Over the last few days, you’ve no doubt heard a lot of grumbling about the fact that players with PED histories are getting paid. You heard it a little when Marlon Byrd (career earnings: approximately $22 million) signed for a guaranteed $16 million with the Phillies, and a little more when Carlos Ruiz (career earnings: approximately $15 million) accepted $26 million to stay in Philadelphia.

But of course, that was just a prelude to the howling that came when Jhonny Peralta, with around $30 million in career earnings to his name, picked up a $53 million contract from the Cardinals — and it’s only going to get worse if Nelson Cruz, who has earned approximately $20 million in his career, actually gets the 4/$75m contract he’s reportedly asking for. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the Baseball Writer’s Association of America has released the official 2014 Hall of Fame Ballot, and because the organization did not induct a single candidate last year, the ballot is more crowded than ever. For reference, here are the 36 names on the list, along with their career WAR.

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As Dave Cameron noted during his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio on Monday, there has been a flurry of transactions in the past week. It got me wondering, is this part of a new trend, or is it really just business as usual? The answer, it seems, is the latter.

Using various Hot Stove Trackers at MLB.com and Free Agent Trackers at MLB Trade Rumors, I’ve cribbed together a pretty good list of when free agents have signed over the past three offseasons. It should be taken with a grain of salt. The timing of contracts may not always be 100% correct. For instance, we learned of Yoenis Cespedes‘ signing in February of 2012, but the contract wasn’t made official until March. I listed him here in March, but he could just as easily be listed in February. There is likely to be some fudging around the edges in terms of players who signed near the end of a month. And then of course there is the possibility that I missed some free agents as well. But with those caveats, I think the data is pretty interesting. Let’s take a look:

This is a bit of a surprise. But during the past two offseasons, there have been more November signings than there have this year. There is of course still a few days left in this November, so if an enterprising team didn’t feel like taking Thanksgiving off, they could draw this number even.

Then I thought to myself, perhaps trades help even the score. We’ve already seen one mega-trade this offseason, and there have been five this month in total (I think…I’m pretty sure). Perhaps that has made it seem like there have been more comings and goings in the early stages of the offseason. But that’s not really the case either. Last year, there were seven trades executed during November. Among them were the Tommy Hanson–Jordan Walden exchange, the deal that sent Denard Span to the Nationals and of course, the gigantic trade between the Blue Jays and Marlins that sent Jose Reyes and company north of the border. So that isn’t the reason.

Still though, it does seem like this November is a bit different. One thing that we know instinctually is that many of the signings we see in the early going are for teams re-signing holdover players. For example, Mariano Rivera was technically a free agent last winter, but no one really expected him to leave New York. So when he re-signed with the Yankees, for the most part, we shrugged our shoulders and got back to the business of creating half-baked trade scenarios. So I went ahead and sorted the signings by whether or not the player signed with the team for which he had most recently played, or if he signed with a new team. Let’s take a look:

Here we see a bit of a shift towards this year. Since the regular season ended, 20 players have signed with new teams, as opposed to 15 and 12 in the previous two offseasons, respectively. There has also been a sense that the contracts this year have been a little meatier. With the two Cuban sensations, Jose Dariel Abreu and Alexander Guerrero, plus the deals for Jason Vargas, Jhonny Peralta and Brian McCann, we’ve had some nice multi-year deals to sink our teeth into. Last year we had B.J. Upton‘s contract, and the year before that there were the even more ill-fated reliever spending deals for Jonathan Papelbon and Jonathan Broxton, but that was about it on deals spanning more than two years. Even the two-year deals this winter have been interesting. Tim Hudson gets to (likely) finish his career in the Bay Area, David Murphy got a multi-year deal after his disastrous 2013 campaign at the dish and Marlon Byrd went from getting just an invitation to spring training to a two-year deal in the span of one year. Even the vesting option on Josh Johnson’s one-year deal is interesting — I can’t say that I’ve seen that before.

So the numbers say not much has changed. Teams get after it early. Nearly as much business is transacted in November as in January, and sometimes more gets done in November. There have been some splashier signings this year than in the past two offseasons, but with the game swimming in money, perhaps that shouldn’t be as surprising as it has seemed.

