Around the trade deadline, there was ever so briefly a rumor that the Nationals might entertain the idea of moving Lucas Giolito for Andrew Miller. It didn’t happen, and more importantly, it wasn’t true, but I wrote up a quick little post entitled The Case for Trading Lucas Giolito. The circumstances haven’t changed very much in the months since. Giolito is in the news again, mostly in connection with Chris Sale rumors. It’s possible that, by the time you read this post, Giolito will be property of the White Sox! The White Sox would be happy about that, because Giolito remains incredibly talented. He’s also been a declining asset. Since the end of July, Giolito kept on not retiring major-league hitters. He’s a 22-year-old top prospect, but there are more questions about him than ever.

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There are a few teams in baseball that just don’t trade with each other, at least not in any meaningful way. The Cubs and White Sox don’t send impact players to their crosstown rivals. The Dodgers and Giants would rather do anything else besides strike a significant trade that might help the other, to the point where you only have to go back four trades between the two franchises before you find a deal that involved Jackie Robinson. Yes, that Jackie Robinson; the deal was voided when Robinson refused to report to the Giants.

Less well known, the Cardinals and Royals also mostly just ignore each other in trade talks. They’ve made four trades together in the last 21 years, involving immortal players like Jose Martinez (twice), Tony Cruz, Jamie Romak, Victor Marte, and Jason Ryan. Back in December of 1995, the Cardinals helped facilitate a three-way trade in which the Royals got Mike Remlinger from the Reds, a move so essential that Remlinger actually never pitched for Kansas City, as he was claimed back on waivers by the Reds before the 1996 season started.

Realistically, the last significant trade between the two franchises was in February of 1993, when St. Louis sent Felix Jose to Kansas City for Gregg Jefferies. Both players had been roughly average players the year before, but Jefferies turned in a +5.4 WAR season in 1993 for St. Louis, while Jose put up a -0.9 WAR season in KC. The Royals apparently decided the Cardinals were not to be trusted after that, and we’ve now gone 23 years without a significant move between the two organizations.

But in reading Jeff’s post yesterday, and thinking about what the Royals could do this winter besides just sit around and hope things break their way, I started to think that Dayton Moore and John Mozeliak should thaw the ice. It’s time for the Royals and Cardinals to make an interesting trade again.

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Over the last few years, the New York Yankees have placed a focus on getting younger. The attempts to make that happen have been mostly successful. The data back it up. Consider: since 2014, the average age of the club’s batters (weighted by plate appearance) has decreased from 32.5 to 31.2 to 30.0.

At first glance, the Yankees’ decision on Sunday to sign Matt Holliday to a one-year, $13 million contract might seem to run contrary to these efforts. Adding a 37-year-old to play designated hitter doesn’t immediately seem like the sort of move that would continue to facilitate the Yankees’ youth movement. That said, this is the same club that allocated a majority of the team’s plate appearances at DH last season to 40-year-old Alex Rodriguez and 39-year-old Carlos Beltran. In a crowded market for designated-hitter types, the Yankees acted relatively early and might have gotten one of the better deals for the upcoming season.

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Not long ago, I was thinking about the teams that might elect to rebuild next. The only really obvious candidate was and is the White Sox, who could begin the process at any moment. After them, I thought about the Diamondbacks, who might be a half-year away. The Orioles might be approaching their own cliff. The Tigers have already expressed a desire to get younger and cheaper. And so on. A team I didn’t think about enough was the Royals. In my head, I still associate the Royals with having so recently won a championship, but now that’s behind them. What’s ahead of them is a future that seems like it’s going to be very tricky to navigate.

Now isn’t the time for the Royals to start blowing it up. The Royals shouldn’t dismantle, not this week, not this winter. I don’t think that would really help them avoid the coming reality. But from the looks of things, 2017 is going to be it. Already, the Royals achieved the greatest success. The cost of that pursuit will begin to take its toll.

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When your favorite team signs a new player, you don’t want to hear about the downside. You don’t want to hear about other players whom your team could have signed, or how your player will age, or if the deal constitutes an overpay. You want to hear about how awesome that player is and how much better he’ll make your team. I’m here for you. I’ll tell you those things about Mark Melancon, who has reportedly signed with the San Francisco Giants for what is likely to be something like four years and $62 million. And then… then comes some cold water. Just warning you.

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Steve Pearce has been very good in two of the last three seasons. The Blue Jays are betting he can be good in the next two, as well, as they have reportedly signed him to a two-year, $12 million deal that likely spells the end of Edwin Encarnacion’s time in Toronto.

