The strength of the Rays organization is depth. The club lacks a true impact talent at the top of this list, although both Taylor Guerrieri and Hak-Ju Lee have the tools to be outstanding players if they can put injuries behind them. Read the rest of this entry »
After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Milwaukee Brewers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay.
Batters
The computer math which informs these ZiPS projections doesn’t know that Ryan Braun was charged, during the 2011-12 offseason, of using PEDs; that he successfully appealed what would have been a 50-game suspension; that he was then named in documents belonging to Biogenesis of America; that he (i.e. still Braun) attributed the appearance of his name in those documents to how his legal counsel had retained Anthony Bosch, the clinic’s operator, as a consultant; or that he then agreed to serve a 65-game suspension last season. The figures here are based on the combination of variables Szymborski generally uses to produce projections: past performance, aging, etc. They reveal no insight beyond that.
What the ZiPS projections below do reveal, however, is how, very quickly and sadly, Rickie Weeks appears to have become a mediocre player, already. In just 2011, Weeks produced a three-win season; the year before that, nearly a six-win one. Now he’s in very real danger of losing his job entirely to Scooter Gennett — a modestly skilled player, Gennett, but without the impressive physical tools that defined Weeks at his best.
Clayton Kershaw signed the largest contract for any pitcher in baseball history on Wednesday. In doing so, he became the first player in MLB to agree to a long term deal for an annual average value of more than $30 million, so on a per season basis, he’s also the highest paid player in baseball history. And he got that deal a year before he was eligible to hit free agency, so this price reflects a discount over what the Dodgers believe he would have gotten with competitive bidding. Given these facts, it’s easy to look at this deal as a harbinger of escalating prices and further proof of significant inflation in Major League Baseball.
Interestingly, however, it’s really not that at all. I walked through Kershaw’s expected value about a half hour before the contract was announced on Wednesday, and my guess for the total price came out to $230 million over seven years, a little less than what he actually signed for, but also didn’t include the value to Kershaw of getting to opt-out after year five. Including that offsetting value, I think my guess was pretty decent.
After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay.
Batters
While not having realized the Sisyphean task of winning a World Series, GM Neal Huntington et al. have constructed a Pirates club that both (a) qualified for the playoffs in 2013 and also (b) would appear to have a reasonable chance of repeating that outcome in 2014.
If the Pirates don’t make their way to the postseason this year, it likely won’t be the fault of their field players. Per ZiPS, Andrew McCutchen is a candidate to win the 2014 MVP award after winning it in real life this last season. Beyond him is a collection of average-or-better players and also Gaby Sanchez. Combining the latter with Andrew Lambo (or maybe Jaff Decker or maybe Travis Snider) in a platoon might even render the club’s first-base position as average.
I’m not gonna lie to you — I’d love to be writing about something more compelling. Perhaps some unexplored Clayton Kershaw angle, or perhaps something else entirely. At the end of the day, traffic does have to be there, and traffic follows entertaining, easily-understandable blog posts. It doesn’t so much follow posts about what it’s like, statistically, to pitch to a rookie in Major League Baseball. But we’re all just slaves to the ideas that we have at any given moment, and after I messed around earlier with league-wide leaderboards, I felt the urge to keep messing around in the same place. I promise this is just a phase.
Earlier I did what I could to investigate whether or not veteran pitchers and veteran hitters get the benefit of the doubt from home-plate umpires when it comes to the called strike zone. Those are theories I’ve heard repeated time and time again, and they were easy enough to look into. That got me thinking about other well-worn baseball theories, and I wound up growing curious about how big leaguers have approached rookies, relative to how they’ve approached non-rookies. Do rookies get fed a steady stream of breaking balls? Alternatively, do they get fed a bunch of fastballs in the zone? Is there any meaningful difference in how rookies are pitched to? It didn’t take a lot to put some numbers together.
The 2014 FAN Projection ballots are now open!
