Archive for Daily Graphings

Pitchers and catchers report to spring training this week, but there are still some pretty good unemployed players. And the most prominent of the remaining job-seekers — Ubaldo Jimenez, Ervin Santana, Stephen Drew, Kendrys Morales, and Nelson Cruz — all remain on the market in part due to the fact that they received a qualifying offer from their previous organization, attaching draft pick compensation in the process. All five will eventually sign, and like Kyle Lohse a year ago, most of them will probably end up with multi-year contracts for more than the $14 million in guaranteed money that they turned down in November.

However, several players and the MLBPA have been vocally unhappy with the way that the tax has encumbered some of the non-star players who have received qualifying offers, and even if we accept that the rule is designed to deflate player salaries and not actually compensate teams for losing players of value — if the system was just about compensating for a loss, it wouldn’t need to tax the signing team in the process — the drawn out process of keeping quality major leaguers on the market until February or March isn’t good for anyone. It is almost certain that the player’s association is going to ask for the qualifying offer system to be renegotiated in the next CBA, while MLB is likely to want to continue to keep some kind of compensation tax in place to help deflate free agent prices.

So, in thinking about potential alternatives to the qualifying offer system, I wonder if perhaps a very small tweak to the rules could actually produce a large change in how the system operates, and resolve perhaps the primary sticking point for the players. That change? Remove the expiration date from the qualifying offer itself.

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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 yesterday, 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 by way of wealthy importer-exporter Mike Podhorzer.

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This year’s Top 100 Prospects list comes with a warning: This might be the thinest compilation of the top 100 players, in terms of future ceilings, since I’ve been writing about prospects (approximately 10 years).

Most teams are now more willing to save money by entrusting starting roles to rookies, rather than overpay for modest performances from established and overpaid (replacement level or worse) veterans. Although I don’t have specific numbers to back up the following comment, it seems as thought clubs, for the most part, are also more willing to aggressively push their top prospects (especially pitchers) through their systems — with players such as Jose Fernandez, Michael Wacha, Archie Bradley and Robert Stephenson as recent examples.

In the case of the pitchers, it could be a matter of front offices wanting to ensure the players’ most effective seasons occur at the big league level during cost-controlled years while also ensuring the club can closely monitor their investments in an effort to mitigate injuries. It’s also possible that more of the top pitching talents are rising through the minors with premium velocity, which allows them to better hold their own as inexpensive, replacement-level talents (ie. No. 4/5 starters), or better, while working on their secondary offerings and command/control at the big league level.

Click on the players’ names to see their player pages and full stats breakdown. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s pretty convenient and informative to have two different and legitimate versions of something. For example, there are a bunch of different baseball stat projection systems. Most of the time, they’re going to agree with one another, because they’re founded on more or less the same information and in the end all projection systems project based on recent performance. But it can be fascinating to identify players or teams where projection systems don’t see figurative eye to figurative eye. For example, for this coming season, Steamer doesn’t love the Reds’ starting rotation. ZiPS, meanwhile, is considerably more optimistic. It’s of interest to examine the reasons why that might be.

Along the same lines, we can turn our attention to player defense. FanGraphs keeps track of both UZR and Defensive Runs Saved, and those are two different methodologies, yielding two different sets of results. On several occasions, people have compared and contrasted the two. But FanGraphs also keeps track of the results of the annual Fan Scouting Reports. To my knowledge, less has been attempted with that data, and I thought it could be fun to see how fan opinion compares to stat opinion.

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The other day, Buster Olney tweeted that some executives see regression in the Pirates’ immediate future. Projection systems seem to be in agreement, and Dave talked about this very thing as soon as the Pirates were eliminated from last year’s playoffs. Nobody thinks the Pirates are going to go back to being terrible — there’s way too much talent there — but people see them more as fringe contenders than NL Central favorites, and it’s not like they’ve had the most constructive offseason, with the biggest move to date being the loss of A.J. Burnett.

Of course, the offseason isn’t over. The Pirates might still be able to get Burnett re-signed, which would be a significant improvement. They’re another one of those teams in a high-leverage position on the win curve, so any kind of improvement should be pursued. And with that in mind, right now the situation at first base involves Gaby Sanchez and unknown others. You probably know that Gaby Sanchez is a real player, but he’s never done much to draw attention to himself, and he’s not a regular. It seems like the Pirates are ripe for a first-base upgrade. But then, what’s really available to them?

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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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