Clubs rebuild. It’s a part of the process. Just look at what’s happening in Oakland right now. Every year, franchises begin rebuilds, continue rebuilds and occasionally start them all over again when the first one sinks into the swamp.

Rebuilds take patience. They can be exciting, and they can be frustrating. Those feelings are not mutually exclusive, in this case. The start of a rebuild can be exciting, because it ushers what is oftentimes a much-needed change in direction. There are typically big transactions that occur at the start of a rebuild, and big transactions are exciting.

The middle part of the rebuild sucks, and is the frustrating part. For several years, the on-field major league product is bad, and watching bad teams isn’t fun. The hopes of the team lie in minor league prospects, and minor league prospects don’t always pan out. When they don’t pan out is when the rebuild starts all over again, and that’s the worst kind of rebuild.

But as exciting as the beginning of a rebuild can be, nothing tops the realization of a successful rebuild and the expectation of imminent success that looms. Years of patience are awarded by the arrival of top prospects reaching their potential, coupled with a couple of marquee additions to compliment the shiny budding plants that are the homegrown prospects. The successful rebuild culminates with the flip of a switch, seemingly overnight, from “rebuild” mode to “contend.” It’s as liberating a switch as there is to be flipped as a front office executive of a major league franchise, and it’s a switch the Cubs are flipping as we speak.
Read the rest of this entry »

Are the White Sox going For It? A move like signing Adam LaRoche to a two-year deal might have looked like advanced place-holding with a chance of contention, but signing a reliever (Zach Duke) to a long-term deal (three years!) sends a slightly different message, especially when examined together.

Adding Jeff Samaradzija looks entirely different. Trading a solid prospect like Marcus Semien for an upper-middle class rotation stalwart just one year from free agency suggests the White Sox have designs on something greater than just existing in 2015. Signing a high-priced closer like David Robertson to a long term deal? That’s an act of aggression, a shot across the rest of their division’s bow and signal of intent to all Wild card comers. They didn’t just add a closer, they added one of the better relief pitchers in baseball, a valuable strikeout machine who looks like he can survive when his fastballs wanes.

Adding more good players? That’s a recipe for a good team. But is it enough?

Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox deal for Jeff Samardzija still hasn’t been officially announced, but everyone is acting as if it’s a done deal. Kenny Williams is openly talking about trying to sign Samardzija to an extension, and at this point, it seems like an announcement could easily come before I finish writing this post. The deal is expected to be centered around infielder Marcus Semien, with a couple of prospects heading to Oakland as well.

Update: the official deal is Samardzija and Michael Ynoa for Semien, Chris Bassitt, Josh Phegley, Rangel Ravelo.

As has often been the case when a premium player gets traded lately, the perception of the deal seems to be slanted towards the buyer of the trade. Jeff Samardzija is really good, and while he’s only under control for one more year, it’s one cheap year with an exclusive chance to sign him long term. Or, failing that, the right to make him a qualifying offer at the end of the season and get a draft pick if he leaves via free agency.

And realistically, with starting pitchers, fewer years of team control can actually be described as fewer years of risk, and can actually be a feature rather than a bug. The White Sox might only be trading for Samardzija’s 2015 season, but the flip side of that coin is they’re not on the hook for his 2016-2021 seasons if he blows out his elbow. For franchises that have been burned by giving out big contracts to starting pitchers, Samardzija represented something like the best of both worlds.

And yet, at the same time that multiple teams were falling all over themselves to give Jon Lester $150 million, Samardzija was traded primarily for a lower ceiling middle infielder who was seen as a back-end Top 100 prospect at best, and has probably seen his stock fall a little bit with inconsistent MLB performance since. Marcus Semien and some stuff is not exactly an overwhelming return, and certainly seems to be less than what the Phillies are seeking in return for Cole Hamels, for instance. So, did we overrate Samardzija’s trade value, or did the A’s make a bad deal here?

The easy answer to that question is to just look at what Samardzija cost the A’s to acquire a few months ago and decide that the A’s didn’t get enough in return. After all, the same pitcher cost them Addison Russell in July, and Marcus Semien is no Addison Russell. But while Jeff Samardzija himself hasn’t changed in the last few months, his trade value has taken a nosedive, because instead of buying two playoff runs, the White Sox are only buying one. Additionally, they’re buying Samardzija in a market where teams have a plethora of alternatives, while the A’s bought Samardzija when there weren’t any quality free agents to sign.

