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Honorable Mentions

We begin with the last five spots on the list. These guys are all excellent players, but they come with some concerns either about their contract, health, or future performance. Teams would love to have any of them, but there are reasons to think that some would hesitate or back away entirely even if these players were made available. They would have significant appeal to a few clubs, but not the broad appeal to start off a league wide bidding war. On to the list. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been preparing the 2013 version of my annual Trade Value list, a project I’ve been doing since 2005 after borrowing the idea from Bill Simmons. I moved the trade value list to FanGraphs in 2008, and it’s been an annual series here ever since. If you missed our retrospective on last year’s list, you can review the entire list, and the lessons we might be able to learn from those names, in this post from Friday.

Coming in a few hours, we’ll introduce the first five players — well, I guess, technically the last five, since we’re working in reverse order — and we’ll do ten players per day all week, culminating in the top five on Friday afternoon. However, before we get into the guys who made the list, I figured it would be worthwhile to do a post on the guys who just missed the cut. This was a tough list to crack, and there were a lot of high quality players who just ended up on the outside of the bubble for one reason or another.

Rather than turning all future posts into a discussion of guys who haven’t yet appeared, this post will hopefully answer some questions as to why a player won’t appear on in the rest of the series. And it isn’t because I hate your favorite team. I promise. In fact, a lot of the guys who just missed the cut are personal favorites of mine, and most of them made some previous iteration of the list before I finalized the order. But, with only 50 spots, someone had to just miss the cut. Here are the guys who didn’t quite make it.

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Some time ago, in talking about the upcoming trade deadline, Dave offered Jesse Crain as a potential alternative to the potentially expensive Jonathan Papelbon. Relievers are always in demand around midseason, and Crain was proving himself to be a hell of a weapon. Shortly thereafter, Crain went and landed on the disabled list, and while his value wasn’t completely obliterated, it was dealt a blow and Crain is right now in the rehab process. He’s not the target he was, and he’s going to have to prove himself if he is to get moved.

I’m here now not to offer another alternative to Papelbon, but to just highlight a good reliever who’s available. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Oliver Perez has been pitching really well, and though he’s probably not reliable closer material, Perez throws hard with his left arm, and the things that used to plague him seem to be history. Perez is a lefty reliever on a bad team in his contract year, and if he gets traded — and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t — his new team should end up pleased as punch, whatever the hell that means.

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Next week, I’m rolling out the latest version of our annual trade value series. Before we get into this year’s list, though, I think it’s instructive to look back at where players were ranked a year ago, and see if there are any lessons to be learned from the placement of various players. I would rather learn from history than repeat it.

Let’s just start with the list itself.

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Glen Perkins has, somewhat quietly, become a dominating relief pitcher. He currently sits 5th among qualified relievers in FIP (1.84), 4th in xFIP (2.21), and he has 14 shutdowns against just two meltdowns. He’s into advanced statistics and knows what FIP and xFIP are. He’s going to represent the Twins in the All-Star Game next week, the team he grew up watching as a kid in Minnesota. And he’s signed to a well below market contract, one that pays him just $2.5 million this year, $3.75 million for the following two years, and then gives the Twins a $4.5 million option on his 2016 season. Because of all these things — okay, probably not the nerd part — the Twins are reportedly not willing to trade Perkins, as their preference is to keep him while they rebuild a new core of young players around him.

The Mets might do a similar thing with Bobby Parnell. He has also been excellent (2.16 FIP, 3.16 xFIP) since moving into their closer role, and as a 28-year-old under team control via arbitration for the next two seasons, the Mets are apparently disinclined to trade him. Neither team wants to send the message that their rebuilds are going to take years, and both are showing a preference to retain their young, cost controlled assets and simply move older pieces on larger contracts instead.

Here’s the problem. Closers — relief pitchers in general, really — are simply not worth building around. Today’s asset is tomorrow’s liability, and the Twins and Mets should learn from the mistake that the Royals made with Joakim Soria.

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Reports surfaced Tuesday on ESPN.com that Ryan Braun refused to answer questions posed by Major League Baseball’s lawyers when they interviewed him as part of the Biogenesis investigation. Alex Rodriguez is scheduled to be interviewed this Friday and, according to ESPN, also will refuse to answer MLB’s questions. Despite silence from Braun and Rodriguez, MLB apparently plans to suspend the two players — and perhaps 20 others — sometime after the All-Star break. But Braun and Rodriguez have been called out for special punishment: Not only does MLB plan to suspend the pair 50 games for possessing or using a banned substance, the league will reportedly add on another 50 games for lying about their use of banned substances.

