Archive for Daily Graphings

Last spring, Mike Trout, Jason Kipnis, Starling Marte, Jedd Gyorko, Matt Carpenter, Yan Gomes, and Andrelton Simmons all received contract extensions buying out free agent years before they had even hit arbitration. The spring before last Anthony Rizzo, Paul Goldschmidt, and Allen Craig signed similar deals. The deals ranged from Gomes’ $23 million guarantee to Mike Trout’s $144.5 million deal. As players file into camp and prove their health, more extensions are likely on the way.

The recent pitcher contract extensions tend to pay more for potential, but on the position player side, present production is more prominent. Of the players signed to extensions in the last two springs, every player had already shown himself to be at least above average, if not an All-Star quality level player. Here are the players who have signed the past two springs as well as statistics for the season prior to signing the extension.

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Have you seen Odrisamer Despaigne’s strange crossed-finger grip? I noticed a while ago and wrote about it, and then went on television talking about it, and then was quoted by a colleague, all the while saying that this grip was his changeup grip. It had to be the changeup because I thought I heard that it was and what other pitch could be so weird, and since his change was so strange by movement, it all made sense.

Well, I was wrong. And there’s video proof that I was wrong, all embeddable, searchable, and posterized for posterity too.

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We’ve all seen it in various TV shows or movies; the main character is sitting on the floor of some room, surrounded by various pieces of hardware after being challenged to assemble some piece of furniture from vague and unhelpful instructions. And then, usually after a cutaway or some kind of time-lapse, we see the proud main character standing next to the completed product, showing off the fruit of his labor to some secondary character, who then rains on his parade by pointing out that while the product looks nice, there are a few leftover pieces that he somehow managed to exclude from the build.

That’s kind of what this Dodgers team feels like at the moment. On paper, this team could be very good, especially if Joc Pederson takes over as the regular center fielder and hits as well as the projections think he might. At that point, you have Carl Crawford and Yasiel Puig in the corners, with an infield of Yasmani Grandal, Adrian Gonzalez, Howie Kendrick, Jimmy Rollins, and Juan Uribe. That group gives them above average projections at every position, the kind of strong supporting cast that can help one of baseball’s best rotations go after the NL West title. So that group looks pretty good.

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Lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel turned some heads when he ranked Ozhaino Albies — a 5-foot-9, 17-year-old shortstop — as the top prospect in the Atlanta Braves minor league system. Albies was on the prospect radar prior to Kiley’s ranking, but slotted much lower on most organizational prospect lists this winter. Keith Law, John Sickels, Baseball America, and Baseball Prospectus ranked him 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th respectively. Here’s what Kiley had to say about Albies and his ranking.

Some scouts are already throwing 60’s on Albies hit tool after a huge pro debut, where he hit .364/.446/.444 in 239 plate appearances over two Rookie ball levels with 22 stolen bases and more walks than strikeouts. He continued his assault by impressing the more heavily-scouted instructional league and every scout that has seen him told me they can’t argue with this ranking.

Power isn’t a big part of game and likely will never be, but he does everything else so well at such a young age, that no one seems to care. He has excellent feel for the stike zone and the bat head, plenty of bat speed, knowledge of when to use his gap power and when to keep the ball on the ground, along with easy plus speed and plus everything on the defensive side, enough to comfortably project to stay at the position.  There has to be universal praise for me to go this high on a guy this young and this small that I’ve never seen before, but I think I’ll have him first on this list next year, so I feel fine getting ahead of the crowd now.

Kiley’s definitely the high guy on Albies right now, but KATOH — my prospect projection system — might be even higher. Setting the minimum to 200 plate appearances, the KATOH leaderboard for hitters based on the 2014 season reads thusly. Read the rest of this entry »

As we anticipate the start of the 2015 Major League Baseball season, we begin to speculate about player performance in the upcoming season. While most players are somewhat consistent year-to-year, there are some who have either breakout years or terrible seasons. These extreme years are a confluence of events throughout the season such as player health, skills peaking, and luck — which can be partially captured by BABIP.

To find the seasons with the greatest offensive output changes, I calculated year-to-year changes for players from 2000-2014 in a handful of offensive statistics: WAR, OPS, BABIP, and HR. Since playing time can fluctuate because of injury or being a rookie, I eliminated comparisons of seasons that a player had a high discrepancy in plate appearances.

To visually compare the seasons, I used slope graphs to show the year-to-year changes in the various statistics. Each graph is limited to players in the sample who had the largest changes in both the positive and negative directions. The left end of the line represents the player’s statistic in one year with the right end of the line representing the following year. A steeper the slope indicates the largest change between two years.
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The FIP statistic was created because of the inherent shortcomings of ERA; so much that was reflected in the traditional pitchers’ statistic was totally out of their control, and the new metric credited and debited hurlers for that which they did. As it turns out, FIP isn’t perfect either, as not all types of batted-ball contract are created equal. Still, FIP is preferable to ERA in just about every way imaginable, and is a much better anchor upon which to base pitcher evaluations. In any given year, however, there are pitchers who are much better (or worse) than both their ERA and FIP, once you adjust for quality of batted ball contact allowed.

