Shohei Ohtani has decided to sign with the Angels. I don’t think many people were expecting an Ohtani announcement on Friday. And I don’t think many people were expecting Ohtani to go where he’s going. There’s a lesson in here, perhaps, the lesson that you should never assume another person’s motives. Yet that lesson also isn’t very helpful. The Ohtani sweepstakes were essentially unprecedented. We’re not going to see many cases like this in the future. By and large, we know how baseball decisions get made. We knew hardly anything about this one. Even though the Angels were there as one of the seven finalists, they were mostly written off, right up until they won.

The Yankees were seen as a favorite. Endorsement opportunities, and everything. They were eliminated early. The Mariners were seen as a favorite. History of Japanese players having success. No dice. The Giants were in there, having recently won a bunch. The Dodgers and Cubs were in there, being presently very good. The Rangers and Padres were in there, with Ohtani pursuits dating back several years. I don’t know what it was that might’ve allowed the Angels to stand out. Ohtani has indicated only that he felt the closest bond with them. That made the difference. You might want to think it was Mike Trout, but, according to Ohtani, it was the team connection.

There’s nothing there to analyze, I don’t think. Not in any meaningful way. Ohtani didn’t go for the most money. He went for what felt right in his heart. That’s the very definition of personal, and what matters most to Ohtani might not matter much to other people. In this case, it doesn’t matter what matters to other people. Something about the Angels spoke to Ohtani’s desire. That’s the whole story. We all have our own things we feel connected to. Those connections might not always seem outwardly to make the most sense.

Now the Angels have a talented young pitcher, who is also a talented young hitter. You’ve been hearing about Ohtani for years, so I don’t need to give you the summary. You know what he’s about. He’ll have to be managed carefully, and there’s certainly some amount of risk, but had Ohtani been an unrestricted free agent, he would’ve signed for something like $200 million. He’s about to earn, instead, the league minimum. Right now, Ohtani is probably one of the 10 or 15 most valuable players in the league. The Angels just…got him. They picked him up and put him on the roster. For all 30 teams, this was a one-time opportunity. It’s the Angels who now get to look a whole hell of a lot better.

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Congratulations to the Angels and the good people of Anaheim, Shohei Ohtani has chosen you.

He perhaps has also chosen wisely.

Ohtani’s agency, CAA, released a statement Friday afternoon saying their client of international interest and acclaim had made his decision after meeting with seven finalists this week. The Angels had made trades to acquire $2.3 million in bonus pool money.

Statement from agent Nez Balelo on Ohtani's decision to join the #Angels pic.twitter.com/NIc3APCbtS

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 8, 2017

An American League destination always seemed to make the most sense due to the DH role for a player who desires to hit and pitch, who desires to be a historic and unique figure within the game. While there seem to be some indicators that Ohtani preferred a small, West Coast market, he chose the No. 2 team in the nation’s No. 2 market.

With Ohtani and Mike Trout now on the roster, the Angels are a must-see attraction in 2018 and beyond. Read the rest of this entry »

When Travis Sawchick asked you which question was most important on Shohei Ohtani’s questionnaire, you answered overwhelmingly that the team capable of keeping him healthy — or of convincing Ohtani that they’d keep him healthy — would win out. Travis went on to use a metric, Roster Resource’s “Roster Effect” rating, to get a sense of which team that might be. The Brewers, Cubs, Pirates, and Tigers performed best by that measure.

Of course, that’s just one way of answering the question. Health is a tough thing to nail down. To figure out which team is capable of keeping Ohtani the healthiest, it’s worth considering the possible implications of health in baseball. Roster Effect, for example, considers the quality of the player and seems to be asking: which rosters were affected the most by poor health? That’s one way of approaching it. Let’s try a few others and see who comes out on top.

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Not every team approaches the offseason looking to get better in the same way. That much is obvious: budget alone can dictate much of a club’s activity on the free-agent market. A little bit less obvious, though, is how the present quality of a team’s roster can affect the players they pursue. Teams that reside on a certain part of the win curve, for example, need that next win more than teams on other parts. That can inform a team’s decisions in the offseason.

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It was a little over three years ago that I first took a look at this question. The article was a hit!

Now I think it’s time to run the numbers again. People change. Situations change. Statistical projections change. Mike Trout is fantastically good. He is probably the best player in baseball, and he’s under contract with the Angels for another three seasons. Albert Pujols used to be fantastically good. He’s not so much anymore. He was just one of the worst players in baseball, and he’s under contract with the Angels for another four seasons. You know where this is going. You’ve probably wondered about this before, even though the hypothetical is stupid and unrealistic.

Trout isn’t going to get traded. Aside from everything else, he has no-trade protection. Pujols isn’t going to get traded. Aside from everything else, he also has no-trade protection. But let’s say the Angels wanted to make a trade. Let’s say they wanted to package the two players together. Does Pujols’ negative value outweigh Trout’s positive value? Would the Angels trade these players, combined, for nothing? Again, this is stupid. Let’s dive in.

