On Tuesday, we learned that Prince Fielder’s career has come to an end following his second major neck surgery in just the last three years. Jeff Sullivan provided a fitting eulogy for Fielder’s career a couple days ago. While the news is certainly devastating for Fielder on a personal level, this post concerns another matter — namely, the potential financial implications of Fielder’s injury, both for the Texas Rangers and Fielder himself. At the heart of the matter: the nine-year, $214 million contract Fielder signed in 2012, a deal that guarantees him another $24 million annually from 2017 through 2020.

For starters, it’s important to note that Fielder is not officially retiring from baseball, but rather has been declared medically disabled and therefore is no longer considered to be physically able to play the game. This is an important distinction legally, because had Fielder voluntarily decided to retire, then he would have forfeited the roughly $104 million remaining on his contract. Instead, by being declared medically unable to play, Fielder remains entitled to the full amount he’s owed under his contract.

Because Texas reportedly has an insurance policy covering his contract in the event of injury, the Rangers will not be on the hook for the entirety of the team’s remaining financial obligation to Fielder. Instead, the club will apparently only be responsible for paying Fielder $9 million per year from 2017 to 2020, with the rest of his salary covered by the team’s insurer (who will reportedly contribute another $9 million per year) and the Detroit Tigers (who are on the hook for the final $6 million per season, based on the terms of the trade that brought Fielder to Texas in exchange for Ian Kinsler in 2013).

That having been said, although the precise terms of the Rangers’ insurance policy are not publicly available, it appears likely that this $9 million in cost savings will not come without some strings attached for the club. Moreover, it’s also possible that the team’s insurance company could still yet find a way to avoid paying some or all of its share of Fielder’s contract.

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Just about one year ago, the Houston Astros were trying to get to the playoffs, and they decided Carlos Gomez was worth a bushel of pretty good prospects. In the present day, the Astros are again trying to get to the playoffs, and they decided Carlos Gomez isn’t worth much of anything. Wednesday, Gomez was designated for assignment, and that’s a tough break for someone coming up on free agency. Of course, the damage was already done.

You might not realize how swift the fall has been. Though the scenarios aren’t exactly the same, Gomez has kind of Shelby Millered. On the season, Gomez has been among the least-valuable regulars. He’s not even 31 years old. And between 2013 – 2014, here are the position-player top five, by WAR:

1. Mike Trout, 18.5 WAR
2. Andrew McCutchen, 15.3
3. Josh Donaldson, 14.1
4. Carlos Gomez, 13.1
5. Miguel Cabrera, 12.6

McCutchen this year has been a disappointment, but the Pirates aren’t on the verge of dropping him or anything. The Astros have set Gomez free, and anyone can have him. Someone will take the chance; the track record alone demands it. Plenty of team officials will look at Gomez and see a player they might be able to rescue. Yet I honestly don’t know how to be encouraged.

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Some of the best numbers in the upper levels of professional baseball are presently working out of the Dodgers bullpen. I don’t mean Kenley Jansen. I mean, I guess I do mean Kenley Jansen, because that certainly applies well to him, but he’s not the focus here. You know about Jansen and you know that he’s dominant. There’s somebody else in there you probably don’t know. You wouldn’t have had a reason to know him, really. Not before this year, but this year, Grant Dayton has taken off.

Here’s the way this usually works: We spot someone with crazy statistics, and then we investigate to try to determine whether the player is for real. I’m not going to pretend like that isn’t what’s happening here, but we all have to start somewhere. We all need some initial reason to start to like a given player. What I hope will come across: Dayton’s numbers aren’t just ordinary-good. They’re unbelievable-good. And now that I’ve watched Dayton pitch in the majors, I’m an even bigger fan. I think you might become one as well.

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Welcome to the third installment of our division-by-division look at team ball-in-play profiles, based on data accumulated through the All-Star break. In the first two pieces, we identified the Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Dodgers as the best “true-talent” clubs in their respective divisions; their recent surges couldn’t have been timed better. Today, we take a macro-type view of the plate-appearance frequency and BIP exit speed/angle detail for AL 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 »

Imagine being Hyun Soo Kim. You’re signed by the Baltimore Orioles to a deal that’s on the small side by American standards, the kind of deal that comes without fanfare or breathless video crews. You’re optimistic about your chances of succeeding in the majors. You spend your spring training calmly adjusting to a new league and country — and then, suddenly, you’re in the middle of a maelstrom when you opt to refuse a minor-league assignment, a right you negotiated into your contract for a reason.

All that might be firmly in the rear-view mirror by now — “I consider spring training in the past” said the Orioles outfielder before a game against the Athletics — but that sort of backstory would make any of us a little uncomfortable. The good news is that the outfielder finally made all of those adjustments, on his own time, and is now getting comfortable in this new situation.

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Following a 4-2 win over the Red Sox in late July, Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander was asked about pitch selection. His response to a small group of reporters was as follows:

“It’s different when it’s a [close] ballgame. You don’t think about pitch count as much; it’s just about getting outs. It’s a different situation with more runs. Maybe you take a shot at throwing some more-hittable pitches to get some quick outs. But not in a one-run ballgame.”

