Archive for Daily Graphings

ESPN just started a new project, Hall of 100, and the basic intention is to create a list of the 100 best players regardless of steroid use. It’s right there in the introductory sentence: “With some big PED-era names facing judgment day next month in the Baseball Hall of Fame voting and with the everlasting cacophony over who belongs in Cooperstown and who doesn’t, we decided to take a fresh look at the greats of the game.” The idea is to remove the asterisk.

Of course, lists of any kind are pretty much SEO gold, so ESPN is not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re doing it because it’s clickbait, and they can own the hashtag #Hallof100, and so on. But the methodology is quite interesting, and I’m fascinated by Halls of Fame, from the mythology to the difficulty of expressing something subjective — greatness — using objective criteria. Greatness is subjective because it has to do with how we feel about a player; it is separate from a simple ordinal statistical ranking, which you could call “bestness.” So what’s the best way to make a Hall of Fame?
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Let’s begin with the news: Josh Hamilton is a free agent no longer. As of Thursday, he’s agreed to a five-year contract with the Angels reportedly worth $125 million. That breaks down easily to come out to an average annual value of $25 million. As of Wednesday, the Rangers looked like the favorites to get Hamilton locked up, and it was said that Hamilton would give the Rangers a chance to match any offer before he committed himself to another organization. According to Jon Heyman, the Rangers were actually given no such chance, as they were simply told that Hamilton was leaving. Reports suggest the Rangers wouldn’t go higher than four years. The Angels gave five. Five is greater than four.

Now let’s follow with some recent history. The Angels weren’t even mentioned seriously as a Hamilton suitor until Thursday morning. It looked like it would be the Rangers, with the Mariners and the Phillies somewhere on the dark-horse periphery. In fact:

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According to Ken Rosenthal, Ryan Dempster is close to signing with the Boston Red Sox. Assuming the deal gets done, you’re going to hear a lot about how Dempster is an NL pitcher transitioning to the AL East, and how this is bound to go poorly. You’re going to hear about Dempster’s 5.09 ERA with Texas after the mid-season trade ended his long stint as an NL only pitcher, and you’re going to hear about how he got taken apart by the Yankees, giving up eight runs in six innings of work.

Because Dempster is headed for his age-36 season, has a fastball that sits around 90 mph, and had spent his entire career in the NL before the mid-season trade to Texas, many are going to expect Dempster to be exposed in the AL East. Whenever a pitcher without top-shelf velocity makes the move from the NL to the AL, and especially to the AL East, there’s always an expectation of disaster. The theory goes that pitchers with marginal velocity can dominate in the NL, but get exposed when facing the big bats of the super scary American League East.

The problem is that we’ve got too many pieces of evidence to suggest that it’s not true.

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A renewal of vows between Ichiro Suzuki and the Yankees is beginning to take on an air of inevitability. I don’t know what the Yankees thought they were getting when they first brought Ichiro in, but he had good success down the stretch, and he expressed a willingness to re-sign. The Yankees need an outfielder, and they’re trying to avoid multi-year contracts. Weeks ago, Ichiro’s agent all but declared that Ichiro just wanted to stay where he was, and now Ken Rosenthal reports that a contract agreement is just about reached. Barring a complete surprise, Ichiro will play for the Yankees during the 2013 season. Which, of course, just a few months ago, would’ve been a complete surprise. You’re not even aware of how quickly the things around you are changing. Ichiro is on the Yankees. Michael Young is on the Phillies. Kevin Youkilis is on the Yankees too. Consider this reality.

Had Ichiro performed poorly with New York, it stands to reason he wouldn’t be re-signing, because it stands to reason they wouldn’t want him. It would’ve been fascinating to see if a market would’ve developed had Ichiro struggled. He didn’t, though, batting well north of .300 with the Yankees, so of course they like him on a small contract. They’ll add a right-handed outfielder and then they’ll see how that goes come summertime. Ichiro’s stretch run added a good amount of value to his name, after a year and a half of hard times in Seattle.

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Yesterday’s three-team blockbuster which sent Shin-Soo Choo to Cincinnati included a couple of my favorite prospects from the 2012 season. Trevor Bauer ranked is the third best right-handed starting pitcher and Didi Gregorius ranked as the seventh best shortstop. On Twitter, prospect followers consider Gregorius to be a lesser player than Trevor Bauer and surmised that the DBacks traded the right-hander because he’s not as good as advertised. From four-plus years scouting prospects in person, this may not be the case considering I see more quality starting pitching prospects in one season than I ever have shortstops. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday evening, several eyebrows were raised when the Indians, Reds, and Diamondbacks pulled off a three-way blockbuster. Some raised their eyebrows because the Diamondbacks dealt a top pitching prospect for a shortstop who might never hit. Some raised their eyebrows because the Indians managed to get that pitching prospect for one year of an outfielder. Some raised their eyebrows because everyone else around them was raising their eyebrows and they didn’t want to feel excluded. And some raised their eyebrows because the Reds landed Shin-Soo Choo with intentions of playing him in center field. Choo, without question, fits the Reds’ need for a leadoff hitter. The other fit is a more curious fit.

