The Kansas City Royals had a disappointing season in J.J. Picollo’s first year as the team’s Executive Vice President/General Manager. Hampered by injuries and the underperformance of numerous promising young players, the AL Central club finished in last place with a dreadful 56-106 record. As Dayton Moore’s replacement — Picollo was promoted to the position on September 21, 2022 — told me during last month’s GM meetings, much more was expected.

My conversation with the Royals’ top executive came almost exactly a year after I first spoke to him about the vision he had for the team. I was curious about two things. First, how has the revamped pitching program we discussed in November 2022 progressed? Second, how does he view his first year on the job?

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David Laurila: We talked about your vision for the team, including the pitching development process, at last year’s GM Meetings. Have things gone pretty much as expected?

J.J. Picollo: “There is more to it than you realize. As much as you think you might be prepared for the lead role, you’re learning along the way all the time. Being able to make decisions quickly, and being able to communicate effectively across all departments in the organization, was a challenge. Looking back on it, last year we were heavily involved with our managerial search [and] a new pitching coach. The entire fall, right up to Christmas, we were hiring. We shared the vision of the organization in different ways.

“If I had to do it over again, we would have had organizational meetings in January. We’d have had that large group gathering so that the communication was clear on what we’re about and what we’re trying to accomplish. This year we did that. We actually did that the week after the season ended, so I feel a lot better about this offseason. I feel like it’s going to slow things down a little bit more this year. But again, there are a lot of things involved in this job. It’s a very different position than being an assistant.” Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, the Royals continued to bolster a pitching staff that desperately needs bolstering, signing Seth Lugo to a three-year, $45 million deal, and Chris Stratton to a one-year, $4 million pact. After signing left-hander Will Smith over the weekend and infielder Garrett Hampson in late November, the Royals have been among this offseason’s most active teams on the free-agent market. With Lugo, the club has made its fourth-largest financial commitment to a free agent in franchise history, and the largest since signing Alex Gordon and Ian Kennedy to the two biggest contracts in franchise history after winning the World Series in 2015.

That Lugo will be made one of the richest Royals ever says more about the market size and the finances of the club than it does about his value, but he makes for a nice add for a team who came out of 2023 with a lot more questions (Jordan Lyles? Brady Singer? Daniel Lynch IV?) than answers (Cole Ragans!) in the starting rotation. Kansas City identified a target in a crowded starting pitching market and went after him with an aggressive offer, and they’ve landed our 22nd-ranked free agent of the winter. Stratton, meanwhile, gives them another veteran in the bullpen at a modest cost. Read the rest of this entry »

So, so, so much digital ink has already been spilled writing about Shohei Ohtani’s groundbreaking, $700 million contract. It’s a sign of baseball’s new era. Maybe it’s an accounting gimmick. Did he sell himself short? Did he set a new high bar? Is he giving the Dodgers a loan, or an unfair competitive advantage? Is the competitive balance tax broken?

I don’t really think it’s any of those things, as you can probably tell from the fact that I included them in my opening paragraph, and in rapid succession at that. In fact, I don’t have much of an opinion about what this contract “means.” I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to figure out how baseball works based on a unicorn, basically. You’d do just as well trying to figure out how countries work by looking at Singapore, or how weather works by looking at a tornado.

That said, boy do I love numbers, and I especially love goofing around with them. I really enjoyed Jon Becker’s CBT explainer, as well as Rob Mains’s look at deferrals and tax regimes. One thing that I feel very strongly about is that treating this as either Ohtani getting fleeced by the Dodgers or him and the team pulling a fast one on the entire league is misunderstanding the situation. Read the rest of this entry »

