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Because of all the angst about this year’s Hall of Fame ballot, there have been a lot of words spilled trying to fix the process. I’m one of many who have suggested that, at the bare minimum, they need to expand the ballot to cover more than 10 slots. Others have offered their own suggestions, from changing the electorate to more clearly defining a player’s eligibility.

There are a lot of interesting opinions out there for ways to improve the Hall of Fame, but they generally start with the premise of tweaking the established methodology. Sometimes, though, I think it’s useful to think about changes without considering what is already in place, to ask yourself what you would do if you could just start from scratch. So, let’s do that with the Hall of Fame.

What would the Hall of Fame look like if we were building it anew in 2013? I’m sure it would be different for each of us. Maybe you’d move it to another location, where it could be more easily accessible to the public at large? Or maybe you’d pick a set proportion of each generation to be represented, so that each age of baseball was equally represented? There are a lot of practical changes you could make that would make the Hall of Fame very different than what it is now.

For, me, though, there’s one thing that stands above the rest as a way to make the Hall more interesting, and to settle most of the problems we have with the enshrinement process as it currently stands; a tiered Hall of Fame.

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The Orioles list is strong at the top but begins to taper off quickly after the Top 4 players. The system boasts a fair bit of up-the-middle position talent (especially in the outfield) and strong pitching. There were another three or four prospects that could have easily slide into the 11-15 range and just narrowly missed the list.

#1 Dylan Bundy (P)

There’s not much to be said about Bundy that hasn’t already been written about a hundred times. Just 19 in 2012, he carved through the minors and reached the majors in his first full pro season. Bundy possesses mid-to-high-90s velocity on his fastball and he also features a plus changeup and a curveball that shows plus potential. He also has a cutter that he hasn’t thrown much as a pro.

I asked a scout familiar with Bundy about the other aspects of the young phenom’s game. “His mechanics are clean and he’s a good athlete with very good body control which allows him to repeat his delivery for solid-average to plus command and he’s got a good feel for what he’s doing,” the talent evaluator said. “His make-up is off the chart. He’s the most driven and focused young man that I’ve every seen and he’s a good character guy. As far as what Dylan needs to work on. I would say he needs to refine his repertoire and learn the finer points to using his pitches.”

The fourth overall selection in the 2011 draft, Bundy made just three starts above A-ball in 2012 so he could return to double-A or triple-A in 2013. With three potentially-plus pitches and plus make-up, Bundy has true No. 1 starter potential. Only an injury appears capable of derailing this once-in-a-generation talent. Read the rest of this entry »

After watching Josh Hamilton sign with their division rival, the Rangers made a move this weekend to replace his bat in their line-up, signing Lance Berkman to take over as their DH for 2013. Much is being made of the fact that Berkman got $11 million after spending basically the entire 2012 season on the disabled list, but Major League teams have begun to make the correct shift towards paying for future production rather than past performance. That Berkman was injured for essentially all of 2012 only matters to the extent that it informs our understanding of his likely health and performance in 2013, and the reality is that projecting future playing time is still something of a black box.

Healthy guys get hurt. Injury prone guys stay healthy. Some guys are more likely to end up on the DL than others, but there’s still an awful lot of randomness in playing time distributions. It is much easier to project a player’s performance than it is to project his health, and Berkman hasn’t yet established a track record of injuries that should make us view him like we do Travis Hafner. At 37, we shouldn’t expect Berkman to be an everyday player, but as a DH with big platoon splits, he doesn’t need to be. He plays the easiest position on the field to run a platoon at, and with the Rangers depth, they can afford to have Berkman spend a few weeks on the sidelines if the aches and pains start to add up. For their roster, performance is more important than durability.

And if we just look at expected performance for 2013, there’s a decent chance that Berkman will put up offensive numbers that are not too different from what Hamilton would have produced.

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I know the results from the latest Hall of Fame voting aren’t in yet, but it’s already clear that the process is deeply flawed. It was always imperfect, but its flaws are now deep, possibly mortal. The voting process is not equipped to handle the messy challenges of our day, and the Hall of Fame is suffering as a result.

Consider what is likely to happen when the results are announced on Jan. 9. The early betting was on Jack Morris and perhaps one or two other apparently clean players, such as Craig Biggio, earning enshrinement. The current guess is that no one will be inducted from this tremendous class of players, perhaps the best of all time. This would be a travesty.

The (arguably) greatest pitcher and batter in the history of the game won’t be admitted? The (unarguably) greatest-hitting catcher of all time won’t be admitted? What of some of the greatest home run hitters the game has ever seen?

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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 Los Angeles Angels of You-Know-Where. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Astros / Athletics / Cubs / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Rangers.

