It appears as though, after a spring’s worth of uncertainty, the Atlanta Braves have decided on an Opening Day shortstop, with the news this afternoon (courtesy David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal Constitution) that the club has assigned defensive wunderkind Andrelton Simmons to minor-league camp, leaving Tyler Pastornicky with the job.

To which level, precisely, Simmons has been sent remains to be seen, but there are options available to the Braves: given his age (22) and previous high level (High-A Lynchburg), an assigment to Double-A wouldn’t (nor should it) be regarded as a slight to Simmons’ skill level or potential. There’s certainly reason to believe that — aside from whatever he showed the coaching staff and front office this spring — that Pastornicky’s experience in the high minors (672 plate appearances between Double- and Triple-A) was instrumental in helping him to secure the starting spot to break camp. There’s also reason to believe that exposure to more advanced pitching would help Simmons’ refine his offensive game.

So, even if Simmons were to spend the entirety of 2012 in the minors, it likely wouldn’t represent any kind of misstep on the part of the Braves.

That said, with Simmons, there are three points always to consider:

1. Defense is his primary skill.

2. His defensive skill — even if coupled with merely replacement-level offense — probably makes him an average major leaguer right now.

3. Defense peaks earlier than other skills — probably around 25 or so.

In light of the facts, it’s probably fair to say that the window on Andrelton Simmons’ major-league career is a slightly different one than we see for many prospects, with the beginning of his peak set to arrive as soon as now. Because a lot of his value is derived from defensive play — that, coupled with the fact that his offensive ceiling is probably limited by a lack of power upside — Simmons will likely never be much more valuable than he will by, say, the middle or end of the 2012 season.

In perhaps the fasteset set of transactions I’ve ever seen, the Astros announced that they were releasing Livan Hernandez at 12:07 pm eastern time, and then Jon Heyman reported that Livan was signing with the Braves at 2:02 pm eastern. Livan wasn’t even unemployed for two hours.

Livan’s a pretty fascinating guy. While his xFIPs are crazy consistent over the last four years (xFIP- of 112, 111, 114, 111), his results have swung wildly from awful in 2008-2009 (ERA- of 138 and 133) to pretty good in 2010 (ERA- of 91) back to not great (ERA- of 118) last year. On one hand, you know exactly what you’re getting with Livan – a durable innings eater who won’t miss bats. On the other hand, you have no idea what you’re going to get from Livan, as his BABIP and HR/FB rates have fluctuated wildly over the last five years.

This series of moves perfectly illustrates how a player can have value to one team but not another. The Braves needed to reduce their exposure to disaster performances, and signing Hernandez gives them some rotation depth and the ability to let Julio Teheran and Randall Delgado start the year in the minors. While he doesn’t do anything to help raise their upside in win total, he probably helps raise the downside slightly, as they now have a decent enough fifth starter to keep the team from imploding if the kids aren’t quite ready on Opening Day.

The Astros, though, have little need to reduce their volatility. The marginal value of a win to a team in their position is quite small, and as a pure rebuilding organization, they’re better off figuring out what they have in a guy like Kyle Weiland instead. The innings Livan would have pitched for Houston would have just reduced the number of chances the team would have had to evaluate their young arms, and so the value of having a veteran stop-gap in place simply wasn’t there.

It’s weird to see a contender pick up a guy that the worst team in baseball just decided they didn’t want, but in this case, it makes sense for both sides. Perhaps that’s why it all happened so fast.

Carson Cistulli remains away, so us the other writers shall — as the Necronomicon suggests we might — play.

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Selected Televised Games
2. Japanese Baseball Wonderments
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Get Your Vote On

Selected Televised Games
Notable games available on MLB.TV.

Mariners at Athletics AL | 6:10 ET
By the time your eyes hit these digital words, this game will should have expired — because this Regular Season series is taking place in yonder JAPAN. But, through the magic of Internet, you can watch this game anytime today and at your leisure! The contest will also be re-broadcast on MLB Network at 9 a.m. (with a three-hour delay, that is), so people looking to get their Yoenis Cespedes / Ichiro Suzuki fix have some options here.

The game is still in progress at the time of publication. I don’t want to give anything away, but suffice it to say: The game involves pitching performances! and multi-hit efforts! and diving/jumping catches!

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After more than 17 years as a fixture in Atlanta Braves baseball, Chipper Jones has announced that he will retire as a player after the 2012 season. His $7 million club option for next year would have vested at $9 million with 123 games played this summer, but apparently enough is enough.

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The recent spat of injury news continued this morning, when the Braves announced that RHP Arodys Vizcaino was undergoing Tommy John surgery and will miss the entire 2012 season. Vizciano was rated the #2 prospect in the Braves system by Marc Hulet, and despite being just 21-years-old, he was in the mix for a Major League job at some point in 2012. While the Braves certainly have the pitching depth to deal with not having him on the mound this year, this is still a blow to the organization.

