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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 St. Louis Cardinals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Boston / Philadelphia.

Batters
There are obvious caveats one should append to the sentence which follows, and yet it’s also true. The St. Louis Cardinals, who’ve just been to the World Series, are likely to enter the 2014 season with a better complement of position players than with which they entered 2013.

Part of that, of course, is having a shortstop at all. Daniel Descalso and Pete Kozma, combined, were never an ideal substitute for Rafael Furcal. That next year’s shortstop is Jhonny Peralta — about whom ZiPS is fairly optimistic — represents a decided advantage. That Matt Carpenter emerged as very possibly an above-average major leaguer has also benefited the club.

In terms of who precisely will play where precisely in 2014, there are some uncertainties regarding that. For the purposes of the depth chart below, I’ve put Allen Craig in right field and Matt Adams at first base. In reality, Jon Jay and (possibly) Oscar Taveras will also play roles with the club, however.

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The hot stove raging inferno season has included a lot of activity so far, but despite all the moves and the rumored moves, there hadn’t been a lot of reported activity around the winter’s biggest trade chip, at least until last night. That’s when Jeff Passan reported that talks with Tampa Bay about acquiring David Price were expected to heat up soon, naming the Mariners, Dodgers, Angels, Rangers, Pirates, Diamondbacks, and Blue Jays among interested teams. But the more interesting part of the story was this:

The 28-year-old Price immediately would be the most sought-after name on the trade market, and teams expect him to net a far bigger package than the Wil Myers-headlined deal Tampa Bay received from Kansas City last season. Despite the potential for $30 million in salary over the next two seasons before he hits free agency after 2015, Price is a rare commodity – an available ace – that is drawing interest accordingly.

The Wil Myers deal was one of the worst overpays in trade in recent history, and Passan is suggesting that people are expecting the Rays to land a “far bigger package than the Myers-headlined deal” for David Price. Suffice it to say that I don’t think teams should view egregious overpays as market-setting preedents, and I wouldn’t advise anyone to base their offer for Price on analysis that goes something like “Shields got Myers, and Price is better than Shields, so Price should cost more than Myers.” So let’s talk about what Price should return in trade.

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Despite their penchant for dealing prospects for veterans, the Giants have amassed an impressive group of young arms that ranges from potential frontline starter to back-end innings-eaters (and everything in between). What the organization lacks, though, is a potential impact bat. Read the rest of this entry »

They say that Tuesday was maybe the craziest MLB offseason day ever. There’s a good chance it was, although in fairness, after Tuesday, none of us can remember any days other than Tuesday. Pretty much every player in baseball up and went somewhere else, and the day was capped off by news  the Yankees were guaranteeing Jacoby Ellsbury a hundred million dollars and then half of another hundred million dollars. Right there, even by Yankees terms, that indicates the organization believes pretty strongly in Ellsbury’s future. You don’t make that kind of commitment to a player whose ability and health you don’t believe in.

But Ellsbury finished the 2013 season hurt, and he was on the disabled list in September. In 2012, he made fewer appearances than Chad Durbin. In 2010, he made fewer appearances than Ben Sheets. What Ellsbury has is an injury history that’s cost him an awful lot of playing time, and it’s taken a toll on his reputation. It’s worth considering what all this says about Ellsbury, and more generally, it’s worth considering how we think about players who have and haven’t gotten hurt.

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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 Philadelphia Phillies. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Boston.

Batters
Citizens of Philadelphia will be glad to see that their club’s first baseman, Ryan Howard — to whom is still owed no less than $85 million — isn’t projected by ZiPS to produce only a single win like last year. What’ll be less encouraging is how it’s because he’s projected to produce more like zero wins in ca. 400 plate appearances.

Fortunately, the club profiles as generally average almost everywhere else — with a number of starters apparent candidates to improve upon their 2013 campaigns. Domonic Brown, Ben Revere, Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Ruiz: all four receive here projected WARs better than their actual WARs from this past season. Difficult to ignore, as well, is the very encouraging projection for Maikel Franco, who recorded a 30:70 walk-to-strikeout and 31 home runs in 581 plate appearances last season between High- and Double-A. Some question remains as to whether Franco will ultimately play third or first base in the majors. Conveniently, however, those appear to be the parent club’s greatest weaknesses at present.

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You’re going to hear Carl Crawford’s name a lot over the next 24 hours. Carl Crawford was a speed-and-defense outfielder heading into his 30s and the Red Sox gave him $142 million over seven years, only to see the deal become an albatross almost immediately. Everyone who was skeptical of aging speed-and-defense outfielders was instantly vindicated. Everyone who is still skeptical of aging speed-and-defense outfielders is going to instantly point to the Carl Crawford deal when they hear that the Yankees have agreed to pay Jacoby Ellsbury $153 million over the next seven years.

