There are free agents whose markets are presently almost complete mysteries. I haven’t the foggiest idea which team might be most likely to sign Josh Hamilton, and odds are the same goes for you. Then there are the free agents whose markets seem better known. B.J. Upton appears to be nearing a decision, and we have a pretty good idea of who he’s deciding between. And Mike Napoli’s market includes three teams, if reports are to be believed. He’s already met with the Mariners, he’s already met with the Red Sox, and he’s shortly to meet with the Rangers. More suitors could emerge, but that’s the picture right now.

Napoli is a somewhat high-profile free agent, being a power hitter capable of playing behind the plate. He’s also a somewhat in-demand free agent, so I thought it’d be a good idea to run a little Mike Napoli Q&A. We all want to know as much as we can about the various free agents — there is much to know about Mike Napoli, just as there is much to know about everyone.

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Following is a very basic list of things we know to be true about Chone Figgins:

• He used to be very successful at baseball
• Lately he has been far less successful at baseball
• Tuesday night he was finally dropped by the Mariners
• Relative to other players, he is little

There’s a lot more to Chone Figgins than that — there’s a lot more to everybody than that — but that’s the skeleton. If you were putting your son to sleep, and you were telling him about various baseball players, and the first one you told him about was Chone Figgins, you’d go into more detail. If you were putting your son to sleep, and you were telling him about various baseball players, and the ninetieth one you told him about was Chone Figgins, you’d skip a lot of the details out of exasperation. Those are the most fundamental details.

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It’s the bottom of the eighth inning. Men are on first and third base, there’s one out and your team is down by one run. The opposing team has one of the best ground-ball pitchers on the hill, and the infield is playing back and is looking for a double play. All you need is a fly ball to tie the game and significantly swing your chances of winning.

So who do you want at the plate?

It’s likely that the opposing manager will either bring in a ground-ball specialist or just tell the pitcher to stay away from pitches that could be hit in the air to the outfield. Knowing who you’d want to hit requires an understanding of what pitches are the most likely to induce a ground ball — and what hitters manage to hit fly balls against those pitches most often.

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Everyone knows that bunting runners over is the key to scoring and winning baseball games! No, wait, it’s dumb, and should never be done! Okay, bunting is sometimes smart, sometimes not. Isn’t sabermetric analysis of strategy great?

Jokes and stereotypes aside, it does seem that discussion of the pros and cons of bunting around the nerd-o-sphere is more nuanced than it used to be. While the allegedly old-school first inning, runner-on-first auto-bunt has fallen out of favor, we also realize that bunting can make sense for a number of reasons in certain situations: keeping fielders honest, increasing run expectancy, and occasions where playing for one run makes sense. As yet another annual tradition, let’s check out some of the most successful bunts of the 2012 regular season as measured by Win Probability Added (WPA).

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Very late last week, another quality starting pitcher in Hisashi Iwakuma nearly entered the free-agent market. But very late last week, the Seattle Mariners decided “hey we need quality players on our team” and re-signed Iwakuma to a multi-year contract. It was a predictable move, and a sensible move; the Mariners needed a good starting pitcher, and Iwakuma had previously expressed a fondness for Seattle. The two sides reached an agreement right at the end of the exclusive negotiating window, and Iwakuma will end up with either $14 million over two years or $20 million over three years. For the Mariners, it’s a potential bargain, and for Iwakuma, it’s security and still a small fortune.

Now, as for the headline, in your case the answer might be “literally anything.” Iwakuma last year flew under the radar, because he pitched for a nothing team, and he didn’t actually start pitching regularly for a few months. For me, personally, Wei-Yin Chen is a blind spot. For a lot of other people, Hisashi Iwakuma might be a blind spot. I don’t know. One should first acknowledge that he was pretty good. Then there’s something else, something specific.

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I have finally had enough time to muddle through the 2012 MLB transaction data and have compiled a complete disabled list (DL) data set for the year(second link). Let’s get right to the data.

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Here are the four rookie position players above 3.0 WAR in the 2012 season:
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Jeff Zimmerman and I have done lots of work on player aging curves in the past 12 to 18 months. Jeff started things off with a series of hitter aging curves, which focused mostly on standard outcomes and WAR components. Jeff and I then joined forces this year for a series focused on pitcher aging.

This time around, I wanted to know how a hitter’s plate discipline changes over his career. We already know plate discipline statistics are easily the most stable, year over year. That said, I wondered whether I’d see meaningful patterns as players age. Often times, scouts and commentators mention how a hitter’s approach changes over time: less disciplined, less contact as a young player; better bat control and better strike-zone awareness as a hitter matures. But does the data confirm this thinking?

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Ever since it opened in 1999, Safeco Field has been a horse, and hitters have been mosquitoes. No matter how much the hitters have tried to inflict damage, Safeco has hardly even noticed. Now, ever since it opened, Petco Park has been a whale to the hitters’ mosquitoes — they haven’t even ever interacted — but just because Safeco wasn’t the most pitcher-friendly ballpark doesn’t mean it hasn’t been an extremely pitcher-friendly ballpark, and now, as announced Tuesday, the dimensions will be changing. The Mariners will bring in the fences in an effort to make the ballpark more neutral.

The planned alterations, of course, have been welcomed by the hitters, and they haven’t been condemned by the pitching staff. Fans, too, are pleased, as baseball fans in the Northwest have grown weary of low-scoring ballgames. People want dingers, basically, and Safeco hasn’t allowed enough dingers. The changes should make for more dingers. Yet just what sort of effect will there be, really? When discussing the changes to Safeco Field, one might keep in mind last offseason’s changes to Citi Field in New York.

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2012 was to be a critical season for the Seattle Mariners, as the organization hoped its young talent would start to jell and suggest the possibility of a playoff bid in the near future. Outside of Felix Hernandez, the keys were assumed to be Dustin Ackley, Jesus Montero, and Justin Smoak. All three position players have recently been tippy-top prospects, and all three position players got their own Mariners team commercials. Ackley was billed as a hitting prodigy, Montero was advertised as the new guy with tremendous power, and Smoak was shown punching down trees with raw strength. The season’s almost over — really! it’s gone so fast — and Montero has a -0.2 WAR. Smoak has a -0.2 WAR. Ackley has a 1.8 WAR, but a lot of that is good defense, which, take that, minor-league scouting reports.

The breakthroughs have come from Kyle Seager, John Jaso, and Michael Saunders, which pretty much no one expected. The three guys thought to be most important have all been disappointments. But with that in mind, check out what happens when you sort the September leaderboards by wRC+:

1. Justin Smoak, 195
2. Joe Mauer, 187
3. Chase Headley, 183
4. Adrian Beltre, 180
5. Ian Desmond, 173

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