As this offseason confirms, the way in which clubs spend their money has changed perceptibly over the last decade or so. Where it used to be commonplace for an organization to pay a player for what he had already done, teams have increasingly begun to compensate players for what they’re likely to do in the future. We see the emergence of this trend most clearly in long-term extensions for younger players, a development that has led to missing free-agent classes.

Of course, that doesn’t mean clubs have stopped signing free agents altogether or stopped exposing themselves to risk of any kind. Teams still need to address weaknesses, and one means to do that is by way of the open market. In some cases, the performances they expect fail to materialize. In some of those cases, teams decide they’re better off paying someone else to take care of the problem. This is how teams end up with dead money on their payroll.

Dead money is generally any money a team is paying out to a player who no longer appears on their 40-man roster. There are three types of dead money:

1. Money paid to players who have been released. Those players are free to sign with other teams, but the team releasing the player still owes the money remaining on the contract.
2. Money paid to other teams as compensation for players who have been traded. Generally, we see teams cover a portion of a contract to receive a better return in trade.
3. Money paid to players who are still in the organization, but who have been removed from the 40-man roster. Any team could have claimed these players if they were willing to take on the contract, and the player probably could have elected fee agency, but then he would forfeit his right to the guaranteed money.

Last season, nearly $300 million of MLB payroll was of the deceased variety, a sum that was double the amount of the prior campaign. Over the past year, we’ve seen the contracts of Carl Crawford, Josh Hamilton, Jose Reyes, and Alex Rodriguez all come off the books. The result is a $100 million decrease in the amount of dead money from last year. The graph below shows the teams who are paying the most money this season to pay players not on their roster.

Boston takes the top spot this year thanks entirely to Rusney Castillo and Pablo Sandoval. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ dead money, meanwhile, is spread out over seven players. Because of their original trade with the Padres that removed Matt Kemp from their roster, they are actually paying an amount higher than his current salary after having reacquired him. And the Dodgers would actually place higher on this list if they had released Adrian Gonzalez instead of taking on Matt Kemp’s contract when their former first baseman was dealt to the Braves and then released. The team could also still increase its total if the front office decides Kemp is not a fit for the current roster.

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It’s that time again! The time when I get to write the same post I write every March. Oh, every time, the numbers are always different. But the words? The words seldom change. In one sense, that makes this post very easy. In another sense, it makes it hard to change things up. Hopefully you won’t notice if I plagiarize myself.

Strength of schedule. You know what I mean when I say that, right? It’s pretty much self-explanatory — we’re talking about how strong or weak a team’s overall schedule is. I think this gets talked about most often in football. Especially college football, I assume. You don’t hear this much in conversations about baseball, because baseball is widely perceived to have a great deal of parity. And the schedules are so very long that it’s easy to assume everything just averages out in the end. But that’s not what happens! If anything, the schedules are so very long that minor differences have a chance to pile up. What’s the cost of a win on the free-agent market? $8 million? $7 million? $9 million? Schedule strengths can matter by multiple wins. This can be a real and significant variable.

And FanGraphs makes this very simple to calculate. So, come along. I can show you who’ll have it relatively easy, and who’ll find things relatively challenging. I always love a post I can write in an hour.

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Zach Davies logged 17 wins and a 3.90 ERA in 33 starts for the Milwaukee Brewers last season. He did so — as my colleague Travis Sawchik detailed in September — as a major-league outlier. Compared to the bulk of his contemporaries, the svelte right-hander is both undersized and velocity-challenged.

Neither of those things is about to change, at least not in a stand-up-and-take-notice way. Genetics are what genetics are. Not that he would mind adding a little meat to his six-foot frame and an extra inch or two to his not-so-fastball. The 25-year-old finesse specialist believes that each would be an asset to his already effective game.

Davies discussed that very game, including his velocity and his approach to sequencing and speed differential, earlier this spring.

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Davies on adding weight and (hopefully) velocity: “I went into the offseason trying to get stronger and put on some weight — that’s always a goal for me — and I’m up to 170 now. I was 160 last year. I think the extra weight has multiple benefits for me. Adding a little velo — I hovered right around 90 last year — would definitely be a positive, and the weight should at least help keep me healthy throughout the year.

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­On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the omnibus spending bill currently being considered by Congress may include statutory language insulating Major League Baseball from liability for not paying minor leaguers minimum wage. This may be the first time on FanGraphs that we are going to be discussing an omnibus spending bill. But it’s relevant in this case.

