand in late May, and that’s a shame, because when Kiermaier is in the field, he’s among the most exciting players in baseball. Kiermaier is must-see television with a glove in his hand. Decidedly less so at the plate. He’s been roughly a league-average hitter through 1,100 career plate appearances, and so it’s understandable that when we’re paying attention to Kiermaier, it’s usually for his defense.

But I want to flip the script for a minute. The Rays are bad, and Kiermaier missed time, and we’re usually paying attention to the defense, so this may have been easy to miss, but Kiermaier’s undergone some rather radical changes at the plate, relative to last season. Cutting to the chase:

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Back in May, we told you guys that we were teaming up with the Pitch Talks crew for a summer tour. We had our first event in Boston back in July, and it went really well, with a few hundred Red Sox fans packing the house for a fun evening with GM Mike Hazen, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, and a bunch of local writers mixed in.

In the next few weeks, the tour really picks up steam, however, with three events happening over the upcoming month.

First up, we’re heading to San Francisco in 12 days.

The Giants GM and play-by-play announcer will both be joining us at The Independent, and Eno Sarris and I will represent FanGraphs among a couple of panels of terrific writers. It’s going to be a good time, and is a steal at just $25. Buy your tickets now.

A week after that, Eno will be traveling to Toronto to take part in the next event up there, joining Jeff Passan and the local Blue Jays writers who have made the events up there so successful.

Then, finally, I’ll be heading to Chicago in September to meet up with Craig Edwards and a bunch of smart baseball folks from the windy city for an event at The Metro right around the corner from Wrigley Field.

Jonah Keri will be joining us for that one as well, and you’ll want to get your tickets before they’re gone, as that promises to be a fun show.

If you’re in SF on August 29th, Toronto on September 8th, or Chicago on September 22nd, make sure you come out and spend an evening talking baseball with a bunch of other die-hard fans. We’re looking forward to seeing you all there.

It’s been a big season for Michael Saunders, and for his career. He’s long been dogged by injury questions, and a season ago he was limited to just nine games played. For 2016 he’s been able to stay on the field, and his bat has done the talking. He’s been part of a loaded Blue Jays lineup, but he’s still third on the team in wRC+, below Edwin Encarnacion but ahead of Jose Bautista. The Jays now have sole possession of first place in the AL East, and given some of what they’ve gone through, it makes sense that they might owe Saunders a great deal of gratitude, his recent slump aside. He’s mostly been stable, and he’s become rather strong.

Numbers are funny, though. There are different ways to spin them, even if you don’t want to spin them. It would be completely legitimate to say Saunders has been one of the best hitters on the team. You could also very legitimately say Saunders has been arguably the least-valuable hitter on the team. It’s true that he’s third in wRC+. It’s true that he’s last in WPA. In a few ways, then, Michael Saunders is having a season to remember.

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We’re now more than halfway through our division-by-division look at granular team ball-in-play data, as of the All Star break. Today, we take a macro-type view of the plate-appearance frequency and BIP exit speed/angle detail for NL East clubs.

About 90 games’ worth of balls in play is a fairly substantial sample size, one that enables us to make fairly educated guesses about the true talent level of each team. Let’s use this information to project true-talent team won-lost records and compare them to their actual marks at the break, examining the reasons for material variation along the way. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Loewen was designated for assignment by the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday. His future is thus in limbo, but that’s nothing new for the 32-year-old southpaw. Loewen has become well-acquainted with adversity and uncertainty since being drafted fourth-overall by the Orioles in 2002.

A contract squabble delayed the start of Loewen’s professional career, and he had barely 100 big-league innings under his belt when elbow woes threw a monkey wrench into his pitching aspirations. No longer able to toe the rubber, the Surrey, British Columbia product — a promising hockey player in his formative years — was converted into a position player.

Not surprisingly, ups and downs followed. Loewen had his moments as a slugging outfielder, but there was a lot of swing-and-miss to his game and he never put it all together. A strong 2011 season in hitter-friendly Las Vegas prompted an opportunity with the Blue Jays, but a 6-for-32 cameo in Toronto brought expectations back to earth. A few years later — his elbow no longer barking — he came full circle. Like no one before him had done at the big-league level, the 6-foot-6 Lefty returned to the mound after once leaving it to become a position player. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to know the most insidious part of my job, it’s deciding what to write about when. Some of the decisions aren’t that crafty — sometimes I have to sit on a Kenta Maeda interview because August just wrote him up, for example. Other times, it’s a small move, like publishing a piece about a pitcher on the day he pitches instead of the day before.

But there are times that make me feel icky. Like the time I talked to Sean Manaea in May and never wrote it up because I felt like there were topics out there that might get more interest. And because I was waiting for a good stretch of ball from him. Well, congratulations to me for being a bad person — Manaea has a 2.84 ERA with 38 strikeouts and just eight walks in 44.1 innings since July tenth. Time to transcribe, you awful, awful dude!

The good news is that we can now check in on the things that Manaea was working on back then and see how they worked out. Welp. If I’d been less honest now, I could have said I planned this all along. Oh well, now you know more about me. Time to know more about Manaea.

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