Archive for Daily Graphings

On December 8, the Cleveland Indians’ Web site published a brief, 135-word story announcing James Harris as the club’s new farm director.

While filling such vacancies is typically not headline news, it was a modest announcement for one of the more inspired front-office additions of the offseason.

Why is it interesting?

Harris never played baseball professionally, in college, or high school.

In fact, Harris has never coached the sport at any level.

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After a short break for the holidays, it’s time to jump back into the saddle and continue our position-by-position look at 2016 hitter performance using ball-in-play data. We’ve gone around the horn in the infield — finishing there with National League third basemen — and now move to the outfield, starting with AL left fielders. Be forewarned: this was not a very productive group. Things will pick up a little bit next week when we deal with their senior-circuit counterparts. As a reminder, we’re utilizing granular exit-speed and launch-angle data to measure how position players “should have” performed in comparison to their actual stat lines.

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Much like the run-up to Christmas or perhaps the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs, the Hall of Fame season seems to get longer and longer. Thanks to Ryan Thibidaux we have more data regarding how writers are voting and who might gain induction. Thanks to the revamping of the Veteran’s Committee, in the form of the Eras Committee, we’re able to begin debates over which overlooked players might be worthy of consideration. Also, the Hall of Fame has moved back the announcement of voting results by two weeks from last year, when Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza were received entry into the Hall of Famers. While early January might be more accurately considered the “leftover free-agent-market portion” of the baseball calendar, examining the cases of future Hall of Famers seems like a slightly more uplifting task. So, as part of this year’s Hall of Fame season, here’s a piece on active position players and what’s required of them to earn consideration for enshrinement when they become eligible.

First, a note: I’m not the first person to engage in this sort of exercise. Mike Petriello has now performed it two years running and Jay Jaffe took a brief look in the middle of last year, as well. In order to add some value to the conversation, we’ll take a look, using a WAR framework, at what exactly some of these players need to accomplish to establish their credentials for the Hall.

In each of the tables below, I’ve included every player’s HOF Ratings — about which metric one can read more here — and the median HOF Rating at the relevant position both for (a) all Hall of Famers regardless of how they got into the Hall of Fame and (b) Hall of Famers elected by the writers (denoted as BBWAA Median), who have had a tougher standard. Given the lapse in election by means of the Veterans (now Eras) Committee, it might be best to look more closely at the writer’s number in terms of likelihood of election. The last column shows an example of what the player likely needs to do to be a Hall of Famer or at least get in the discussion, where noted.

First, the guys who seem very likely to make the Hall of Fame.

Albert Pujols is an easy choice. Miguel Cabrera has already exceeded the standards for first basemen in the Hall, and with a few more good seasons will be better than Jeff Bagwell both by the advanced metrics and the traditional numbers. Ichiro presents a unique case given his late debut, but it’s difficult to see voters keeping him out with his considerable accomplishments. Adrian Beltre should be a no-brainer, but the writers have been particularly stingy when it comes to third baseman. Ron Santo couldn’t make it in on the writer’s ballots, for example, despite a strong resume. Although, to be fair, there haven’t been too many other third baseman who have had great cases. Chipper Jones has one for next year, Scott Rolen has a better case than one might think, and Beltre will have a great case in another half-dozen years or so.

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Back on November 29th, the Brewers decided to non-tender first baseman Chris Carter, despite the fact that he hit 41 home runs for them last year. Despite his big time power, they wanted to open the position for Eric Thames, a free agent they signed the same day. Thames has been a star over in Korea the last few years, and the Brewers decided to bet on his uncertainty, hoping that some of his success over there is based on real improvements, and not just evidence of what a minor league slugger can do to inferior competition.

Normally, when teams make moves, we like to cite the projection system data as a baseline, to give us a rough understanding of what a player might reasonably be expected to do going forward. Because Thames was playing in Korea, though, we didn’t have a Steamer projection for him at the time, and in fact, we didn’t have one for him until yesterday, when Jared Cross finished running his forecasts for international players. And so, starting today, we’re officially displaying a projection for Thames here on the site. And it’s a pretty good one.

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On Tuesday, we looked at the best pitches in baseball last year when judged by whiffs and grounders. One thing we learned in that exercise: they were all thrown by relievers. Makes sense. They get a lot of advantages when it comes to short stints and leveraged situations. Let’s not hold it against them because the rest of the reliever’s life is very difficult. On the other hand, let’s also celebrate the starting pitchers separately, because many of them have pitches that are excellent despite the fact that they have to throw more often, to batters of both hands.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Cincinnati Reds farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Dramatically increased ISO (.170 as a sophomore, .243 as junior) at University of Tennessee in 2016 and stole 25 bases at an 86% clip.