And, while no decision will likely be made on this until after Vizcaino rehabs, there’s a decent chance that this answers the lingering “starter or reliever” question that has followed Vizciano around. His two-pitch repertoire and big time fastball suggested a career in the bullpen may be in his future, but the Braves continued to let him start in Double-A last season before having him pitch in relief in Triple-A and the Majors. Even putting aside any durability questions this injury raises – in conjunction with the elbow soreness he experienced in 2010, his long term health has to be a concern – the lost year of development probably tips the scales towards a career in relief. He’s a guy who needed as much time on the mound as possible to continue developing his repertoire if he was going to stick as a starter, but losing the entire 2012 season is going to make it difficult for the Braves to keep him in that role.

More likely, Vizciano will return to the mound next year and be told to just prepare for a career of 15 pitch outings. Hopefully, for his sake, that task proves less strenuous on his arm.

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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With a glaring hole at shortstop, the Atlanta Braves are poised to hand the position over to an untested rookie who has consistently exceeded scouts’ expectations. Tyler Pastornicky worked his way up through the Braves’ system, peaking with a .314/.359/.414 line across two levels in 2011. But while Pastornicky looks like the man for 2012, he has a top-flight prospect right on his heels as Andrelton Simmons enters his third professional season and could be ready for the big leagues next year.

Simmons was the Braves second-round pick in the 2010 draft while Pastornicky was a fifth-rounder for the Blue Jays in 2008. The Braves got Pastornicky as part of the Yunel Escobar trade in 2010. Despite being drafted two years apart, both Pastornicky and Simmons will play the entire 2012 season at 23-years old.

The physical differences between the two players is noticeable. Pastornicky is slightly undersized at 5-foot-11, 170 pounds and he mirrors the description of a scrappy middle infielder. While Simmons is also on the thin side, his 6-foot-2 frame offers a little more projection and the added physicality that scouts prefer. Read the rest of this entry »

Take the best available player.

That refrain continues to be the draft philosophy espoused by all thirty major league organizations throughout each summer. It does not matter if the player is 18-years-old and in high school or if the player is 21-years-old and in college. Simply evaluate the talent on the field and draft accordingly. As Mariners’ scouting director Tom McNamara stated last June in preparation for the 2011 Draft:

“If we think the high school player is the best player at No. 2, we’ll take the high school guy. If we think it’s a college guy, we’ll take the college guy.” (source)

Seattle eventually selected collegiate left-hander Danny Hultzen with the second pick in the draft. In 2010, Seattle selected prep right-hander Taijuan Walker in the supplemental first round, which happened to be their first and only first-round pick of the draft. The year before, they had three first-round picks and selected one collegiate player and two high school players.

Echoing the best player available approach, the Mariners have not shown preference toward high school or college. In fact, the organization has drafted seven prep players and six collegiate players since the 2000 Draft. Essentially an even split.

All organizations are not like this, though. I gathered all of the first-round draft picks (including the first supplemental round) since the turn of the century, and noticed a few trends that have developed.

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With Spring Training approaching the Atlanta Braves claim to have put their historic 2011 collapse behind them. Unlike their brethren in collapse — the Boston Red Sox — the Braves made very few changes to the team or baseball organization in the wake of the collapse. Significant off-season transactions were limited to the firing of rookie hitting coach Larry Parrish, trading Derek Lowe to the Indians in a salary dump, and allowing shortstop Alex Gonzalez to leave as a free-agent and replacing him with Jack Wilson (and Tyler Pastornicky, as noted below).

The lack of moves by the Braves stands in contrast to the rest of the N.L. East where all of the other teams made major moves. The Marlins, Phillies, and Nationals all added major pieces through the free-agent market, while the Mets cut payroll and allowed Jose Reyes to move to the Marlins. While claiming to have an open mind about adding players later in the Spring, Braves GM Frank Wren seems to be betting that the Braves will be competitive without a major addition, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Mark Bradley:

If everyone bounces back, then we’ve got a good ballclub that doesn’t have a major need.

In essence, Wren is betting on regression to the mean. Hoping that players who struggled last year will revert to their normal performance level. In 2011 the Braves were generally quite good at preventing run, as there 605 runs allowed was second in the N.L. behind the Phillies. Scoring runs was the problem for the Braves, as they finished 10th in the N.L. with 641 runs scored. At what positions can the Braves expect increased offensive production this year?

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For a catcher, the “tools of ignorance” is an endearing term used to sum up the challenges of the position in a neat and tidy phrase. Over the past three seasons, scouting well over 100 games and a few hundred prospects has led me to develop my own “tools of magnificence” as a handful of players have displayed 80-grade tools which are now seared into my scouting conscious.

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