The Cy Young Award.

The Jackie Robinson Award.

The Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award.

Players dream of earning these awards during their career. To be a part of the prestige and history of the game in that manner is the stuff that dreams are made of.  Then, we have the award named after baseball contemporaries.

Matt Klaassen started the Carter-Batista Awards (CBA) in 2009 to recognize those players whose offensive value is exaggerated by their RBI totals.  Joe Carter’s name is listed first because not only does he own the highest CBA score since 1990, he owns three of the top seven.
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The Mariners lost Tom Wilhelmsen last year, not to injury, but to whatever it is that capriciously claims the effectiveness of relievers with otherwise quality stuff. In stepped Danny Farquhar, one of two guys the Mariners got for Ichiro in a deal interpreted as nothing other than a dump and a favor. At the time, the Mariners said they liked Farquhar’s new cutter he’d shown in the minors. He proved to be, you could say, up to the task. There were 125 relievers last year who threw at least 50 innings. Farquhar ranked sixth in strikeout rate, between Kenley Jansen and Trevor Rosenthal. He ranked fourth in FIP-, between Mark Melancon and Craig Kimbrel. He ranked sixth in xFIP-, between Aroldis Chapman and Rosenthal. As closer he had a 2.38 ERA. In no time, Farquhar established himself as perhaps one of the better relievers in the major leagues.

On Thursday the Mariners replaced Farquhar with free-agent Fernando Rodney. It had been rumored for months that the Mariners were interested in a veteran closer, and they got the last good one for two years and $14 million, with another possible million in incentives. The Orioles were a possibility, but it seems they’ll stay internal. For the Mariners, on the surface, it’s a strange move. Below the surface, it’s a perfectly reasonable move, that fits within the current market.

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Even a couple of days after the news broke about the Braves locking up Freddie Freeman to a $135 million contract, there remains a lot of residual skepticism about this price for a non-star player who was still three years from free agency. Yesterday I compared the deal to similar contracts signed by Ryan Braun and Elvis Andrus, but Freeman doesn’t have Ryan Braun’s track record and Andrus was a year ahead of him in service time, so both comparisons required a little imagination. The reality is that we haven’t seen a contract like this for a player like Freeman before. The guys who have landed $100+ million extensions while still early in their careers have almost exclusively been superstars (Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, and Buster Posey), and Freeman is not at that level. This is the first nine figure commitment we’ve seen to a player this far from free agency who isn’t already one of the true elite players in the sport.

The size of the Freeman commitment stands out because, over the last four or five years, we’ve seen a rash of young player contract extensions that have generally been for far less than what the Braves just gave their first baseman; in most cases, the total guarantees were half as large as what Freeman just got from Atlanta. It’s easy to react negatively to 8/$135M for Freeman when you see contracts like 7/$80M for Carlos Gonzalez, 6/$66M for Nick Markakis, 6/$51M for Andrew McCutchen, Justin Upton, and Jay Bruce, and a bunch of contracts hanging in the 5/30M range for good young pitchers like Madison Bumgarner, Chris Sale, Jon Lester, Derek Holland. These prices are what we’re used to seeing in terms of long term deals for good young players with potential but also real risk. Freeman’s deal blew all those contracts out of the water, even though as a player at this point in his career, he’s pretty similar to many of them.

So that leaves us with two options. Either the Braves massively overpaid Freeman — a pretty popular sentiment, it appears — or that players and agents have concluded that the previously agreed to price levels were simply too team friendly. I’m going with the latter.

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Two years ago, things looked to be headed in the right direction for San Diego. True, they were coming off a 91-loss 2011 season as they transitioned out of the Adrian Gonzalez / Heath Bell era, but the signs were at least pointing the right way. Keith Law ranked them as the #1 farm system in baseball, saying “in terms of total future value of players likely to play significant roles in the big leagues, they’re ahead of everyone else,” and “they are well-positioned to compete even with modest major league payrolls during the next five to six years,” thanks in no small part to the rewards reaped from the trades of Gonzalez and Mat Latos. Cameron Maybin had finally shown some of the promise that had made him a centerpiece of the Miguel Cabrera trade by putting up over 4 WAR, and so the Padres gave him a five-year extension. Nick Hundley took a big step forward with a .356 wOBA and 3.3 WAR, so San Diego bought out most of his remaining team control years too.

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Laser eye surgery has become a pretty routine procedure. Nothing’s yet been perfected, and fear comes from a machine slicing your eyes open, but patients are in and out in practically no time at all, and the risk of complications is incredibly low. And many of those complications are minor and/or temporary. It’s a safe and accepted part of contemporary living. Given that it involves removing tissue from one body part and weaving it into another, it’s something of a miracle that Tommy John surgery these days has a success rate even within sniffing distance of laser eye surgery. Of course, it’s not that automatic, and of course, there’s still the year-long rehab, but Tommy John surgery isn’t feared the way it used to be, and the results tend to speak for themselves. Certainly, among fans, it seems like the operation is simply seen as a year-long delay. Less devastating, more annoying.