Batters
It’s impossible to ignore the very optimistic projection for 2012’s Champion of WAR, Mike Trout — so, let’s not. While an eight-win season is certainly aggressive so far as a forecast is concerned — if for no other reason than only two or three players surpass the eight-win threshold per year — it’s also the case that ZiPS is being at least somewhat conservative with regard to Trout, forecasting him to hit fewer home runs, steal fewer bases, post a considerably lower BABIP, and save fewer runs afield in 2013 than in 2012.

Otherwise, the Angels are almost uniformly above average: with the exception of Mark Trumbo, every starter is projected to post a (rounded) WAR of 3.0 or greater.

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Big news everyone – Justin Upton is still on the trade block. He has been for about three years now, and he will continue to be until he is mercifully traded to a team that wants him more than Arizona seems to. With yesterday’s reports about Upton’s availability, more than a few people on Twitter asked me about Upton’s home/road splits, and whether or not we should expect him to regress significantly if he’s traded to a less hitter friendly ballpark. In case you haven’t seen them, Upton has enormous home/road splits, and it’s a career trend, not just a one year blip.

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Pete LaCock is a good storyteller. The former first baseman is prone to embellishment — Retrosheet doesn’t see eye-to-eye to with some of his recollections — but his tales are certainly entertaining. The son of long-time Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall, LaCock played for the Chicago Cubs (1972-1976), for the Kansas City Royals (1977-1980) and for the Yokohama Taiyo Whales, in Japan (1981).

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LaCock on battling Bob Gibson:

“Billy Williams had broken his ankle, so the team was looking for a left-handed hitter. I had been hitting the ball pretty well, so they brought me up from Double-A. I was 19 years old. The game was in Chicago, and Bob Gibson was pitching for the Cardinals.

“It was 3-2, bottom of the ninth, and we had runners on second and third with two outs. Our pitcher was due up and Don Kessinger was the next hitter. He wasn’t a very good left-handed hitter — he was a better right-handed hitter — and Gibson had already struck him out a few times.

“I figured they were going to walk me. My run didn’t mean anything and putting me on meant they could get an out an any base. They had a meeting on the mound and somebody said, ‘Does anybody know this guy?’ Gibson said, ‘If they’re bringing in a rookie, I’m pitching to him.’ Ted Simmons was the catcher, and he told me this. When he comes back behind the plate, he goes, ‘They’re going to pitch to you, kid.’ I said, ‘Great.’ Read the rest of this entry »

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

Other 2013 Projections: Astros / Athletics / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Rangers.

Batters
The Cubs are projected by ZiPS to have, in shortstop Starlin Castro and first baseman Anthony Rizzo, to have a pair of basically All Star-type players who are also just 23 years old. Those are good kinds of players to have — especially for a team that isn’t likely to be very competitive this season, but has the resources to invest in free agents if and when such a thing is called for in the near future.

The rest of the starting lineup — besides human-shaped albatross Alfonso Soriano, that is — is a combination of decent organizational products (Darwin Barney, Wellington Castillo) and low-risk free agents (David DeJesus, Nate Schierholtz) acquired since the arrival of Theo Epstein et al.

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It still feels like the holiday season, and the holiday season is a time for sharing. To be honest, every time is a time for sharing, but around the holiday season it seems a lot more important. With friends and family and sometimes perfect strangers, you share gifts and pleasantries and the warmth of your company. Baseball teams, too, can get into the sharing spirit. I don’t know how else to explain what’s been going on with Eli Whiteside, Sandy Rosario, and Scott Cousins.

For these three players, it’s already been an incredibly active offseason, and it’s barely January. For players who are hitting the market, the offseason is a time to find a new home. Whiteside, Rosario, and Cousins have cycled through several potential new homes. In case you haven’t been paying close attention — and I don’t know why you would be — I’ll try to go over the details as quickly as possible.

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With January here and a few big name free agents still on the market, one of the popular stories of the week is how the new compensation system is affecting free agent pricing. I wrote about it yesterday, as did Jeff Passan, and this morning, C. Trent Rosencrans documented some comments Kyle Lohse made on the radio. He seems to have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on:

“It’s not exactly an open, free market when you attach such things on a guy like myself, but yet a guy like a Zack Greinke or Anibal Sanchez got a get-out-of-jail-free card because they got traded midseason, so the rules don’t pertain to them,” Lohse said. “I’m obviously a little biased, but the rules could use some tweaking.”

Of course, Greinke and Sanchez also have the advantage of being younger and better than Lohse, but their lack of draft pick compensation almost certainly helped drive up their price a little bit, so Lohse isn’t wrong here. But, rather than spend another day talking about the rules themselves, I want to talk about the actual change that teams appear to be making this winter – significantly inflating the valuation of a draft pick.

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