This isn’t one of those deals that came out of nowhere. The Padres have been rumored to be the most aggressive Matt Kemp suitor for a couple of weeks now, and all other interested parties seemingly dropped out as the asking price kept getting higher and higher. Over the last few days, this deal felt somewhat inevitable, so we’ve had plenty of time to process the trade and figure out what to say about it. And yet, I’m still kind of stumped.

The 2015 Padres are going to be bad. We currently project them at around a 75 win level, putting them in the same group as the Astros, Twins, Diamondbacks, and Braves. The only team demonstrably worse is the Phillies; you could reasonably argue that the Padres are something like the second worst team in baseball. And they could very well make themselves worse on purpose before the offseason ends, as they’ve reportedly been shopping their veteran starting pitchers, including walk-year guy Ian Kennedy.

It makes plenty of sense for the Padres to trade Kennedy, and if they’re worried that Tyson Ross‘ elbow will blow up from all the sliders he throws, there’s a good case to be made for trading him too. Non-contenders should generally be incentivized to move their short-term assets, especially ones with a significant chance of losing value, in exchange for players who will stick around longer and might increase in value in the future. Given the state of the Padres talent base, they should probably be focusing more on the future than the present.

Which is why I have a hard time understanding why they prioritized adding Matt Kemp. Yes, it’s clear that the team wanted to add a “big bat” to their line-up this winter, and Kemp is legitimately one of the best right-handed hitters in baseball. He gives them something they didn’t have before. I just don’t see how adding Kemp makes them a significantly better baseball team.

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Durability can be a difficult thing to prove, but it can be an easier thing to demonstrate. And teams are fond of players they can count on, which is one of the reasons why Nick Markakis got four guaranteed years while the Mariners sold a relatively cheap Michael Saunders. Francisco Liriano has a history of some issues, but he got himself three years after completing a stretch without pitching-related arm injuries. Brandon McCarthy, historically, hasn’t been so dependable. There was a basically annual shoulder problem, and because of that, it’s long been hard to see McCarthy getting himself an extended guarantee. But McCarthy didn’t just match Liriano — McCarthy got himself four years from the Dodgers, and $48 million, after a completely healthy season. The Dodgers, it would seem, believe enough in McCarthy’s health, and because of some of his 2014 indicators, this is a deal that even includes substantial upside.

You’ve read about McCarthy enough, and we’ve written about McCarthy enough, that we probably don’t need to go into great detail again. He’s always been an interesting pitcher, but 2014 saw him reach a new level of intrigue. The Dodgers, it must always be understood, can afford to take some of these risks, on account of the money that funds them, yet this is a deal that would look pretty good on a number of payrolls. If you believe even a little bit in the power of xFIP, there’s more to McCarthy than meets the eye.

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If you’re a baseball fan and you spent any amount of time on Twitter on Wednesday night, then you probably spent as much time hyperventilating as the rest of us. A new Dodger front office that had spent its first few weeks stealthily upgrading around the fringes of the 40-man — guys like Joel Peralta, Chris Heisey and Juan Nicasio — turned the entire sport upside down with trade after trade after trade, followed by more trades.

Three of those moved served to massively shake up the middle infield. Jeff has you covered on the Dee Gordon–Dan Haren–Andrew Heaney deal, which removed a second baseman from Los Angeles. Dave did a quick InstaGraph on the ensuing Howie Kendrick-Heaney trade with the Angels, which brought one right back. Right here, we’ll talk about how after 15 years and 2,090 games in Philadelphia, Jimmy Rollins is reportedly heading west, joining with Kendrick to make for a fascinating new infield duo. A 36-year-old shortstop well past his prime isn’t exactly the type of player you’d expect this front office to go for, but it makes all the sense in the world for both the player and the team.

