There is an inherent optimism when contracts are signed. The Cleveland Indians believed they were putting themselves over the top three years ago when they signed Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn to four-year deals. The team did not get the production they were hoping for, and after making the Wild Card their first year with the team in 2013, the team has won fewer games the last two seasons, and the Indians agreed to pay money to the Atlanta Braves to get rid of Bourn and Swisher while taking on the contract of Chris Johnson, who they have also jettisoned. As a result, the Indians have a larger percentage of their payroll going to players not playing for them in 2016 than any other Major League Baseball team.

The Indians might have the largest percentage of their payroll devoted to dead money, but they do not have the largest amount in total. The two franchises from Los Angeles both best the Indians. Thirteen of the 30 MLB teams have money going to players not currently on their 40-man roster. The graph below shows those 13 teams, with data collected from Cot’s Contracts.

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Previous editions: Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles (AL) / Miami / Minnesota / Milwaukee / New York (NL)

Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Los Angeles Dodgers. In this companion piece, I look at that same LA farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Dodgers have the third best farm system according to KATOH, trailing only the Brewers and Astros. They have the most projected pitching WAR and the most WAR coming from 3.5+ WAR players.

There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their first six major-league seasons, those who receive a projection between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their first six seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

1. Corey Seager, SS (Profile)

KATOH Projection: 12.3 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 65 FV

Seager showed what he’s capable of last September when he slashed .337/.425/.561 with the Dodgers. Prior to that, he hit a strong .278/.332/.451 in Triple-A. Seager’s 2015 numbers weren’t particularly gaudy, but he did manage to cut down on his strikeout rate, which was previously the one flaw in an otherwise promising stat line. Shortstops who hit that well at such a young age are few and far between. That’s why Seager has the chance to be a special player.

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Other clubs: Angels, Astros, Braves, Brewers, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Marlins, Mets, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, Twins, White Sox.

You might not know it by listening to talk radio or television discussions about the club, but it’s an awesome time to be a Dodgers fan right now. They continue to use their financial might to bring in a plethora of international and domestic amateur prospects, then proceed to pawn off their international bonus slots for even more prospects. While they’ve gotten a lot of criticism for letting Zack Greinke go and not dishing out any of the bigger contracts this offseason, the reinforcements they have available in their minor-league system are at least a part of the reason why. Not only do they boast one of the deepest major-league rosters, they have ready-made replacements within a couple levels of their parent club, particularly on the pitching side. On top of that, they keep making shrewd mid-level trades and taking some of my favorite upside talents in the amateur draft. At every turn, their process has been consistent and on point.

You could make a case that they’re light on impact offensive prospects outside of the guys who’ll be starting the year in Los Angeles and first baseman Cody Bellinger, but they have enough depth in the next tier down. Outfielders Johan Mieses, Jacob Scavuzzo and Alex Verdugo are close in the outfield, while Willie Calhoun and hopefully a return to form by Micah Johnson give them options in the infield should multiple position players falter this year. Julio Urias and Jose De Leon are two of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball, and could handle a promotion in the near future if pressed into duty.

Austin Barnes and Trayce Thompson are in the 50+ FV group here, despite how Barnes is only the club’s second or third option at catcher, and Thompson’s reputation in recent years as a questionable bat who might not make it in the big leagues. Thompson is quicker to explain: I really like the changes he made to his swing and approach. No one ever denied the tools and overall athletic ability, and barring a step back for some reason, he’s positioned to develop into a legitimate starting option in the outfield.

Barnes is much farther out there compared to perception, I’m well aware. He’s not a big power guy, and he doesn’t have big arm strength, both tools that historically are typical of catching prospects. His atypical profile is probably why he didn’t get more of an opportunity in the Marlins organization. Perhaps it’s telling, however, that one of the smartest front offices in baseball targeted him. As a professional, all he’s done is hit, flirt with an on-base percentage over .400, steal some bases and be one of the best pitch framers in the minor leagues — for years now. He makes enough contact and has a good swing, so there’s no reason I can find that he won’t continue to do it against big-league pitching. I don’t see any reason to discount his receiving behind the plate. Watch a Dodgers spring-training game and you’ll quickly notice what makes him so special back there.