Just as we did yesterday, we’re giving you a chance to win a free copy of The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2014. If you miss out today, don’t worry, there will be one more trivia contest tomorrow.

In case you haven’t heard, The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2014 is now available to purchase on ye ole internets. You can find my post on the book here, Dave Studeman’s post on the book here, and listen to Carson Cistulli’s FanGraphs Audio episode with Studes here.

After you’re done consuming those posts, you can buy it from Createspace (where we get the biggest cut of sales), from Amazon (in both print and for the Kindle) and from Barnes & Noble on the Nook.

Because we’re giving folk, and since it’s the beginning of the holiday season and all, we want to give you a chance to win yourself a free copy of the book. So today, tomorrow and Wednesday, we’ll be running a trivia contest based on one of the articles in the book. The first person to post the correct answer in the comments will win a free physical copy of the book (sorry, no free Kindle or Nook versions). It’s just that simple!

Today’s question comes from the article entitled “Shifty Business, or the War Against Hitters,” by Jeff Zimmerman. In it, Jeff uses data from Inside Edge to break down how teams and players shifted and were shifted against, respectively, and what the ramifications of said shifts were. It’s a great read, and in it we find the nugget for today’s trivia question. Jeff found that seven players successfully bunted a ball in play against a shift more than once. Of those seven, just one player reached base four or more times. So the question before you, dear reader, is this:

Who was the only player to successfully reach base via a bunt against a shift four or more times during the 2013 season?

If no one is able to answer that question correctly, then the secondary question is:

Name as many of the seven players who successfully bunted a ball in play multiple times against a shift in 2013.

You might want to try to answer both questions, just for funsies.

Good luck!

Over the last few years, we have analyzed nearly every notable contract signed in Major League Baseball, and one of the tools that we have used regularly is a pricing model that we often refer to as $/WAR. Basically, this calculation takes a look at the expected production from a player during the life of the contract that he just signed, then also the total cost of the contract over the length of the deal, and divides the production by the price. This calculation attempts to estimate the price paid for the expected production, and gives us an idea of what teams are paying for projected wins in baseball’s closest thing to a free market.

To be clear, FanGraphs didn’t invent this calculation, and this isn’t an idea specific to us. Doug Pappas was doing similar calculations a decade ago using a method he called Marginal Payroll and Marginal Wins. Nate Silver also wrote about the marginal value of a win during his time at Baseball Prospectus, and Tom Tango has been calculating $/WAR for contracts for years on his blog. Over the last few years, plenty of others have written about the price of a win in MLB, and there are multiple methods to perform this kind of calculation.

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Comcast SportsNet Houston went live Oct. 1, 2012, and has been in trouble ever since. Actually, the trouble may have started before the first broadcast signal beamed to homes in the Houston area. Now the network and its various constituent owners are fighting in federal bankruptcy court and in Texas state court. The situation may get worse before it gets better.

The Houston Astros own the largest equity stake in CSN Houston, at 46%. The Houston Rockets own 32% and Comcast has the remaining 22%. Comcast owns NBC Universal, which operates Comcast Sports Group — the network of regional sports networks that includes CSN Bay Area, CSN California, CSN Chicago, CSN Philadelphia, CSN Mid-Atlantic and CSN Northwest.

Not only do the Astros have a large stake in CSN Houston, but also a 20-year, rights-fee deal that was supposed to pay the team, on average, $80 million per season. That figure is in line with other recently-inked broadcast deals for MLB teams in medium-to-large television markets: the Rangers and Angels are on the high end, with deals averaging $150 million per year for 20 years. The Padres are on the low end, with a deal averaging $60 million per year for 20 years.

But what the Astros were scheduled to be paid for the broadcast rights to their games differs significantly from what they received. Forbes reported that the CSN Houston deal called for the Astros to be paid $56 million this year, but the network paid only $25 million because it didn’t have the revenue to meet its obligations.

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Nolan Arenado excelled defensively in his rookie season. The Colorado Rockies third baseman won a Gold Glove, and he had the numbers to back it up. The rifle-armed 22-year-old ranked second at his position in assists, fielding percentage, and Defensive Runs Saved. He ranked third in UZR.

