Archive for Daily Graphings

After the Marlins and the Blue Jays swung that gigantic trade some time back, I found myself researching something with regard to Emilio Bonifacio, since if there was one thing people wanted to read about after that trade, it was Emilio Bonifacio. My research led me somewhere, but it didn’t lead me where I wanted — it led me to Willy Taveras, and I couldn’t think of any reason to write a FanGraphs post about Willy Taveras. The guy hadn’t played in the majors since 2010. The guy didn’t play pro ball anywhere in 2012. Nothing was groundbreaking, and everything was abandoned.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found out today the Royals had signed Taveras to a contract. It’s only a minor-league contract, but it comes with a spring-training invite, which means Willy Taveras might be back. He is, at least, back on the big-league radar. Here, now, is the rest of a post about Willy Taveras. Because to my knowledge, the Indians and Reds haven’t yet completed a Shin-Soo Choo pseudo-blockbuster.

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Somehow, Shin-Soo Choo has yet to make an All-Star Game. The 2009 and 2010 seasons saw him as the fourth-best outfielder in the game by both WAR (11.2, behind Carl Crawford, Ben Zobrist, and Matt Holliday) and wRC+ (139; behind Holliday, Jose Bautista, Ryan Braun).

But an injury-racked and ineffective 2011 — .259/.344/.390 in 85 games — was just part of a disappointing Indians campaign. Choo hit a sharp .283/.373/.441 in a rebound 2012, but at 30 years old, his fielding skills may be declining and he’s projected to earn $7.6 million in his final arbitration season according to Matt Swartz at MLB Trade Rumors. A 68-win season for Cleveland in 2012 has left Choo squarely on the trade block.

It appears the Indians have found a taker in Cincinnati — Danny Knobler of CBSSports.com reported the Indians are in talks to acquire center fielder Drew Stubbs and shortstop prospect Didi Gregorius from the Reds.

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In the wake of the Kansas City and Tampa Bay trade from Sunday night, many have speculated upon — and Jeff Sullivan has considered with something not unlike aplomb — how Wade Davis might perform in his return to the starting rotation (i.e. the role he’s likely to assume with the Royals). As Sullivan notes, Davis was a not particularly excellent starter from 2009 to 2011. Then, he (i.e. Davis, not Sullivan) was a considerably above-average reliever in 2012. One is compelled to wonder, naturally, if Davis learned something from his year as a reliever that will aid him as a starter — or, alternatively, if he was merely benefiting from the sort of improvement one sees while working out of the bullpen.

That, as I say, is something a person would wonder. It is not, however, my ambition to meditate on that question at the moment. One reason is because Sullivan mostly did that. A second reason is because the answer (see: “we don’t know”) merits only so much attention.

Instead, what I’d like to examine here — with the aid of, like, 10 or 50 animated GIFs — is what Davis’s likely ceiling is. What, in other words, does Wade Davis look like — and what, in particular, does his repertoire look like — when he is being the best possible Wade Davis.

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The Tampa Bay Rays may be great at pitching and defense, but they do not score many runs… Right? MLB Trade Rumors thinks so:

The Rays could address multiple needs by dealing a top-of-the-rotation starter. Their offense ranked 18th in MLB in runs scored, so there’s clearly room for improvement.

-Ben Nicholson-Smith, 10/31/12

ESPN suggested just as much:

…[Justin] Upton would give Rays a badly needed presence in the middle of their lineup.

-Buster Olney, 11/11/12

And even in the sabermetric sphere, we tend to hold that axiom:

Alas, the Rays’ hitting was an entirely different story, as they finished just 11th in the league in scoring. Yes, they certainly were undone by crummy luck in close games. But the crummy luck might have gone largely unnoticed if the Rays had scored 30 or 40 more runs.

-Rob Neyer, 10/27/12

But the consensus does not gel with the very leaderboards that ranked them the No. 8 MLB offense in 2012, according to wRC+. The disconnect between popular perception and the reality of their past and future production comes from two key sources: (1) Three especially cold months of run production in 2012 and (2) the under-appreciated pitcher’s haven, Tropicana Field.
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On Saturday, the Los Angeles Dodgers gave one of the biggest contracts in baseball history to Zack Greinke. On Sunday, the Dodgers gave a big contract to Ryu Hyun-Jin, who has never before pitched in the majors. The Dodgers still might not even be done, and neither of the moves this weekend came as a surprise, because as we’ve established, the Dodgers have all of the money. The Dodgers have money and a baseball team, so it only makes sense that they would spend liberally to improve the baseball team. These Dodgers aren’t your daddy’s Dodgers. These Dodgers are your older brother’s Yankees.

As the Yankees have made a goal of exhibiting financial restraint, the Dodgers have been like “**** that” and they’re prepared to enter 2013 with the highest payroll that baseball’s ever seen. It was not very long ago that the Dodgers were bankrupt. Then there was the Hanley Ramirez trade. Remember the Hanley Ramirez trade? Then Brandon League, and Shane Victorino, and Joe Blanton, and acquiring the Red Sox. Then Greinke. Then Ryu Hyun-Jin. Yasiel Puig was in there somewhere. So was an Andre Ethier extension. Of course, like everyone else, the Dodgers have their limits, but we’ve been given no indication that the limits are being approached.

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After the Rays traded for Yunel Escobar, I began working on a piece discussing prospect ETA’s and how off-season moves affected players like Tim Beckham. In it, I closed the door on Beckham and the Rays due to Ben Zobrist and his team friendly contract manning second base for the next three seasons.

