Play the player-profile game every day this week at 1:00pm ET. We’re giving away a free annual subscription to FanGraphs+ to the first reader who guesses correctly the identity of that day’s mystery player. (Limit one copy per customer).

As the absurdly coiffed Eno Sarris announced this morning, the newest iteration of FanGraphs+ is now available in exchange for your hard-earned money — and any other kind of money, too.

As in recent years, we’re celebrating this important Moment in History by way of the player-profile game.

Said game is easy: the author offers the text of an actual player profile from the newest iteration of FG+, being careful to omit any proper names that might reveal the identity of the player in question. The reader, in turn, attempts to identify the player using only the details provided in the profile.

First reader to guess correctly (in the comments section below) gets a free annual subscription to FanGraphs+, worth roughly the equivalent of Alec Baldwin’s watch in Glengarry Glen Ross.

Today’s entry comes to us courtesy Mike Petriello.

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The Diamondbacks signed Bronson Arroyo to a two year, $23.5 million contract on Friday, and predictably, response from the statistical community wasn’t that positive, especially with Paul Maholm signing for just $1.5 million in guaranteed money with the Dodgers earlier in the afternoon. Jeff already wrote up the pros and cons of Bronson Arroyo’s deal this morning, which I’m essentially in agreement with, so feel free to read that if you’re just looking for a summary of the deal. However, there’s another aspect to Arroyo that I think is worth mentioning, especially considering that he’s changing divisions.

Arroyo has really large platoon splits; some of the largest in the game, in fact. Over the last three years, he’s held RHBs to a .290 wOBA, much better than the league average, but LHBs have put up a .374 wOBA against him, making him one of the worst regular starting pitchers in baseball against left-handed bats. Among right-handed pitchers who have faced least 1,500 total batters over the last three years, only Jason Marquis (.389 wOBA) has been worse against left-handed bats. Including LHPs (which brings in the disastrous Ricky Romero), Arroyo ranks 106th out of 108 starters in wOBA vs LHBs since the start of the 2011 season. It’s a pretty big flaw.

Now, it’s not that uncommon for a pitcher to strongly favor pitching to same-handed hitters, and he’s hardly the only starter with a big platoon split. Gavin Floyd and Justin Masterson actually have bigger ratios between their wOBAs against lefties and righties, and Max Scherzer, Rick Porcello, and Lance Lynn aren’t far behind. These are all pretty solid pitchers — Scherzer obviously is more than just solid — and shows that a big platoon split doesn’t ruin a RHPs chance of sticking in the rotation. After all, you only have a big split as a Major Leaguer if you’re particularly good against same-handed hitters, so we’re selecting for pitchers who are strong against one side, giving them the ability to get some hitters out with a lot of frequency.

But this also leaves them vulnerable against teams who can stack the deck with lefties, and pitchers who run big splits tend to face a lower percentage of same-handed hitters than pitchers with a more even split. For reference, here are the five RHPs with the biggest platoon ratio over the last three years, with their batters faced totals included as well.

Notice Arroyo’s Platoon%, relative to the other four? Masterson has faced nearly 60% lefties, and Floyd and the two Tigers are both over 55%. Arroyo, though, is at just 50%, as he’s faced an almost identical number of right-handed and left-handed bats since the start of the 2011 season.

A big part of that is that he’s the only National League starter in that group. An AL manager is never going to put a right-handed DH in the line-up against these guys if they can help it, so there’s basically an extra left-handed bat in the line-up against the AL platoon guys every single time out. It’s simply easier for AL managers to exploit platoon splits than it is for NL managers, which is one of the reasons why pitchers like Arroyo have more success in the NL than the AL.

But it’s not just the National League factor pushing Arroyo’s ratio of left-handed hitters down. It’s also the National League Central factor, and maybe even more specifically, a Cincinnati Reds factor. The Reds themselves had a decent amount of left-handed hitting last year, ranking 3rd in the NL in PAs from LHBs, but of course, Arroyo didn’t have to pitch against his own team, and the rest of the NL Central teams simply didn’t have much in the way of left-handed hitting.