At the plate, he wasn’t as good. The right-handed hitter had a .267/.301/.405 slash line, with 10 home runs. Discipline was an issue, as his 4.5 walk rate was one of the worst in the National League.

His track record suggests Arenado will always be an aggressive hitter. His minor-league walk rate ranged between 4.8 and 8.1, and his strikeout rate between 8.0 and 13.0. Despite his free-swinging ways, he’s shown plenty of potential on the offensive side of the ball. In four-plus seasons on the farm, he hit .299/.345/.473.

Arenado talked about his offensive approach during the 2013 season. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you haven’t heard, The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2014 is now available to purchase on ye ole internets. You can find my post on the book here, Dave Studeman’s post on the book here, and listen to Carson Cistulli’s FanGraphs Audio episode with Studes here.

After you’re done consuming those posts, you can buy it from Createspace (where we get the biggest cut of sales), from Amazon (in both print and for the Kindle) and from Barnes & Noble on the Nook.

Because we’re giving folk, and since it’s the beginning of the holiday season and all, we want to give you a chance to win yourself a free copy of the book. So today, tomorrow and Wednesday, we’ll be running a trivia contest based on one of the articles in the book. The first person to post the correct answer in the comments will win a free physical copy of the book (sorry, no free Kindle or Nook versions). It’s just that simple!

Today’s question comes from the article entitled “The Most Storied Postseasons.” In it, Dave Studeman details the 10 most storied postseason careers, using ChampAdded as his metric of choice. Studes ran the list both before and after the 2013 postseason, and there were changes. The question before you today, dear reader, is this:

Which player got bumped off of the 10 most storied postseason career list, and which player played his way onto it during the 2013 postseason?

To win the free copy, you have to get both parts of the answer correct.

Good luck!

Over the weekend, the Cardinals signed Jhonny Peralta to a four year, $53 million contract. I think it’s fair to say that, heading into the off-season, he was expected to sign for much less. The Tigers didn’t bother making him a qualifying offer. He was coming off a 50 game suspension for using PEDs. Some teams that expressed interest in him saw him as an outfielder, not a shortstop, and his offensive production levels aren’t that fantastic for a corner OF. He was so overlooked that Carson Cistulli even forgot to include him in the Contract Crowdsourcing series, but the general consensus from other contract prognosticators was something in the range of $20 million over two years.

But Peralta landed a deal for twice as long and more than twice as much money, as the Cardinals spent aggressively for the right to fill their shortstop hole without trading from their base of young talent. They could have acquired a cheaper shortstop from a financial perspective, but the cost of talent would have been substantial, so they chose to spend their monetary resources rather than their physical ones. Eno’s already talked about some of the risks and rewards of signing Peralta, so rather than rehash that post, I wanted to talk about Peralta’s price, and perhaps how we should have seen this coming.

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Jacoby Ellsbury has shown the ability to be one of the league’s most dynamic offensive players in the cost-controlled portion of his career.  No one would dispute his ability to hit for average or his base running prowess.  Add on top of this his ability to play center field, and you have a marquee player that would make any MLB team better.  As Jeff Sullivan pointed out a couple weeks ago, the perceived disparity between Ellsbury and other speedsters like Michael Bourn lies in the history of his power tool and its potential going forward.  

To me, the questions that must be answered for prospective employers are: 1. Can Ellsbury stay healthy? 2. Is the power still there? and 3. Is the power predicated on getting consistent at bats, or did something change in his body or swing to cause the sudden loss (and appearance) of power?.  I will not try to predict the future of Ellsbury’s health; that’s the job of the trainers and doctors who can see him in person.  Here I would like to analyze the chances of Ellsbury putting up another 30+ home run season by observing the subtle differences in Ellsbury’s swing this year compared to his last fully healthy season in 2011.

First, let’s look for some clues in the batted ball data available for a comparison.  Below are the graphical representations of all the homeruns hit by Ellsbury in 2011 and 2013, courtesy of ESPN’s Hit Tracker:
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