Archive for Daily Graphings

A lot of people are big fans of player comparables. When describing a current reality or a projected future, it can help to attach a familiar face, so that an audience has a better idea of the point being conveyed. Comps can be useful, but they’re also controversial, in part because every player is unique, and in part because they’re frequently unrealistic. A flattering comp lasts forever, and if a player doesn’t pan out it can make an analyst or scout look pretty stupid. I don’t even remember the context anymore, but a few years ago I remember seeing J.A. Happ compared to Cliff Lee, and this was well after Lee became awesome. Happ obviously hasn’t gone in that direction, and while maybe the observer was on to something at the time, now it’s a comparison to laugh at. The most one can say is that J.A. Happ is closer to being Cliff Lee than you are, presuming you’re not Cliff Lee or someone better than J.A. Happ.

Talk about Charlie Morton and, at least on the Internet, you’ll probably end up talking about Roy Halladay. The backstory is simple enough: Morton was bad, and he wanted to not be bad, so he went to a new delivery that looked a lot like Halladay’s. People chuckle, because Halladay simply had one of the best pitcher peaks ever, while Morton’s just a guy on a team. But ignore the Halladay angle and it’s clear that Morton has turned himself into something, and now he’s got a new three-year contract with the Pirates, worth $21 million. Morton saved his career, and now he’s a part of a good team’s present and future.

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A couple of years ago, Logan Morrison was one of the best prospects in baseball. Before the 2009 season, Baseball America rated him the #18 prospect in baseball, and before the 2010 season, he was rated 20th overall. Then as a 22 year old rookie in 2010, he hit .283/.390/.447 in his debut, good for a 129 wRC+. He took walks, he made contact, he hit for some doubles power, and he looked like one of the game’s best young hitters.

And it’s been all downhill since then. In 2011, he annoyed the Marlins enough that they sent him back to the minors for a week to teach him some humility. His wRC+ regressed to 116, which combined with atrocious outfield defense made him a marginally valuable player. The last two years, he’s been even worse, posting below average hitting lines while struggling to play the field, and knee surgery limited both his playing time and his mobility.

So now, here we are heading into 2014, and Morrison has nearly 1,500 plate appearances, a 108 wRC+ over the years he’s spent in the big leagues, and a career WAR of +1.0. He will head to arbitration for the first time as a 26 year old who has been a replacement level player for each of the past three seasons. What once looked like a promising young hitter now looks like more of an opportunity to salvage a former prospect in his post-hype stage.

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Hitting is in Lloyd McClendon’s blood. The Seattle Mariners hope some of it flows into an offense that scored the third fewest runs in the American League last season. Infusing Robinson Cano into the lineup will help make that possible, as will the expertise of the club’s new manager.

The highly-regarded Howard Johnson is Seattle’s new hitting coach, but McClendon’s influence will be inevitable. He spent the past seven seasons as the hitting coach in Detroit, and previously served in that capacity for the Pirates. This is the second time McClendon has moved from the batting cage to the manager’s office. He did so with Pittsburgh, so he knows how to separate the two positions.

McClendon shared some of his philosophies during this week’s winter meetings in Orlando. Read the rest of this entry »

I wish I could remember the date. One of my favorite pastimes is looking at the box scores of games I attended that were meaningful for some reason. I was there when Johan Santana struck out 17. I saw Carlos Gomez score from second base to win Game 163 of the 2009 Twins season. But, for the life of me, I can’t remember the date of this game. It was at Target Field — I know that. I was with my wife and two family friends, Abbey and Andrew. We were in the upper deck overlooking left field. Right next to me, a man — a Twins fan, I discerned from his hat — was watching with a companion from England.

From what I could overhear, this companion had never seen a baseball game before, and the other man was trying to explain the basic goings on of the on-field action. He was teaching her how baseball was played, ostensibly. And he was doing a fine job, I remember. He would slowly and assuredly explain how the runners moved, the idea of balls and strikes, tagging up, foul balls, etc. Basically, everything a newcomer to the game would need to know. I don’t even remember who the Twins were playing — the Royals? This is bothering me. But sometime later in the game, just as the English spectator was starting to recite what happened back to her friend in a way that signified that she was beginning to understand, it happened. Just when the traveled fan must have felt pretty good about his lesson, he was shouldered with the unenviable task of explaining just what the hell a balk was. That poor so-and-so.