The Cubs and Cardinals ranked 6th and 7th in the NL in PAs from LHBs, while the Pirates ranked 13th and the Brewers ranked 15th. The Brewers, in fact, were on an island to themselves in terms of right-handed slant, as every other NL team had at least 2,000 PAs from LHBs in 2013, while the Brewers had just 1,690. The Phillies and Giants sent nearly twice as many left-handed hitters to the plate last year as the Brewers did.

This wasn’t just a one year fluke, either. The non-Reds NL Central teams ranked 6th/9th/10th/11th/15th in LHB PAs in 2012, and 7th/9th/12th/13th/16th in 2011. For whatever reason, the NL Central has just not had many left-handed hitters over the last few years, with nearly every team skewing to the right side of the plate. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that other high Platoon Ratio/Low Platoon% pitchers happen to pitch for NL Central teams as well. Charlie Morton (PIT) has had a whopping 1.44 Platoon Ratio, but just 46% of his batters faced have been LHBs. Lance Lynn (STL) posted a 1.26 Platoon Ratio, but only faced 46% LHBs over the last three years. Shaun Marcum (MIL, mostly) put up a 1.24 Platoon Ratio, but faced just 49% LHBs from 2011-2013. Jeff Samardzija (CHC): 1.14 Platoon Ratio, 47% Platoon%.

Outside of NL Central hurlers, we just don’t really see examples of righties who struggle against lefties getting to face more righties than lefties. Especially in the AL, these pitchers end up facing 55-60% LHBs, and even in the NL West and East, the number is more regularly in the 52-53% range. And unfortunately for Bronson Arroyo, he doesn’t get to take the NL Central’s distribution of hitters with him to Arizona.

How big a deal is a few percentage points in platoon distribution? Well, let’s use Arroyo as an example. If you just take his three year wOBA against numbers (.290/.372), here’s what his total wOBA allowed would look like based on different platoon ratio distributions.

You take the same pitcher with the same skills and move him from a 50/50 to a 40/60 distribution, and his wOBA allowed goes up eight points just from the additional number of left-handers he’d have to face. Eight points of wOBA might not seem like a big deal, but over 850 batters faced, that adds up to about an extra six runs allowed per year. Over 200 innings, that’s roughly equivalent to 20 points of ERA.

Now, Arroyo almost certainly won’t face 60% left-handed hitters in Arizona, since it’s still an NL team and he won’t have to face DH-filled line-ups too often, but this is one of those subtle things that suggests that Arroyo’s change of location might make him a little worse off than even the modest projections already suggest, and perhaps more importantly, this flaw significantly limits Arroyo’s usefulness in October. While there’s an argument to be made that regular season totals understate the importance of frontline pitchers and ace relievers in the playoffs — which is likely one one the reasons why teams pay premiums to acquire these types of players — starters with big platoon splits are less valuable in October than they are in the regular season.

If Arizona happens to make the postseason, any team facing them in the NLDS or NLCS will have the ability to stack its roster in such a way as to force Arroyo to face a bunch of left-handed bats, and if Arizona makes it to the World Series, starting him in an AL park is basically a no-go, because otherwise he’d be tasked with facing yet another left-handed bat in the form of the DH. In other words, the Diamondbacks paid Arroyo $23.5 million to help them make the playoffs in the next two years, but if they get there, he probably won’t be able to actually help them much in the postseason, given that his success is pretty dependent on facing line-ups filled with right-handed hitters.

This isn’t just a warning for the Diamondbacks. This is relevant for any team trading for Samardzija, Lynn, or any other right-handed pitcher in the NL Central. It’s not a huge factor and shouldn’t be the reason why you don’t complete a trade for a hurler from that division, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the RHPs in the NL Central are probably not quite as good as they look.

The Marlins lost 100 games last year, and there’s no way around it: that’s a terrible season. It’s the low point to date of a slide that started after an 87-75 2009, dropping to 82, 90, and 93 losses before hitting the century mark last year, and that’s embarrassing even if we’re just sticking to the on-the-field miscues, rather than also including the continued tragicomedy that is the ownership of Jeffrey Loria. Were it not for the teardown of the Houston Astros, the Marlins would be the worst team in baseball.