Back in August, I looked at the cost of buying wins at the trade deadline, and my back-of-the-envelope calculations suggested that prices may be as high as double what they were the previous winter. Samardzija himself is both less valuable now than he was in July, and the market price for acquiring talent is less than it is at midseason, so we can’t simply say that the A’s should have gotten a similar return to what they gave up few months ago.

So let’s try to quantify what Samardzija’s trade value might actually have been. Given the prices being floated for Lester, it seems that the going rate for an elite starting pitcher is probably in the $8 million to $9 million per win range. Samardzija conservatively projects as a +3 WAR pitcher for 2015, though you could argue for something closer to +4 WAR if you buy into his 2014 performance as legitimate improvement rather than career year. What’s the market rate for one year of a pitcher at this level? Those price estimates would suggest something in the range of $25 to $35 million on a one year deal; the latter seems more realistic, given what Lester’s about to sign for.

And that doesn’t even include the value of the qualifying offer, which adds another $5 to $15 million in value, depending on how aggressively you value draft picks. That leaves us with a combined value of somewhere in the range of $30 to $50 million. Let’s split the difference and just call it $40 million. We don’t see those kinds of salaries because teams would rather borrow from the future than hit up their owners for that kind of cash on a one year outlay, but given the amount of money in the game and the lack of risk that a one year deal brings, it’s a justifiable salary.

Samardzija is actually due $9-$10 million for 2015, so he brought about $30 million in additional value to the table. That’s a lot, certainly, but we can be fairly certain that teams value their elite prospects at more than that amount. The rumored price tag for Yoan Moncada, for instance, is in the $60-$80 million range, and that’s with all the extra risk that comes with evaluating an international player who hasn’t played in the states yet. The best prospects currently in the minors probably have a market value north of $100 million at this point.

So Samardzija wasn’t bringing back Addison Russell, or anything close to it. Not in the winter, when free agent alternatives exist, and not with just one playoff run left. So is Marcus Semien worth anything close to $30 million by himself? Maybe.

If you think he’s a league average second baseman right now, as Steamer projects him to be, then it’s actually a pretty easy argument to make. After all, Yasmany Tomas — who seems to project as roughly a league average outfielder — just got $68 million in guaranteed money from the Diamondbacks, and that contract included a fourth-year opt-out, so if he hits his upside, it really turns into $36 million for four years and then the D’Backs lose him to free agency. Semien’s skillset won’t be valued the same as Tomas’ right-handed power, but we have a very recent example of a team betting big on a 24 year old with no big league track record who doesn’t project as a superstar.

And while Semien’s skills may be valued less than Tomas’ skills, the contract terms are certainly far more favorable. Essentially, Semien is signed to a one year, $500,000 contract with five team options beyond that. If he plays well and they keep him through all five arbitration years, he’s probably going to make somewhere in the range of $20 to $30 million through his team controlled years, so to be worth $30 million in value above his paychecks, he’d have to be worth $50 to $60 million over those six years.

$10 million per year currently buys you Jason Hammel, Billy Butler, Nick Markakis, or Andrew Miller. Each of those four project for something like +1 to +2 WAR players in 2015, and each project to get worse as their contracts go forward. Is it unreasonable to expect Semien to be better than any of those four in 2015, or to improve as he reaches his prime? Steamer thinks he’s likely a +2 WAR player for 2015, on par or better than Asdrubal Cabrera, who the crowd projected for $33 million over three years. If an aging Cabrera is worth 3/$33M, is it really absurd to suggest that Semien would have a market value of 6/$50M?

As I noted in the piece about star player trade value last week, it seems like there’s currently a disconnect between the public and the teams themselves about the value of mid-level talents. If you think it’s an easy task to find capable +1 to +2 WAR players who can fill holes and perform reasonably well, then this trade makes no sense, because Marcus Semien would have little value. But Major League teams clearly do not think that it’s easy to find above-replacement-level pieces, because they’re paying a mint to get low-upside role players this winter.

Marcus Semien and some stuff feels like a light return for Jeff Samardzija, just like Drew Smyly and Nick Franklin felt like a light return for David Price, and Martin Prado and stuff felt like a light return for Justin Upton. At some point, we need to stop expecting the market value of very good players on short-term deals to be elite talents who could turn into superstars. Instead, it appears that the market value of these kinds of players is lower-ceiling, big league ready players who look like they could perform at roughly a league average level for multiple low cost years.

That kind of production might not be as sexy, but getting the equivalent performance of a $10 million player for the league minimum has legitimate value. Marcus Semien might not ever turn into anything more than just a nice little second baseman, but nice little second baseman aren’t so easy or cheap to acquire as we might think. As another trade piles up suggesting that this is what teams can expect in return for short-term frontline starters, we probably need to calibrate our expectations accordingly.

