Earlier this week, I chatted wth Red Sox manager Alex Cora about the relative value of contact skills versus hunting pitches that you can drive. Not surprisingly, the 2017 American League batting champion’s name came up.

“People might be surprised by this, but Jose Altuve isn’t afraid to make adjustments even when he’s getting his hits,” said Cora, who was Houston’s bench coach last year. “When Jose is really, really, really good — because he’s good, always — his strike zone shrinks. He doesn’t chase his hits. Sometimes he’s getting his hits because he’s unreal with his hand-eye coordination — he gets hits on pitches that others don’t — but when he looks for good pitches he’s even better.”

Cora was a contact hitter during his playing days, and looking back, he wishes he’d have been more selective. Not only that, he wouldn’t have minded swinging and missing more often than he did.

“I had a conversation with Carlos Delgado about that,” Cora told me. “When you commit to swinging the bat — I’m talking about me — it often doesn’t matter where it is, you end up putting the ball in play. It’s better to swing hard and miss than it is to make soft contact for a 4-3.” Read the rest of this entry »

I suppose what I should say is that the Gerrit Cole trade has two perception problems. One, it’s clearly just a bad look for Pittsburgh. It’s generally a bad look when a major-league team has to trade away an established major-league talent, and with Cole and then Andrew McCutchen going out the door, it’s a twin reminder of how the Pirates failed to build on a tremendous run of success. I don’t know how much more the Pirates reasonably could’ve done, but there’s forever that lingering question regarding ownership’s commitment to winning. This is nothing new. It’s a reopening of wounds that never healed.

There’s also, though, another aspect. The Pirates have been heavily criticized for the return package they got for Cole from the Astros. I have no interest in trying to figure out whether the Pirates got the best package possible. I don’t know what else was truly on the table. Maybe more would’ve been available in July; maybe Cole’s stock would’ve dropped. All we know is what the Pirates got. My read of the consensus is that the Pirates didn’t get enough. But my read is also that the Astros have a little something to do with that. Specifically because the Astros are unusually good and deep.

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If you’ve read any of the dozens of articles over the years trying to create a framework for player asset values (putting a dollar amount on a player’s value), you’re aware of the biggest weakness of this genre of article. Take a star player, run him through a marginal-value analysis, and you’ll be disappointed in what it says about his trade value. Before we jump into the Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen trades, follow me down a thought-experiment rabbit hole.

Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball and Steamer projects him as a six-win player next year. Using the roughly $9-10 million at which a win is currently valued on the open market, Kershaw is likely to produce something between $50 and $60 million of value next year; let’s call it $55 million. Would multiple teams bid that amount for his services on a one year deal? Probably yes, because there’s some surplus value at that salary for which the formula fails to account. It doesn’t consider, for example, either extreme payrolls (i.e. the Dodgers’ on one hand, the A’s on the other) or more critical spots on the win curve (moving an 87-win team to a 93-win team is worth far more revenue-wise than 65 to 71).

So what would the A’s bid? They had an $86 million payroll last year, and they obviously wouldn’t give nearly two-thirds of it to one player. Oakland’s value for Kershaw would likely be whatever the maximum is that they would pay for any player, but that number is much lower than what the Dodgers would spend, maybe $20 million. Granted, these are extreme cases, but it illustrates the limitations of using a one-size-fits-all dollar-per-win calculator in specific instances, even if it works fine in aggregate.

More Granular Valuation

I point all that out to illustrate the fact that players aren’t worth the same to every team. Kershaw’s value, on which we all basically agree, varies by $30-40 million from the A’s to the Dodgers on just a one-year deal. So wouldn’t it follow that the A’s and Dodgers would value other players differently, too?

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The Astros have acquired right-hander Gerrit Cole (for real this time) from the Pirates in exchange for Michael Feliz, Joe Musgrove, and prospects Jason Martin and Colin Moran. Below are the KATOH projections for the latter two of those players.

Note that WAR figures account for each player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings.

*****

Colin Moran, 3B (Profile)
KATOH: 3.0 WAR
KATOH+: 2.8 WAR

The Marlins made Moran the sixth-overall pick back in 2013, but his stock has cratered since. His bat never developed the way scouts thought it would, culminating in a paltry .259/.329/.368 line in 2016. He showed signs of life last year, however, hitting .308/.373/.543 in his second crack at Triple-A. For the first time as a professional, he hit for power — largely by upping his fly-ball rate by 10 percentage points — while simultaneously cutting eight points off of his strikeout rate.

