Come eat and drink with FanGraphs readers and writers on Friday, January 22nd in Seattle. We’ve invited some of our best friends in the writing and baseball world to join, as well. There will be free food, happy hour pricing, and good conversation, and we hope you’ll join us. The event runs 5-7 pm in the Mezzanine, but I’m sure you’ll find us downstairs for a while afterwards. Details and attendees are below.

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Sometimes, it’s only natural to wonder why it took so long for a trade to come to fruition. In an ideal world, the Nationals would have found a free agent outfielder with whom they could agree upon terms. In an ideal world, the Blue Jays would have found a free agent reliever with whom they could agree upon terms. Our world is less than ideal, though, and neither team found a fit. So a match was made between the two. Drew Storen will pitch high-leverage innings for the Blue Jays, now. As a result, Ben Revere will slap singles, run fast, and play the outfield for the Nationals.

This isn’t a trade that will make a monumental impact, either way. Revere, at his very best, is something like a three-win player who’s actually more like a two-win player, and the Nationals can keep him for another year after this one if they feel he’s deserving of a fourth trip to arbitration. Storen, at his very best, is something a two-win player who’s probably more like a one-win player, and he’s set to be a free agent after this season. Both will earn somewhere between five and ten million dollars this year. Nothing here moves any kind of needle too much. If it did, it wouldn’t make so much sense.

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Next week, in a federal courtroom in New York City, the future of televised baseball will be at stake. On one side, attorneys representing baseball fans at-large will contend that MLB’s existing broadcast policies violate the Sherman Antitrust Act by illegally limiting competition and consumer choice, ultimately increasing the price we pay for televised baseball. On the other side, lawyers for Major League Baseball will seek to preserve the status quo by arguing that the league’s restrictions increase both the quantity and quality of games aired on television, to the benefit of fans.

The case — Garber v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball — may not be the highest-profile lawsuit currently proceeding against MLB. But from the league’s perspective, it’s almost certainly the most important.

Long-time Fangraphs readers are probably already familiar with the Garber suit, as we’ve previously covered the case on a number of different occasions. By way of a brief recap, though, the lawsuit essentially alleges that MLB violates federal antitrust law by assigning its teams exclusive local broadcast territories (the same rules that also give rise to MLB’s infamous blackout policy).

Not only do the plaintiffs allege that the creation of these exclusive territories illegally prevents MLB teams from competing for television revenue in each others’ home markets, but they also contend the rules restrict teams from competing with the league itself in the national broadcast marketplace (preventing teams from signing their own national television contracts, for instance, or offering their own out-of-market pay-per-view services in competition with MLB Extra Innings and MLB.TV).

Thus, the Garber suit presents a direct challenge to MLB’s existing television business model, one that could revolutionize the way in which baseball is broadcast in the future.

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No one hacked into the Houston Astros database 40 years ago. Had that been possible, they could have gleaned valuable information by doing so. Tal Smith is the reason why.

Smith was ahead of his time. While serving as the Astros director of player personnel, he began accumulating and cataloguing data “around 1969 or 1970.”

“This was only a few years after the advent of the amateur draft, and I thought it was important,” explained Smith. “I wanted a backlog of all the draft choices —where they were coming from, out of high school, out of college, and so on — and to track those players’ progress. We inputted all that data. This was back in the old keypunch days.”

His colleagues weren’t as enamored with his efforts. Smith left to work for the Yankees in 1973, and when he returned to Houston two years later he found that no one had maintained the program. It was necessary for him to start over. Read the rest of this entry »

When I saw that only two players had been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this week, my thoughts immediately turned to future years. With only two deserving candidates going in, there was still going to be a log jam. How would that impact the players who are coming onto the ballot next year? There are three who have a real case for being in the Hall of Fame: Vladimir Guerrero, Manny Ramirez and Ivan Rodriguez.

Ramirez and Rodriguez seem pretty easy to peg. Ramirez — one of the great right-handed hitters to ever grace this planet, but also a player with several off-field transgressions, including two failed performance enhancing drug tests — seems likely to get a middling level of support, similar to Mark McGwire. Enough to remain comfortably on the ballot, but not enough to be near induction. Rodriguez will vault firmly into the middle of the pack at the very least, and stands a strong shot at induction on his first go-round. He has 13 Gold Gloves, the most of any catcher, and while he had PED whispers, so did Mike Piazza, and he just got in. The tide seems to be turning on the “Steroids Era.”

Guerrero, however, is a total wild card. At least to me. I could see him vaulting into strong induction contention, or I could see him scraping the bottom of the barrel. It’s hard to get a good read on his candidacy.

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For the next five minutes, convince yourself that Barry Bonds retired following the 1998 season. Perhaps he suffered a bad injury in the offseason prior to spring training in 1999. Maybe he got tired of playing baseball and wanted to become a farmer. Make up whatever fantastic story you want to about his life after 1998 — just don’t have it include playing major league baseball.

We’re focusing on 1998, of course, because that’s the final year Bonds was considered “clean” by most sources. For our purposes, I’m not going to try to pinpoint specific months or dates: 1999 was the first season Bonds had Greg Anderson as a full time personal trainer, the man who supposedly introduced him to certain PEDs, and there are books written about this subject that can inform a reader on specific timing far better than I can here. For today, the offseason after the 1998 is the delineating line.

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It’s the winter of 1998. K-Ci & JoJo are on the top of the charts with “All My Life.” In theaters, You’ve Got Mail reigns supreme. When the news of Barry Bonds’ retirement breaks, newspaper columns talk about how incredible his 13-year career was — often juxtaposed to the outsized personality he showed in the clubhouses of the Pirates and Giants. SportsCenter is particularly watchable, and Stuart Scott and Rich Eisen reflect on what might have been: about how, if only he were able to play for a few more years, Bonds could have been the first player in baseball history to hit 500 home runs and steal 500 bases. What an honor to have been able to watch this guy play, they say to the camera.