Crawford is a data point in their favor, absolutely. He was a similar player to Ellsbury, and he got a similar contract to Ellsbury, and it didn’t turn out to be a very good idea. Crawford is absolutely evidence that this contract could be a big mistake. Crawford is a reminder that big free agent deals often turn out badly. But if you’re going to use Carl Crawford as the sole data point in your belief that players like Ellsbury are bad investments, you’re simply ignoring the fact that history doesn’t actually agree with you.

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Most rumors, of course, are nonsense, or at least things that won’t come true. We all know this to be the case, but a lot of the time, it’s difficult to tell from the outside what’s part of the signal and what’s part of the noise. Then there are the rumors that are just immediately, obviously ridiculous. This is the way I choose to feel about the chatter that the A’s have strong interest in Nelson Cruz — Cruz looks like the opposite of a free-agent bargain, he’s going to cost a draft pick, and the A’s have a full outfield. There’s no part of my rational mind that would link Nelson Cruz to Billy Beane’s ballclub. Not one bit of it seems logical, so the rumor’s dismissed.

I had a similar reaction when I first saw word that the A’s were interested in trading for Jim Johnson. Johnson, like Cruz, has his uses, but he’s a Proven Closer due to make eight figures next season. Closers tend to be the most overpaid players on the market, so I didn’t see Beane falling for this, in reality. Then Beane actually traded for Johnson, giving the Orioles Jemile Weeks and a little bit else. The A’s deliberately acquired an eight-figure Proven Closer, and now the more I think about how it happened, the more I see how it makes some sense after all.

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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 Boston Red Sox. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
In Stephen Drew, Jacoby Ellsbury, Mike Napoli, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Boston has lost to free agency a foursome that accounted for over 2100 plate appearances and 16 wins in the club’s championship 2013 campaign. A difficult thing, is what that would appear to be. One notes, however, that a team never loses a departed player’s performance from the previous season, but from the one ahead. Napoli and Saltalamacchia, for example, are unlikely to match their plus-.350 BABIP figures from 2013. ZiPS discounts their likely 2014 value accordingly.

One notes also that Boston isn’t entirely ill-equipped to deal with those departures. Two of the organization’s more promising young players, Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley, appear to be reasonable — and very cost-effective — alternatives to Drew and Ellsbury. A.J. Pierzynski, meanwhile — whose signing was announced as this actual paragraph was being written — will likely provide as much in the way of wins as Saltalamacchia would have, with less of an investment. Some combination of Mike Carp and Daniel Nava ought to approximate Napoli’s two-win projection at first base. All told, the Red Sox are probably at a deficit of something like two wins.

This, of course, ignores how Boston might choose to utilize the payroll freed up by the aforementioned departures. That same foursome was paid about $30 million collectively in 2013. With a well-established starting rotation, Boston is in a position to focus its resources on upgrades among its field players. Pierzynski is one step in that direction. One supposes that an upgrade at first base/left field could be another.

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The Tigers have six good starting pitchers, if you believe that Drew Smyly should be able to transition back to starting after a successful pitstop in the bullpen. Steamer projects all five of their current starters for at least +3 WAR next year, and it’s not at all crazy to think that Smyly will be a +2 to +3 WAR pitcher as a starter, given his track record and stuff. The desire to move Smyly back into the rotation meant that had someone to go. For the last few months, the rumored trade candidates have been Rick Porcello and Max Scherzer.

Those guys can officially unpack their bags, however, as the Nationals have solved the Tigers pitching problem by relieving them of Doug Fister instead. And they did it at a shockingly low price, considering that Fister is one of the game’s most underrated pitchers. But let’s deal with what they gave up first.

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This is an overly simplistic generalization, but when signing free agents to contracts smaller than $100 million, you can choose performance or health, but probably not both. Players who play everyday at a high level command massive paychecks, and are pursued by nearly every team with money to spend. When you’re shopping in the lower rent districts, you can sign healthy players with mediocre performances, or broken players with good performances, but there aren’t many good healthy free agents signing short term contracts these days.

The A’s, over the last few years, have very clearly prioritized performance over durability. When they wanted a center fielder back in 2010, they signed Coco Crisp despite the fact that he was coming off shoulder surgery. When they traded away Andrew Bailey in 2011, they targeted Josh Reddick from the Red Sox, who had been an interesting player when he was able to stay on the field. When they needed a shortstop last winter, they turned to the Astros and acquired Jed Lowrie, who had a history of both hitting well and breaking down regularly.

They’ve done it with pitchers too, acquiring guys like Brandon McCarthy, Brett Anderson, and Jarrod Parker at various points over the last few years. Because of their budget constraints, the A’s have to shop from the bargain bin, and they have consistently chosen to buy talented broken players over more reliable mediocrities. When faced with a choice between talent and health, the A’s have chosen talent and hoped that the health would get better.

Today, they’ve done that again, signing Scott Kazmir to a two year contract for a little more than $22 million. And based on both the A’s history and Kazmir’s 2013 season, this looks like a strong bet to be one of the best contracts given to a free agent starter this winter.

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