But even then, it was easy to argue that it wasn’t entirely a lost season. The atrocious optics of last winter’s massive deal with Toronto gave way to a quiet appreciation that the move actually made a good amount of baseball sense, and of course they saw Jose Fernandez go from “highly touted prospect” to “Rookie of the Year and arguable Cy Young winner in a world without Clayton Kershaw.” I tried to make the case at ESPN last summer that the considerable amount of young talent the organization was accumulating could have them poised to make one of their once-a-decade runs, and my pal Marc Normandin did much the same at Sports on Earth in September.

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It’s time for the annual refresh of FanGraphs+!

Let’s call it a refresh, because if you pay $5.99 for FanGraphs+, you get access to our articles for ESPN Insider for a full calendar year. And buying now also gives you access to all the FG+ research and pieces from past years.

But it’s also a big moment, because we’ve worked on 1200+ player caps for you, to help you prepare for the upcoming season. And yes, with that many player caps, there are plenty of fun ones, full of snark and celebration, just waiting for that random day you decide to look up Cody Ransom’s stats.

And, thanks to the hard work of our in-house analysts, we have the stable of long research pieces that form the ‘annual’ portion of FanGraphs+. Take a look at the table of contents:

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Kevin Towers is a confident, talkative man. He’ll tell you what he’s thinking about, and he’ll tell you what he’s doing. There aren’t many anonymous leaks that come out of the Diamondbacks organization because Towers doesn’t exactly keep many secrets — even when he’s actively negotiating. Towers has spent much of this offseason talking about how badly he wanted to acquire a No. 1-type starting pitcher. He was in on Masahiro Tanaka; he’s been in on David Price. He admitted he wanted to make a significant splash. Just the other day Arizona signed Bronson Arroyo for two years and $23.5 million. Or three years and $30 million. The bigger point is that Arizona signed Bronson Arroyo, and now they’re finished.

Arroyo, of course, is no one’s idea of an ace. Most simply, the best pitchers get strikeouts, limit walks and limit dingers. Arroyo does one of those things. He’s 37 in a couple of weeks, meaning he’s basically 37 now. There’s little sexiness with this acquisition, and Towers would tell you he knows he didn’t get a No. 1. Still, Arroyo does have something going in his favor. It’s just a matter of how much you believe in it.

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The Houston Astros have done some unspeakable things to their fans. The primary defense for watching bad baseball is that bad baseball is better than no baseball, but at times the Astros have caused people to question whether what they’re watching is even baseball at all, or some kind of deliberately unwatchable performance art. The good news is that there’s good news. Psychologically, this experience has made Astros fans stronger, more tolerant of adversity and less prone to hysterics. And on the field, the Astros as a ballclub are making forward progress. They’re still not good, but they’re getting closer to good, and they shouldn’t be as dreadful as they have been for a long long time. With a wave of young talent on the way, Astros fans can begin to envision a most majestic, formidable crest.

Among the brightest of potential stars is 24-year-old George Springer. The former first-round pick ought to debut somewhere in 2014, and Springer is nearly the perfect prospect. He has plenty of power, as evidenced by last year’s 37 home runs. He has plenty of discipline, as evidenced by last year’s 83 walks. He has plenty of speed, as evidenced by last year’s 45 stolen bases. Defensively, he’s a center fielder who could stick there. He has range and he has an arm, and though he’s not unusually young for his level, he’s right on track to be a core asset. There’s just one thing that Springer is missing, and he’s missing it in spades.

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The Super Bowl is over, spring training is nearly upon us, and a whole bunch of potentially valuable free agents remain unsigned. Previously in this space, we already took a look at Ubaldo Jimenez and Ervin Santana from a batted-ball profile perspective; yesterday and today, five others went/are going under the microscope – starting pitchers Bronson Arroyo and A.J. Burnett, and position players Stephen Drew, Kendrys Morales and Nelson Cruz. Today, we’ll look at the pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, the Braves announced that they had signed Freddie Freeman to an eight year, $135 million extension. I’ve already written about the diminishing need for a track record and about whether this deal heralds a coming market correction, but hopefully you’ll indulge some more thoughts about this contract and the changing economic structure of Major League Baseball.

