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I was one of the large majority of BBWAA members who voted for transparency in Hall of Fame balloting. On the off chance you missed the news, all ballots must be made public beginning next year. I’m fully behind this decision, albeit with one concern.

More and more writers are making their ballots public well in advance of the January announcement, and they are being scrutinized ad infinitum on social media. While mostly a good thing, this could unduly influence a small yet meaningful percentage of voters.

Say you’re on the fence between two players for your tenth checkmark. You’re leaning one way, but your peers — not to mention the online community — are bullish in the other direction. Following the herd is a safer option than following your heart (and mind). No one likes to be lambasted for being a black sheep in the BBWAA brethren. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2016, I once again had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of people within baseball. Many of their words were shared via the FanGraphs Q&A series. Others came courtesy of my Sunday Notes column. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations.

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“I look at my role of GM as a systems manager. I’m focused on our infrastructure and how our system is working. How the seven or eight departments within baseball operations are carrying out our philosophy and vision.” — Billy Eppler, Angels general manager, January 2016

“As the wheels keep turning — as baseball evolves — teams are going to start using their best relievers to get the biggest outs. They’re not going to keep putting them in a box where they only pitch the ninth. And the teams that are early adopters are going to reap the most benefits.” — Burke Badenhop, itinerant reliever, January 2016

“I called time out and proceeded to walk off the field. Billy Williams, the umpire, said, “Cro, where are you going?’ I said, ‘I don’t play in lightning. I don’t like lightning. We have spikes on. We could die out here.’ I went into the dugout and it took 15 minutes to coax me out of there.” — Warren Cromartie, former Expos outfielder, January 2016 Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Seattle Mariners. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / San Diego / San Francisco / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Here’s the very easiest way to determine if a club is likely to possess at least an average collection of field players: determine if all the field players in question receive a forecast of two wins or better. Where the Seattle Mariners are concerned, that’s more or less the case.

The hypothetical right-field platoon of Seth Smith (410 PA, 1.4 zWAR) and Guillermo Heredia (523, 0.9) might represent a weak spot — as might a platoon of Dan Vogelbach (508, 1.0) and Danny Valencia (419, 1.4) at first. In both instances, however, there’s at least a path to competence. Beyond that, basically every other position in the starting lineup — including a left field occupied by the recently acquired Mitch Haniger (517, 1.9) — is average or better. Nor does this account for the nearly elite contributions of Robinson Cano (644, 4.2) and Kyle Seager (653, 4.8).

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While the free-agent march of the offseason continues to crawl along — due in no small part to the lack of appealing options — it might be helpful to look ahead to next winter. The starting pitching of next offseason’s free-agent class is set to mark a vast improvement over the present class. This year’s collection of free-agent hitters, meanwhile, seems to be composed mostly of corner outfielders, first basemen, and designated hitter-types, with few up-the-middle options. Next year’s class appears likely to include plenty of bat-first options available, but the group does have a very good catcher, a very good center fielder, and quite a few third baseman from which teams can choose, as well. Ultimately, however, next year’s crop of position players is going to look an awful lot like this one.

One of the reasons next year’s free-agent hitting class will so closely resemble the current one is that a number of players on the market this offseason figure to appear there again next season. Here are the players who’ve agreed to a one-year deal of one sort or another:

That’s already seven players of some relevance. Nor does that include current free agents like Jose Bautista, Brandon Moss, Mike Napoli, Mark Trumbo, and Matt Wieters who could sign one-year deals if a satisfactory market fails to develop for them before the end of this offseason.

The top names in the table above, Carlos Gomez and Neil Walker, will seek to re-establish their value in 2017. Gomez had a good run at the end of this past season with the Rangers, and while many thought he might get a multi-year deal, he opted to go back to Texas to take a run at a bigger paycheck in a year. Neil Walker chose to accept the qualifying offer extended to him by the Mets, largely due to an injury that ended his season in August and hurt his appeal to clubs at the same time. If he has a healthy 2017 season, he should be in line for a solid multi-year deal. If Matt Holliday hits the two-win mark like his projection estimates, he’ll likely be in line for another similar deal, not unlike how Carlos Beltran parlayed a solid season into a nice one-year deal with the Astros. Castillo’s value might dependent on his reputation defensively, while Jay and Moreland will have to outperform expectations to have a real market next year.

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The pieces are starting to come together for the rebuilding Braves. Though they’ve spent their winter stocking up on veteran starting pitchers and piratey-looking utilitymen, it’s been a winter spent with an eye looking to the future. None of the players whom Atlanta has added are standing firmly in the way of a young prospect, and they all make the team just a little bit better for their debut at their new taxpayer-funded stadium.

The extension of Ender Inciarte is a different matter. This isn’t a move that allows the future to happen, it’s one that shows what the future is going to look like. Inciarte has been given $30.525 million to stick around for an extra two years, and the Braves hold a $9 million option for an additional year after that. If that sounds cheap for a young, three-win center fielder, it’s because it is. Here’s how the deal breaks down.

MLB Trade Rumors’ arbitration projections pegged Inciarte to earn $2.8 million this offseason, and assuming he’d been his usual productive self this year, he would’ve gotten a good raise next winter. Still, this seems like a real steal. Even if you assume Inciarte will record only the 2.4 wins for which Steamer projects him in 2017 and also assume that wins are going for $8 million a piece this offseason (when $8.5 million is more likely), it’s still likely that Inciarte will produce more than $100 million in on-field value over the next five years.

