Archive for Daily Graphings

Carlos Beltran signed with the Astros for a year and $16 million. There is probably plenty to say about this! There’s stuff to say about Beltran so far managing to defy the nature of aging. There’s stuff to say about the Astros being almost overloaded with position players. There’s stuff to say about Beltran returning to Houston after the two separated so many years back. There’s a lot for different people to tackle, but I’m only one guy and I’m also one guy in a hurry, so, here, numbers and plots. The Astros are good!

I mean, the Astros were already good. They were good before they signed Beltran. They were good before they got Brian McCann and Josh Reddick. Now they’re only better. Focusing strictly on offense, I’m going to show you two images. First, here’s one reviewing 2016. This shows total team offensive runs above or below average, that just being a combination of batting value and baserunning value. This is only for non-pitchers so as to try to balance out the leagues.

I highlighted the Astros, who were right around the middle. Specifically, they ranked 16th. Now for the projected future! I know this is to some degree a silly exercise. It’s all based on one projection system, and no team’s offseason is complete, and projections don’t do a great job of accounting for platoons. But this does give you a good idea of where things stand today. Here’s a 2017 projection of the same information as above, based on Steamer projections and our updated depth charts.

The 16th-place Astros now show up as the second-place Astros, and they’re first place in the American League. They’re 22 runs removed from the third-place Nationals, and they’re 27 runs removed from the Red Sox. Once again: the Red Sox will acquire at least one hitter. The Astros are probably finished, as their lineup goes. Anything else they do will probably be about pitching, and there are a lot of hitters left out there for other teams to pick up. But make no mistake — the Astros have built a lineup that’s going to be a daily challenge for any pitcher. There’s new flexibility and new depth, and the lineup might well lack an easy part. The winter meetings haven’t even begun and the Astros look like a terror.

As has been the case, it’s going to come down to how the rotation holds up. They’ll try to make an addition. It might not work, maybe not in the winter, but when a team isn’t sure how much it can trust its starters, the best you can do is to assemble lineup and bullpen depth. That’s what the Astros have done, and that’s why they look like possible, if not probable, AL favorites. It’s not a bad place for Beltran to seek that elusive World Series.

Yesterday, the author of the current post published a lightly annotated version of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for the San Diego Padres. To no one’s surprise, likely, the forecast for the 2017 edition of the club isn’t wildly a promising one. After investing heavily in some expensive veterans during the first year of his tenure as the club’s general manager, A.J. Preller has taken a very different approach over the last calendar year, acquiring whatever young talent he could in exchange for the aforementioned veterans.

On the offensive side, some of that young talent is already materializing at the major-league level. Outfielders Travis Jankowski, Manuel Margot, and Hunter Renfroe, for example — who’ve recorded fewer than 600 plate appearances as a group — are projected to produce about two wins each next year. That’s encouraging both for the club’s present and future. On the pitching side, however, Szymborski’s computer was decidedly less optimistic: of the club’s likely starters, only one (Tyson Ross) was projected to produce more than a win.

Of course, the caveat attached to any team-based projections released at this time of year is that the complexion of said team’s roster can change dramatically. “This is bad,” one could reasonably say of the forecast for the Padres’ rotation, “but the team could still make some moves.”

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For two or three days, I’ve been sitting around, waiting for the Nationals to make a big trade. This isn’t the one I was expecting, but, the hell with it, as long as I’m here anyway, the Nationals have picked up Derek Norris from the Padres, at the cost of Pedro Avila. Avila is as 19 as any other 19-year-old, and last year he was fine as a low-level starting pitcher. You know the rest of this. Intriguing stuff, many years away. I will not be discussing Avila again in this post.

Norris is the more interesting of the two. The Nationals wanted a catcher to pair with Jose Lobaton, and Norris can slide right in for cheap. The Nationals will have him for two years if they want, and this year he’ll cost about $4 million. Not much. But, the thing I didn’t expect: Norris was baseball’s worst hitter last season.

That is, if you go by results, and if you set a minimum of 400 plate appearances. The minimum is arbitrary, so, you might say someone else was worse. But Norris did the least with the most playing time. I’m not sure how that escaped my attention as it was playing out, but actually, yes, I am sure how, because Norris played for the Padres, and why would I have been paying attention to them? Norris was dreadful, as you can see in this table.