For the Dodgers, the appeal is clear. To say shortstop was a need is a massive understatement. With Ramirez gone and top prospect Corey Seager probably another year away, the current situation was so dire that it ranked No. 31 — that’s last, because “free agents” count as a team right now — in our depth charts. Gaze upon the horror: Read the rest of this entry »

Things have been enthusiastic around the Marlins lately. They surprised the industry by managing to lock up Giancarlo Stanton, and then they turned their attention to trying to extend a handful of other promising young big-leaguers. Also, the Marlins swore to improve the immediate big-league roster, signaling that they want to get to the playoffs. There’s been a sense that, for the first time, the Marlins are serious about getting good and staying good, and paying money to do so. The Marlins are trying to convince everyone they’re entering a new era. Which is all well and good, until you make a misstep in trying to improve. That’s the real dangerous bit.

So just to restate: #Marlins getting Dee Gordon and Dan Haren from #dodgers for Heaney, Kike Hernandez, Austin Barnes and Chris Hatcher

— clarkspencer (@clarkspencer) December 11, 2014

I’m not sure if this is the worst move of the offseason. If it is, I’m not sure if this will remain the worst move of the offseason. But my later response continues to match my initial response: Andrew Friedman and the Dodgers are making out like bandits, successfully selling Dee Gordon about as high as possible. The Dodgers are losing a probable regression candidate, about to enter his Super-Two seasons. They’re getting probably the Marlins’ best prospect, and then even more to boot. The Dodgers picked up some more long-term assets. The Marlins might not have gotten better at all.

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Matt Kemp was an atrocious center fielder. There’s really no way around that. Of the 60 center fielders with at least 6,000 innings played since 2002, only the decline years of Ken Griffey, Jr. and Bernie Williams show up as being worse. His 2010 is the single worst DRS ranking of any player season we have on record dating back to 2008. We generally use Rafael Palmeiro’s 1999 Gold Glove in a season where he played only 28 games in the field as the paragon of atrocious award choices, but it could have just as easily been Kemp winning not one but two such awards.

That was true before the endless run of injuries — notably multiple hamstring pulls, a severely injured ankle and a badly damaged shoulder — that sidetracked his career, and it’s even more true now. At 30, with years of injuries behind him and speed that isn’t what it once was, Kemp can no longer outrun his mistakes and questionable instincts in center. You know that. We know that. The Dodgers know that, having forced him out of center in the middle of a May road trip when the immediate alternatives were no better than Andre Ethier and Scott Van Slyke. Kemp himself might not know that, having made noises he wanted to return to center, but Jeff did a wonderful job here back in July explaining just why that was such a bad idea. Whether or not the Dodgers trade him or hang on to him, it seems all but certain that Kemp will never be a regular center fielder again.

Now Kemp is a corner outfielder, and that’s opened up some new questions, issues that are particularly relevant as the Dodgers field endless trade discussions this winter. They have to weigh the positive and negatives between the facts that he’s still owed $107 million, that the team has a well-known outfield glut, that Hanley Ramirez has taken part of the Dodger offense with him to Boston, that second-half adjustments made him one of the best hitters in the game down the stretch… and that by the metrics, he’s not seen as being a good corner outfielder, either.

That’s an important distinction, because as teams try to figure out how much to weight his hot second half and year of full health against his future projections, what he can offer on defense plays a big part in that. There’s a big reason that his very good 140 wRC+ in 2014 led to only a 1.8 WAR, because it was weighed down by 1,195 innings of awful defense. Now we have a question to attack — how much of Kemp’s awful rating was because of his time in center, a position he’ll never play? How much of his lousy rating in the corners can we rely on because of sample size? Is he just a DH with a glove, or is he worse because teams will actually let him play the outfield rather than forcing him to DH?

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There’s an awful lot you can learn from the way that a player gets pitched. Often, you could just look at the player’s statistics, I suppose, but let’s make believe we live in a world without publicly-accessible performance statistics. All right, so, now we’re imagining. Last year, no regular player saw a higher rate of fastballs than Ben Revere. Why would that be? No regular player saw a lower rate of fastballs than Josh Hamilton. Why would that be? First basemen saw far, far fewer fastballs than American League pitchers. If all we had was this information, we could still interpret it, figuring out clues as to how the hitters are perceived.