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Plenty of people over the years have questioned Alex Wood’s ability to remain a starting pitcher, but what you at least couldn’t question, for a time, was how Wood as a starter performed. He was effective as a rookie in 2013, and then the next year, he posted numbers that, from an objective perspective, looked like they could’ve belonged to Cole Hamels. Wood struck out a quarter of the batters he faced, and while he’s never going to totally escape the skepticism, Wood looked like he was on to something. Then 2015 happened, and everything got worse. Wood found himself on the outside of the Dodgers’ rotation, looking in.

There’s a reason the Dodgers assembled so much depth, though — they knew they might run into injury problems, and already, it looks like Wood is going to be needed. That would be a good opportunity for anyone, but Wood feels like this is a chance to show off some adjustments he’s made. Everyone who shows up to spring training has a path to get better. Yet Wood isn’t trying to do anything new. If anything, he’s worked to be more like the Wood of old.

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Over the last few years, the Dodgers have made it pretty clear that, when it comes to pitching, they’re willing to take some health risks in order to get talent upside. To that end, they’ve signed pitchers like Scott Kazmir, Brett Anderson, Brandon McCarthy, and Brandon Beachy as free agents, all of whom have put up very good performances at times, but all of whom have had significant medical issues throughout their careers. This winter, they attempted to sign Hisashi Iwakuma, but backed off due to concerns with his physical, and then signed an incentive-laden deal with Kenta Maeda, who reportedly had some pretty ugly medicals himself. And this doesn’t even count Hyun-Jin Ryu — who wasn’t recently acquired, but is returning from shoulder surgery — or Alex Wood, a pitcher with a delivery so awkward that his long-term health was one of the main reasons the Braves traded him to Los Angeles to begin with.

The 2016 Dodgers rotation was essentially Clayton Kershaw and then some combination of four high-risk pitchers with health problems. We’re only a couple of weeks into spring training, but the downside of pursuing this strategy is already starting to show through the cracks.

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Baseball may have seemed to have solved the catcher concussion problem when it instituted new rules governing the play at the plate in 2014. Despite some hiccups, eliminating the play at the plate seems to eliminate the main source of player on player in-game violence — and the other, the play at second base, is currently under scrutiny. Despite the odd pitch to the head and outfielder into the wall, that should make baseball one of the safest sports for a young brain. The numbers, especially for catchers, provide hope.

But there is still one repetitive play that causes concussions regularly for catchers — and there might be a fix to that problem, too. A fix that seems to come with even fewer ramifications for the game.

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You smell that? It’s baseball’s prospect-list season. The fresh top-100 lists — populated by new names as well as old ones — seem to be popping up each day. With the individual rankings coming out, some organization rankings are becoming available, as well. I have always regarded the organizational rankings as subjective — and, as a result, not 100% useful. Utilizing the methodology I introduced in my article on prospect evaluation from this year’s Hardball Times Annual, however, it’s possible to calculate a total value for every team’s farm system and remove the biases of subjectivity. In what follows, I’ve used that same process to rank all 30 of baseball’s farm systems by the surplus WAR they should generate.

I provide a detailed explanation of my methodology in the Annual article. To summarize it briefly, however, what I’ve done is to identify WAR equivalencies for the scouting grades produced by Baseball America in their annual Prospect Handbook. The grade-to-WAR conversion appears as follows.

Prospect Grade to WAR Conversion

Prospect Grade	Total WAR	Surplus WAR
80	25.0	18.5
75	18.0	13.0
70	11.0	9.0
65	8.5	6.0
60	4.7	3.0
55	2.5	1.5
50	1.1	0.5
45	0.4	0.0

To create the overall totals for this post, I used each team’s top-30 rankings per the most recent edition of Baseball America’ Prospect Handbook. Also accounting for those trades which have occurred since the BA rankings were locked down, I counted the number of 50 or higher-graded prospects (i.e. the sort which provide surplus value) in each system. The results follows.
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I’ll tell you what this was supposed to be about. Over the weekend, Howie Kendrick was in the news, since he re-signed with the Dodgers. I was going to take the opportunity to write about how Kendrick just about never hits a pop-up. It’s one of those things that helps explain why he’s been able to run high batting averages, and even though I know I wrote about this very thing like a year ago for Fox Sports, Kendrick didn’t hit a single pop-up in the most recent season. Nor did he hit a single pop-up in the previous season. So, by our numbers, Kendrick has gone more than two regular seasons without a pop-up, which is insane and well worth re-visiting. Who doesn’t like to read about the weirdos?