Before you can project any players, you’ll have to select the team you follow most closely towards the top of the screen. If you really don’t follow a team, just pick one. You’ll only have to do this once.
After you’ve selected a team, there are 9 categories for pitchers and 10 categories for position players. Pick the values in the drop-down boxes closest to what you think the player will do in 2014, hit the submit button and you’re done! If you made a mistake, you can always go back and change your selection at any time.
Please note that everything this year is a rate stat. You’re projecting 2B+3B, HR, SB, and Fielding as a measure of 150 games (basically a full season). The player’s previous stats are shown per 150 games in the projection ballot too. This will make changing playing time projections much easier as you’ll only have to change the games played portion.
That’s really all there is to it. You can filter players by team, or if you go to the player pages, you can project players individually. If you want to see all the players you’ve projected, you can click on the “My Rankings” button which will show you only what you specifically projected a player to do.
Fan Projections will show up on the player pages after there have been 5 ballots submitted.
If you do notice any issues, please let us know.
Over the last few years, a common thought experiment among nerdy baseball fans has been to imagine what Mike Trout would sign for if he was a free agent. He was the best player in baseball before he could legally drink, and if the market had to price a player of his ability and youth, $400 million wouldn’t be out of the question. You could even make a case for $500 million if the contract was long enough. But it was all just fun mental gymnastics, a hypothetical that didn’t exist in reality.
However, Mike Trout isn’t the only historically special player currently dominating the big leagues. Clayton Kershaw has also put up numbers that few his age have ever matched, and since he’s only a year from reaching free agent status, we’re about to find out just what the market will pay for a young superstar on a Hall of Fame track.
After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago White Sox. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay.
Batters
Despite having performed no rigorous analysis on the matter, the author nevertheless feels comfortable asserting that it’s difficult for a club that features just one above-average hitter — it’s difficult for that sort of club to win very much. Unfortunately, barring any sort of further offseason acquisitions, this appears to be the sort of club with which the Chicago White Sox enter the 2014 season. According to ZiPS, the next-best projected batting line after Cuban emigre Jose Abreu’s 129 OPS+ is the 97 OPS+ shared both by Adam Dunn and Avisail Garcia.
That Cuban emigre Jose Abreu’s No. 1 comp is Paul Konerko might amuse the reader — on account of Konerko is more or less the player whom Abreu is replacing, that is. This particular comparison also serves as a pretense upon which to remind the reader that all comparable players pertain only to the age-season into which the projected player is entering. So, for example, the season of interest regarding Konerko as it pertains to Abreu is the former’s age-27 one — which, besides a deflated BABIP, wasn’t a bad one.
Now that Alex Rodriguez‘ career has quite possibly come to an end, it’s time to put it into some sort of historical perspective. He’s not just the player whose career is apparently ending in disgrace, with any number of emerging subplots. He’s also the Miami high school wunderkind, the Mike Trout of his time in his Seattle days, and guy who signed the biggest contract in baseball history – twice – with the Rangers and Yankees. He resides near the top of many all-time leaderboards, but at the same time his career can be seen as a disappointment.
He’s a paradoxical character who has been a consistent elite performer, but seems to be loved by no fan base, and has been derided for his postseason output though the numbers aren’t much different from those of Reggie “Mr. October” Jackson or Derek Jeter. He just might be the most universally hated superstar in US sports history. Let’s take a step back from all of it, however, and with as a critical and unbiased an eye as possible, assess his career and see where it fits within the history of the game. Read the rest of this entry »
Alex Rodriguez sued Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association on Monday as part of an effort to overturn his suspension. That suspension became effective on Saturday when arbitrator Frederic Horowitz issued a decision on Rodriguez’s appeal and reduced the slugger’s penalty from 211 games to the entirety of the 2014 season — 162 regular season games and any postseason games the Yankees might play.
Click here to read Rodriguez’s complaint and arbitrator’s 33-page written decision, which is attached as Exhibit A to the complaint.
