Major League Baseball’s salary-arbitration process is a pretty ridiculous exercise. A player and team each submit a figure for how much that player should be paid the following season. At some point not long after that, each party argues in defense of their figure, employing an array of statistics that front offices don’t even use for the purposes of evaluation.

If a team’s representatives successfully make their case, then a panel of arbitrators chooses the number they’ve submitted. If the team fails to sufficiently badmouth their own player, then the panel of arbitrators chooses the player’s chosen figure. Even in the best-case scenario — i.e. when the player and team agree to terms before arbitration — they still arrive at that agreement based upon what would would transpire at a hypothetical arbitration hearing. There has to be a better way.

Travis Sawchik recently proposed the introduction of restricted free agency to baseball, an approach that would likely eliminate arbitration, allowing teams to match offers made by other franchises. Like Travis, I would like to see arbitration abolished. Also like Travis, I am concerned about the middle class of players who seem to be shorted in the current system.

I agree that something needs to be done and that restricted free agency represents a better approach than the one currently in place. That said, I do think there might be a better solution, one that doesn’t entirely dismantle the framework of the present system and yet allows players to receive compensation proportional to their talents.

I think the adoption of a new arbitration-type system might benefit from greater use of a mechanism that was first introduced during the 2012-13 offseason — namely, the qualifying offer.

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In reality, there is no separating the Pirates from their circumstances. The Pirates are a smaller-market team, and a smaller-budget team, but followers won’t ever let you forget it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. It’s fair to question ownership’s commitment to winning, as the Pirates never spent big to supplement what became an impressive and successful core. Predictably, the Pirates wound up squeezed, hence the trades of both Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen. They were getting expensive, with decreasing team control. Time to reload. That’s the cycle.

But it’s not like Neal Huntington has a choice. He has to operate within the given constraints, so it started to make sense to deal Cole away. And then it made sense to deal McCutchen away. Ideally, the Pirates wouldn’t be here in the first place, but, well, they’re here, and so trades have been made. And trades have been criticized, the Cole move in particular. There’s the prevailing thought the Pirates didn’t get enough back. Certainly, they didn’t receive the classic headliner. Fans would like to see a better haul for their ace.

Me, I’ve come fully around. I like Joe Musgrove. He’s interesting. I like Michael Feliz. He’s also interesting. Jason Martin is further interesting, as a fourth piece. But I’d like to shed particular light on Colin Moran. Moran has, in the past, been an extremely polarizing prospect, and at this point he might be considered post-hype. Yet Moran made significant changes in 2017, the kinds of changes you’ve heard about elsewhere. Colin Moran is a swing-changer.

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At the completion of trading on January 5, the S&P 500 reached a milestone, having endured the longest interval in its history without experiencing a 5% decline, according to Spencer Jakab of The Wall Street Journal.

In another WSJ story, reporters Chris Dieterich, Ben Eisen, and Akane Otani note that declines have “grown shallower” over the last two years and “are snapping back sooner.” These trends, according to the authors, are a result of “economic optimism” and a growing awareness of the returns enjoyed by those who remained invested in “riskier assets” during the rebound from the Great Recession. Investors are jumping on the smallest signs of value, buying the smallest declines.

From that piece:

“The investor base has been conditioned to buy the dip,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz SE. “And the reason why they have been conditioned is because it has been an extremely profitable trade.”

Buying the dip has been profitable — and particularly so in this bull market.

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Earlier in the offseason, the Giants came ever so close to trading for Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton has been one of the most important players in the Marlins’ admittedly limited history, but all that got in the way was a well-earned no-trade clause. Which is what ultimately took Stanton to the Yankees, instead of the Giants or the Cardinals.

Shortly after that all went down, the Giants traded for Evan Longoria. Longoria has been the most important player in the Rays’ admittedly limited history, but, well, the Rays are the Rays, and Longoria is both increasingly old and increasingly expensive. The commitment meant that Longoria had to go, and the Giants were there to welcome him with open arms.