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When Kevin Towers took over the Diamondbacks as general manager, one of the first things he did was make a trade. In Mark Reynolds, he had a 27-year-old entering his first year of arbitration eligibility. The big righty had clear strikeout problems, and he wasn’t known to be an asset anywhere in the field, but what made Reynolds was his power. Strength was his defining characteristic, and to that point Reynolds owned a career 108 wRC+ while being worth about eight WAR. In short, he was simultaneously flawed and useful, and Towers gave him up to the Orioles in exchange for a couple relievers. One of them is all right.

Towers is still in charge of the Diamondbacks as general manager, and the most recent thing he’s done is make a trade. As had been rumored for a good while, Towers pulled the trigger on a deal to bring in Mark Trumbo. Trumbo is a 27-year-old entering his first year of arbitration eligibility. The big righty has clear strikeout problems, and he’s not known to be an asset anywhere in the field, but what makes Trumbo is his power. Strength is his defining characteristic, and to this point Trumbo owns a career 111 wRC+ while having been worth about seven WAR. In short, he’s simultaneously flawed and useful, and Towers got him from the Angels in exchange for Adam Eaton and Tyler Skaggs. Both of them could be quality young players.

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If it’s possible to both buy low and sell low simultaneously, then that might be just what the Rockies and Athletics did by swapping 25-year-old lefty starters Drew Pomeranz and Brett Anderson on Tuesday afternoon at the Winter Meetings. (The A’s are reportedly also sending $2 million; Colorado sends 23-year-old righty starting prospect Christopher Jensen, who has has yet to make it out of A-ball and is on no one’s top prospect list.) Read the rest of this entry »

In the past 24 hours, we have learned that the Indians are open to at least listening to offers for both Asdrubal Cabrera and Justin Masterson. We can debate the merits of trading Masterson, but moving Cabrera is a slam dunk decision. On the whole though, the willingness to listen on two players who are nearing free agency and may fetch something juicy on the trade market shows that Cleveland is very much conducting their offseason properly.

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It appears, once again, that Domonic Brown’s name is out there cooking up in the hot stove.  Dave and Jeff each touched on Brown when his name last came up in rumors last month when a Brown for Jose Bautista rumor was floated out of Philadelphia. Both pieces laid out the caveats of such a move in that Brown’s career is still immature enough that it could go in either direction. 2013 could as much be his baseline as much as it could be his peak.

Brown’s major league career has consisted of just 1032 plate appearances. Prior to 2013, Brown was on the Philly to Reading shuttle a number of times and also had to recover from a hamate injury, which sapped some of his power through the recovery process. The amount of plate appearances he received in parts of three seasons from 2010 to 2012 were nearly identical to the ones he received in his 2013 as a full-time player for the first time. Not only were the plate appearance totals nearly identical, so were the skills.
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It looks like Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball finally have agreed on changes to the posting system between their two bodies. Joel Sherman reports:

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Yesterday, I wrote a mini diatribe on the value (or lack thereof) provided by Nelson Cruz. Because he has earned the label of “right-handed power hitter”, teams are apparently ignoring the fact that he’s not actually that good of a hitter and doesn’t really do anything else to help a team win. Bat only players where the bat isn’t that special are probably the most overrated players in the game, and that is certainly a club to which Cruz belongs.

That description also works pretty well for the eminently available Mark Trumbo. His name is perhaps the most popular of the morning, as the Diamondbacks are apparently working multiple avenues to try and acquire his power from the Angels in exchange for some of their excess pitching. Keith Law has even reported that there’s a chance that they could get the White Sox involved in a three way trade in order to find the right fit to help them acquire Trumbo, and it seems likely at this point that the Angels will move Trumbo in a quest to upgrade their rotation.

If the reported price tag of Adam Eaton and Tyler Skaggs is even remotely close to true, it seems fairly clear that the Diamondbacks are drastically overrating the value of Mark Trumbo, an unsurprising result given that he possesses the skillset that is most often overrated. To give up a prospect like Skaggs for the right to swap a speed-and-defense +2 WAR player for a dingers-and-ribbies +2 WAR player suggests that the Diamondbacks are following the trend of putting far too much emphasis on the ways players create runs and not the amount of runs they create.

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