Readers are likely familiar with the lawsuits filed by Minor League Baseball players alleging that their pay — generally around $1,100 per month for first-year players, with no pay for spring training — is a violation of a law called the Fair Labor Standards Act because it failed to pay minor leaguers even minimum wage. Thus far, the suits have had mixed results: one suit that attacked Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption was dismissed last summer, but another suit, which has been pending for over three years now, remains extant. Paying minor leaguers minimum wage would cost MLB franchises an extra $5.5 million per year. Minor leaguers are not members of the MLBPA.

Nathaniel Grow already covered the problems these suits face in a pair of excellent articles I recommend highly. My own take, as someone who has personally litigated about two dozen class actions in one form or another, is that one suit, in particular, has a shot. (The reasons why are complex enough to deserve their own article, but if you’re curious, that case is Senne et al. v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball et al., and I think that Garrett Broshuis, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, had the right idea in the very clever way he pleaded his complaint.) That said, even if none of the lawsuits had any legal merit whatsoever — which is not, I believe, the case — defending such suits is expensive, and there is always risk inherent to any contested litigation.

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On Monday, Craig Edwards began our positional power rankings series by evaluating the catchers. If you’re unfamiliar with the process or concept, Jeff explained the series yesterday, too. Today, we tackle first base.

First base is at an interesting place. There remains plenty of familiar star power at the top of FanGraphs position rankings here, from Paul Goldschmidt to Anthony Rizzo to Joey Votto, the type of lineup-anchoring sluggers you expect to find at a position that is typically a run-production workhorse. There are also emerging young stars like Cody Bellinger and perhaps Matt Olson.

And first base has become home to a growing number of fly-ball revolutionaries, players attempting to make swing changes to get under the ball and save or extend careers standing by improving their overall offensive efficiency. It makes sense that players like Yonder Alonso, Logan Morrison and Ryan Zimmerman would be among those motivated to launch more pitches into the air since they don’t have much defensive versatility to fall back upon.

First base, from a production standpoint, also appears to be a healthy place. First basemen led all position groups with a 113 wRC+ last season, their second-highest mark of the last decade. First basemen also produced their collective second-highest WAR total (80.7) of the last 10 years.

But the position has become crowded and so loaded with offensive sources that free-agent first basemen were having trouble finding work this winter. Power has become so common, so easy to find, it’s become devalued. For instance, Morrison hit 38 home runs last season and posted a 130 wRC+ but had to settle for a one-year, $2.5-million deal.

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Both Kiley and I will be posting in-person scouting reports on draft prospects we see throughout the spring. Well, summer and fall, too. Here is another dump of notes from Arizona and a recent trip to Southern California.
2018 Draft Board

Other in-person notes: Matthew Liberatore, Nick Madrigal, Luken Baker, Jake Wong, TCU Pitching

Oregon righty Matt Mercer threw six innings of two-run ball on Friday night against Arizona State. He struck out eight Sun Devils, walked four, and left scouts with lukewarm feelings about his stuff. Mercer was up to 96, sitting 91-94 throughout his outing, and ASU hitters squared it up pretty often. His best secondary offering was his above-average changeup, which has bat-missing fade and benefits from Mercer’s funky delivery. Neither of Mercer’s breaking balls nor his command impressed scouts. His below-average mid-80s slider lacked movement and mid-70s curveball was fringey. I thought his curveball flashed average and could mature there if it’s used more frequently.

On one hand, Mercer is a college arm up to 96 with an out-pitch changeup and potential average third offering, if you’re willing to project on one of his breaking balls. On the other, he has below-average command right now, not everyone likes his delivery and/or athleticism, and he’s already had one Tommy John. There are some foreseeable avenues that lead Mercer to league-average starterdom but more that run to the bullpen. In the bullpen, maybe his fastball ticks up and singular focus on his changeup means he’s a 60 fastball, 60 changeup reliever with some funk, a la Tyler Clippard.

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PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — Rays starter Chris Archer is one of the better pitchers in the game. He’s one of the more thoughtful and intelligent players in the game, too. Besides those distinctions, Archer might also be prescient. He has a sense of what the future will look like for a major-league pitcher. He’s going to be part of an experiment this season in Tampa Bay that could impact what the future looks like for many arms.

“If you don’t have that high-end stuff as a starter, it’s going to get a little blurry,” Archer said to FanGraphs with regard to the future of pitching roles.

The Rays are committed to a four-man rotation this season, although it’s more of a hybrid plan. While it will include only four traditional starting pitchers, the Rays will use bullpen games and a high volume of off-days early in the season to keep their four starters on regular intervals of rest.

MLB.com Bill Chastain reported on the plan a couple weeks ago:

“We’re going to try to stay at four,” [Rays manager Kevin] Cash said. “We’re going to have some bullpen days in there. We’re going to try and do that for a long period of time. We’re going to learn a lot in the first six weeks.