He finished 203rd out of 203. It was an extremely brutal offensive season, and, related to that, Norris had a career-worst strikeout rate. Yet, it wasn’t all terrible. Fancy yourself an optimist? I like to subtract soft-hit rate from hard-hit rate. Here is a selection from that leaderboard, with the same 400-PA minimum.

No one’s impressed by being close to Marwin Gonzalez, but, Anthony Rizzo? Robinson Cano? Carlos Santana? Wilson Ramos was actually right after Cano. By this measure alone, Norris’ contact was just like Ramos’ contact. The point being, Norris didn’t fall completely apart. He can still sting the baseball, and his career wRC+ is almost league-average. The Nationals assume there’ll be a bounceback, just as Ramos’ three-year wRC+ marks went from 93 to 63 to 124. Like Norris, the bad, 2015 version of Ramos had a career-high strikeout rate. Last year he was one of the Nationals’ more valuable players.

And Baseball Prospectus also considers Norris something of a defensive plus. While he’s not much for throwing out runners, Norris has put together two strong years of receiving, and it stands to reason that should continue into Washington. Acknowledging that we have no idea if Norris actually calls a good game — he seems above-average defensively, and at the plate, he’s been above-average before. This is a pretty painless buy-low, even if it seemingly removes the Nationals from the justifiably perplexing Ramos free-agent sweepstakes. His tale is a sad one, but the Nationals had to move on.

From the Padres’ perspective, easy space has been cleared for Austin Hedges, who deserves this opportunity. And for Norris, while he still won’t be a full-time catcher, at least now his 2017 job share will come with a contender instead of with a rebuilder. That’s not bad news to take a man into a weekend.

While everyone else basks in the glow of continued labor peace and begins to explore the minutia of the latest pact between the league and its players, the Yankees remain committed to a PR campaign against the collective bargaining agreement and its (negative) influence on the team’s ability to compete. The latest critique comes courtesy New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman in a piece from George King III of the New York Post.

We’ll get to that in a moment. Before we do, though, we should acknowledge that, yes, the Yankees pay a substantial amount both in revenue sharing and luxury tax. Yankees president Randy Levine indicated that the former obligation was $90 million in 2015 — from a combination both of the standard 34% revenue sharing and also a performance factor, explained in greater depth here by Wendy Thurm. As a result of these obligations, the Yankees are giving more money back to small-market teams than any other club in baseball. Add in more than $300 million in luxury-tax/competitive-balance penalties over the last decade, and it’s pretty easy to see the Yankees’ grounds for dissent.

That’s not the real cause of the Yankees’ failure to dominate in recent seasons, however. Rather, poor spending and failed player development have been the team’s main issues.

But back to Cashman, for a moment. In his recent comments, he was unambiguous about the effect that the last few CBAs have had on his club.

“The CBA is going to affect us in the long term,” general manager Brian Cashman said Tuesday at Yankees scout Cesar Presbott’s Thanksgiving turkey giveaway in The Bronx. “It’s already crippled us in the short term. Exhibit A is our free agency last year and a lot of the international markets I’ve been taken out of.

“The previous CBAs have really hindered us, so I think the next one is something we’re clearly going to be interested in on how it will impact us over the entire course of the term of the contract. The previous ones have impacted us in a bad way.”

As noted above, the Yankees have been compelled to contribute quite a bit in revenue sharing, etc. — ultimately paying out probably more than a billion dollars directly to their competitors over the last decade. It’s not that simple, though.

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Have you heard? The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2017 is now available for sale. You can check out the table of contents and read some excerpts from the book here. When you finish that you can purchase it Amazon in either print or Kindle form.
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The collective bargaining agreement on which the players and owners have just tentatively come to terms didn’t move the needle too much in the grand scheme of things. The changes that occurred were more akin to trimming the branches on a bonsai tree than they were clear-cutting a forest. But one interesting alteration was the replacement of the 15-day disabled list with a 10-day variety. This be interesting in a few ways.