Last winter, Mets prospect Ronny Mauricio took the Dominican Winter League by storm, slashing .287/.335/.468 for Los Tigres del Licey and earning MVP honors. The 22-year-old was off to an even better start in the 2023–24 season, batting .433 with four extra-base hits in seven games, but all that ground to a halt on Monday. Facing rivals Las Águilas Cibaeñas, Mauricio attempted to steal second, but when he tried to make a sudden stop, his right leg buckled. On Tuesday, SNY’s Andy Martino reported that the injury is a torn anterior cruciate ligament. Although the Mets won’t put a timetable on his return until after he undergoes surgery, even the most aggressive rehab schedule would have him missing at least the first half of the season before getting his legs back under him in the minors. It’s grim news for a young player who was primed to get his first real shot at breaking camp with the big club. Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest domino of the offseason has fallen. Shohei Ohtani is the newest member of the Dodgers, and the discourse surrounding the unique nature of his contract could be enough to last the entire offseason. But for teams, the floodgates are now open to throw the money earmarked for Ohtani elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I don’t have Cody Bellinger or Yoshinobu Yamamoto news to report; it’s only been three days, after all. But the weekend did bring a couple more reliever signings, this time at least slightly more impactful than the wave of minor league and split contracts that characterized the early offseason.

Royals sign Will Smith to one-year, $5 million deal

Smith has been a solidly good, sometimes great reliever for a decade now, but his biggest claim to fame (aside from his name) is that he’s won rings in each of the past three World Series, each with a different club. His talents took him from Atlanta to Houston to Arlington, celebrating a championship in each city before promptly leaving for a new destination. His latest stop is a return home of sorts; Smith made his big league debut with the Royals back in 2012 as a starter, before being moved to the bullpen the next year and immediately taking off.

Smith has consistently found himself near the top of the league in strikeout rate thanks to his plus slider, which he threw nearly as much as his fastball before it was cool to do so. But he isn’t the pitcher he used to be before crossing the wrong side of 30, and his days as one of baseball’s premier late-inning arms are coming to an end. Read the rest of this entry »

By now, you’ve probably heard that Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million contract will pay him through 2043, with Ohtani deferring an unprecedented $680 million (over 97% of his contract). The structure calls for Ohtani to earn just $2 million each year of the contract, and then $68 million a year for the 10 years following the deal.

Ohtani will inarguably be taking home $700 million via this deal, and I disagree with the notion that the contract should be described as anything other than that big number from a bottom-line perspective. But what matters, especially with regards to the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT), is the present value of the contract.

Article XXIII of the CBA concerns the CBT, and the key component for determining payrolls for CBT purposes is the average annual value (AAV) of contracts. If Ohtani’s contract didn’t contain any deferrals, his AAV would be $70 million, calculated by simply dividing $700 million by the 10 years of his contract. Where things get complicated is with deferrals. When money is deferred in a contract, the value of that money depreciates over time, and it is the depreciated value of the contract that is used as the numerator, or replacement for the $700 million, in the AAV calculation. Ohtani’s deferrals will be paid without interest, which is key for depreciating the value of the payment; interest would have increased the present value of the contract, and as such, the AAV and corresponding CBT hit. Read the rest of this entry »

Dasan Brown exudes energy, athleticism, and defensive acumen in the outfield. Drafted 88th overall in 2019 — two picks in front of Spencer Steer and 10 in front of Michael Harris II — the 22-year-old Oakville, Ontario, Canada native is coming off of a disappointing season with the stick. In 463 plate appearances with High-A Vancouver, the left-handed speedster slashed just .218/.309/.315 with seven home runs and a 74 wRC+. He did fare better in the Arizona Fall League; flashing more of his potential, he batted a solid .274 with a .342 OBP. Between the regular season and his Surprise Saguaros stint, he swiped 30 bags.

Brown, who is ranked 23rd on our 2024 Blue Jays list with a 40 FV, discussed his skill set following the AFL’s Fall Stars Game.

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David Laurila: Defense is your strong suit. Is that accurate?

Dasan Brown: “Yeah. I mean, that’s what’s come most naturally to me. As a kid, I just wanted to go get baseballs. As I got older, I learned the skill part of it. I’ve gotten some good coaching here and there, but overall it’s just an instinct. It’s trusting myself out there. I kind of have fun with it. I see the ball up in the air and go get it.” Read the rest of this entry »

Before the high-tide news of Shohei Ohtani’s free agency decision washed it away like a sandcastle on the beach, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts made some waves with his comments to the media during the Winter Meetings. While his breaking of the omerta regarding the team’s pursuit of Ohtani received most of the attention — in part because the rest of the narrative pickings out of Nashville were so slim — Roberts divulged the team’s plans regarding their middle infield situation by announcing that Mookie Betts would be a full-time second baseman in 2024. This came on the heels of GM Brandon Gomes stating that the Dodgers plan for former top prospect Gavin Lux to be their everyday shortstop.

