The Washington Nationals optioned top prospect Bryce Harper to Triple-A Syracuse on Sunday afternoon, ending the discussion of whether or not the 19-year-old phenom would begin the season in the major leagues or back down in the minors.

Harper lost some time due to a calf injury this spring. Although the injury was deemed nothing serious, it appears that it may have affected his performance. After all, he has only gone 3-for-17 with nine strikeouts at the plate since returning to the lineup. Everything needed to go perfectly this spring for Harper to break camp with the Nationals’ big league club. Both the injury and plate discipline issues made the decision to option him to Triple-A for more seasoning extremely easy.

In Triple-A, the Nationals will reportedly attempt to groom Harper in center field. With Mike Morse entrenched in left field and Jayson Werth in right field for the foreseeable future, squeezing Harper into center field is a natural fit for the organization. Most scouting reports believe he possesses the natural athleticism to survive in center — though a corner outfield position will still be his eventual home — and his bat profiles as plus-plus in center, as well.

The time frame for a potential big league call up for Harper remains unclear. If he dominates Triple-A pitching as he did in the Arizona Fall League — where he hit .333/.400/.634 with six home runs — his time with the Syracuse Chiefs will be relatively short-lived.

Keeping the seat warm in the big leagues will be 27-year-old Roger Bernadina. Last season, Bernadina hit .243/.301/.362 and was worth +0.8 wins in 337 plate appearances. ZiPS projects approximately the same output in 2012, which follows historical precedent as the young man has not been worth a single win in any season throughout his career. He also plays poor defense in center field, too, which makes his lack of bat a bit more concerning.

Of course, Rick Ankiel could also see some time in center field. His bat leaves quite a bit to be desired, as well. He only hit .239/.296/.363 last season with the Nationals. Defensively, though, he does play a much better center field (+6.9 UZR in CF in 2011) than does Bernandina (-5.2 UZR). That significant upgrade could net Ankiel more playing time than currently projected at this point in the spring.

Whether Bernadina or Ankiel plays the majority of innings in center field for the Nationals this season, though, they will merely serve as a placeholder for Harper. The organization is perhaps only a few months away from trotting out a big league lineup with both of their hyped young players, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper. The future of the organization is almost now.

About eight years ago Major League baseball saw the influx of a host of high quality third baseman. The arrival started with the debut of players like Kevin Youkilis and David Wright in 2004 and continued with Ryan Zimmerman in 2005. The string of hot corner studs slowed after this stretch and was capped by the arrival of Evan Longoria in 2008.

Baseball is a cyclical game and the development of young third baseman has stagnated over the last several years. That trend may be shifting as the minor leagues play host to several players that have impact potential. The Nationals’ Anthony Rendon and the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado are two of the top hot corner prospects in the game, and they are joined by players like Miguel Sano, Nick Castellanos and Mike Olt, among others. These players appear poised to ascend upon the Major Leagues and become the next wave of great third baseman.

Focusing on Rendon and Arenado offers an opportunity to compare two extremely talented players. Heading into the 2011 college season Rendon was considered by scouts to be the top position player in the draft class and was arguably the top player available overall. After injuring his ankle the prior year, Rendon battled shoulder issues last spring, an injury that ultimately kept him from playing the field for much of the season. Concerns over his injury history and the overwhelming emergence of pitchers like Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer, combined with his Scott Boras affiliation sent him sliding in the draft. The Nationals popped him with the sixth overall pick and signed him to a Major League deal worth north of $7 million. Read the rest of this entry »

With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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Dare to dream.

On Thursday, we looked at Fielding Independent Offense (FIO) — as well as the Should Hit formula — and decided to toss stolen bases into the equation. The result were, let’s say, brow-elevating.

Today, we are going to put that result — the FIO formula — into action.

In the timeless words of Sir Samuel Leroy Jackson: “Hold onto your butts!”
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When the Washington Nationals and Ryan Zimmerman began negotiating his $100 million extension, Zimmerman was already bound to the team for 2012 and 2013 seasons. Even still, the Nats decided to give him a $100 million guarantee this weekend in exchange for his services from 2014 until 2019. Zimmerman’s performance through his 34th birthday is now the property of the Nationals. Washington had two years to decide whether to make such an investment in Zimmerman’s health and extended performance — but they decided to take the risk now.

The deal’s critics already pointed out Ryan Howard’s questionable extension in April 2010 — also two years before he became free-agent eligible — but there are a number of recent contracts that may be better comparisons for Zimmerman’s. While Howard’s deal appears that it will be a major overpay, it turns out these contracts generall work out quite well for teams. Instead of being unnecessary risks, they are usually hedges against spending even more money in the future.

Utilizing all contracts of players with at least six years service time from 2007 to 2011, I searched for deals that were signed at least two years before the player was eligible for free agency and that bought out at least three free agency years. I included deals that bought out arbitration years as well — though these  obviously are different than Zimmerman’s new contract — and found 11 contracts that met these criteria. To quantify these contracts’ values, I looked only at performance and pay from 2007 to 2011. This excluded six years of these deals that started before 2007, and 14 years of these contracts that ended after 2011.