Of course, it’s not just about fastball rate. You can look at fastballs, or you can look at pitches in the zone, or you can look at types of pitches in particular parts of the zone — there’s a lot you can examine. Players get pitched according to the scouting reports that teams have on those players, and since we can’t look at those scouting reports, we can use the information we have to examine them indirectly.

One thing you can do is look at a guy’s pitch patterns. Yet another powerful indicator of something can be a change in a guy’s pitch patterns. What that would suggest is a change in a guy’s ability level or approach. Yasiel Puig, for example, was pitched differently in 2014 from how he was pitched as a rookie. That’s because Puig evidently corrected a weakness against inside fastballs. If we look at drop in rate of fastballs seen, no hitter saw a bigger drop between 2013 and 2014 than J.D. Martinez. There’s a pretty simple explanation: Martinez changed his swing mechanics and became an out-of-nowhere slugger. So pitchers found themselves having to be more careful.

At the other end, Mike Trout saw an increase in his fastball rate. Opponents tried to seize a perceived weakness against high heat. Allen Craig saw an increase in his fastball rate. Opponents identified that he was missing bat speed and couldn’t get around on hard pitches in. And yet, of all the players, no one saw a bigger year-to-year fastball-rate increase than Hanley Ramirez. Ramirez was productive, and Ramirez just signed a big contract with the Red Sox, but clearly, pitchers saw him differently in the season recently completed.

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The list of non-tenders is out. Time to dream!

It’s actually a very tough place to shop, even if there are a few names that seem attractive this year. Only about one in twelve non-tenders manages to put up a win of value the year after they were let loose. Generally, teams know best which players to keep, and which to jettison.

You’re not going to get 12 non-tenders in your camp in any given year, but there is a way to improve your odds. It’s simple, really: pick up a player that was actually above replacement the year before. If you do that, you double your chance of picking up a productive major leaguer. So let’s look at this year’s market through that lens first.

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A month and a half ago, Yasiel Puig was struggling. In the playoff series against the Cardinals, Puig struck out seven times in a row at one point, and there was a pretty clear book on him: try to beat him with heat, away. He was having trouble catching up, so the Cardinals were having less trouble putting him away, and that’s among the reasons the Dodgers were unable to advance. Anyway, nevermind the bigger context. Nevermind the Dodgers. It’s interesting how Puig was being pitched.

Because the book on Puig late in 2014 was sort of the opposite of the book on Puig late in 2013. A year ago, it seemed like pitchers solved Puig by busting him with fastballs inside. That was the scouting report at the time, and there’s no reason to think it wasn’t valid. It’s just, accurate scouting reports can be temporary scouting reports, sometimes. Over the course of 12 months, Yasiel Puig changed his own book.

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I understand why the BBWAA announces finalists for awards before it announces the winners — they’re trying to build some suspense, some anticipation, and, okay, that’s fine, even if the finalists don’t tell us much we couldn’t predict. For example, we’ve long known the AL Cy Young was going to come down to Felix Hernandez vs. Corey Kluber. All the non-contenders have been officially eliminated, which does nothing. It’s even funnier when you get a race that isn’t a race at all, like Jose Abreu and the AL Rookie of the Year. Or, say, Clayton Kershaw and the NL Cy Young. According to the BBWAA, Kershaw is a finalist, along with Johnny Cueto and Adam Wainwright. The ESPN forecast is somewhat torn between Felix and Kluber, in one league. In the other league, it’s less torn:

Unanimous, in other words. And this is the way things are likely to play out. Clayton Kershaw ought to get every single first-place vote, because of the gap between himself and the others. You can eyeball the gap if you want, but we can also put some numbers to the idea. What would it have taken for Kershaw to come away resembling Cueto or Wainwright?

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The days of having to rail against runs batted in as a particularly useful indicator of individual offensive value are long behind us. That does not mean there might not be potentially interesting research to do on situational hitting or the like, but simply that the straight-up use of RBI is not something that really needs to be debated.

Nonetheless, it is still interesting to see what sorts of hitters can accumulate high numbers of RBI, something we recognize with an award named for two players who managed big RBI numbers despite less than impressive advanced hitting metrics: the John Carter-Tony Bautista Award.

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