The hardest thing about writing is the writing. The other hardest thing about writing is finding ideas. Without an idea, you’ve got nowhere to put your words, and sometimes baseball doesn’t cooperate by providing an abundance of discussable topics. As I write this, nothing’s going on. Maybe Ervin Santana got a phone call, or maybe his agent did, but maybe not, and we’ll definitely never know. Even the executives have probably been thinking about the Super Bowl.

So here’s an official tip of the cap to content recycling. Who needs a new idea when you can just use an old idea over again? At the end of the 2012 regular season, inspired by Erick Aybar, I wrote a post about the year’s most inside pitches slammed for home runs. As it turned out, the pitch to Aybar that got me thinking didn’t make the list, and it didn’t even come real close to making the list, but a list was still made and it was fun and informative. And now we’ve had a whole other regular season since! So what’s the harm in exploring 2013’s most inside pitches slammed for home runs? That’s what follows, in the familiar form of a top-five.

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The Cubs weren’t going to win in 2013, and everyone knew it. The organization had begun to find its way, but it was understood it would be a long process, and 2013 would be more about development. That didn’t mean, however, that the Cubs would be inactive in free agency, and one of the things they did was sign veteran starter Scott Feldman for a year and $6 million, with an additional $1 million in possible incentives. Feldman was solid over 15 starts, and then the Cubs flipped him to Baltimore with Steve Clevenger in exchange for Jake Arrieta, Pedro Strop, and some international spending money. In that way, the Cubs turned a stopgap veteran into possible long-term resources. It was perfect execution of a classic idea.

The Cubs aren’t going to win in 2014, and everyone knows it. The organization is still on its way, and overall it’s made progress, but it’s still going to be a long process, and 2014 will be more about development. That doesn’t mean, however, that the Cubs need to be inactive in free agency, and something they just did is sign veteran starter Jason Hammel for a year and $6 million, with an additional $1 million in possible incentives. What Hammel hasn’t been, yet, is flipped for possible long-term resources. But that could be perfect execution of a classic idea.

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Everybody’s interested in free-agent bargains. Regular free-agent prices always seem increasingly insane, so everybody’s interested in free-agent bargains. People ask about remaining bargains in seemingly every FanGraphs chat I either run or read, and my automatic answer has long been Chris Capuano. I don’t even think about it anymore. It’s Capuano, and then it’s on to the next question. I don’t remember when it started this way. I don’t remember what my initial explanation was. It seems about time to actually write a post about this, and as it happens, this post can even be timely.

Buster Olney wrote this morning about how free-agent prices are coming down with spring training nearly upon us. Teams have even exploited this as a strategy, figuring that, in time, players will get more desperate than the teams will. Olney also composed a few tweets, two of which are relevant to this particular Capuano-centric discussion. Now I’ll embed them, as you do.

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Here’s your chance to vote for the 2014 SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards winners.

The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, The Hardball Times, and Beyond the Box Score.

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Early last summer, I wrote an article for Baseball Digest magazine that began with a quote from Bobby Cox. The Hall of Fame manager said, “They’ve got their RBIs in their gloves.” He was referring to weak-hitting shortstops with elite defensive ability. A few paragraphs later, I brought up Jose Iglesias.

Whether Iglesias fits that profile is a matter of debate. The 24-year-old ended up far outperforming expectations by hitting .303/.349/.386 between Boston and Detroit. He also had a .356 BABiP. The jury is still out on his bat.

There aren’t any questions about his glove. Iglesias is a human highlight reel at the shortstop position. His one-motion-catch-and-throw of an infield roller last summer was probably the defensive play of the year. His basket catch in short left field, in the ALCS, wasn’t far behind. Simply put, he makes plays no one else — OK, maybe Andrelton Simmons — can. By the eye-test, Iglesias is nothing short of brilliant.

The numbers don’t disagree. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s grant that there’s pretty much always something to not like about a given free agent. Baseball has a very limited number of truly extraordinary players, and those players seldom become free agents, at least before they start getting old. So any free agent will always have a more optimistic perception, and a more pessimistic perception. But no matter what could be said about other years, it’s felt like there’s been a lot of uncertainty within this year’s free-agent-starting-pitcher class. Teams didn’t know whether they could trust Matt Garza’s elbow. A year ago, Ervin Santana wasn’t good. A year ago, Ubaldo Jimenez wasn’t good. Masahiro Tanaka has never pitched in the States. Hell, the surest thing might be A.J. Burnett, and he’s old, and he just became an actual free agent the other day. For effect, let’s repeat that the surest thing within a given player pool might be A.J. Burnett.

Jimenez is probably the most mysterious out of everybody. He’s been an ace, he’s been a wreck, and he’s been everything in between. He’s not old, but he doesn’t throw like he did when he was young. Statistically, he’s coming off a bounceback season, having posted the same adjusted FIP and the same adjusted xFIP as Zack Greinke. The strikeouts were there, even if the old velocity wasn’t. On the surface, Jimenez and Santana look similar, in that they’re asking suitors to buy in to surprisingly successful 2013s. That makes them kind of difficult to trust. With Jimenez, though, it’s even more difficult. With Jimenez, it isn’t about all of 2013.

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Bruce Chen has had a pretty weird career. He was a top prospect with the Braves, got to the Majors at 21, and had his first excellent season at age-23. And then he fell apart and became the definition of a replacement level pitcher. From 2000 to 2003, he played for the Braves, Phillies, Mets, Expos, Reds, Astros, and Red Sox. He changed teams at least once in each of those four years, and was officially a journeyman by the time he was 26.

A decade later, he just re-signed with the Royals for another $4.25 million in guaranteed money, with an option that could actually keep him around through the end of his age-37 season. This wasn’t a particularly easy outcome to see coming, given how mediocre he was for most of his career, but his late career revival is almost something of a reminder about just how much of a pitcher’s performance is driven by home run rates.

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Here are a couple things that we know:

• The Rays and the A’s are lower-budget baseball teams
• The Rays and the A’s have good ideas of what they’re doing

I suppose we can’t really prove the second one, but to the extent that results can serve as indicators, it’s hard to argue with how successful the teams have been despite their considerable financial disadvantages. Both front offices are thought of as intelligent, forward-thinking, analytical, and efficient, and they’re efficient out of necessity, because neither team can afford to flush money down the toilet. They need to try to get the most out of every dollar they spend.

Here’s another thing that we know: over the offseason, the Rays and the A’s have poured some millions into building up their bullpens. Relievers are often thought of as being lousy investments, and it seems easy enough to cobble a bullpen together on the cheap, so when the Rays and the A’s invest in late-inning vets, it gets attention. The temptation is to believe they’re exploiting some kind of inefficiency. The temptation is to believe we’ve been wrong about relievers for a while. Basically, the temptation is to believe that they’re on to something. And, you know, maybe that’s true. Maybe they’ve figured something out. Or maybe people are just looking for patterns in the sand. Maybe there’s nothing weird going on at all.

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The advantages of pulling the baseball have been an increasingly popular analytical topic in the fairly recent past – wildly productive slash lines on pulled batted balls, especially those hit in the air, can be readily trotted out for almost any hitter. Is it really that simple? Should hitters just stride to the plate and look to pull for distance at all costs, and then expect to enjoy the riches that ensue? Doing so, upon further review, appears to have some unintended consequences. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies system starts off nicely but drops off rapidly after the third slot. Serious injuries have taken a huge bite out of the rankings for players such as shortstop Roman Quinn, catcher Tommy Joseph, as well as pitchers Shane Watson and Adam Morgan. Read the rest of this entry »