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The Nationals continued to lock up their core talent today, agreeing to terms on a six year, $100 million extension for third baseman Ryan Zimmerman. The extension is tacked on to the end of his current deal, which pays him $26 million over the next two seasons, so he’s essentially now under contract for the next eight years for $126 million, and if a team option is exercised for 2020, the deal could turn out to be $150 million over nine years.

That’s a big paycheck, but Zimmerman is one of the game’s most underrated players, and the Nationals correctly identified his skillset as one worth keeping around. However, there’s continuing skepticism around every player who generates a lot of value with his glove, and people continue to be uncomfortable projecting stardom for guys who rely on their defensive skills to sustain elite performance. Since Zimmerman is a good bat/great glove guy, not everyone is on board with committing $100 million to that skillset, thinking that the value may not be there if the defensive value degrades with age and injury.

So, I figured it’d be instructive to look at how some other players with this skillset have aged recently. Here’s my list of comps, and their performance through age 26 – for reference, Zimmerman’s at a 119 wRC+, +52 FLD, and +30.2 WAR in 3,669 PA, or more generalized, 4.9 WAR per 600 PA.

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As you undoubtedly know by now, Gary Carter passed away yesterday. The Hall of Fame catcher had an outstanding career as a big part of the star-crossed Montreal Expos’ only playoff team and later a World Champion Mets team. My own first awareness of Carter was one Christmas or birthday long ago, when, although I did not collect baseball cards, someone gave me a pack, and a card bearing the image of a young Gary Carter was included.

Many pieces have been and will be written about Carter in the wake of his passing, pieces that will tell various stories of his memorable on-field exploits. Different people will have their own particular favorite Gary Carter “moment” for which there is no substitute. As a contribution to the ongoing tribute to Carter around the Web, here are Carter’s three biggest regular season hits as according to Win Probability Added (WPA).

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It is a simple question.

What is sabermetrics?

Not the history of it, but what is it, right now? What is, in our nerdiest of lingoes, its derivative? Where is it pointing? What does it do?

Last Tuesday I created no little stir when I listed the 2012 saber teams, delineating them according to their perceived embrace of modern sabermetrics.

Today, I recognize I needed to take a step back and first define sabermetrics, because it became obvious quickly I did not have the same definition at heart as some of the readers and protesters who gathered outside my apartment.

I believe, and this is my belief — as researcher and a linguist — that sabermetrics is not statistics. The term itself has come to — or needs to — describe more than just on-base percentage, weighted runs created plus, fielding independent pitching, and wins above replacement.

Sabermetrics is the advanced study of baseball, not the burying of one’s head in numbers.
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Silly monkey, BRAINS ARE FOR ZOMBIES.

Casey Kotchman is in many ways a man without a home — a player equal parts under-appreciated and over-valued, who irks both old and new schools at the same time. Old school analysts say his defense is amazing, but they cannot quantify it, and in 2011, they claimed his cleared vision meant he finally learned how to aim the ball “where they ain’t,” but he’s still a .268 hitter with little power. The new school says he’s worth about 7.6 runs per season defensively, but worth ~1.1 WAR per 600 PAs — not good — and his BABIP was high 2011, so he should not be able to repeat his success.

Despite his inability to build a consistent following of fans in the baseball outsiders communities, Kotchman seems to have some insider communities very much interested in him, as Tom Tango points out:

Kotchman’s last four teams: Redsox, Mariners, Rays, Indians. Can we say that a team that signs Kotchman is saber-leaning?

Indeed, after spending five and a half seasons on the Angels’ and Braves’ rosters, Kotchman has begun to shuffle around with the Nerdz, most recently signing with the Cleveland Indians. It makes sense too — Kotchman’s lack of power keeps him cheap, and his strong defense keeps him amorphous for the old school teams, while the new schools might have different valuations on Kotchman, they can at least quantify his contributions and better know how he fits.

Then, on Monday, the Houston Astros signed Justin Ruggiano, long-time Tampa Bay Rays outfielder who was never good enough to stick on the Rays’ roster, but who possesses strong defensive chops and above average patience. His lack of power and ~.290 batting average, however, must make him a mystery — or at least an undesirable asset — to the old school teams.

Upon Ruggiano signing with the Astros, a once highly old school team, my reaction was all: “Welp, that’s one more team to compete with” — and then it occurred to me! No only have the Astros entered the realm of, so to speak, saber-minded organizations, but so have the long-backward Chicago Cubs.

Suddenly the league looks very different.

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This morning I was scrolling through some of Dan Szymborski’s projections over at Baseball Think Factory, and I noticed that he had run a projection for Matt Stairs. I had not heard any news about the guy we all know now as a pinch-hitter. As I scoured the internets (read: typed “Matt Stairs” into Google) I quickly realized that Stairs had retired, though since he will be a studio analyst for NESN this year, all is not lost. Still, it will be disappointing to not see him on the field any longer.

Few pinch hitters struck fear in my heart the way Matt Stairs did. When Stairs came to the plate against a team for which I was rooting, I always sure that something bad was about to happen. Even still, I couldn’t hate him. A portly slugger with a great sense of humor — I will always remember Will Carroll forwarding the Baseball Prospectus email group an email from Stairs with a picture of his flexed calf muscle and promptly doubling over in laughter — Stairs was exceedingly easy to root for, and in the latter, pinch-hitting days of his career he became somewhat of a nerdy folk hero.

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