Scouting Report
A young-for-the-class SEC hitter with a long track record of success, Senzel was the most polished bat available in the 2016 draft. I saw him early in the year during a four-team round robin in Arizona and thought he’d go somewhere in the top 10-15 picks. While facing pitching far beneath the quality of arms he’d see later in the year during SEC play, Senzel finished the weekend 8-for-13 with four doubles, six walks, five of those on the final day of play. Despite my own enthusiasm, when a scout told me they thought he had an outside shot at going 1-1, I scoffed. Senzel was drafted No. 2 overall by Cincy in June. There are probably a few reasons for this, beyond a potential misevaluation of Senzel’s talent. Prospects ahead of Senzel on my board at that time (such as Jason Groome, Delvin Perez, Alec Hansen) all saw their stocks dip for one reason or another during the spring, while Senzel continued to rake. Moreover, he was one of the safest prospects in a draft class without huge, risk-worthy talent up top.

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The home-run swing comes in many forms. It ranges from the artistic whip-like movement exemplified by Ken Griffey Jr. to the panicked marionette impression favored by Hunter Pence, the muscled uppercut of Prince Fielder to the paintbrush stroke of Carlos Gonzalez. All of them are impressive and beautiful in their own way. (Yes, even Pence’s. The fact alone that he can hit a ball that far with mechanics like that probably means he deserves no fewer than 20 awards.)

The prospect of a Chris Davis home run has become a mundane event. The big man is paid to hit dingers, and lots of them. He does just that. He is Paul Bunyan, and he plays in a stadium that was probably bought at Toys “R” Us and came with Matchbox cars. It helps that he can hit the ball out anywhere, but has taken up residence in Baltimore. Davis home runs are like Billy Hamilton steals and Max Scherzer strikeouts. They happen early and often, and therefore it’s easy to lose sight of just how damn cool they are.

“Cool” perhaps isn’t the first word to pop into one’s head when seeking to describe Davis. “Big,” “strong,” “gargantuan”… these are all good and sound adjectives. But make no mistake. Davis is cool on the field.

Let’s watch him hit a home run.

See. That’s what cool looks like. That’s a cool home run.

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The forces of supply and demand appears to be bringing the offseason to a standstill when it comes to heavy hitters. Not many teams are looking for that type of player, and yet a number of them remain available. Edwin Encarnacion had to take less than he wanted, while Jose Bautista and Mark Trumbo headline a group of bat-first guys still available on the market. It’s a group that also includes Chris Carter, who was non-tendered by the Brewers, as well as Pedro Alvarez, Brandon Moss, and Mike Napoli. The qualifying offer hurts for Bautista and Trumbo, but the real reason Trumbo remains unsigned is that he isn’t worth a multi-year deal, and he probably isn’t even worth the $17.2 million attached to the qualifying offer.

There’s certainly some sort of market for Trumbo and the 47 homers he hit in 2016. As a player, though, he only does one thing really well, and it’s tough for him to compensate for his deficiencies with that one strength. It’s not just that Trumbo is a poor defender and baserunner, it’s that he isn’t even that good on offense. Last season, Trumbo’s on-base percentage was .316, below the league-average mark of .323 for non-pitchers. Sure, his .533 slugging percentage was very good, but it wasn’t among the top 10% of baseball, and when combined with his lackluster OBP, his 123 wRC+ ranked a respectable 40th out of 176 qualified players last season. While respectable, getting such little mileage out of 47 homers is a little disconcerting.

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What type of contract would Mike Trout have commanded this offseason had he been a free agent? Coming off an MVP-award-winning campaign in which he compiled 9.4 WAR and about to enter just his age-25 season, Trout would have easily been one of the most sought after players ever to hit the open market. And given the state of this year’s historically weak free-agent class, the bidding for Trout may very likely have ended up in the $400-500 million range over eight to ten years.

Considering that Trout signed a six-year, $144.5 million contract extension back in 2014 – an agreement that runs through 2020 – this is just an interesting, but hypothetical, thought experiment, right?

Not necessarily. A relatively obscure provision under California law — specifically, Section 2855 of the California Labor Code — limits all personal services contracts (i.e., employment contracts) in the state to a maximum length of seven years. In other words, this means that if an individual were to sign an employment contract in California lasting eight or more years, then at the conclusion of the seventh year the employee would be free to choose to either continue to honor the agreement, or else opt out and seek employment elsewhere.

Although the California legislature has previously considered eliminating this protection for certain professional athletes – including Major League Baseball players – no such amendment has passed to date. Consequently, Section 2855 would presumptively apply to any player employed by one of the five major-league teams residing in California.

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Every year, we run lots of pieces here in the FanGraphs family of blogs. We take a look at the “best” of them each week, but that’s fairly subjective, and there’s also an effort to spread the love, since a true “best of” post would just be 10-15 articles by Jeff Sullivan every week, and that wouldn’t be an entertaining exercise. Not even for Jeff.

This article is something we try to do every year, though sometimes I forget. This is all about the numbers — which posts were the most popular? We’ll do an overall top 15, since we do 15 posts for the “best of” post, with some honorable mentions as well. We’ll start at No. 15, because if nothing else, I want to make you scroll you down the page a little. Just in case it’s not clear, this top-15 list is going to be limited to pieces which were posted in 2016.

No. 15 (Mar. 29)
Let’s Find Rusney Castillo a New Home, by Dave Cameron
Sadly, Rusney Castillo did not find a new home, though he did hit better in the second half in Triple-A. I’m still not ready to give up on him, but Boston’s outfield is beyond crowded, so this story might not have a happy ending.

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