The Houston Astros organization boasts both depth and some high-ceiling talent. The club has compiled its impressive collection of prospects through both solid scouting via the draft and shrewd wheeling-and-dealing via the trade market. Read the rest of this entry »
Until this afternoon, the Rangers had a fairly complete team, save for left field, which was a mixture of never-was’ and might-be’s. For a team that was struggling to keep up this offseason with its counterparts in the Bay Area and Orange County, that simply wasn’t going to cut it. A move needed to be made, and today Texas made their move by signing Shin-Soo Choo.
Currently, the starting left fielder on the Rangers’ depth chart is Jim Adduci. Last season, Adduci made his major league debut, and tallied eight hits in 34 plate appearances. Not bad, except when you consider the fact that it was Adduci’s age-28 season. With him fronting the group, the Rangers’ left field options ranked just 28th on our depth charts entering today.
Strikeouts for pitchers aren’t overrated, and here’s why: there is no more fundamental indicator that a pitcher is or isn’t hard to hit. To get strikeouts, you have to throw strikes or pitches that look like strikes, and the batter has to not put those pitches in play. All that’s important for a pitcher to do goes into the generation of strikeouts. There are, of course, relatively ineffective pitchers who get strikeouts. There are relatively effective pitchers who do not get so many strikeouts. Strikeouts aren’t everything, because the name of the game isn’t “Get The Most Strikeouts”, but they are the closest to everything of any of the basic stats. Make people miss and you’re probably good.
So if you want to find pitchers people are buzzing about, follow the strikeouts. If you want to find young potential aces, follow the strikeouts. Yovani Gallardo seemed like a young potential ace. He’s still not old, and he’s still plenty talented. But people have been waiting for him for years. He has yet to post a full-season ERA- under 90. His runs have never quite matched his peripherals. And this past season was something of a worrisome mess. In 2009, Gallardo had baseball’s seventh-highest strikeout rate, essentially equal with Clayton Kershaw. He kept on striking out about a quarter of batters through 2012. This last year, his strikeouts matched Jordan Zimmermann and Edinson Volquez. His rate was still fine, but considerably worse, and it’s enough to make one wonder: what happens when a young starter loses strikeouts?
A popular question in our FanGraphs chats is which team has had the best offseason in the league. The offseason, of course, isn’t close to over, and the answer is necessarily subjective to some extent, but the other day Dave suggested the Cardinals, and I’ve thought the same thing. I love what the Cardinals have done, improving without making future sacrifices, and there’s a reason they’re considered one of the best-run organizations in MLB. A team that hasn’t crossed my mind, when considering the same question, is the Angels. I don’t think the Angels have had a bad offseason, so much as an uninspiring one. The Mark Trumbo trade was neat.
Another popular question asks which bad team from 2013 is most likely to surprise and contend in 2014. There are, of course, a few candidates, and the team I always want to point to is the Angels, who finished short of .500. I hesitate, though, because I’m not sure how bad the Angels really were. Their numbers were a good deal better than their record. In any case, looking forward, it seems to me the Angels are ripe for a return to contention, and that’s despite an offseason that’s only served to shuffle modest talent around.
Yesterday, I noted that the historical average set by the Hall of Fame was to induct between 1-2% of the total population of baseball players, and that was fairly consistent throughout history. In response, some commenters noted that expansion and specialization meant that perhaps the inflation of the number of players hasn’t led to a proportional inflation of worthy of Hall of Famers, and wondered what the data looks like if we exclude the legions of middle relievers who bounce around the game but obviously aren’t in consideration for election to Cooperstown.
This was a good point, and a potentially interesting challenge to the idea I put forward yesterday. Perhaps the change in roster construction in the modern games means that we should be electing a lower percentage of players now than we have been before. Maybe the correct model isn’t total percentage of all players, but total percentage of all players who had long sustained careers that would give them at least a fighting chance to end up on the HOF ballot.