Jeff Samardzija is very good and very valuable. Marcus Semien is less good, but maybe not that much less valuable.

Matt Kemp was an atrocious center fielder. There’s really no way around that. Of the 60 center fielders with at least 6,000 innings played since 2002, only the decline years of Ken Griffey, Jr. and Bernie Williams show up as being worse. His 2010 is the single worst DRS ranking of any player season we have on record dating back to 2008. We generally use Rafael Palmeiro’s 1999 Gold Glove in a season where he played only 28 games in the field as the paragon of atrocious award choices, but it could have just as easily been Kemp winning not one but two such awards.

That was true before the endless run of injuries — notably multiple hamstring pulls, a severely injured ankle and a badly damaged shoulder — that sidetracked his career, and it’s even more true now. At 30, with years of injuries behind him and speed that isn’t what it once was, Kemp can no longer outrun his mistakes and questionable instincts in center. You know that. We know that. The Dodgers know that, having forced him out of center in the middle of a May road trip when the immediate alternatives were no better than Andre Ethier and Scott Van Slyke. Kemp himself might not know that, having made noises he wanted to return to center, but Jeff did a wonderful job here back in July explaining just why that was such a bad idea. Whether or not the Dodgers trade him or hang on to him, it seems all but certain that Kemp will never be a regular center fielder again.

Now Kemp is a corner outfielder, and that’s opened up some new questions, issues that are particularly relevant as the Dodgers field endless trade discussions this winter. They have to weigh the positive and negatives between the facts that he’s still owed $107 million, that the team has a well-known outfield glut, that Hanley Ramirez has taken part of the Dodger offense with him to Boston, that second-half adjustments made him one of the best hitters in the game down the stretch… and that by the metrics, he’s not seen as being a good corner outfielder, either.

That’s an important distinction, because as teams try to figure out how much to weight his hot second half and year of full health against his future projections, what he can offer on defense plays a big part in that. There’s a big reason that his very good 140 wRC+ in 2014 led to only a 1.8 WAR, because it was weighed down by 1,195 innings of awful defense. Now we have a question to attack — how much of Kemp’s awful rating was because of his time in center, a position he’ll never play? How much of his lousy rating in the corners can we rely on because of sample size? Is he just a DH with a glove, or is he worse because teams will actually let him play the outfield rather than forcing him to DH?

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Winter Meetings time, so that means the ratio of rumors to actual stuff happening is exponentially high. Some modestly sized moves have happened, however, and the possibility of something really big is in the air. The one big shoe that could drop at any given moment is the signing of lefty Jon Lester, most likely by one of four primary suitors: the Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers or Giants. Where might he head, how might that destination treat him, how much money might he earn, and how wise of an investment might that be? Let’s answer those somewhat loaded questions as best we can. Read the rest of this entry »

It would appear that, today or tomorrow, Jon Lester will decide where he’s going to pitch, and that move will set a whole lot of others in motion. One way or the other, the Red Sox will gain some clarity. The Cubs will gain some clarity, and the Giants will gain some clarity, and other teams unrelated to the pursuit will also gain some clarity. Lester will cause an already active market to accelerate, and what’s interesting about that is that Lester isn’t even the best pitcher available. Unless he is, which, well, let’s get into this.

Last year, Lester and Max Scherzer was basically even. Lester was perhaps even a little better, but when you factor in the uncertainty that’s always there, both of them were right around six-win pitchers. That tells you one thing. Looking at a longer track record tells you another thing. Over a three-year period, Scherzer’s been superior. The margin’s not even that close. This is one of the reasons Phillies fans believe that Cole Hamels has significant trade value — they don’t see him as being worse than Lester. Last year was an important one for Jon Lester, and the result is he’s going to earn a lot more money than he would’ve otherwise, but the big pressing question is, how much did last year mean, relative to the previous years?

Read the rest of this entry »

With the Winter Meetings officially underway, the Cleveland Indians wasted no time making a splash, acquiring first baseman/outfielder Brandon Moss from the Athletics in exchange for second base prospect Joey Wendle, the team announced Monday afternoon.

We’ve already got a couple Moss pieces up on the site, which I suggest you read. Dave Cameron compared Moss’ offensive production over the last three years favorably to Matt Kemp, and Eno Sarris speculated what kind of fantasy production Moss could bring with his move to Cleveland.