With each read, I re-worked and lightened my wording because of Zobrist’s ability to play the outfield and the fact the Rays had an organizational hole to fill there. With the addition of uber-prospect Wil Myers, a right-fielder, consider the hole emphatically closed and punch Beckham’s bust card as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Melvin was named American League Manager of the Year after leading the overachieving Oakland A’s to a playoff berth. It was an honor well-deserved. The 51-year-old former big-league catcher knows how to nurture young talent, and the squad he skippered was laden with first- and second-year players. Melvin discussed five rookie members of his pitching staff during last week’s winter meetings.

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David Laurila: Tommy Milone, Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin all had relatively low strikeout rates. What does that mean for their success?

Bob Melvin: It means they can get deeper in games, and with younger guys, you really want them to cut down on their pitch counts.

As far as Tommy Milone, he’s more touch-and-feel, put the ball in play and keep it in the big part of the ballpark. He’ll use his changeup. He’s not really a strikeout guy, even though he has the ability to strike guys out.

A.J. Griffin has four pitches and he’s very unpredictable about when and where he is throwing them.

I think you’ll see Jarrod Parker potentially strike more guys out. His changeup is a strikeout pitch. He’s getting much better about the command of his fastball and where he wants to throw it. His velocity was 89-92 at times last year. Other times it was 92-95 and when it was 92-95 he was striking guys out.

DL: Are strikeouts and ground-ball rates less important in your home ballpark? Read the rest of this entry »

Were you to read FanGraphs, and only FanGraphs, you might be led to believe there’s only one opinion one might have on Sunday’s trade between the Rays and the Royals. And that one opinion would be “that’s a bad trade, for the Royals.” Indeed, many feel that way, but many also do not feel that way, for reasons I won’t bother to get into. Those people don’t write here. While there’s a spectrum of thought on the deal, though, there’s one thing all opinions have in common: Wade Davis is kind of the forgotten guy. James Shields is the rotation ace the Royals were after. Wil Myers is maybe the top hitting prospect in baseball, and the other prospects are other prospects. But Davis is in there, and the Royals have plans for him. Big plans. Starting plans!

In 2012, Davis lost a spring-training rotation battle to Jeff Niemann, and shifted to relief. As a reliever, Davis came to excel, but all along there was talk the Rays still saw him as a starter long-term. Now Royals property, it appears as if Davis will be looked at as a starter. The Royals’ press release announcing the trade, at least, referred to Davis as a starter. This is a re-conversion that’s probably worth exploring.

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It’s no secret that I don’t think the Kansas City Royals made a very good trade last night. In my view, the price was just too high, and the Royals weren’t in a position where their team needed to give up that kind of future value to improve their chances of winning in 2013. Reasonable folks can disagree, of course. There’s a case to be made that the Royals are closer to contending than I think they are, and if KC can overtake Detroit for the division title, then the reward may justify the cost. Win-now moves can be worth it, and as teams like the Nationals, Orioles, and A’s showed last year, pre-season projections aren’t written on stone tablets and handed down from on high.

But, this morning, I’m not reading many arguments in favor of this trade that come from that angle. Instead, the defense of this trade from the Royals perspective is coming mostly from a different angle. Here’s Jeff Passan’s take, for instance:

While Shields is a known quantity – six straight seasons of 200-plus innings, a strikeout rate that approached one per inning last year and battle scars of the AL East to show for it – there is little allure in the expected. The fetishization of prospects is a baseball-wide malady, and it’s why sentiment skewed decidedly in the Rays’ favor. Granted, it should – Myers has the sort of talent that wins awards, Odorizzi looks like a mid-rotation starter, Montgomery is a high-ceiling left-hander and Leonard comes with the one tool, power, that everybody wants – but not nearly to the degree it did.

There’s a reason Tampa Bay turned down Myers for Shields straight up. There’s a reason Oakland turned down Myers for Brett Anderson straight up. Despite the scouting reports that glow and the awards he won this year, the 22-year-old Myers remains a risk. He is a safer one than most – his .314/.387/.600 line with 37 home runs between Double-A and Triple-A last season portends stardom – but any number of players have aced the minor leagues only to lag behind early in their major league careers.

Shields “is a known quantity”. Myers “remains a risk”. The Royals just traded a grab bag of who-knows-what for an ace, turning potential into performance. Myers might be good, but Shields already is. This argument gets trotted out there every time a team trades young for old. Unfortunately, this argument simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

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One of my favorite* old writer techniques was when people would try to analyze Zack Greinke’s decision-making process based on the fact that he had social anxiety disorder. It was as if the condition made Greinke more understandable, as opposed to less. “Greinke would never want to play in a large market,” people would assert. “He wouldn’t be able to handle it.” Zack Greinke, most recently, has been a free agent. Zack Greinke just reportedly signed a six-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers for $147 million. As markets go, Los Angeles is pretty big.

* least favorite

Greinke was the market’s best available free-agent starter, so in that sense it’s not a surprise that he wound up with the Dodgers, since the Dodgers have all of the money. Even your money is the Dodgers’ money now. They even took your laundry quarters. In recent days, this wasn’t so clear, though, as it was down to the Dodgers and the Rangers, and there were indications that Greinke preferred Texas. But those indications were just rumors, and the smart bet would’ve been on the team with all of the money. The team with all of the money was and is the Dodgers.

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