But, you know, ideas evolve, especially when you give them a few days to simmer. Kendrick, pretty clearly, is exceptional in this regard. However, he’s not unique. You might be thinking right now about Joey Votto, and Votto is also pop-up averse, but this past year there were just two regular players who successfully avoided pop-ups: Kendrick and Christian Yelich. This is fitting, because over the past five years, if you set a 1,000 plate-appearance minimum, Yelich and Kendrick own the lowest pop-up rates in baseball. They both feature phenomenal bat-to-ball skills, reflected by these numbers, and they’re valuable because of the extra singles they can scratch out.

So, Kendrick doesn’t hit pop-ups. Yelich doesn’t hit pop-ups. By at least one source, neither hit a pop-up in 2015. Might it be possible to crown either the 2015 pop-up champion?

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Over the weekend, the Dodgers and Diamondbacks made a pair of related transactions. On Friday night, after failing to find a suitor due to the specter of a potential lost draft choice, Howie Kendrick re-signed with the Dodgers for a relative pittance; $20 million over the next two years. Given that Kendrick turned down the qualifying offer, which would have guaranteed him $15.8 million for just the 2016 season alone, Kendrick had to settle for far less than he thought he would get this off-season, and at that price, the Dodgers decided the value was too good to pass up, even though they didn’t really need another infielder.

Kendrick is better than Chase Utley and he should make the team better in both 2016 and 2017; however, they did surrender the possibility of obtaining a compensation pick if another team had eventually decided he was too good to pass up at that price as well.

For a good chunk of the winter, the assumption was that a team would make that choice, and for the last few months, the Dimaondbacks looked liked the obvious fit. General manager Dave Stewart publicly talked about his desire to add some offense at the top of the order to replace Ender Inciarte, and some combination of Chris Owings and Aaron Hill didn’t inspire a lot of confidence that second base was going to be well-handled in 2016. The D-Backs had talks with Kendrick, and had tried to trade for Brandon Phillips, so it was clear that they wanted to make a move for a more established second baseman, pushing Owings into the utility role that he’s probably better suited for.

But, after having surrendered the 13th pick to sign Zack Greinke, the Diamondbacks became fiercely protective of the 39th overall pick, a competitive-balance selection they were awarded that they would have to surrender if they signed Kendrick (or Ian Desmond, another free agent would could have helped them). Stewart even stated outright that they weren’t going to give up that pick:

“We’re not going to give up the pick,” Stewart said of the D-backs, who have the 39th selection (Competitive Balance Round A). “It’s just tough after we’ve already given up our first pick. To give up our top two picks, that would be difficult for us to do.”

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The search for utopia is a futile one. For humans to truly appreciate happiness, we must always be reminded of our sadness. If happiness were a constant, it would become no longer desirable. A world without imperfections is a world impure.

And so to truly appreciate Clayton Kershaw is more than to simply watch a glorious seven-minute YouTube highlight video of Vin Scully calling every out of Kershaw’s June 18, 2014 no-hitter against the Rockies in Los Angeles. I mean, yeah, that’s a part of it — watching that specific video is actually one of the required steps; you’ve gotta watch the video — but by only observing Kershaw at his best, by choosing only to remember his triumphs, by only witnessing him accomplish that which leaves his peers in awe, we begin to lose context. For our admiration of Kershaw to be pure, we must always remind ourselves of his fleeting moments of fallibility, for they are what allow us to appreciate his greatness.

I’m a man of my word. And I’d sure like to continue enjoying Clayton Kershaw. So let’s watch him throw some trash pitches.

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