The San Diego Padres were the most active team in baseball last winter, as newly-minted general manager A.J. Preller put his mark on the franchise with a mind-numbing mass of moves that aimed to quickly turn the Padres into a contender, mostly by injecting a bevy of ever-coveted right-handed power bats into a previously punchless lineup.

The plan didn’t work, for a host of reasons neither here nor there, and now a new plan has emerged. Justin Upton walked to free agency, Craig Kimbrel was shipped off to Boston, Wil Myers got out of center field, and Preller might not be done jettisoning the very players he acquired last year, the ones who were supposed to form The Next Good Padres Team.

Last week, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News reported that the Texas Rangers continue to covet an upgrade at catcher, though their top target may not be Milwaukee’s Jonathan Lucroy, as previously expected, but rather Padres’ backstop Derek Norris. The Rangers like Norris because he’s cheaper than Lucroy, he’s got an extra year on his contract, and the Padres have more pieces that could be packaged together with Norris to make for a potential blockbuster deal.

While Norris may not be the same caliber player as a healthy Lucroy, he would presumably offer an upgrade over Texas incumbent Robinson Chirinos, both behind the plate and with the bat, while also providing much-needed depth. But the glove has only been a plus for one year — Norris graded as a well below-average pitch-framer before last season — and the deeper you look into the bat, the less promising it becomes. And evidently, pitchers around the league agree.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now officially two weeks from Opening Day, which means you’re about to be inundated with season previews. Some places will go team by team, others will group by divisions, but basically every outlet that covers baseball will roll out overviews of the 2016 season. In an attempt to provide something a little bit different here at FanGraphs, we do our season previews on a positional basis, and we call them the Positional Power Rankings. This is now our fifth crack at these things — you can see the archived versions of 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 by clicking on those links — and we hope that they’re getting better each time we do them.

From my perspective, one of the primary benefits of previewing the season from a positional perspective is that we can spend a bit more time discussing a team’s overall depth. Most team-based previews aren’t going to spend a lot of time on the bench pieces or the minor leaguers who will get first crack at playing time should an injury occur, especially on a contender; no one clicks on a story about the Nationals 2016 season to read about Jose Lobaton, for instance. But depth matters, and often times, the difference between making the postseason or watching October baseball from home is the performance of a team’s role players, and with many teams moving towards a balanced roster approach over betting on a few big-name stars, we think breaking down every team’s projections at each position on the field gives you guys a better understanding of where the various strengths and weaknesses lie.

How does a platoon stack up against having one regular everyday guy? What is the magnitude of the improvement a team will get from swapping out a veteran placeholder with a top prospect in May or June? These are the kinds of things we think the Positional Power Rankings are helpful at identifying, and because our previews are based on strength at a certain spot, non-contenders get a chance to shine if they have a particularly strength as well. So we know it’s different than most places, but hopefully it’s different in a good way, providing you with information you won’t get elsewhere, or at least provides information in a format that makes you see a team’s pros and cons in a different light.

Read the rest of this entry »

Adam LaRoche’s unexpected retirement announcement on Tuesday – along with the many twists and turns that followed – dominated the baseball headlines last week. To recap, on Wednesday we learned that rather than walking away from the game voluntarily due to a perceived diminution in talent or lack of desire, LaRoche instead elected to retire after being informed by Chicago White Sox Vice President Ken Williams that LaRoche’s son Drake was no longer welcome in the team’s clubhouse (or, at least, was not welcome to accompany LaRoche quite as frequently as he had in 2015). Then on Thursday, reports emerged that the Major League Baseball Players Association was considering whether to file a grievance against the White Sox on LaRoche’s behalf.

It’s currently difficult to determine exactly how strong a legal case LaRoche might have against the White Sox because there is still a lot we don’t know about what agreement, if any, LaRoche reached with Chicago regarding the extent to which his son could accompany him to games. For instance, on Friday, White Sox union representative Adam Eaton told the media that LaRoche’s contract with the team did in fact include a provision regarding his son’s access to the clubhouse. Meanwhile, other reports have suggested that any agreement between LaRoche and the team regarding his son was limited to a verbal understanding, and was not embodied in his written contract.

Ultimately, this distinction between a written and verbal agreement is likely to determine whether LaRoche has any real hope of prevailing in a grievance against the White Sox, should he choose to pursue one.

Read the rest of this entry »

Email newsletters are a burgeoning communications tool, and FanGraphs is getting in on the act. This is something we’ve actually had our eye on for quite some time — as far back as 2013, actually — and we’re excited to finally be bringing it to you. Today, actually: the newsletter’s inaugural edition will drop this afternoon. Let’s talk details.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dick Egan has had a long and successful career. Currently a special assistant to the general manager in Detroit, the 78-year-old Egan has been in the game for over five decades. A few months ago he received a Legends in Scouting award.