And now the Giants have traded for Andrew McCutchen. McCutchen has been one of the most important players in the Pirates’ far less limited history, one of the keys to the franchise’s recent return to relevance, but where Longoria’s deal was too big for a smaller-market operation, McCutchen’s was too small. With just one year left, McCutchen all but forced the Pirates’ hand, and the Giants, again, were there. The agreement, as it is:

Giants get

• Andrew McCutchen
• $2.5 million

Pirates get

• Kyle Crick
• Bryan Reynolds
• $0.5 million in international-pool money

For the third time, the Giants targeted the face of another ballclub. For the third time, they reached an agreement. For the second time, a move has been actually made. Because of who McCutchen is and has been, this is an impact transaction, one that’s sure to have widespread consequences. The reality of trading or trading for McCutchen is complex. It’s also quite simple. The Pirates aren’t good enough to keep a 31-year-old staring ahead to free agency. And the Giants are trying to return to the playoffs before the inevitable reckoning. McCutchen gives them something they just didn’t have.

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Dylan Carlson was the Cardinals’ first-round pick in 2016, so it’s easy to look at his numbers and say he’s been disappointing. After getting his feet wet with a .717 OPS in his draft year, he slashed a ho-hum .240/.342/.347 in his first full season. There have been flashes of power, yet the switch-hitting outfielder has gone deep just 10 times in 652 professional plate appearances.

Not to worry. While his performance has been anything but splashy, it’s important to consider that Carlson has been playing against older competition since signing. He spent the entire 2017 season in the Midwest League as an 18-year-old.

If he’s sometimes felt like he was in over his head, he was reluctant to admit it. When I asked him late in the season if being one of the youngest players on the field is ever intimidating, Carlson dove directly into the positive.

“It’s actually great to have teammates who are older and have been to college,” said the former Elk Grove (CA) High School standout. I can always lean on them for advice — I like being around older guys for that reason — and it’s also been fun coming out and competing against older guys. I’m learning a lot.”

Carlson claimed he’s essentially the same hitter he was when he entered the St. Louis system. While developmental strides have been made, there have been no mechanical overhauls or watershed moments. Aside from “standing a little taller in the box,” he’s just focused on “refining the basics.” Read the rest of this entry »

There are times when a single statistic grabs your attention. Such a time occurred for this author late last month, courtesy an excellent piece by Sahadev Sharma at The Athletic.

Sharma examined the number of innings recorded for every major-league team by pitchers they’d acquired via the draft since the arrival of the current curse-breaking Cubs regime ahead of the 2012 season.

During that timeframe, which includes six drafts, the Cubs have produced a total of 30 homegrown innings. Thirty! The Blue Jays lead the majors with 1,299 such innings. The Cardinals are second in the majors and lead the NL with 872, according to Sharma’s research.

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As of press time, J.D. Martinez, the biggest bat available this offseason, remains unsigned. In any normal offseason, we could chalk this up to Scott Boras slow-playing the market until he gets the deal he wants for his client. Even in this abnormally slow offseason, we probably should still chalk it up to Boras playing his normal games — although holding out until spring training, as has been reported by Jon Heyman, would represent an unusual gambit. Heyman reports that offers are currently in the $120 to $150 million range, with Boras seeking an additional $30 to $60 million on top of that upper figure. As for how much Martinez will be worth over the next five to seven years, there is a wide range of possibilities there, too.

At the beginning of the offseason, when Carson Cistulli crowdsourced deals for the top-50 free agents, respondents were underwhelmed by Martinez, seeing a five-year deal worth $110 million. Looking at projections, that seems reasonable. Generous, even. Steamer projects Martinez for a 130 wRC+ for 2018, right in line with his career average. Take away a few runs from below-average baserunning and a bunch more for subpar defense in a corner-outfield spot, and it turns into a 2.7 WAR at age 30 next season. Now 30, Martinez is more likely than not to be entering the decline phase of his career. Starting with his projected 2.7 WAR for 2018 and adjusting for age-related decline thereafter makes a $100 million contract seem almost outrageous.