Betts, who turned 31 on October 7, is fresh off an MVP-caliber season in which he set a career high with 39 homers, posted a 163 wRC+ (his highest since his 2018 AL MVP-wining campaign) and finished tied with Ronald Acuña Jr. for the major league lead with 8.3 WAR. Betts also split his time between right field, where he’s won six Gold Gloves (most recently in 2022) and the middle infield. His foray onto the dirt came about because Lux, whom the team planned to shift from second base to shortstop last year in the wake of Trea Turner’s departure, tore his right ACL in late February. Amid a winter of cost-cutting, Lux’s move to shortstop left second base in the hands of 23-year-old rookie Miguel Vargas, with Max Muncy moving to third base to replace the departed Justin Turner, and Chris Taylor in the outfield mix after Cody Bellinger was non-tendered. Lux’s injury left Taylor and light-hitting veteran Miguel Rojas the most viable shortstop options.

Betts mainly played second base in the minors, but in Boston he was blocked by Dustin Pedroia, hence the move to right field. Even filling in for Pedroia after he suffered a season-ending injury in 2014 (Betts’ abbreviated rookie campaign) and spotting there occasionally in subsequent years, he made just 30 major league appearances at the keystone before 2023, including 25 starts; he had seven of the former and five of the latter in both 2021 and ’22 with the Dodgers. In 2023, Roberts quickly put him into the mix, and the rejuvenation of Jason Heyward — whom the team signed to a minor-league deal after he was released by the Cubs with one year to go on his eight-year, $184 million contract — gave the Dodgers some additional flexibility. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Melvin feels that the San Francisco Giants could use more star power. Hearing the team’s new manager say as much when he met with the media in Nashville earlier this week prompted a question from yours truly. Prefacing it by pointing out that the San Diego Padres team he led last year had no shortage of it, I asked the veteran skipper if it is possible to have too much “star power.”

“Not necessarily,” replied Melvin, whose 2023 Padres underachieved to the tune of an 82-80 record. “It just depends on the makeup. Look, the year before we went to the NLCS in my first year there. Last year was a disappointing season, but I don’t think there’s anything to make of it being a poor year because there was too much star power. They have some really good players there, it just didn’t work out as well.

“I am big on incorporating,” Melvin added. “I think everybody needs a role and everybody needs to feel they’re a part of it. That makes for a much better clubhouse. Everybody feels they’re important. There’s an enthusiasm to that. I think there’s a place for both.”

Scott Harris largely agrees with Melvin. When the subject of impact free agents such as Shohei Ohtani came up, I asked Detroit’s President of Baseball Operations the same question that I’d asked his San Francisco contemporary. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, I took a long look at the predictive power of rookie exit velocity. One of the things I learned was that for rookies with at least 200 balls in play, wRC+ was less predictive of their future performance than max exit velocity. That blew my mind. Knowing just one measurement, the velocity of a player’s hardest-hit ball, was more useful than knowing about their overall performance through their entire rookie season. Exit velocity matters a lot, as does how you interpret the data.

Since the rollout of Statcast in 2015, we’ve been introduced to three general ways of thinking about exit velocity, along with half a dozen individual variations. Depending on the context, we might read about a player’s average exit velocity, their maximum exit velocity, their hard-hit rate, or any number of exit velocity percentiles. For a while now, I’ve been wondering which one of these methods is most useful. Could there be one exit velocity metric to rule them all?

I have to imagine that at some point in the last several years, the R&D department of each major league team has asked itself that exact same question. In each big league city, someone much smarter than I am did the math and wrote up the results in a report that now rests comfortably in a proprietary database with a catchy name. The rest of us just have to make do with rumors and innuendo suggesting that teams most often value something akin to 90th-percentile exit velocity. To my knowledge, no one in the public sphere has made a comprehensive survey, and I wanted to look into the matter for myself. Read the rest of this entry »