Ah, the winter meetings, a four-day swap meet where the entire baseball industry gets together in one place and…makes a fraction of the transactions they made the week before, when they were all in their respective home cities. In fact, until about an hour ago when I sat down to write this, there had only been one trade consummated in Orlando. It was an interesting one, a three-teamer that sent slugger Mark Trumbo to Arizona, young starting pitchers Hector Santiago and Tyler Skaggs to Anaheim, and catalyst CF Adam Eaton to Chicago. Dave and Jeff have already checked in with analysis of the deal, and I figured I’d throw in my two cents on one facet of it.

Within the entire population of major-league players, opinions of Mark Trumbo’s value likely vary as much as anyone’s among and within major-league front offices. From a scouting perspective, he absolutely crushes the baseball. From an analytical perspective, he hemorrhages outs. What is Mark Trumbo, and where is he headed? 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.

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Yesterday, I wrote a mini diatribe on the value (or lack thereof) provided by Nelson Cruz. Because he has earned the label of “right-handed power hitter”, teams are apparently ignoring the fact that he’s not actually that good of a hitter and doesn’t really do anything else to help a team win. Bat only players where the bat isn’t that special are probably the most overrated players in the game, and that is certainly a club to which Cruz belongs.

That description also works pretty well for the eminently available Mark Trumbo. His name is perhaps the most popular of the morning, as the Diamondbacks are apparently working multiple avenues to try and acquire his power from the Angels in exchange for some of their excess pitching. Keith Law has even reported that there’s a chance that they could get the White Sox involved in a three way trade in order to find the right fit to help them acquire Trumbo, and it seems likely at this point that the Angels will move Trumbo in a quest to upgrade their rotation.

If the reported price tag of Adam Eaton and Tyler Skaggs is even remotely close to true, it seems fairly clear that the Diamondbacks are drastically overrating the value of Mark Trumbo, an unsurprising result given that he possesses the skillset that is most often overrated. To give up a prospect like Skaggs for the right to swap a speed-and-defense +2 WAR player for a dingers-and-ribbies +2 WAR player suggests that the Diamondbacks are following the trend of putting far too much emphasis on the ways players create runs and not the amount of runs they create.

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Knock on wood, I certainly hope so. This piece isn’t about sending a tribute to the area, rather it is a discussion of the composition of the minor leagues and those who reach the major leagues.

While this article became a study of a the California League’s population, the concept began when I was thinking about Jake Lamb’s prospect status. Lamb signed with the Diamondbacks last June and I stumbled upon him during his first Spring Training with the club — he ranked among the 10 best prospects I saw in Arizona. Intrigued, I followed his injury-riddled season closely and thought he would never garner the attention I believed he deserved because of his old age and collegiate pedigree (though, Hulet ranked him higher than anyone else this off season!).  Suddenly, I found myself buried in Excel attempting to discover what Jake Lamb’s chances were to become a major leaguer.

Statistical studies of prospects are difficult because the minor leagues are vast and rife with variables and failure. There are 189 teams across 16 full-season, short season and rookie leagues, each stocked with talent that may never make a major league 25-man roster. With over 5,000 minor leaguers vying for 750 MLB roster spots it can be easier to study the successes.

Studying only the players who reach the major leagues may be easier, but often such studies snag on “survivorship bias.” Survivorship bias may be present when a study’s population consists of a select group amongst a larger class. If one is going to study success, it’s wise to study failure too. For a demonstration of survivorship bias, read Dave Cameron’s post on The Value of Hunter Pence.

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At the end of last week, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the D-backs or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Chicago AL / Miami / Seattle.

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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:

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The Cardinals face possible elimination today at the hands of the Pirates. It has been a wild year for the National League Central. One could make an argument that, this season at least, the National League Central was right up there with the American League East as the best division in baseball. The Cardinals won that division and tied the Red Sox for the best record in baseball.

But it could all end for St. Louis today. Although I personally do not have a rooting interest in this series (yeah, it would be fun to see the Pirates advance, but that is not the same as being a fan of either team), it would be too bad to see the Cardinals’ Matt-heavy lineup depart. It has Matt Carpenter, a legitimate MVP candidate in his first year of full-time major league play, Matt Holliday, who overcame a relatively slow start to have another very good season, and Matt Adams, a rookie who is starting the place of the injured Allen Craig, and who managed to whack 17 home runs in part-time action.

With my own semi-vested interest in Matts, and with the Matt-loaded Cardinals playing perhaps their last game of 2013 today, a bit of trivia is in order: the best-hitting Matts in playoff history.

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Brandon McCarthy has famously embraced sabermetrics before. Learning about ground balls and efficiency helped save his career. That doesn’t mean that the struggle to learn and improve doesn’t continue. And, after we talked last week, it seems the pitcher is running up on the limits of sabermetric research. Or at least, he is identifying places where execution trumps theory.

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The last pitch Yusmeiro Petit threw while he had a perfect game was the one that ended his perfect game. It was a fastball, thigh-high, over the outer edge, and Eric Chavez got around it and lined it to right. The ball was very nearly caught, but everything in baseball is very nearly something else, and Petit’s bid was over with one strike to go. The pitch was just about right where Petit wanted it to be, and when he retired the next hitter, he had to settle for simply having pitched the game of his life. Immediately, it was easy to see the top of the ninth as bittersweet. Petit’s still never going to forget what he did, and how the crowd roared for him.

The second-to-last pitch Yusmeiro Petit threw while he had a perfect game was almost the one that sealed his perfect game. It was a curveball, knee-high, around the low-outside corner, and Eric Chavez took it for a ball. The count jumped from 2-and-2 to 3-and-2 — Petit would perhaps have to come into the zone. This pitch, more than the next one, is the one I find fascinating. It seemed to me to be almost the perfect pitch. It seemed to me to be the perfect way to end a perfect game.

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Cleveland crushed Chicago 6-1 yesterday, largely due to Chicago’s year-long inability to get anything going on offense and Ryan Raburn’s huge day. The domination of Chicago’s terrible hitting was not all that unusual, but Raburn’s performance was awesome. He had three hits, including two home runs, driving in four. More impressively, two of those hits (and one of those homers) came against Chris Sale. However bad the White Sox’ offense is, Sale has been the opposite of that as a starting pitcher since the beginning of last season.

One might point out that Raburn has always hit much better versus southpaws. Still, it is not as if Sale is a left-handed version of, well, Justin Masterson. Raburn was put in a position to succeed and has been used quite well this year by Terry Francona, who had enough confidence to have Raburn hit third yesterday against one of the American League’s best pitchers.

Raburn has been a great pickup for Cleveland, who right in the wildcard hunt. Inspired by Raburn’s big day and season, let’s take a closer look at him and two other part-timers, Mike Carp and Eric Chavez, who have provided very good value in part-time platoon roles.

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