A couple weeks back, we looked at Jake Odorizzi and Drew Hutchison, two pitchers who were much better than both their ERA and FIP in 2014. Today, let’s look at the two ERA-qualifying NL starters who were most significantly worse than both their ERA and FIP in 2014: Cole Hamels and Henderson Alvarez. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, and welcome to something we’ve already done. Two months ago, I asked you what you thought of the American League team projections, then I followed that up by asking you what you thought of the National League team projections. Shortly thereafter, I analyzed all the results, and, what fun we had. What number of things we learned, about ourselves and one another.

I had an idea then I’d be re-doing the same project. Max Scherzer, for example, was still a free agent at that point. Same with James Shields. There have been trades and injuries. There’s been some added roster clarity. There’ve been a couple months of critical thought. And, very importantly, our projections page now includes ZiPS, in a 50/50 blend with Steamer. Previously, everything was based on Steamer and Steamer alone, and I know some of you have very strong opinions about that. Now Steamer’s been balanced, and our numbers reflect the new inputs.

So now I’m curious where you stand — even more curious than I was at the end of December. These are the current projected standings. They’re based on two projection systems and on the depth charts maintained by a group of FanGraphs authors. You can navigate to all the individual depth charts here, and while there will surely be injuries and while there will surely be waiver claims, it’s unlikely the league landscape changes significantly before Opening Day. So how do you feel about your favorite team’s projection? Does it seem right on, a little off, or somehow outlandish? There are polls, so many polls, embedded below, just begging for your participation, but hopefully I have made this post pretty easy to follow. Even though this time around I’ve combined both leagues into one huge polling maelstrom, if you get overwhelmed, I think it’s your own fault.

I’ll analyze the results before very long. There will only be results if you guys help me out! Do that, please. Participation was awesome the last time around. I’m hoping for a repeat.

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We all know Pedro Alvarez had a pretty rough year in 2014, as he hit just 18 home runs, half of his total of 36 in 2013. That was almost the whole story, as hitting home runs (usually impressive, towering ones) is what Pedro Alvarez does well. Unfortunately, he happened to time the failure of the thing he does well with the continued failure of the thing he has never done well — making ignominious throwing errors at third base — thereby forcing the playoff-bound Pirates to take his glove out of the infield (and bat out of the lineup) by platooning him toward the end of the year.

What is less publicized is that Alvarez made some plate discipline strides last year, posting career-best walk and strikeout rates (10.1% and 25.4%, respectively), so 2014 wasn’t all bad. In fact, if you were an extremely optimistic person, you might say that 2014 was an important year for El Toro, as he seemed to make adjustments to improve the glaring holes in his plate approach. However, entering his age-28 season in 2015, a realist would say Alvarez is now facing a crucial test: given his defensive shortcomings and struggles against left-handed pitching, the prospects of a bounce-back campaign at the plate aren’t just a nice expectation, they’re now more of a necessity.

With Ike Davis out of the picture, the Pirates’ plan is to have Alvarez play first base, getting his bat back in the lineup and allowing him to almost never have to throw the ball – though you get the sense his leash as a starter might not be all that long. Let’s look into what was behind Alvarez’ power decline in 2014, and if his plate discipline improvements will help drive a return to form.

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It’s a fascinating and volatile starting rotation in New York. CC Sabathia’s been awesome before, but he’s got injury questions. Same goes for Masahiro Tanaka. Same goes for Michael Pineda. Same, to some extent, goes for Ivan Nova. Nathan Eovaldi has fewer of the injury questions. Just last year he was an out shy of 200 innings. But Eovaldi’s still trying to get close to his ceiling. The upside for the other guys comes from their health. Eovaldi’s upside is somewhere in his arm.

And the Yankees, and Larry Rothschild, are committed to bringing that upside out into daylight. The current mission: polish Eovaldi’s third strikeout pitch. Before I get any deeper, I’d like to acknowledge Matt Tobin, who got me back thinking about Eovaldi in the first place. I want to talk some about the stuff we know he has, and I want to talk some about the pitch he might soon have. It’s the pitch that, very sincerely, might make all the difference.

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Contract extensions for younger players have been on the rise in recent years. Over the past three springs, 38 players with under six years of service have signed extensions buying out free agent years. Twenty-four of those 38 contract extensions were signed by players who had yet to reach arbitration. Eight contract extensions have gone to starting pitchers and seven out of those eight pitchers had not reached arbitration, with Homer Bailey as the lone exception.

Here are the extensions given to pre-arbitration eligible pitchers over the last three springs, with Julio Teheran’s Valentine’s Day deal included as well, from MLB Trade Rumors.
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