The rumor mill was pretty sure the Pittsburgh Pirates would sign James Loney this week. This year’s version of Tampa’s continual reclamation project at first base has a longer history of above-replacement production than Casey Kotchman and Dan Johnson ever did. There does seem to be some buy-high risk, though. Maybe it’s not sexy to sign a guy that has the upside to be league average, but this Pirates team hasn’t seen an average first baseman since 2009’s version of Garrett Jones left the building, and he was the only once since 2001 to achieve that feat.

Coming off of a career-best season that also featured his full-season career-best batting average on balls in play, it’s tempting to say that James Loney is only average when luck fuels him. He’s not without his warts, that’s true. But when you add up the strengths and weaknesses, another average year is absolutely attainable for Loney. Especially in Pittsburgh.

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Joe Jackson was born July 16, 1887, in Pickens County, South Carolina. He died sixty-four years later, on December 5, 1951, exactly sixty-two years ago. He is remembered for two things: his nickname, “Shoeless Joe,” and his lifetime ban for participating in the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” conspiracy to throw the World Series. He is permanently ineligible for the Hall of Fame, but if anything, that has only added to his legend: the apocryphal phrase “Say it ain’t so, Joe” is more famous than all but a handful of Hall of Famers. The 1988 movie Eight Men Out and the 1989 movie Field of Dreams tried to rehabilitate his memory.

It is time for baseball to lay to rest the ghost of Joe Jackson.
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The hot stove raging inferno season has included a lot of activity so far, but despite all the moves and the rumored moves, there hadn’t been a lot of reported activity around the winter’s biggest trade chip, at least until last night. That’s when Jeff Passan reported that talks with Tampa Bay about acquiring David Price were expected to heat up soon, naming the Mariners, Dodgers, Angels, Rangers, Pirates, Diamondbacks, and Blue Jays among interested teams. But the more interesting part of the story was this:

The 28-year-old Price immediately would be the most sought-after name on the trade market, and teams expect him to net a far bigger package than the Wil Myers-headlined deal Tampa Bay received from Kansas City last season. Despite the potential for $30 million in salary over the next two seasons before he hits free agency after 2015, Price is a rare commodity – an available ace – that is drawing interest accordingly.

The Wil Myers deal was one of the worst overpays in trade in recent history, and Passan is suggesting that people are expecting the Rays to land a “far bigger package than the Myers-headlined deal” for David Price. Suffice it to say that I don’t think teams should view egregious overpays as market-setting preedents, and I wouldn’t advise anyone to base their offer for Price on analysis that goes something like “Shields got Myers, and Price is better than Shields, so Price should cost more than Myers.” So let’s talk about what Price should return in trade.

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This past season was the season of the Red Sox, and in a lot of ways the Red Sox’s season was the season of Koji Uehara. From the emergency closer service to the relief equivalent of a perfect game to all of the playoff heroics, Uehara emerged as an important and unhittable star, becoming widely known to a nation that had almost entirely overlooked the earlier portion of his big-league career. One question we have now is, will Uehara be able to repeat? Another question is, how didn’t we see something like this coming? As a reliever between 2010-2012, Uehara issued 16 unintentional walks, with 183 strikeouts. The biggest concern was durability; in 2013, Uehara was durable. And amazing.

Given Uehara’s rise to fame and the Red Sox’s success, it would make sense for some other teams to try to mimic their model. There existed on the market a relief pitcher with an awful lot in common with Uehara, a guy who might be a bit underrated. Thursday, that pitcher found a new home. Because Edward Mujica has signed with the Red Sox.

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Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort recently told Troy Renck of the Denver Post that the Rockies’ earned $170 million revenue in 2013. Monfort shared the information as part of a larger discussion with Renck about the Rockies’ finances as the team looks to upgrade for the 2014 season. As Renck reports, Rockies fans were in an uproar in October after learning that the team was building a party deck in the upper right-field seats. After two consecutive last-place finishes, fans were clamoring for more money to be spent on the product on the field, not the fan experience off of it.

Perhaps in response to the fans’ negative reaction, Monfort told Renck that the Rockies have a conservative business plan that aims to get the team into the postseason two times every five years. Specifically, Monfort said about the 2013 season:

• The Rockies earned $170 million in revenue;
• The Rockies spent $84 million on player salaries, including in-season call ups;
• The payroll accounted for 49.4% of revenues, in line with the 50/50 rule of thumb; and
• The Rockies local TV rights deal is worth $200 million over ten years and expires in 2020.

Renck asked about the additional revenue all MLB teams will receive in 2014 from the new national TV deals. As I explained in this post a few weeks ago, ESPN, Fox and TBS will pay MLB $1.5 billion per season from 2014 through 2021, nearly double what the networks paid the league under the prior deal. That works out to approximately $25 million in additional revenue per team, if the TV money passes entirely from MLB’s Central Fund to the 30 teams. Monfort believes that MLB will only pay out $19 million per team, to account for Central Fund money the league planned to hold back in 2013 but paid forward after teams complained.

For the Rockies, Monfort expects to spend $5 million or so of the additional $19 million on player salaries and $5.5 million on loan payments to MLB. Another $3.5 million will make up for an expected decrease in ticket revenue compared to 2013 when the Rockies hosted the Yankees and Red Sox at Coors Field. That leaves another $5 million. For what, it isn’t clear. Under the 50/50 rule of thumb, you’d expect the Rockies to spend $9.5 million of the $19 million on players’ salaries.