“We’re going to schedule in a bullpen day as our fifth starter. That’s kind of our hope — going past six weeks.”

An evolution from the traditional five-man rotation might be inevitable. Saber-minded voices have screamed for years that starting pitchers are less effective each time they work through a batting order. Pitching labels are blurring. Relievers accounted for an MLB-record 38.1% of total innings thrown last season, up three percentage points (35.2%) and 1,200 innings from just 10 years earlier. The game warps even more toward the bullpen in the postseason. Last October, relievers accounted for 46.4% of innings.

“The playoffs make it appear to be sexy, but over the course of 162, it’s hard to sustain,” Archer said of radical pitching-staff construction.

It wouldn’t be fair to say Archer is an unwilling participant in the Rays’ plan. “The concept makes sense,” says Archer of the four-man rotation as a theory. But he has his doubts about it as a full-season practice. The questions include whether the plan can extend to and succeed over the course of a full season, what it means for player development, and how the club will adapt to inevitable challenges, whether they be in-game or longer-term in nature.

Archer has shared his questions with the front office, which he says extends to him an open line of communication.

“Our front office is open. They talk to me about a lot of different scenarios: ‘How do you feel about this, what do you think about this?… Do you think you could bounce back if you pitch like this?’” Archer said. “I do like that they are asking someone actually doing it as opposed to drawing their own conclusions.”

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As Opening Day approaches, many team’s rosters have rounded into place. However, there is some slight tinkering to be done. With this in mind, let’s consider the careers of two players, blindly — one of whom is a mainstay for his team and the other who used to be.

Both players converted from shortstop to center field. They’re almost the same age. Player A was once a top-25 prospect, however, while Player B was a relatively unheralded signing out of the Dominican. Now, Player A is his team’s unquestioned starting center fielder, while Player B is on the trading block.

Player A is Billy Hamilton, noted speedster, while Player B is Juan Lagares. Recent reports suggest that the Mets have received interest in Lagares and that the club is motivated to move him.

Now, this could be the case for a variety of reasons. Lagares hasn’t hit particularly well this spring, going just 7 for 36 so far with 13 strikeouts. While spring stats only correlate so well to regular season, Lagares hasn’t made an overwhelming case for an expanded role. Lagares also makes $6.5 million this year and $9 million next year, and the Mets have supposedly been interested in shedding some payroll. Finally, there’s the fact that Lagares — one of the best defensive center fielders in baseball — is buried on the Mets’ outfield depth chart by a bevy of corner outfielders masquerading as center fielders. The fact that he is available should pique the interest of many teams, just as much if Billy Hamilton was available.

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Season-preview time is always a little weird. Spring training is the signal that the regular season is coming right up. We’re past the point where we’ve heard about who’s in great shape. By this point we’ve already had players getting injured. And, of course, we’ve had players getting reassigned or released. The Opening Day rosters are clearer than ever, because Opening Day’s in a week and a half. We should do something to prepare for the season, right? Something to lay out how every team looks.

On the one hand, maybe it’s unnecessary, because we’ve been writing about baseball every day, and there have been constantly updating 2018 team projections. If you’re on FanGraphs, you’re more likely to already know what’s going on. On the other hand, some sort of season preview just feels obligatory. You can’t not preview the upcoming season. There seems to be a demand for it. The trick is to do it well, and to be thorough while still being engaging.

I don’t think anyone has figured out the perfect way to do a season preview. What I can say is that FanGraphs, at least, runs a series unlike any other. It might not be perfect, but I like what we have. Consider this the kickoff post. Welcome to the 2018 positional power rankings!

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Brendan Rodgers is living up to his billing. Drafted third overall by the Colorado Rockies in 2015 out of a Florida high school, the smooth-swinging shortstop slashed .336/.373/.567 between high-A Lancaster and Double-A Hartford last year. His calling-card bat speed on full display, he crashed 18 home runs in 400 plate appearances.

Rodgers was seemingly born to hit. He’s worked hard to hone his craft, but at the same time, letting his natural talent shine through is his M.O..

“I keep hitting as simple as possible,” explained the talented 21-year-old. “Body movement, stride, how my hands work… everything. I keep all it to a minimum. I try to not make the game harder than it is.”

Mechanically, Rodgers sticks with what he was taught “when he was younger.” He told me that the Rockies haven’t suggested any notable tweaks, and that for him “it’s all about being on time and in rhythm.”

He doesn’t have a leg kick — “just a little stride” — although he did have one back in his formative years. Wanting to feel more balanced, he “shut that down and spread out a little bit,” which he feels helps him stay in his legs better. Approach-wise, he attacks the baseball. Read the rest of this entry »