Everybody knew the Reds were in the market for a leadoff hitter and a center fielder. They failed to land Ben Revere, and they failed to land guys like Angel Pagan and Shane Victorino. So in finding their leadoff hitter and center fielder, the Reds acquired a leadoff hitter and right fielder who they plan to move over. Obviously, things could change between now and the start of the year, and things could still change after the start of the year, but ask the Reds today and they’d tell you that Choo will play in the middle. Choo is 30 years old, and he’s played in the middle for all of 83 innings. He hasn’t done it once since 2009.

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This post isn’t so much a trade analysis of last night’s three team trade between the Reds, Indians, and Diamondbacks, as that post wouldn’t be that interesting – the Indians got a ridiculously great value for one year of Shin-Soo Choo, the Reds turned a prospect they didn’t need into one year of a nice outfielder, and the Diamondbacks turned a pitcher they didn’t want into a guy they hope can be their shortstop of the future. For the Reds, this could be a good move if they can deal with the defensive deficiencies in center until Billy Hamilton is ready. For the D’Backs, they can finally stop trying to sell low on Justin Upton, so even if this trade in particular isn’t a great one, it has a nice side benefit at least. And, for the Indians, they turned one year of Shin-Soo Choo into six years of Trevor Bauer, which looks to be nothing short of a heist.

Last year, both Marc Hulet and Baseball America rated Bauer the #9 prospect in baseball, at that was before he went out and posted a 2.41 ERA over 130 innings between Double-A and Triple-A, striking out 30% of the batters he faced along the way. Bauer’s almost certainly going to be ranked among the top 10 prospects in the game again this coming year. It is extremely rare for a team to turn a rent-a-player into a top ten prospect, especially when that rental is more of a nice player than any kind of star. The Indians got more for one year of Choo than the Twins did for three years of Denard Span. Cleveland fans should be thrilled with this return.

But, at the same time, they should recognize that it might take Bauer a little while to live up to the hype.

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Before the 2007 season, Major League Baseball Advanced Media partnered with StubHub as the official secondary ticket marketplace for Major League Baseball. All 30 MLB teams participated. Anyone could list MLB game tickets for sale on StubHub, at any price. StubHub charged buyers a handling fee and a delivery fee, often totaling more than $10, regardless of the selling price. The “delivery fee” was the key to the deal, as it allowed buyers to print the tickets at home. Gone were the days of sellers tossing tickets out a window to buyers at midnight. Sellers also paid a fee to StubHub, charged as a percentage of the sale price. StubHub shared about half its fees with MLBAM. In 2011, that amounted to more than $60 million. MBLAM then funneled a portion of those funds to the 30 teams.

Fans rejoiced. During the 2011 season, more than 8 million MLB tickets sold on StubHub, up from 6 million in 2010.

But many teams weren’t as thrilled. The Yankees, in particular, were a vocal critic of StubHub’s pricing policies. With no price floor, Yankees tickets were often available on StubHub for less than $5, a price significantly below the lowest ticket price available at the box office or on Yankees.com.  Critics countered that Yankees ticket prices were too high, creating a fertile market for very cheap tickets on the secondary market. But even teams with lower ticket prices lost sales to StubHub.

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In at least one way, Kevin Youkilis is a perfect fit for the Yankees. They’re trying to stay under the luxury tax threshold in 2014 in order to reset their tax rate and there aren’t many other third basemen willing to take one-year deals on the market. Beats trying to coax Chipper Jones out of retirement, probably, and Youkilis has retained enough of his skill to be an asset, even coming off his worst year.

In at least one other way, Youkilis is less than an ideal fit.

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Dave Raymond won’t be returning to the Houston Astros radio booth next season. Along with broadcast partner Brett Dolan, he was informed that his contract will not be renewed. [Milo Hamilton, who shared air time with the two, is retiring.] There is irony involved in the decision.

A member of the Astros radio team from 2006-2012, the 40-year-old Raymond was seemingly a perfect fit for the club’s analytics-driven approach. A graduate of Stanford University and former business reporter for Forbes Magazine, he is among the more saber-savvy broadcasters in the game. Unlike the old-school Hamilton, he speaks the same language as the Houston front office.

Raymond, an undervalued asset in the broadcaster free-agent market, is currently in search of his next opportunity.

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David Laurila: What are your thoughts on the Astros having adopted an analytics-based approach?

Dave Raymond: “I thought it made a lot of sense when they first started moving in that direction. Before the sale closed, it was made clear in what direction the team would be headed. They would be looking for a young, analytics-based general manager, and would shift aggressively to the new philosophy. It was a good idea, especially given the status of the franchise at that time. They were depleted in prospects, and the major-league roster was either aging rapidly or just deteriorating in terms of production. It was obvious they were going to have to do some drastic maneuvering.

“Having watched what has happened in the last 12 to 18 months, it’s been really dramatic. I’m sure anybody in the industry would echo that sentiment. I didn’t know they would be as aggressive as they’ve been, or that they would have had as much success moving guys and adding so many young bodies. They’ve pulled off several one-for-two, and one-for-three, trades. It’s simple law of averages. If they can bring in three younger options for one body — they realize all three aren’t going to make it big — but if one of them does, maybe they make some real headway.

“It was a bold move, although it’s tough for the fan base, because there is such little hope of winning in the near term. Long term, it will more than likely suit them well.”

DL: Compared to many broadcasters, you have a good understanding of analytics. Read the rest of this entry »