Following the sudden shock of his retirement, writers and analysts turn to another subject: Bonds’ Hall of Fame chances. They tally his counting statistics through the 1998 season and compare them against every player since 1871:

Given the exceptional power and speed numbers, as well as his stellar defense, Bonds has the statistics to get into Cooperstown on one of his first few tries. However, there is one issue that raises a flag for voters: his character. Always making the game about himself, Bonds’ history is littered with showing up coaches, arguing about his contracts, and always needing to to be the center of attention. After a couple years of not getting in, comparisons to Dick Allen’s situation starts to surface, but finally — after Bonds has paid his character penance — he’s voted in. A few years later, analysts run the numbers on the best players in history up to their age-34 season with a new metric, Wins Above Replacement. Bonds is the 12th-best player in baseball history up to 1998 by WAR for players aged 34 and under, and he ends up 19th overall with no age cap.

Even though he retired with seemingly so much left to give on the field (he put up 8.5 WAR in his final season, 1998), Bonds is a clear Hall of Famer.

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For the Giants, it’s easy to say this has been an offseason of risk. They’ve invested a fortune in Johnny Cueto, suggesting they aren’t too worried about his most recent second half. They’ve invested a slightly smaller fortune in Jeff Samardzija, suggesting they aren’t too worried about his most recent second half. And now, as of Thursday, they’ve invested a smaller fortune still in Denard Span, suggesting they aren’t too worried about his 2015 injury problems. It’s simple to see how this could conceivably blow up in the Giants’ faces. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Deeply flawed most recent seasons.

Of course, there’s upside to the Cueto deal. Of course, there’s upside to the Samardzija deal. And now, take Span. There’s no getting away from the fact that he spent much of last year hurt, eventually undergoing season-ending hip surgery. But Span wasn’t extended a qualifying offer, so the Giants aren’t losing a draft pick. And it’s a three-year commitment with a $31 million guarantee. There are incentives, and if Span hits them — if he hits all of them — then, over the next three years, he’ll earn as much money as J.A. Happ. There’s upside to the pitcher contracts, but the upside with Span seems plenty more reachable.

Leave aside for a moment the Giants didn’t have a real in-house center fielder. Leave aside for a moment the market isn’t flush with alternatives. There are a few places where I think teams are a little too cautious with their money. I think teams are still too cautious with talented Japanese and Korean players, placing the major leagues on too high a pedestal. And I think teams are too cautious with players who have injury questions. We’ve seen, for example, the Dodgers work to accumulate a bunch of affordable arms with injury backgrounds. That’s taking advantage of what they perceive to be a soft part of the market.

Span fits in a similar place, except he’s a position player, and not a pitcher, so he doesn’t have the usual pitcher concerns. Everybody wants talent and health. It’s expensive to get them both. The Giants are placing a bet on Span’s talent, figuring better health is going to follow.

Read the rest on Fox Sports.

It was surprising when Jim Edmonds got knocked off the ballot in his first year of Hall of Fame eligibility when results were announced a couple days ago. It was surprising that Ken Griffey Jr. received he highest percentage of votes in history, or it was surprising that he wasn’t unanimous, depending how you want to look at it. It was a bit surprising, maybe, that Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines didn’t make it, and it might have been surprising how much ground Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens seemed to make up. There’s always little surprises. That’s life.

To me, though, the biggest surprise of them all was the fact that Trevor Hoffman nearly became a first-ballot Hall of Famer. In his first year of eligibility, the longtime Padres closer received 67.3% of the vote, the fifth-highest total on the ballot, just behind Bagwell and Raines and just ahead of Curt Schilling, Clemens, and Bonds. History has shown us that voters who receive such a high percentage of the vote at any time in their eligibility, let alone the first year, are bound to make it in eventually. Trevor Hoffman is going to be a Hall of Famer. It might even happen next year.

There are dissenting opinions with regards to the place of closers in the Hall of Fame, and it’s probably something worth thinking about and discussing. Hard to come away worse from a thoughtful discussion. For some folks, Hoffman is a clear Hall of Famer, and should have been in on the first ballot. For others, he was nowhere near the 10 most deserving players, and might not even garner a selection with an unlimited number of votes per ballot. In the interest of full disclosure, my position has been closer to the latter than the former, though I’m open to seeing the other side. That’s what this post is for.

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The Dodgers just signed Japanese righty Kenta Maeda to a deal that sounds like it belongs in the early 1990s: eight years, $25 million. Not $25 million a year. $25 million. Total. Greg Maddux signed in 1993 for six years and $28 million. That’s how far you have to go back to get a similar deal.

Of course, this is nothing like that deal, because this is 2016, not 1993. The reason this deal is so low is all the risk — risk upon risk, really. But the years, the low guarantee, and even the incentives combine to shift this deal all the way in the other direction. The Dodgers did really well here.

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Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Chicago Cubs. In this companion piece, I look at that same Chicago farm system through the lens of my KATOH projection system. There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their age-28 seasons, those who receive a projection of at between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their age-28 seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

1. Albert Almora, OF (Profile)

KATOH Projection Through Age 28 (2015 stats): 12.7 WAR
KATOH Projection Through Age 28 (2014 stats): 3.3 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 50 FV

After a down 2014 campaign, Almora re-established his prospect status with a strong showing in Double-A last year. The toolsy outfielder made loads of contact, and paired it with a respectable amount of power and speed. The end result was a .272/.327/.400 triple slash, which was eons better than his .234/.250/.335 showing from his pit-stop at the same level last year. Read the rest of this entry »