Do you know what else seems a bit outrageous, though? Projecting a player with a 148 wRC+ over his last 2,143 plate appearances and a 166 wRC+ at 29 to decline so dramatically at 30 years of age. Dave Cameron believed Martinez would get a contract more representative of his recent performance, predicting six years and $156 million. Martinez is certainly a great hitter now — only Aaron Judge and Mike Trout posted higher wRC+ marks than Martinez last season — but his prospects for future production come with some uncertainty. Martinez hasn’t been a model of health in his career. As he enters his 30s, his risk for injury will only get worse.

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Francisco Giants. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
“Baseball’s biggest disappointment,” is how Jeff Sullivan characterized the 2017 Giants back at the end of September. And not without reason: the club produced the league’s worst record relative to the preseason projections, a development expressed in graphic form just below.

On the one hand, that’s bad for the 2017 Giants. On the other, though, it’s probably good for the 2018 version of the club. The Giants are likely due — due perhaps more than any other team — for positive regression. Even if San Francisco were to field precisely the same roster this next season, that same precise roster would almost certainly outperform its disappointing predecessor.

The ZiPS projections appear to support this hypothesis. Here, for example, are the forecasts for San Francisco’s top-four returning hitters:

The core returning members of the Giants’ offense — Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, Joe Panik, and Buster Posey — are projected, on average, to produce an additional win each in 2018. That’s in roughly the same number of plate appearances as 2017, as well, meaning that ZiPS is calling for all four simply to play better this season.

This isn’t to say the club’s field-playing cohort is without flaw. No outfielder, for example, is projected even to produce an average season. Nevertheless, a combination of positive regression and Evan Longoria (645 PA, 3.1 zWAR) ought to facilitate easy improvement over last year’s performance.

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As you are probably aware, this offseason has delivered an unusually ice-cold start to free agency. The final months of 2017 facilitated little in the way of movement. The new year, meanwhile, has given us Jay Bruce to the Mets.

There are a variety of reasons for this — reasons that have been examined at this site and elsewhere. For starters, more teams are thinking the same way and believe that free agency is often a losing bet for the club. There are undoubtedly some teams waiting and holding cash in reserve until next year’s historic class. There is the new CBA, which has tougher penalties regarding the luxury tax. And Dave Cameron noted on Tuesday — his last real post for the site — how the presence of a few “super teams” might have removed the motivation for clubs to improve and spend.

Peter Gammons briefly outlined the perspective of clubs and agents last week for The Athletic.

Wrote Gammons:

Management has argued that agents have overrated their clients’ markets, with no Max Scherzer or Zack Greinke to establish the market. Agents feel this is an industry-wide attempt to make players wait and come down to a lesser market.

Last week, I cataloged which of Dave’s top free agents had signed thus far. Little has transpired in the meantime. As of today, Carlos Santana is the only player among Cameron’s top five to have found a home this offseason. Of Cameron’s top-10 free agents, only three have signed. Of the top 20, just six have a new contract, with Bruce representing the latest. That’s a unusually low volume of transactions.

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I have an early, hazy memory of Benito Santiago explaining to a reporter the approach that had led to his game-winning hit moments earlier. “I see the ball, I hit it hard,” said Santiago in his deep accent. From which game, in what year, I can’t remember. Also, it isn’t really important: it’s a line we’ve heard before. Nevertheless, it contains multitudes.

We know, for example, that major-league hitters have to see well to hit well. Recent research at Duke University has once again made explicit the link between eye sight, motor control, and baseball outcomes. This time, though, they’ve split out some of the skills involved, and it turns out that Santiago’s deceptively simple description involves nuanced levels of neuromotor activity, each predictive of different aspects of a hitter’s abilities. Will our developing knowledge about those different skills help us better sort young athletes, or better develop them? That part’s to be determined.

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