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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Boston Red Sox. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cardinals / Cubs / Diamondbacks / Dodgers / Giants / Mariners / Marlins / Mets / Nationals / Orioles / Padres / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Rays / Reds / Rockies / Royals / Tigers / Twins / White Sox / Yankees.

Batters
It’s important, of course, to acknowledge always that front offices — especially the sort which have a reputation for embracing all manner of analysis — that they might possess certain information to which we, baseball’s laypeople, are not privy. To whatever degree that might be the case, however, it’s difficult to imagine what information precisely the Red Sox might have with regard to Jonny Gomes, whom the club signed to a two-year, $10 million contract this offseason and intends, it seems, to deploy as their starting left fielder. While the bar is rather low for Gomes to earn his money, Dan Szymborski’s math computer suggests that Gomes’ odds of producing like an average major-leaguer aren’t excellent.

I asked Szymborski about the Gomes projection — and, in particular, to what degree it might account for platoon splits (Gomes having a reputation for possessing a large-ish one). To which question Szymborski replied: “ZiPS only knows past usage.” To that point, we ought to consider this when considering Gomes’s rather successful 2012 season: about 59% of Gomes’s plate appearances in 2012 were against left-handed pitchers. Meanwhile, only one-third of his plate appearances between 2009 and -11 were against lefties.

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I was going to do my list of the 10 worst off-season transactions today, but I’m going to push it back to next week, since I have some things to say about yesterday’s news.

The Mariners are apparently set to sign Felix Hernandez to the largest contract ever given to a Major League pitcher. The total commitment is $175 million over seven years. It’s a staggering amount for a guy who wasn’t eligible for free agency until after the 2014 season, and in many ways, this contract is the continuation of the trend that we saw begin last year with Joey Votto’s deal with the Reds. Here’s what I wrote a year ago when that deal was announced:

So, at this point, we have a couple of options – we can continue to be shocked and amazed at the growing rate of contracts that guarantee big money to players from 2018 and beyond, or we can adjust our expectations for what premium players are going to be able to command going forward. With the promise of new money flowing into many organizations over the next three to five years, I’d imagine we’ll see more and more teams being aggressive in trying to lock up their young stars before they get to free agency and have to bid against whichever franchise just happened to renegotiate their television contract a few months prior.

For the Reds, the equation was pretty simple – keep Votto and contend during the run-up to the expiration of their television deal, or trade him away, rebuild, and come to the table asking for more money after a couple of years of going young and probably taking their lumps. Given those options, giving Votto a couple of extra years at the back end to increase their bargaining position doesn’t look quite so crazy.

…

This deal is going to have lasting repercussions on the sport. Not only does it suggest that the Reds are going to remain competitive in the NL Central going forward, but it also resets the price expectations for every pre-free agent player in the sport. Congratulations, players, all of your expected prices just went up. Way up.

Felix’s deal with the Mariners is the pitcher’s version of Votto’s deal with the Reds. It’s a free agent price for a pitcher who wasn’t a free agent, and in that sense, there’s a pretty good argument to be made that it’s too much money. The Mariners are taking on significant additional risk by guaranteeing him his 2015-2019 salaries now, and like with Votto, that risk wasn’t offset by getting a below market price on the deal. Given the history of pitcher attrition, there’s a significant chance that this deal will go south for the Mariners, and they’ll end up with an expensive and overpaid former ace. Most good young pitchers don’t turn into good old pitchers, and the Mariners have just made a huge bet on Felix being the exception rather than the rule.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Baltimore Orioles. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cardinals / Cubs / Diamondbacks / Dodgers / Giants / Mariners / Marlins / Mets / Nationals / Padres / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Rays / Reds / Rockies / Royals / Tigers / Twins / White Sox / Yankees.

Batters
Readers with an interest in arbitrary-ish end points will be keen on learning that, among major-league catchers over the last two seasons, Matt Wieters is fourth overall by WAR with a mark of 9.1. Other readers — even those who are entirely wary of arbitrary end points — will recognize that Wieters is projected by ZiPS to produce in 2013 roughly what he averaged between 2011 and -12. In either case, he’s probably one of the five-best catchers in the major leagues.

For as much as it will cost the team — i.e. something like $2.5 million total — experimenting with a platoon of Wilson Betemit and Danny Valencia (or the recently acquired Russ Canzler, as the case may be) at DH isn’t the worst possible idea. Isolating platoon skill requires a considerable number of plate appearances; however, the switch-hitting Betemit has been better against righties (117 wRC+, .350 BABIP, 1752 PA) and Valencia has been better against left-handers (127 wRC+, .343 BABIP, 326 PA).

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San Diego has an impressive system with both some high-ceiling talent and depth. The organization has had some impressive drafts recently, and a number of trades have brought in exciting talent.

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The off-season isn’t technically over yet, as there are still a few free agents to be signed, and there’s a chance we could see another significant trade before spring training opens. However, most teams have essentially finished their off-season shopping at this point, and now we can look back and see which teams did the best in terms of adding talent to their organizations, or made a good move that pushes them closer towards serious contention without doing long term damage to their franchise.