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Sometimes, baseball analysis can reveal new truths, things that nobody had ever noticed before. Other times, it can simply confirm what’s already obvious. Meander through Phil Hughes‘ FanGraphs player page and you’ll realize that playing in Yankee Stadium did him zero favors. But you don’t need to know anything about FIP or HR/FB% to understand that Hughes could benefit from pitching in a friendlier environment. He’s going to do that in Minnesota, and while I don’t know exactly what the Twins’ thought process is, I presume it’s in the vicinity of, Hughes is talented, and fewer balls should leave the park going forward. Target Field is bigger than Yankee Stadium, so Hughes stands a chance of bouncing back.

Hughes debuted in the majors in 2007. Since then, 151 pitchers have recorded at least 250 innings both at home and on the road. Hughes’ home ERA is 0.86 points higher than his road ERA, the sixth-highest difference in the pool. His home wOBA allowed is .046 points higher than his road wOBA allowed, the first-highest difference in the pool. Driving this, primarily? Hughes’ home HR/FB% is six percentage points higher than his road HR/FB%, also the first-highest difference in the pool. Hughes allowed more than twice as many dingers in New York as in not-New York, and there’s nothing more damaging than a dinger. The Twins clearly believe that Hughes was at least partially sunk by the home-field bandbox.

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The winter meetings kick off next week in Orlando, and with it comes the tons-of-fun Rule 5 Draft.  Though the increase in its popularity has been coupled with the steady decrease of useful picks, many teams use it to take chances on bounce-back players to fill out a big league bench or bullpen.  There have not been any true impact position players taken for at least 7 years, especially since the change in rules for eligibility a few years ago.  Outfielder J.D. Martinez was removed from the 40-man roster November 20th while putting together an impressive winter league season in Venezuela.  Since then he has done nothing but continue to show an improved look at the plate, and teams that have noticed could take advantage of one of the best value Rule 5 picks in years.

Injuries have taken a toll on Martinez’s big league numbers, with 2011 representing the last season he contributed better than replacement value.  However, he is not far removed from the guy that blasted through the minor leagues to the tune of a .928 OPS, and was considered a lineup building block for the rebuilding Astros just two seasons ago.  Through 81 at-bats in the Venezuelan Winter League, J.D. has torn the cover off the ball to the tune of a .333/.402/.630 line with 6 home runs.  He has undergone some pretty impressive swing improvements since he finished his injury-riddled Major League season, which I will explore further in this article.  Quick synopsis?  J.D. is showing a tremendously better ability to drive the ball to center and right-center fields due to a change in swing path and lower half stability.

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I watch a lot of amateur baseball. You can maybe tell from my articles and tweets that the origin of prospects and how they enter professional baseball is of great interest to me. While brainstorming ideas for this article I was looking over the San Francisco Giants farm system and I got to looking at where their prospects originated from. I don’t only mean high school or college… I mean where geographically.

Teams can’t draft entirely locally of course – even those in California. Yet, teams do often like to snag talent from their own backyard when they can. Among the Giants top prospects the only California natives are outfielder Gary Brown, catcher Andrew Susac and pitchers Martin Agosta and Chase Johnson. Brown and Johnson are SoCal guys, while Susac and Agosta come from the Sacramento area originally. Only Susac and Agosta would arguably be “local” kids for the Giants and even that may be a bit of a stretch. In terms of schools, Brown went to Cal State Fullerton, Johnson attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Augusta went to St. Mary’s up in the Bay Area. Among the team’s 2013 draftees, Brian Ragira and Garrett Hughes went to Stanford, Johnson we already covered and Nick Vander Tuig was a UCLA Bruin. Of the high school draftees catcher John Riley was taken out of high school in San Joe in the 31st round and Jonah Arenado came from the Los Angeles area.

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They say that Tuesday was maybe the craziest MLB offseason day ever. There’s a good chance it was, although in fairness, after Tuesday, none of us can remember any days other than Tuesday. Pretty much every player in baseball up and went somewhere else, and the day was capped off by news  the Yankees were guaranteeing Jacoby Ellsbury a hundred million dollars and then half of another hundred million dollars. Right there, even by Yankees terms, that indicates the organization believes pretty strongly in Ellsbury’s future. You don’t make that kind of commitment to a player whose ability and health you don’t believe in.

But Ellsbury finished the 2013 season hurt, and he was on the disabled list in September. In 2012, he made fewer appearances than Chad Durbin. In 2010, he made fewer appearances than Ben Sheets. What Ellsbury has is an injury history that’s cost him an awful lot of playing time, and it’s taken a toll on his reputation. It’s worth considering what all this says about Ellsbury, and more generally, it’s worth considering how we think about players who have and haven’t gotten hurt.

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With the 22nd pick in the 2012 Rule 4 draft the Jays selected Duke University right-handed pitcher Marcus Stroman. Listed at only 5-foot-9 Stroman would be one of the shortest starting pitchers in the majors in recent memory. Is he a starting pitcher, though? He was a starter in college and made 20 starts for Double-A New Hampshire in 2013. Yet, questions remain about whether his future lies in the rotation or the bullpen.

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