To be honest, I really don’t like to speculate on offseasons. Especially offseasons of previously aggressive teams, with so many quality players remaining on the market. I just recently heard about a significant trade that came within a hair of happening between two hopeful contenders, and no one ever caught wind of it as a rumor. There’s a whole lot that goes on as an industry secret, so I really don’t know what teams are up to. But, forced to speculate, I’d say the Tigers seem just about finished. I don’t think that’s a team that’s going to make another splash, and the roster looks more or less like a finished product.
And so, for the Tigers, it’s been an interesting and uncharacteristic sort of offseason. The Tigers, unquestionably, are in position to contend, and to contend for the World Series. Teams like that, you usually see add players and add payroll. But for Detroit it was more an offseason of acting on fiscal responsibility. The biggest name involved in their offseason is Prince Fielder, and he was sent away. They waved goodbye to a pair of quality free-agent middle infielders. They dealt a good starter to D.C. for a young and underwhelming package. Overall, the Tigers saved some money and set themselves up better for the future. It was odd timing, but there’s an angle that might help explain the thought process. At least, it’s an angle that recognizes what the Tigers still are.
Casey McGehee just signed a contract to play for the Marlins in 2014, after spending the season with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, where he was teammates with Andruw Jones, Kaz Matsui, Brandon Duckworth, and Takashi Saito. McGehee had a good year: .292/.376/.515 slash line, with 28 homers and 93 RBIs. (He and Jones were easily the team’s two best hitters; he was two homers ahead of Jones and one RBI behind him.) Now 31, he will try to reestablish himself in the majors.
McGehee is far from the only player to cross the Pacific in the other direction. I spent several hours making an unscientific study of baseball-reference, Lexis-Nexis, and Wikipedia, and came up with a list of 167 players from the Americas who spent time in Japan and then returned to play in the major leagues. (There may be errors both of omission and commission in the list; I do not claim to have found everybody, and it is possible that some people wound up in the list who should not have. Please make corrections in the comments and I will update the doc.)
There was a rumor the other day that Shin-Soo Choo turned down a seven-year contract offer from the Yankees worth $140 million. I’m not sure I believe that, but Scott Boras has been aiming high, as Scott Boras does. There are reports out that Boras is seeking Jacoby Ellsbury money, and in his most recent chat, Dave figured that Choo would end up with Jayson Werth money. The message is this: Choo is the impact guy who remains on the free-agent market, and he’s going to get paid. Plenty of teams are after him, and in the end he should get at least six years, and something in the vicinity of $20 million per. While he doesn’t come with Ellsbury’s potential for all-around value, Choo gets on base an awful lot, and what’s more important than getting on base?
A number of teams are interested in Choo, meaning a number of teams are looking for a quality corner outfielder, and have money to spend. Due to the laws of this world and this league, only one of the interested teams will actually get Choo, since there’s only just the one of him. But there is an alternative out there, and it doesn’t take the form of Nelson Cruz. The alternative is almost as good a player, and from all indications he’d be pretty easy to get. All you’d need to do is place a call to the Dodgers.
With the baseball off-season moving into a little bit of a lull, the next few weeks of baseball writing often take on a decidedly Cooperstown-centric swing. Hall of Fame ballots have been mailed to the 600 or so voters, and they have until December 31st to decide how to fill those ballots out, so those of us with some semblance of a platform usually try to influence the voters while they have the ballot in their hands. For instance, Jay Jaffe penned this excellent piece on Mike Mussina’s candidacy, and anyone who is planning to vote for Tom Glavine but not Mussina should read that and reconsider.
I probably won’t join the lobbying for any specific players this year. From my perspective, there are something like 15 to 19 reasonably justifiable candidates on the ballot, so lobbying for one player out of that bunch is necessarily lobbying against some other viable candidate. So, instead, I’m simply going to try and provide some evidence that will hopefully convince my fellow members of the the BBWAA to stop waffling and start voting in worthy candidates.
Joaquin Benoit got a two-year, $15.5 mmillion deal to pitch for the Padres this week. The signing didn’t make many waves — after all, Benoit has been a very good reliever the last three years. But three years ago, Benoit’s three-year deal seemed like a head-scratcher. Are there any multi-year reliever signings going on right now that we might look back on as favorably as Benoit’s with the Tigers? Are there any past relievers, future closers still on the market? Who’s the next Joaquin Benoit?
