It’s not so much that we’re in the offseason’s dead period — we’re just in its waiting period. There’s a lot of life left, but there likely won’t be any breaths until we get to Masahiro Tanaka’s signing deadline, at which point several dominoes ought to fall. That’s two and a half weeks away, and for the time being there’s not much going on. Dave and Carson talked on the podcast about how the things being written about these days are Tanaka and the Hall of Fame. As a change of pace out of desperation, I’m choosing to turn to the comfortable default FanGraphs fallback, that being Mike Trout, and how very good he is.

This is a question from my own chat earlier Tuesday:

Comment From Eddie
How many MLB outfields post less value than Mike Trout in 2014? Have to think the Cubs are on that list.

I was in love with the idea right away, and below, my subsequent investigation. I’d like to thank Eddie for the prompt, and for giving me another reason to re-visit Mike Trout’s unparalleled player page. Obviously, we can’t know anything yet about how the coming season is going to go. But we do have complicated mathematical guesses, which I’m happy to depend on for these purposes. By WAR, how many outfields does Mike Trout project to out-produce on his own during the 2014 regular season?

Read the rest of this entry »

For five years now, Bronson Arroyo has been better than his peripherals. Since 2009, only three pitchers have a bigger gap between their fielding independent numbers and their ERA, and those three didn’t come close to pitching as many innings. It’s tempting to say the free agent 36-year-old has figured something out… but what has he figured out, exactly? How has he become more than the sum of his parts? It has to be more than a whimsical leg kick.

Let’s use some basic peripherals to find comparable pitchers. His fastball struggles to break 90 mph, he doesn’t strike many out, and he doesn’t have great worm-burning stuff — but the control has been elite. Here are a few other pitchers that fit that sort of mold.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over the next week or so, we’re going to learn who gets into the Hall of Fame and (likely) the results of Alex Rodriguez‘ suspension appeal. Those are the kinds of stories that tend to bring out a lot of ugliness around the game, so it’s important that we take the opportunity to focus on smaller stories that remind us why we spend so much time following this sport in the first place — things like Mark Mulder signing a contract with the Angels on New Year’s Day, attempting a comeback after not having appeared in the bigs in the previous five seasons.

It’s incredibly unlikely to work, for reasons we’ll get to in a second, but it’s pretty easy to see why the Angels are willing to give this a chance. Mulder’s deal reportedly has zero guaranteed money, making it entirely performance-based, so the risk is low, and despite the well-received additions of Hector Santiago and Tyler Skaggs in the Mark Trumbo trade, the Los Angeles rotation is still thin. Jered Weaver and his terrifying trends remain at the top along with C.J. Wilson, and Garrett Richards figures to slot in somewhere. Joe Blanton will likely be cut loose one way or another, and the Angels may yet be the most likely landing spot for Matt Garza, but for the moment, their improved rotation is one that could still use some help.

So, fine, it’s a chance worth taking. But can Mulder make this work? Has anyone, ever? Read the rest of this entry »

A popular question in our FanGraphs chats is which team has had the best offseason in the league. The offseason, of course, isn’t close to over, and the answer is necessarily subjective to some extent, but the other day Dave suggested the Cardinals, and I’ve thought the same thing. I love what the Cardinals have done, improving without making future sacrifices, and there’s a reason they’re considered one of the best-run organizations in MLB. A team that hasn’t crossed my mind, when considering the same question, is the Angels. I don’t think the Angels have had a bad offseason, so much as an uninspiring one. The Mark Trumbo trade was neat.

Another popular question asks which bad team from 2013 is most likely to surprise and contend in 2014. There are, of course, a few candidates, and the team I always want to point to is the Angels, who finished short of .500. I hesitate, though, because I’m not sure how bad the Angels really were. Their numbers were a good deal better than their record. In any case, looking forward, it seems to me the Angels are ripe for a return to contention, and that’s despite an offseason that’s only served to shuffle modest talent around.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Kevin Towers took over the Diamondbacks as general manager, one of the first things he did was make a trade. In Mark Reynolds, he had a 27-year-old entering his first year of arbitration eligibility. The big righty had clear strikeout problems, and he wasn’t known to be an asset anywhere in the field, but what made Reynolds was his power. Strength was his defining characteristic, and to that point Reynolds owned a career 108 wRC+ while being worth about eight WAR. In short, he was simultaneously flawed and useful, and Towers gave him up to the Orioles in exchange for a couple relievers. One of them is all right.