There’s no question that teams are throwing more and more money at players who haven’t reached free agency; this is the 15th extension of $100+ million signed in the last three years by a player who was still under team control for at least another year. Players no longer have to reach the open market in order to obtain nine figure contracts, and as we’ve seen with Joey Votto, Elvis Andrus, and now Freddie Freeman, players don’t even have to get to their walk year to land a monster extension anymore. And while this shift towards big money deals for non-free agents is a new thing in MLB, it might be part of an ongoing trend that is shifting baseball’s payroll distribution back to what it was before “the PED era”.

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11:57

Comment From Perplexed Fantasy Owner Hey Jason. Thanks for doing the chat today. I’m in an 11-team AL-only league, and I need your guidance. I own Brandon Morrow and Scott Kazmir on the cheap this year, but they both terrify me! What do you expect out of each of them in 2014? Should I hang on to them or cut bait before the season starts?     Jason Collette: I have Kazmir myself and not terrified as I really liked what I saw from him as the season progressed. Morrow would terrify me as health is a problem that does not go away and Toronto, for whatever reason, seems to have more injury issues than most teams.

11:58

Comment From jesse pneumonia, that sound like an excuse, man up and rub some dirt on hit!     Jason Collette: I’ll paste what I said last week when someone else asked the same thing – I’ve been writing about fantasy baseball since 1999 where I got started at the old RotoJunkie.coom (now rjbullpen.com). In 2008, Fanball plucked me from there and then I was split between BP and Rotowire in 2011 when Fanball was shut down by Liberty Media. I’m still doing a lot of work at Rotowire and also do monthly contributions to BaseballHQ.com and guest spots on the ESPN Sweetspot blog. Lastly, I’ve been writing about the Rays since 2007 between time spent at DRaysBay, Dock of the Rays (now in the hands of the talented Jason Hanselman) and now write with R.J. Anderson & Tommy Rancel at TheProcessReport.net. I believe in the DH, roofed stadiums, fake grass, and yoga pants.

11:59

Comment From Zach I see this is only your third chat and you’re a fairly new FG contributor. What’s your brief bio? What do you like to chat about?     Jason Collette: well, this is the question I meant to reply to previously. I blame the meds

11:59

Comment From Brad Pitcher keeper: Pick one: Bailey, A. Sanchez or Teheran and why? Thanks.     Jason Collette: I’m a big Homer Bailey guy. You want my non-Kershaw pick for the NL CY, there it is.

12:01

Comment From Brian I just traded for Mike Trout as a 15th round keeper for the rest of his career. I can’t come up with a way to celebrate that lives up to this moment.     Jason Collette: Streaking in the quad while holding a large growler of a Russian River brew would work for me

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Look, there’s no way to begin this except with a little story. I don’t know how else I could get to the meat and keep you guys with me. From time to time, I like to play around with pitcher numbers when they’re facing other pitchers. It’s not super meaningful — little of my research is ever super meaningful — but it’s interesting to me, and it’s interesting that pitchers, at least some of the time, get to face hitters who are so tremendously worse than the rest of the guys in the lineup. It only makes sense to me to occasionally split those numbers apart.

Usually, I look at strikeouts. Strikeouts are the best indicator of dominance, at least over the smaller samples I generally encounter. I’ve written here before about how Gio Gonzalez one year put up some crazy strikeout numbers against pitchers in the National League. But something else that’s caught my eye a bunch of times is that I keep seeing the name ‘Wandy Rodriguez‘. As in, it seems like Rodriguez has been a strikeout machine against pitchers. Rodriguez has been a perfectly adequate starter, but I’ve never really thought of him as being unhittable, so his name stood out to me as slightly out of place. Eventually, this was something I knew I’d have to pursue.

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