This should be a very positive deal for the Blue Jays. Pearce has been prone to injury throughout his career — he he didn’t amass more than 200 plate appearances in a season until 2014 (his eighth in the league) and he dealt with forearm, elbow, hamstring and calf injuries last year — but the Blue Jays have paid him accordingly. Generally speaking, you would expect to see a guy coming off a 136 wRC+ to get more than $6 million per year, but that’s exactly what Pearce is getting. If he produces, the Blue Jays will be getting a steal. If he ends up hurt, as his medical history suggests is likely to happen, the Blue Jays are still OK because they haven’t committed much money to him.

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Rich Hill is, probably, the most fascinating free agent in recent memory.

On the one hand, he’s a frontline pitcher in a market starved for pitching, the only guy available you can really imagine handing the ball to in a playoff game and liking your chances of winning that day. Since the start of the 2015 season, Clayton Kershaw (.221) is the only pitcher alive to allow a lower wOBA than Hill (.231). During the last two years, his 23.3% K%-BB% puts him right between Noah Syndergaard (22.9%) and Chris Sale (23.8%), while at the same time, no starting pitcher has allowed home runs at a lower rate than Hill’s 0.4 HR/9.

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Omar Vizquel will be on Hall of Fame ballots for the first time in 2018. In all likelihood, he’ll still be there when I become eligible to vote a few years later (This is my sixth year in the BBWAA, so I have four to go). The defensive whiz will receive some support, but his odds of reaching the 75% mark aren’t great. There’s a pretty decent chance he’ll eventually end up an Eras Committee candidate.

The arguments against Vizquel are valid. His .688 OPS and 82 adjusted OPS are clearly inferior, and he was an All-Star just three times in 24 seasons. His 42.6 WAR pales in comparison to Alan Trammell’s 63.7, and the Tigers’ great was (inexplicably) snubbed by the BBWAA.

I plan to vote for Vizquel. Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Beltran signed with the Astros for a year and $16 million. There is probably plenty to say about this! There’s stuff to say about Beltran so far managing to defy the nature of aging. There’s stuff to say about the Astros being almost overloaded with position players. There’s stuff to say about Beltran returning to Houston after the two separated so many years back. There’s a lot for different people to tackle, but I’m only one guy and I’m also one guy in a hurry, so, here, numbers and plots. The Astros are good!

I mean, the Astros were already good. They were good before they signed Beltran. They were good before they got Brian McCann and Josh Reddick. Now they’re only better. Focusing strictly on offense, I’m going to show you two images. First, here’s one reviewing 2016. This shows total team offensive runs above or below average, that just being a combination of batting value and baserunning value. This is only for non-pitchers so as to try to balance out the leagues.

I highlighted the Astros, who were right around the middle. Specifically, they ranked 16th. Now for the projected future! I know this is to some degree a silly exercise. It’s all based on one projection system, and no team’s offseason is complete, and projections don’t do a great job of accounting for platoons. But this does give you a good idea of where things stand today. Here’s a 2017 projection of the same information as above, based on Steamer projections and our updated depth charts.

The 16th-place Astros now show up as the second-place Astros, and they’re first place in the American League. They’re 22 runs removed from the third-place Nationals, and they’re 27 runs removed from the Red Sox. Once again: the Red Sox will acquire at least one hitter. The Astros are probably finished, as their lineup goes. Anything else they do will probably be about pitching, and there are a lot of hitters left out there for other teams to pick up. But make no mistake — the Astros have built a lineup that’s going to be a daily challenge for any pitcher. There’s new flexibility and new depth, and the lineup might well lack an easy part. The winter meetings haven’t even begun and the Astros look like a terror.

As has been the case, it’s going to come down to how the rotation holds up. They’ll try to make an addition. It might not work, maybe not in the winter, but when a team isn’t sure how much it can trust its starters, the best you can do is to assemble lineup and bullpen depth. That’s what the Astros have done, and that’s why they look like possible, if not probable, AL favorites. It’s not a bad place for Beltran to seek that elusive World Series.

Yesterday, the author of the current post published a lightly annotated version of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for the San Diego Padres. To no one’s surprise, likely, the forecast for the 2017 edition of the club isn’t wildly a promising one. After investing heavily in some expensive veterans during the first year of his tenure as the club’s general manager, A.J. Preller has taken a very different approach over the last calendar year, acquiring whatever young talent he could in exchange for the aforementioned veterans.

On the offensive side, some of that young talent is already materializing at the major-league level. Outfielders Travis Jankowski, Manuel Margot, and Hunter Renfroe, for example — who’ve recorded fewer than 600 plate appearances as a group — are projected to produce about two wins each next year. That’s encouraging both for the club’s present and future. On the pitching side, however, Szymborski’s computer was decidedly less optimistic: of the club’s likely starters, only one (Tyson Ross) was projected to produce more than a win.

Of course, the caveat attached to any team-based projections released at this time of year is that the complexion of said team’s roster can change dramatically. “This is bad,” one could reasonably say of the forecast for the Padres’ rotation, “but the team could still make some moves.”

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