As for the logistics of the trade itself, it’s interesting. The deal was first rumored as early as last Wednesday, but took nearly a week to complete, despite it being a one-for-one trade. This makes some sense, given the recent history of the players involved. Let’s analyze this move from the Indians perspective by breaking it down into five pieces.
Read the rest of this entry »

You might have heard offense is down around baseball. There’s talk of new rules to stop the shift, as if that was the cause. But maybe the game will police itself without help from the rules committee. It looks like there’s already some batters that shouldn’t be shifted as much as they are currently.

First, it seems strange to blame the shift for the current state of run scoring, even if you ignore that it’s been around for a long time. Here’s a handy little chart showing the batting average on balls in play since free agency began. There have been more shifts, as the number of players shifted 100+ times has gone from 15 to 44 from 2013 to 2014 alone. But it doesn’t look like more shifts have moved the overall BABIP needle at all.

BABIP used to live in the .280s until the mid nineties. Since then, it’s been within a few points of .300 most years. You’d think shifting would catch a few more of those balls in play as they’ve become more prevalent.

You might think we’ll take the easy way out here, and say that we should stop shifting the guys that are hitting well into the shift. But only three players — David Ortiz, Ryan Howard, and Brian McCann — were shifted as much as 300 times. If we focus on their results (Ortiz had a BABIP that was 100 points higher when the shift was on), we’re basically looking at the fate of a few bouncing balls in what amounts to one half-season of at-bats.

So no mention — other than in passing — of the fact that Matt Adams led baseball in shift BABIP (.374) or that Victor Martinez was top-five in that department (.332).

Let’s instead identify the type of hitter that we would not want to shift against. Beyond just “goes the opposite way.”

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Chili Davis is now the hitting coach in Boston. Josh Donaldson is now a Blue Jay. For the past three seasons they were together in Oakland, where they didn’t always see eye-to-eye.

Davis is a note-taker. He logs how his hitters are being pitched to, as well any bad habits they might be getting into. He also logs conversations. If Davis sees a player getting away from what he does well, he can reference his notebook and address the situation from there. There was a certain amount of push-back when he approached the club’s all-star third baseman.

“Donaldson was stubborn,” Davis told me earlier this week. ‘Donaldson was, ‘This is how I do things.’ And that’s fine if you’re swinging it good. But if you’re not swinging good, and not implementing what you told me you like to do, I need to bring you back to when you were doing things right.

“Donaldson, at times, would say things that contradict how I think. I’m not saying he’s wrong – that’s just how he thinks – but I had to adjust to that.”

According to Davis, Donaldson’s mechanics – he utilizes a leg kick – require “more rhythm and sync” and can “get violent at times, too aggressive.” He said Donaldson needed to focus on being under control, and not jumpy.

Davis made clear that while Donaldson could be stubborn, he wasn’t inflexible. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s an awful lot you can learn from the way that a player gets pitched. Often, you could just look at the player’s statistics, I suppose, but let’s make believe we live in a world without publicly-accessible performance statistics. All right, so, now we’re imagining. Last year, no regular player saw a higher rate of fastballs than Ben Revere. Why would that be? No regular player saw a lower rate of fastballs than Josh Hamilton. Why would that be? First basemen saw far, far fewer fastballs than American League pitchers. If all we had was this information, we could still interpret it, figuring out clues as to how the hitters are perceived.

Of course, it’s not just about fastball rate. You can look at fastballs, or you can look at pitches in the zone, or you can look at types of pitches in particular parts of the zone — there’s a lot you can examine. Players get pitched according to the scouting reports that teams have on those players, and since we can’t look at those scouting reports, we can use the information we have to examine them indirectly.

One thing you can do is look at a guy’s pitch patterns. Yet another powerful indicator of something can be a change in a guy’s pitch patterns. What that would suggest is a change in a guy’s ability level or approach. Yasiel Puig, for example, was pitched differently in 2014 from how he was pitched as a rookie. That’s because Puig evidently corrected a weakness against inside fastballs. If we look at drop in rate of fastballs seen, no hitter saw a bigger drop between 2013 and 2014 than J.D. Martinez. There’s a pretty simple explanation: Martinez changed his swing mechanics and became an out-of-nowhere slugger. So pitchers found themselves having to be more careful.

At the other end, Mike Trout saw an increase in his fastball rate. Opponents tried to seize a perceived weakness against high heat. Allen Craig saw an increase in his fastball rate. Opponents identified that he was missing bat speed and couldn’t get around on hard pitches in. And yet, of all the players, no one saw a bigger year-to-year fastball-rate increase than Hanley Ramirez. Ramirez was productive, and Ramirez just signed a big contract with the Red Sox, but clearly, pitchers saw him differently in the season recently completed.

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.