His coaching and scouting acumen have exceeded his ability to retire big-league hitters. Pitching out of the bullpen for the Tigers, Angels and Dodgers from 1963-1967, Egan put up a 5.15 ERA.

The first of his 74 career appearances came on opening day, at Tiger Stadium. Egan recalls it being cold — “I think it was about 20 degrees when we arrived in Detroit” — but he got off to a hot start. The left-hander replaced Jim Bunning in the eighth inning and fanned the only batter he faced.

“They got me up, brought me in, and I struck out Nellie Fox with three straight sliders,” said Egan. “Bob Scheffing, our manager, told me he’s never seen Fox look that bad. Unfortunately, it didn’t carry over to the rest of my career.”

The following year, Egan threw a pitch that carried a long way. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam LaRoche may or may not be retiring. It certainly seems as though he is, and it seems as though his decision was made abruptly. While that may not be 100 percent certain, now seems like a good time to look back on his career. On one hand, LaRoche was sort of a letdown, in that he never really took off the way it seemed like he might. On the other hand, LaRoche was a huge success, and should be celebrated as such.
Read the rest of this entry »

Previous editions: Arizona / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles (AL) / Los Angeles (NL) / Miami / Minnesota / Milwaukee / New York (NL) / New York (AL).

Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Oakland Athletics. In this companion piece, I look at that same Oakland farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The A’s have the 19th-best farm system in baseball according to KATOH.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you were to examine the spectrum of defensive positions, going from easiest to most difficult, it would probably look something like this: Designated Hitter-First Baseman-Left Field-Right Field-Center Field-Third Base-Second Base-Shortstop-Catcher. Right field and left field are very similar and center field, second base, and third base are also bunched together under the typical spectrum. However, when looking for the positions that pay the most money, the positions that are the easiest to play make the most money. A similar point, in a similar fashion, was made last year at this time, and it remains true. A combination of the free agent system, aging, and the decline that puts the spectrum to use mean first basemen and designated hitters make the most money while shortstops tend to make the least when taking all starters into account.

I took every position player and designated hitter starter from our FanGraphs Depth Charts and put that alongside the salary information from Cot’s Contracts to find an average salary for the 30 starters at every position with the 15 starters at designated hitter. As was the case last year, first base and designated hitter make the most money, although this season, with Albert Pujols moving to designated hitter, first base lost its crown.

Read the rest of this entry »

Even Jackie Bradley couldn’t have guessed it. Before the start of the 2014 season, the Red Sox outfielder told the Boston Herald’s Jason Mastrodonato that he wanted to steal more bases. That’s become something of a Spring Training trope over the years, but Bradley did his best to keep good on his word and went 8-for-8 in steals.

Bradley’s a former running back who certainly has the speed to steal bases at the major league level, but lacked the instincts and experience to do it at an efficient clip. He was just 31-for-49 (63%) in the minor leagues, well below the major league average success rate of 73%. He knew he had the explosiveness, likening the necessary jump of a base stealer to that of a running back accelerating to hit a hole. He just needed to get better at identifying the pitcher’s movements and understanding the profitable situations to take off.

Seems he’s done a good job. Jackie Bradley Jr. is 13-for-13 on steal attempts to begin his major league career.

It may not seem like a large number, but since the beginning of the expansion era in 1961, Bradley’s perfect 13 is tied for the 11th-longest streak to begin a career, and is halfway to the record:
Read the rest of this entry »

If Xander Bogaerts were a video game character you’d hold down the A button for three seconds and he’d start to glow red. Hitting for power is really easy when you’re glowing red. Bogaerts is a real person, not a video game character though, so hitting for power is considerably more difficult. Last season Bogaerts managed all of seven homers in 654 plate appearances. The fact that I can spell the number of homers means he didn’t hit many. Don’t let me mislead you though. The Xander Bogaerts of 2015 was a very good player. He played good defense, hit for average, and even stole some bases. He just wasn’t a power hitter. And that’s fine. Good, even. The odd part is the Bogaerts we saw last year was almost the opposite of the player we were expecting as he was coming up through the minor leagues.

Bogaerts’ calling card as a prospect wasn’t just his power, but that was an important feature. And yet last season the homers just weren’t there. That’s not how it was supposed to be. And so we’re left to wonder, what happened to the power bat we watched so intently zoom through the minor leagues?

To get a better picture of where Bogaerts will end up, it’s instructive to look at where he’s been. The Red Sox shortstop of the present has been the Red Sox shortstop of the future for going on six years now. In 2011 he hit 16 homers in 72 games in A-ball as an 18 year old. The next year he hit 20 homers combined while splitting time between High-A and Double-A at age 19. None of the teams he played for play in particularly homer-prone ballparks, so the power was legit. After the 2012 season Baseball America ranked Bogaerts as the eighth best prospect in baseball. At the time they gave his bat a 60 on the 20-to-80 scale. They gave his power a 70.

Read the rest of this entry »