Keep in mind, just because a trade is listed here as a win for one franchise doesn’t mean that I think the decision was necessarily a poor one for the other side. There are several deals below that I think served both teams interest, and in fact, one deal is listed twice, because I think both teams got exactly what they needed in the transaction. There are win-win deals, so the support for one side of a transaction should not be read as condemnation of the other side. We’ll look at the worst transactions of the winter tomorrow, and it won’t simply be the flip side of the trades listed below.

Final disclaimer: only transactions made after free agency began were considered. While Jake Peavy and David Ortiz re-signed to team friendly deals, we’re excluding them from the discussion, as they came before the off-season began.

If you’re interested in such things, here’s the list of moves I liked from last off-season. The teams listed below are probably hoping that their moves turn out more like the Carlos Beltran signing and less like the Michael Pineda acquisition. On to this year’s recap.

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Yahoo! Sports reporters Jeff Passan and Tim Brown reported late on Tuesday that they had obtained records of now defunct anti-aging clinic Biogenesis and that three of the documents contained the name of Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun. Last week, the New Times of Miami reported that Biogenesis and its founder Anthony Bosch had allegedly provided performance-enhancing drugs to other MLB players, including Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz, and Gio Gonzalez. Rodriguez, Cruz, and Gonzalez have denied receiving PEDs from Biogenesis or Bosch.

According to Yahoo!, one of the documents includes Braun’s name among a list of other players, including Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Melky Cabrera, Francisco Cervelli, and Danny Valencia, but without any notation about drugs or other substances banned by MLB. Another document has multiple references to Chris Lyons, one of several attorneys who represented Braun in 2011 and 2012 in his appeal of a positive drug test. That appeal was ultimately successful when the MLB arbitrator, Shyam Das, found that the urine sample obtained from Braun had not been handled in accordance with the process set forth in MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program and was, therefore, invalid.

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The Texas Rangers organization continues to churn out high-ceiling prospects but, unlike some clubs, it relies heavily on home-grown players rather than flipping them in trades for established big-leaguers. If the playing time develops, look for Jurickson Profar to have a Bryce Harper-type impact in 2013.
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Here at FanGraphs, you are treated with a smorgasbord of baseballery. From research on aging curves to in-depth mustache analysis, the pages are filled with the base and ball dreams of a true diamond-level nerd.

And so it’s true of our premium product that all the different parts of baseball are represented. Ostensibly, the ‘annual’ portion of FanGraphs+ is fantasy-baseball-centered, but that doesn’t mean that your average non-roto baseball lover won’t find something to enjoy. Take Dan Wade’s investigation into reaching on error as a skill. Or Jeff Zimmerman looking at adjustment times for position players switching leagues. Hey, even if you hate closers, you might be interested in Jack Moore’s attempt to predict closer changes with a stat found on our leaderboards. And with the purchase of FanGraphs+, you’ll also get free access to the analysis we provide ESPNInsider on a weekly basis.

NotGraphs? Our staff painstakingly produced 1113 player caps. There are only 750 players on opening day rosters, and even with our near-200 prospect caps — which, by the way, are full of observations from Marc Hulet, Mike Newman, Jason Catania, J.D. Sussman and others — that leaves almost 200 players that probably shouldn’t get a player cap. Enter the wit of our glorious Notters, who will leave little nuggets of laughter for you on the unexpected player page. You’ll leave with a smile on your face and a question in your heart: Why was I looking at Vincente Padilla’s player page anyway?

And yes, it’s also a fantasy product. Later this week, we’ll give you Auction Values on the projections leaderboards. Chad Young already gave ottoneu players auction values for all scoring settings. Between Michael Barr, Mike Podhorzer and I, you’re set in preparing for your draft, no matter what style it is. And then there are the rookies! Marc Hulet gets the top-notch ones, Carson Cistulli rummages through the bargain bin, and Chris Cwik tells you why you shouldn’t care about any of them.

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On Friday, ESPN.com’s lead baseball story was title “Let’s Corral the WAR Horse,” and the image used in the rotation feature box was simply a white sign with the words “NO WAR” attached to a stick, presumably a stock image of a sign from an anti-violence protest. In the piece, Jim Caple — a writer I like, have spent a little bit of time with, and who is a pretty good advocate for logical thinking, by the way — explained why he’s a little frustrated with what he perceives as an over reliance on WAR as the stat’s popularity grows.

Quoting Caple:

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the New York Yankees. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cardinals / Cubs / Diamondbacks / Dodgers / Giants / Mariners / Marlins / Mets / Nationals / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Rays / Reds / Rockies / Royals / Tigers / White Sox.

Batters
It’s probably not entirely correct to say that Robinson Cano is twice as good as any of his field-playing teammates. What does appear to be the case, however, is that — owing to a combination of offensive production, positional adjustment, and durability — Robinson Cano is likely to be twice as valuable in 2013 as any of those same teammates.

Elsewhere, there are a lot of rather low plate-appearance projections among the Yankees batting corps. Brett Gardner, Travis Hafner, Alex Rodriguez, and Kevin Youkilis: none is forecast to make even as many as 500 plate appearances. Of course, A-Rod’s mean projection by that account is already appearing to be rather an optimistic one: according to general manager Brian Cashman, the nominal starting third baseman is expected back from hip surgery in July, but could potentially miss the entire season.

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