As you can see, this deal saves the Braves a lot of money in the long run, and it gives Inciarte some immediate financial security. Atlanta will now have more money with which to play in free agency and in acquiring players in trades as they look to morph into a contending club.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Detroit Tigers farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Has recorded 46 recorded in 29 pro innings.

Scouting Report
Manning is the prototypical prep righty. He has tremendous size, throws hard, is a terrific athlete (he was committed to Loyola Marymount to play baseball and basketball) with great bloodlines (his father played in the NBA) and has exhibited a nascent feel for a potentially dominant curveball. Any high-school pitcher cooking with that list of ingredients is a slam-dunk first-round pick, and Manning was clearly the second-best high-school righty in the 2016 draft.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. 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.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / San Diego / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
A cursory examination of the club’s field players reveals a theme: almost all of them receive both a better-than-averge (a) strikeout and (b) fielding-runs projection. Nor should this be very surprising: Giants batters produced the second-lowest strikeout rate in the majors last year and the second-most defensive runs. Buster Posey (512 PA, 5.1 zWAR) is well acquitted by both measures. Brandon Crawford (575, 4.3) receives something closer to a league-average strikeout-rate projection; on the defensive side, however, the combination of his fielding mark (+9) and hypothetical positional adjustment (something like +7, probably) produce about 1.5 wins, rendering him league-average player almost without any consideration of his offensive skills.

Overall, the position-player side of things appears well suited to avoiding the awful. If an area of weakness remains, it’s in left field, where Jarrett Parker (449, 1.4) and Mac Williamson (389, 0.6) are expected to form a platoon. Even that combination, though, appears capable of providing wins at a league-average rate.

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Thursday afternoon I spent a few minutes talking about pitch-framing with Michael Baumann and Ben Lindbergh. I was on their podcast for a segment to talk about my entry in this year’s Hardball Times Annual, and in the course of the conversation, Ryan Doumit’s name came up. As a big-leaguer, Doumit mostly stayed under the radar, but pitch-framing research exposed his crippling weakness. The numbers made him look bad. Not just bad-bad. Not just run-of-the-mill bad. Extremely bad. Extraordinarily bad. Doumit, as a receiver in 2008, is charged with -63 runs at Baseball Prospectus.

It wasn’t a one-year fluke. For his career, Doumit’s framing was worth almost -200 runs. If you look at his FanGraphs page, you see 8.2 career WAR. Fine role player, average bat. Add in framing, though, and he plummets to a WAR of nearly -12. Doumit goes from being useful to toxic. All because of something we couldn’t even measure a decade ago.

You’d be justified in wondering whether these numbers are accurate. I have trouble believing in them myself. That’s just so, so much value given away. However, allow me to offer this evidence. Doumit caught more than 4,000 innings. Other catchers on his teams caught twice as much. When Doumit was catching, the pitchers allowed 5.34 runs per nine innings. When someone else was catching, the pitchers allowed 4.90 runs per nine innings. That difference, over Doumit’s innings total: 213 runs. Something bad was happening there.

I’ve gone off course. I’m not here to pick on Ryan Doumit. He earned salaries totaling more than $22 million. He did it! But thinking about Doumit made me wonder. How bad could a pitch-framer possibly be? What would be the lower bound? I can’t give you a realistic answer, but I can give you estimates.

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Every full season Mike Trout has put together as a Major League Baseball player has been great. Through his age-24 season, Mike Trout has been worth roughly 48 Wins Above Replacement, averaging around +9.5 wins per season. Through age-24, that is more than any other player, with Ty Cobb a close second, and Mickey Mantle, Mel Ott, Jimmie Foxx, and Ted Williams a bit further behind. Trout is already in third place through age-25, 10th place through age-26, and 23rd place through age-27 with three seasons to be played before he gets there. Mike Trout is great. Everybody knows that.

But what would happen if Mike Trout had a good year in comparison to, well, Mike Trout?

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Teams have been less than enthusiastic with this year’s class of free-agent starters. Only two pitchers, Rich Hill and Edinson Volquez, have received multi-year contracts worth more than $10 million per season. Combined, the years and dollars on their contracts equal the same five years and $70 million that Ian Kennedy received from the Kansas City Royals last year, the eighth-highest contract given to a starting pitcher during the 2015-16 offseason.

There’s good reason for the lack of sizable free-agent contracts for starters this winter: the class isn’t particularly good. While some have already begun looking ahead to the monster class of free agents available after the 2018 campaign — one that includes Bryce Harper, Matt Harvey, Clayton Kershaw, Dallas Keuchel, Manny Machado, and David Price — next year’s class should actually be quite strong as well. It might be even stronger than the 2018-19 offseason’s free agents on the pitching side.

The effect of opt-outs in contracts has been rather small thus far. In recent years, Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia both opted out of their contracts and then re-signed with the New York Yankees. Zack Greinke opted out of his contract with the Dodgers last winter and cashed in with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Next winter, we’re going to see the first full-fledged offseason during which opt-outs could loom large.

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