I have to say, my first thought was very much:

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Greetings! Yesterday, I wrote about how Billy Hamilton is a freak. If you didn’t read the post, let me save you some time. First of all, yeah, you kind of already knew that. But, statistically, he’s gone almost without comparison. I looked at all regulars and semi-regulars through age 25, going back to 1961, and I examined their batting, baserunning, and defense. Based on my analysis, Hamilton stands out, with his closest comp being Julio Cruz. To this point, he’s been a terrible hitter. He’s also been an elite runner and defender. Highly unusual!

Related to that, I felt somewhat inspired. That was a post about how Hamilton is atypical. Who else these days is atypical? Who these days is the most atypical? What follows is a quick and similar analysis. Of course, you haven’t seen the last of Hamilton’s name.

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The St. Louis Cardinals sent lefty Jaime Garcia to Atlanta in exchange for a trio of minor leaguers this evening. Below are my thoughts on the prospects heading to St. Louis in the deal.

John Gant, RHP (Profile)

The good-bodied and eccentric Gant is probably the likeliest to yield big-league value of the triumvirate acquired by St. Louis tonight. He’s already spent time there, having thrown 50 major-league innings in 2016. As a rookie, Gant struck out nearly a batter per inning (recording a 22% strikeout rate) but also struggled with walks (9.5%). Gant’s fastball sits in the low 90s, mostly 90-93, but will touch as high as 96 and has a slightly above-average spin rate. His changeup is his best secondary offering and best pitch overall. It’s a plus, low-80s cambio that disappears away from lefties as it approaches the plate. Gant maintains his fastball’s arm speed throughout release. There are times when Gant makes a visible effort to create extra movement on the pitch, alters his arm action, and causes his change to flatten out. He also has a loopy, below-average mid-70s curveball. He’s had to use the curve more frequently than a pitch of this quality usually warrants in order to navigate his way through minor-league lineups multiple times.

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The Braves’ first few moves of the 2016-17 offseason — and, in particular, the acquisitions of both Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey — appeared to raise the floor for an Atlanta club team designed to survive, if not necessarily thrive in, 2017. The club’s most recent move might not help raise that floor any higher. What it could do, however, is heighten the team’s ceiling — and, at the very least, provide the club with an interesting trade chip for the July trade deadline.

Earlier tonight, the Braves traded three prospects to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for Jaime Garcia, who enters the final season of an extension signed back in 2011.

Here’s the trade in full.

Braves Receive:

• Jaime Garcia

Cardinals Receive:

• 2B Luke Dykstra
• RHP Chris Ellis
• RHP John Gant

When healthy, Garcia has been an effective pitcher. Over the course of his career, he’s produced a better-than-average FIP and ERA (both 8% lower than league average). Staying on the mound for any length of time has been the issue for Garcia, however. After recording 194 innings in 2011 — and earning a four-year contract extension (with two options) along the way — Garcia struggled to stay healthy. He managed only 220 innings over the next three seasons combined and began 2015 on the disabled list. His numbers were never particularly bad during that span — and were, in some cases, quite good. After thoracic outlet surgery in the middle of 2014, however, his career appeared to be in some jeopardy.

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Earlier this week, Baseball America named Dave Wallace their 2016 Minor League Manager of the Year. Wallace led the Akron Rubber Ducks, Cleveland’s Double-A affiliate, to the Eastern League title. It was his third year in Akron, and his sixth at the helm in the Indians system.

The 37-year-old former catcher is moving on. He’s not leaving the organization, but a change of scenery is in order.

“I won’t be managing next season,” Wallace told me earlier today. “That’s something I approached (team president) Chris Antonetti, (general manager) Mike Chernoff, and (director of player development) Carter Hawkins about. There are a few reasons, but the biggest is family. I have two kids, ages six and three, and I need to figure out the best way to go forward with my career, and at the same be the best dad, and husband, I can. My priorities start with them, and baseball comes after that.”

Wallace has been exploring his options with members of the Indians brain trust, who have been “overwhelmingly supportive” of his decision. He hopes to move into a role — quite possibly within the front office — that has a more flexible schedule, allowing him to be home for things like his kids’ birthdays.

He sees his impending job change as more than a family matter. It’s also a hiatus, and a stepping stone in his career. His long-term goal hasn’t changed.

“I want to get exposure to other aspects of the industry,” explained Wallace, who studied human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University. “That can only help me be a more well-rounded manager in the future. One thing that hasn’t changed is my desire to be a big-league manager one day.”