Archive for Daily Graphings

In its current state, the Yankees’ system is rather pedestrian, or middle of the road, when compared to the other 29 teams in Major League Baseball. The talent in the upper levels of the system underwhelmed in 2013 and many of the top prospects also dealt with significant injuries. The good news, though, is that the club has drafted extremely well and paired that with a strong international scouting presence, which made good use of their limited budgets. If a few of the lower level sleepers break out in 2014, this could turn into a Top 10, if not Top 5, system in short order. Read the rest of this entry »

While a lot of the current focus is on the remaining starting pitchers from this free agent class and where they will end up, we are getting close to the point where the focus starts to shift to the players who are going to hit free agency after next season. Generally, spring training is the time of the contract extension, and for players under team control for only one more season, this is often the last time they’ll negotiate an extension before testing the free agent market. Last year, we saw guys like Martin Prado and Carlos Gomez sign new contracts during this stretch of the off-season, and the year before, we saw Matt Cain, Ryan Zimmerman, and Howie Kendrick sign deals that kept them from playing out their walk year. And of course, Clayton Kershaw just reset the bar on long term extensions for players with only one year of team control remaining.

With the recent trend of teams ponying up nearly free agent prices to keep players from testing the market, we should expect that Kershaw won’t be the last pitcher to choose guaranteed security now rather than playing out the string and opening himself up to a bidding war next winter. So, today, let’s take a look at the 2013 lines from the five big remaining starters who are either going to land an extension in the next few months or hit free agency next winter.

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Kansas City designated Emilio Bonifacio for assignment over the weekend in order to make room for the return of Bruce Chen, and that’s normally the kind of thing that would fall through the cracks of a baseball news cycle. In Bonifacio’s age-28 season, he put up a .295 OBP between the Blue Jays and the Royals, getting shipped to Kansas City in August for “cash considerations,” which is another way of saying “you deal with him now.” Now he’s been cut loose barely more than a week before camp starts, and when that happens in late January or February, that generally means player number 40 on the 40-man roster just got whacked to clear a spot for someone new. That’s Chaz Roe, or Everett Teaford, or Pedro Figueroa, the previous three guys who were DFA’d across the bigs. I’d wager less than a quarter of you can name all three teams who let them go. These kinds of moves just aren’t all that interesting.

Except that Bonifacio’s DFA is somewhat interesting, because the Royals signed him to a $3.5m deal to avoid arbitration not three weeks ago, and the fact that he’s suddenly gone now when they didn’t just non-tender him earlier this offseason strongly indicates that Chen is taking his budget slot, as well as his roster spot. (That the Royals appear to be calling it a day with a payroll of around $89m-90m, thus forcing them to go with the abysmal Pedro Ciriaco as a backup instead, is another matter entirely for a team with holes that hopes to contend.) Before the Royals signed Omar Infante, there were non-ludicrous discussions to be had about Bonifacio starting 2014 as the team’s starting second baseman, then moving to the super-sub role he’s best suited for if and when the team improved at the position.  Read the rest of this entry »

When you’ve got something that lends itself to a series, you might as well just complete the whole series. In recycling an old idea, I just wrote about the most inside pitches hit for home runs during the 2013 season. The natural follow-up, then, is to write about the most outside pitches hit for home runs during the 2013 season, so that’s what’s going to be below, because that’s the way these things work. Later on, we’ll find the lowest pitches and the highest pitches hit for dingers, and then we’ll move on. Or we’ll take the series deeper somehow. I don’t know, but we’ll find out.

I mentioned in the earlier post that the overwhelming majority of inside pitches hit for dingers were hit by righties. Correspondingly, the overwhelming majority of outside pitches hit for dingers were hit by lefties. Of the 100 most outside pitches hit out this past season, 69 were hit by lefties and 31 were hit by righties. The numbers are closer to being even than they were a year ago, but they clearly are still not even, and my presumption is that lefties get pitched outside more often, and also stand closer to the plate, perhaps because they get pitched outside more often. We know that the left-handed strike zone is shifted more away, so everything else follows. If we had data about pitch distance from batter bodies, that could tell us a bit more, but we don’t have that and maybe never will. What we’ve got is pitch location relative to the plate. So. That’s how this is all sorted.

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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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