To an extent, that’s justified. Surgeons know what they’re doing, the rehab track has been tested a million times over, and most pitchers are able to make it back and make it back effectively within the usual timetable. Sometimes they even feel stronger, perhaps because other parts of their bodies are able to heal while the pitcher isn’t throwing. But it’s important to understand that there can be speed bumps. Sometimes there can be even bigger obstacles. Recovery from Tommy John shouldn’t be taken for granted, and you could just ask Cory Luebke.

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As the 2014 season approaches, the Cincinnati Reds are left with the unenviable task of figuring out exactly what to do with Billy Hamilton. After his September call-up, Hamilton electrified fans. In 13 games, he went 13 of 14 in stolen base attempts and scored 9 runs. He also managed to hit .368 in that span with a .105 ISO. If scouting reports and minor-league track records are to be believed, only two of those three stats should be taken to heart when projecting his future value. In 2013, in AAA, Hamilton had a .308 OBP and .657 OPS. He swiped 75 bags during that time, but the word is out on him — at this point, he just doesn’t have great hitting skills.

Hamilton will almost certainly be a part of the 2014 Reds roster, it’s the capacity at which he’ll be used that is up in the air. His speed (and its impact on his defense) is his asset, and putting him at the top of the lineup will give him the most chances to use that asset. This will also exploit his biggest weakness. Hiding his weakness by putting him at the bottom of the order will lose him a lot of opportunities to use his legs. I’m sure the Reds will wait to see how he fairs in Spring Training before making any decisions, but Hamilton’s status is currently in limbo.

“No one’s ever given me the time to show what I can do,” he says, a lean, tightly-muscled sprinter’s body slipping into uniform. “What people don’t understand is that it’s never a lack of opportunity, just time. I could hit .260 if I played every day up here. Maybe .270, .280 with a good hitting instructor. But a lot of the time, when a player’s called up, it’s those first few weeks that count. If you don’t get in the lineup, you become an extra man the rest of your career.”

It’s easy to imagine Hamilton saying such things toward the end of this April, but that quote is actually from 1979 and belongs to Matt Alexander, the most proficient pinch-runner in baseball history. He holds the records among pinch runners in appearances (271), steals (91), and runs scored (89). He appeared in 374 games, but logged a mere 195 plate appearances.  He only amassed 4.3 BsR in nine seasons, and stole bases at a 60% career rate. Yet the A’s and Pirates used him almost exclusively for pinch running. Alexander ended his career worth -.5 wins above replacement. His skills on the base paths just weren’t good enough to really make him an effective player in such a small role. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of things happen when you’re guaranteed a hundred thirty-five million dollars. That’s a guess on my part, since I’ve never been in that particular situation, and I can’t speak to what many of those things might be. I presume an overwhelming number of old acquaintances try to re-establish contact. One thing I know for sure is that people talk about you a lot. Lots of people out there talking about Freddie Freeman at the moment, on the heels of his contract extension and also on the heels of literally nothing else happening. Freeman’s eight years are the subject of much dialogue.

Some of the talk is new, and some of the talk is old. There’s just a whole lot of talk, in sum, because even with baseball’s rampant inflation, people are still getting used to the idea of nine-figure contracts and especially nine-figure contracts to non-superstars. People want to know how good Freeman actually is. People want to know how good Freeman will become. And, relatedly, people want to talk about Freeman’s power upside, since he’s a first baseman and first basemen are supposed to hit for more power than Freeman has to date.

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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; today and tomorrow, we’ll examine five others – starting pitchers Bronson Arroyo and A.J. Burnett, and position players Stephen Drew, Kendrys Morales and Nelson Cruz. Today, we’ll look at the hitters – tomorrow, the pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »

Much of my offseason writing on this site focused on the legal proceedings involving Major League Baseball, partly because MLB is embroiled in quite a few lawsuits, and partly because I try to stick to the advice: “Write what you know.” But as spring training kicks in to gear next week, and then the season in late March, I hope (I really, really hope) to spend more time on interesting baseball stories and less time on the intricacies of the Joint Drug Agreement and federal antitrust law.

Call me a dreamer.

In any event, there have been a few recent developments in MLB-related legal matters; perhaps not significant enough to warrant their own post, but important enough to mention as part of this legal roundup. When readers ask me on Twitter, “Hey, what’s happening with such-and-such lawsuit,” I’ll be able to send them a link to this article. At least for a while.

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As the calendar has flipped to February, we are officially transitioning out of free agent season — though a few stragglers remain — and moving into extension season. With arbitration providing the nudge for teams and players to run valuations and negotiate over their differences, it’s only natural that these discussions often turn into conversations about long term deals that avoid the process entirely, and the spring training months provide the best opportunity for a team and a player to come to a mutual agreement on a mutli-year extension. While Clayton Kershaw kicked off the extension season a few weeks ago, Freddie Freeman’s new deal with the Braves is a reminder that extension season isn’t limited to just big market teams with overflowing revenues, and also a reminder of just how important a player’s age has become in long term valuations.

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