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After a couple false starts earlier in the week, the Houston Astros finally acquired right-hander Gerrit Cole from the Pittsburgh Pirates last night. As Travis Sawchik notes, the deal makes sense for both teams: the re-tooling Pirates get a collection of useful players, all within close proximity to the majors; the Astros, meanwhile, receive two years of a pitcher with a great arm and history of success. It’s mutually beneficial.

There’s a third party that might benefit from the deal, however, and that’s Cole himself. He might be worth more in Houston than anywhere else.

As a major leaguer, Cole has been either good or really good in each of his five seasons. There’s always this sense, however, that the former No. 1 pick could be great. Earlier this week, Travis Sawchik proposed one way that Cole could perhaps unlock the remaining upside in his 27-year-old arm –namely, by throwing his fastball less. In this way, his move to the Astros represent an opportunity: not only is Cole’s secondary stuff ready for more action, but his new team is uniquely suited to help this adjustment along.

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Gerrit Cole was reportedly traded to the Astros earlier this week. I wrote about that hypothetical move in greater length here and why Cole might fit well with Houston.

I wrote earlier this offseason that the Pirates ought to trade Cole. The Pirates are re-tooling to some degree, while the Astros are a World Series contender that has been motivated to find a starting pitcher. It makes sense for both parties.

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Gerrit Cole is reportedly on the verge of joining the Astros:

Or… maybe he’s not:

In any case, it sounds like a deal will get done eventually:

Unless it doesn’t:

While something may or may not be imminent, such a trade would not be surprising: the Pirates have decided to retool at some level and Cole’s name has come up all offseason, first connected to the Yankees (though the Yankees were apparently unwilling to part with Gleyber Torres). The Astros are a top AL contender, the sort team looking to consolidate its position.

The possible return is not yet clear, though the Astros possess the sort of high-end prospects which the Pirates currently lack in their system. So, on the surface, this potential trade makes a lot of sense. A club headed for a rebuild sells two years of control of a top-of-the-rotation arm to a contender.

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When we last saw him, Joe Smith was recording the final out Cleveland would induce in 2017, getting Aaron Judge to ground out. Earlier in the series, he entered Game 3 of the American League Division Series in the eighth inning. He struck out Aaron Judge. Then he struck out Gary Sanchez. He intentionally walked Didi Gregorius — the only batter of eight he allowed to reach base in the postseason — then got Starlin Castro to ground out. It was an excellent end to an excellent season.

Given recent events, it appears likely that Smith will return to the playoffs in 2018: last night, the defending champion Houston Astros officially announced a two-year deal with the right-hander worth $15 million.

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Chatter has been picking up that Major League Baseball will introduce a pitch clock in 2018. It’s felt like an inevitable development for some time, with the clock having been in place in the upper minors for the last few years. Reactions have been mixed, because reactions are always mixed, but the pitch clock is coming, and it’s probably going to be fine. We’ll get used to it, everyone will get used to it, and the game will remain by and large the same.

I made a point about the pitch clock last week. According to early reports, the proposed clock would only be used when the bases are empty, and I pointed out that the game only really slows down after somebody reaches. When there’s a runner on base, pitchers have more to worry about, so it makes sense that they’d work slower. But I don’t want to make this all about pitchers. We tend to think of pitchers as being responsible for dictating the pace. They are, after all, the guys holding the baseballs. But in any at-bat, there are two parties involved. As Buster Olney wrote in his report, no batter in the National League averaged more time between pitches than Odubel Herrera. And no batter in either league averaged more time between pitches than Marwin Gonzalez.

On average last year, overall, there were 24.2 seconds between pitches. For Gonzalez, that average was 29.5. That was up from the previous year’s 27.2, and up from his career low of 24.4. Pitching to Gonzalez was most recently 22% slower than pitching to a league-average hitter. Just as a pitch clock will make certain pitchers hurry up, it would have the same effect on certain hitters. At least, given proper enforcement.

I imagine we can mostly agree that’s a good thing. There’s baseball’s normal, familiar pace, and there are the players who push it too far. Wasted seconds benefit no one, and there’s no need for there to be just two pitches every minute. Players will need to maintain a good tempo. What effect this all ultimately has, we’ll have to see. Yet there’s one question we can answer right now: What in the heck is Marwin Gonzalez even doing?

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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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