ESPN’s report generated lots of questions and commentary. Who leaked this information to ESPN and why? Did MLB leak it to put pressure on Braun and Rodriguez to cooperate? Did Braun or the players’ union leak it to show the league’s heavy handedness? How can the league already have decided to suspend Rodriguez for 100 games before he’s even met with investigators?

But perhaps the most pressing question is: How can a player be suspended for lying when he remained silent in response to questions from MLB’s investigators? And the corollary: If the “lying” didn’t take place during the investigation, does MLB plan to rely on years-old public statements? Wouldn’t that open a huge can of worms? Craig Calcaterra, over at Hardball Talk, had some interesting things to say on these issues:

Last year Melky Cabrera famously — and quite ridiculously — attempted to pass off a phony website as an excuse for his positive PED test. It caused MLB to actually have to conduct an investigation into the phony company, purchase phony products and, at least according to some reports, travel to the Dominican Republic. This, apart from its hilarity, was blatant lying, deception and fraud. And yet, at the end of it, Melky Cabrera was given only a 50-game suspension.

If what Melky Cabrera did wasn’t worthy of double discipline, how on earth could Braun offering denials or, more likely, not saying anything, justify it?

Craig’s comments sent me scurrying back to the Collective Bargaining Agreement and the Joint Drug Policy to see if I could figure out MLB’s 100-game suspension plan. I’ve actually written on this point before, back in June, in my primer on all things Biogenesis. In that post, I pointed to two different “just cause” provisions — one in the CBA and one in the Joint Drug Policy — that MLB would likely rely on.

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You’re going to be reading a lot about Matt Garza, if you haven’t already. This being July, it’s officially trading season, and Garza is probably the best starting pitcher on the market. So, rumors. Let me try to distill what I’ve seen: there’s talk the Cubs might reverse course and sign Garza to a long-term extension, but that probably won’t happen, and Garza will probably be dealt, probably soon. The free-agent-to-be has been scouted by just about everyone with an interest in pitching, because scouting is cheap. Garza’s going to be in demand, and he’s allowed five runs over his last five starts.

Among his opponents over that five-start stretch: the Astros, the Mets, and the White Sox. The Cubs would like to pitch Garza as a top-of-the-rotation ace, but that’s not the right label. By ERA-, he’s been as good as Mat Latos, but by FIP- he matches Scott Feldman, and by xFIP- he matches Yovani Gallardo. Over the rest of the season, ZiPS projects Garza to pitch similarly to Ricky Nolasco and Edwin Jackson. This has all been Matt Garza in a nutshell: he’s a good pitcher and an available pitcher, but he’s a three-month pitcher who isn’t worth torching the farm. He’s unlikely to be a guy who saves a season.

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Bob Tewksbury had a lot of success in 1992. Pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals, the right-hander went 16-5 with a 2.16 ERA. A control artist, he walked 20 batters in 233 innings.

He had less success against the Chicago Cubs. In five starts, he allowed 18 runs — 14 of them earned — in 34 innings. Andre Dawson, Mark Grace and Ryne Sandberg went a combined 26 for 65, with 10 extra-base hits, against him.

Tewksbury knows why he struggled against the Cubs, and why he had success against the rest of the National League. The internet age was still a few years away, but notebooks weren’t. Tewksbury logged scouting and statistical information after every game he pitched.

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Peter Gammons, as he so often does, teased an interesting tidbit yesterday morning, this one concerning Philliers closer Jonathan Papelbon. To wit:

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Jarrod Saltalamacchia has come a long way behind the plate. “Salty” isn’t among the elite at his position, but he’s developed into a solid defensive catcher. He is certainly among the most cerebral. Once looked at as an offense-first backstop, he is playing a key role in the success of a Boston Red Sox pitching staff that is exceeding expectations.

Originally a first-round pick by the Atlanta Braves in 2003, the 28-year-old switch-hitter was acquired by the Red Sox from the Texas Rangers in 2010 and has been the team’s primary catcher for the past two seasons. He discussed the nuances of his craft — and several members of the Boston pitching staff — prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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