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When I talked to Mike Rizzo in Orlando earlier this week, he told me the Washington Nationals have an eight-person analytics department that includes “three or four employees” who have been added in the last two years. The veteran GM also told me they have their own “Scouting Solutions, which (they) call The Pentagon.” In Rizzo’s opinion, his team has gone from behind the times to having “some of the best and brightest analytics people in all of baseball.”

A pair of uniformed-personnel changes further suggest an increased emphasis on analytics. Dave Martinez has replaced Dusty Baker as manager, and Tim Bogar has come on board as the first base coach. According to Rizzo, their saber-savviness played a role in their hirings.

“It was part of the process,” related Rizzo. “Davey is a 16-year major league veteran who can appeal to a clubhouse of major league players — there’s a respect factor there — and he’s also coming from two of the most-analytical organizations in baseball, in Tampa Bay and Chicago. He’s bringing that love of analytics and the implementation of those statistics with his thought process. Read the rest of this entry »

Every Major League Baseball organization has players who fly below the radar. They add value — or are projected to do so in the future — yet are underappreciated, if not unnoticed, by the vast majority of fans. The same is true for coaches, and even some managers, particularly at the minor-league level. Other behind-the-scenes personnel, such as scouts, are largely invisible. Given their contributions, many of these people deserve more accolades than they get.

With that in mind, I asked a cross section of general managers and presidents of baseball operations if they could point to a person in their organization who stands out as being under the radar. With a nearly across-the-board caveat that it’s hard to name just one, all gave interesting answers.

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Chaim Bloom, Tampa Bay Rays: “I’ll go with two guys who we feel strongly about that are actually no longer on the radar, because we just put them on our big-league staff. That would be Kyle Snyder and Ozzie Timmons. They were with us in Durham for a while and have played a huge role in the development of a lot of our young players. One of the reasons we’re excited about what’s coming was on display with that club. They won a Triple-A championship with a very young team.

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“The best for the group comes when everyone in the group does what’s best for himself and the group.”

–American mathematician John Nash

Shohei Ohtani is fascinating for a number of reasons. We start with the dual talent, of course.

While injury limited him to just five starts as a pitcher in 2017, he struck out 29 and allowed only 13 hits in 25.1 innings — as a 22-year-old. He produced a .332/.403/.540 slash line in 230 plate appearances. In 2016, he went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA over 20 starts in the NPB. He struck out 174 and walked 45 in 140 innings. He also OPS’d 1.004 with 22 home runs in 323 at-bats in 104 games.

He was named the league’s best pitcher and best DH.

While Clay Davenport’s deadly accurate statistical translations don’t appear to be available for 2017 NPB play, Davenport’s 2016 translations are available to the public.

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On Wednesday night, a team from the AL West won the World Series. That team possesses more long-term value than any other organization in baseball. On Thursday, a rival team from the AL West agreed to contract terms with Justin Upton. It’s hard to see how the Angels might knock the Astros off of their perch, but, I guess, of course it would be hard, given what the Astros just did this past month. The Angels didn’t want to give up. They don’t want to concede the future, which you couldn’t in good conscience do, as long as you’re paying Mike Trout.

This is newsworthy only for the answer it provides. It was unclear whether Upton was going to opt out from his remaining four years, worth $88.5 million. It was known there was a chance he could stick around. Now stick around, he will, with the Angels adding on another year, and another $17.5 million. It’s not quite that simple — the Angels have also made the five years slightly backloaded. But the sides have agreed to turn a possible four-year commitment into a five-year commitment. That was all Upton needed to get in order to forego another round of free agency. The terms are agreeable. This is neither wildly good, nor horribly bad.

So then. Why did the Angels want to keep Upton in place? Because he can do this to the occasional baseball.

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Billy Eppler does not care about baseball writers. A year ago, the day after the World Series ended, he traded for Cameron Maybin to shore up his outfield. Today, the day after the World Series ended, he gave Justin Upton a new contract to convince him to not use his opt-out clause and become a free agent, once again improving his outfield.

The deal seems pretty straight forward; in addition to the $88 million he had remaining on his contract over the next four years if he didn’t opt-out, the Angels added an $18 million guarantee for a fifth year, pushing his new guaranteed total to $106 million over five years. Given what the market is paying for wins these days, this effectively values Upton as something like a +3 WAR player expected to age fairly normally.

Obviously, he was a lot better than that this year, putting up his second best season by WAR in his career, but since signing his last free agent contract, he’s totaled +6.3 WAR over two seasons, so a +3 WAR per year estimate seems about right. Upton might not be the steadiest performer around, but given his base of skills, a little over $100 million for five years seems about right.

The Angels just saw a division rival win the World Series, and the Astros are going to enjoy all the benefits that comes with that over the next few years, making them an even tougher opponent to overcome. But with Upton in the fold at a fair rate, they have a better shot at capitalizing on Mike Trout’s prime than they would have had Upton hit the open market.