As the media scrum broke up, I asked Verlander a point-blank question: “Do you pitch to the score?” His answer was a short and simple, “Yes.”

He’s not the only one. Jack Morris has been criticized — if not mocked — for saying that he pitched to the score. Others have certainly done the same, but how many? Is the practice prevalent, or are pitchers like Morris and Verlander the exception rather than the rule?

I decided to explore the subject. Prompted by Verlander’s answer, I asked a collection of pitchers, catchers, pitching coaches and managers if big-league pitchers do indeed pitch to the score. Here are their responses.

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Alex Avila, Chicago White Sox catcher: “For a starter, it’s probably a little bit different than it is for a reliever. Some starters can’t. They’re kind of oblivious to the score — they don’t want to know the score — and they don’t want to let up.

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Let’s peer into the future for a moment. The time: roughly one year from now. I’m hosting my weekly Tuesday chat, and a reader wants to know: who is the most underrated player in baseball? It’s a common question. It’s a question without an answer, but an answer everyone wants to know. Ben Zobrist’s time with the belt has come and gone. It’s no longer Jose Quintana — not after winning last year’s Cy Young Award. Another one of my go-to answers for this question is Mike Trout, and I might still believe that, but I know it’s not what the reader’s looking for. No, they want the star-not-perceived-as-a-star. The guy flying under the radar as one of baseball’s best at his position without the national recognition. They want what Zobrist was in his heyday. What they want is Devon Travis.

But they’re not going to get Travis as the answer to that question a year from now, because what I’m here to do now, in the present, is exactly what they don’t want you to do in any movie that involves time travel, like that one with Ashton Kutcher or any one of the dozen Final Destination films. I’m here to do something in the present that changes the future. I’m here to prevent Devon Travis from becoming the most underrated player in baseball, because he deserves to be recognized as one of the best second baseman in baseball already.

Travis checks all the boxes of a player doomed to be underrated. The first key of being overlooked as a major leaguer is to be overlooked as a minor leaguer. Check. Travis lasted until the 13th round of the 2012 draft, selected as the 424th pick between Phildrick Llewellyn and Alan Sharkey largely because teams were wary of his 5-foot-9 stature. By 2014, he’d worked his way up to cracking Baseball America’s top-100 prospect list, but even then came in at just 84th, and shortly thereafter was traded from Detroit to Toronto for Anthony Gose, whose own stock was rapidly plummeting.

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The St. Louis Cardinals recalled top prospect Alex Reyes yesterday and, a few hours later, the hard-throwing right-hander recorded his major-league debut, striking out one in a clean inning of relief work (box).

The book on Reyes is that his stuff is off the charts, but his control and command leave something to be desired. His numbers paint this picture vividly. His top-notch stuff enables him to miss a lot of bats, resulting in nearly unmatched strikeout rates the past couple of years. Meanwhile, his lackluster command has resulted in a concerning number of walks.

All else being equal, you’d prefer to have a pitcher that doesn’t have iffy command and an ugly walk rate. But all else isn’t equal with Reyes. His ability to generate strikeouts, especially at such a young age, is a huge point in his favor. I yanked some of those words from my recent Tyler Glasnow piece, but I’m recycling them here since they’re equally applicable to Reyes.

My KATOH projection system adores Reyes. It projects him for 7.6 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method and 12.6 WAR by the method that integrates Baseball America’s rankings. Reyes placed 18th and seventh overall, respectively, on KATOH’s recent top-100 lists. Among pitchers, though, he was third and first. KATOH’s lists tend to be relatively hitter-heavy — likely due to some combination of pitchers’ attrition rates and the fact that KATOH does not directly quantify “stuff.” But in terms of pitching prospects, scouting-infused KATOH thinks Reyes is the best one on the planet.

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After last season, Prince Fielder was named the American League Comeback Player of the Year. Neck problems and surgery ruined Fielder’s 2014, but he came back to run a 124 wRC+ over 158 games played. Fielder was plenty deserving of the award, and it looked like the 31-year-old had his career back on track. But this season, Fielder developed symptoms similar to the ones he had before. He was diagnosed with about the same problem, requiring a second surgery, and now Fielder’s playing days are done. Though he’s not actually retiring, he’s also not receiving clearance to return, which means functionally the same thing. The difference is important to the Rangers, but it doesn’t matter to the fans.

Situations such as these are always difficult to discuss from the outside. We know Fielder as a baseball player, and we know baseball players by their numbers. Fielder, right now, doesn’t care about his numbers; he cares about his own ability to move. He cares about what reduced flexibility could mean for his quality of life. It’s important to understand that being declared medically disabled means there’s something wrong with an actual person. As of today, Prince Fielder is one of us, and he’s hurting. Three months ago, he turned 32.

So, there’s no way for us to know what Fielder is truly going through. There’s no real way for us to connect beyond the shallowest of terms. I think the best we can do is to wish Fielder well, and to say that in his chosen line of work, he was outstanding for several years, a hitter sufficiently complete to overcome some obvious drawbacks.

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