Towers is still in charge of the Diamondbacks as general manager, and the most recent thing he’s done is make a trade. As had been rumored for a good while, Towers pulled the trigger on a deal to bring in Mark Trumbo. Trumbo is a 27-year-old entering his first year of arbitration eligibility. The big righty has clear strikeout problems, and he’s not known to be an asset anywhere in the field, but what makes Trumbo is his power. Strength is his defining characteristic, and to this point Trumbo owns a career 111 wRC+ while having been worth about seven WAR. In short, he’s simultaneously flawed and useful, and Towers got him from the Angels in exchange for Adam Eaton and Tyler Skaggs. Both of them could be quality young players.

Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Smith, who has long contended with Scott Baker and Jim Johnson for The Most Boring Name in Baseball, reportedly signed a three-year, $15.75 million deal with the Angels over the weekend. This might seem like another multi-year contract of the sort bloggers like to complain about, but I don’t think that conclusion is self evident. The more important question might be how this fits into a coherent off-season strategy for the Angels to improve their run prevention.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the World Series, broadcasts from both TBS and Fox kept telling us how good of a center fielder Jon Jay was. In between plaudits, Jon Jay would inevitably get a poor jump, take a bad route, or just drop an easily catchable ball, sometimes all in the same game. It became something of a running joke, as Jay appeared to be a defensive disaster in the postseason, even while the networks kept insisting that he was terrific with the glove.

Well, the Cardinals clearly weren’t swayed by the rhetoric, and today, they’ve acquired Peter Bourjos from the Angels to be their new center fielder. And now TBS and Fox can properly say that the Cardinals have one of the best defensive center fielders on the planet, because Peter Bourjos is what Jon Jay was supposed to be.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies re-signed Carlos Ruiz to a 3-year, $26 million deal. Also: Brayan Pena and Geovany Soto have locked down their 2014 teams (the Royals Reds and Rangers respectively). And now it appears Jose Molina is in the final stages of returning to St. Pete for another two years of expertly framed and eh, who cares about blocking? pitches.

So where does that leave the catching market? As far as I have seen, the Yankees, Red Sox, Rockies, Angels, Rangers (still), Blue Jays and Twins have all been connected with free agent catchers on MLBTR. Using their handy free agents leaderboards (with a few additions), we can examine the remaining free agent catchers and try our hand at predicting the right fits for each.
Read the rest of this entry »

The 2013 season was a banner season for players going on the disabled list. The DL was utilized 2,538 times, which was 17 more than the previous 2008 high. In all, players spent 29,504 days on the DL which is 363 days more than in 2007. Today, I take a quick look at the 2013 DL data and how it compares to previous seasons.

To get the DL data, I used MLB’s Transaction data. After wasting too many hours going through the data by hand, I have the completed dataset available for public consumption.  Enjoy it, along with the DL data from previous seasons. Finally, please let me know of any discrepancies so I can make any corrections.

With the data, it is time to create some graphs. As stated previously, the 2013 season set all-time marks in days lost and stints. Graphically, here is how the data has trended since 2002:

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been working on an interactive tool that allows you to create spray charts using Game Day data from the past two years for a few weeks now. I’ve always loved the Katron Batted Ball tool, and it’s been a great resource of mine for years. However, I wanted to put something together that was a bit more interactive, allowed for more filtering, and made side-by-side comparisons easier.

Our writers here at FanGraphs have been kind enough to play around with it and offer suggestions. After some tweaks I am ready to officially release the tool into the wild so that anyone can use it.

Read the rest of this entry »