It was announced earlier today that Barry Bonds has not been voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Nobody was voted into the Hall of Fame, and there are several topics worthy of discussion, but I’m partial to the Bonds one, myself, because the voting results provide a reason to look at Bonds’ career statistics again. Asterisks or no asterisks, Bonds’ numbers are downright impossible, and looking at them is the most fun a person can have at work the most fun a person who doesn’t write from home for FanGraphs can have at work. You shouldn’t be allowed to drive and drink, you shouldn’t be allowed to drive and text, and you shouldn’t be allowed to drive and consider Barry Bonds’ career baseball statistics.

By WAR, Bonds’ best season was 2001. By wRC+, Bonds’ best offensive season was 2002. By wRC+, Bonds’ 2002 is the best offensive season in baseball history. At 244, he beats out Babe Ruth’s 1920, at 237. Bonds also had a 234 and a 233. Ruth had a 231 and a 223. A new name finally shows up at #7. Anyway.

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Kyle Crick enters 2013 as the top prospect in the San Francisco Giants organization. Having seen his final start of the 2012 season, I can attest to his having both the raw stuff and durable frame to eat innings at the Major League level. On a night where I saw him bad, Crick’s arsenal was awfully good. Seeing a great prospect on an off night presents an opportunity to discuss both Kyle Crick, and the value of a single look in context.

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Armed with a new measure for offensive volatility (VOL), I wanted to revisit research I conducted  last year about the value of a consistent offense.

In general, the literature has suggested if you’re comparing two similar offenses, the more consistent offense is preferable throughout the season. The reason has to do with the potential advantages a team can gain when they don’t “waste runs” in blow-out victories. The more evenly a team can distribute their runs, the better than chances of winning more games.

I decided to take my new volatility (VOL) metric and apply it to team-level offense to see if it conformed to this general consensus*.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, will be released at FanGraphs this year. Below is the first set of 2013’s projections — for the World Series champion San Francisco Giants. Don’t hesitate to leave notes regarding format/presentation in the comments section, as the author frequently has no idea what he’s doing.

Other thing: Szymborski himself will be chatting at Noon ET today in these very same electronic pages, and will happily answer any questions readers have regarding the projections themselves.

Batters
The Giants’ success is tied pretty strongly to the health and success of Buster Posey — not merely because only one player (i.e. Mike Trout) posted a higher WAR than Posey in 2012, but also because San Francisco’s catching corps lacks anything like impact talent. At 23, Hector Sanchez certainly has some promise, but even approaching Posey’s production would be a considerable challenge.

Of some interest will be how well the club is able to account for the departure of Melky Cabrera. While they were obviously able to win a championship following his suspension, Cabrera was also integral to the Giants’ regular-season performance, posting a 4.6 WAR in just 113 games (501 plate appearances). Manning the corners now will be Hunter Pence in right field and (likely) a platoon of Gregor Blanco and Andres Torres in left. ZiPS is optimistic neither about Blanco’s ability to match his career-high 2.4 wins from 2012, nor Pence’s ability to earn the entirety of the ca. $14 million he’s likely to receive in arbitration.

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Episode 288
Prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel discusses players he’s seen — including, among others, pitching prospects Marcus Stroman (Blue Jays), Lance McCullers (Astros), and Jose Fernandez (Marlins) — and the larger concerns each raises with regard to prospect analysis generally.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 38 min play time.)

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Before the 2007 season, Major League Baseball Advanced Media partnered with StubHub as the official secondary ticket marketplace for Major League Baseball. All 30 MLB teams participated. Anyone could list MLB game tickets for sale on StubHub, at any price. StubHub charged buyers a handling fee and a delivery fee, often totaling more than $10, regardless of the selling price. The “delivery fee” was the key to the deal, as it allowed buyers to print the tickets at home. Gone were the days of sellers tossing tickets out a window to buyers at midnight. Sellers also paid a fee to StubHub, charged as a percentage of the sale price. StubHub shared about half its fees with MLBAM. In 2011, that amounted to more than $60 million. MBLAM then funneled a portion of those funds to the 30 teams.

Fans rejoiced. During the 2011 season, more than 8 million MLB tickets sold on StubHub, up from 6 million in 2010.

But many teams weren’t as thrilled. The Yankees, in particular, were a vocal critic of StubHub’s pricing policies. With no price floor, Yankees tickets were often available on StubHub for less than $5, a price significantly below the lowest ticket price available at the box office or on Yankees.com.  Critics countered that Yankees ticket prices were too high, creating a fertile market for very cheap tickets on the secondary market. But even teams with lower ticket prices lost sales to StubHub.

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The perils of rumor reaction writing – Baggarly has amended his original note to suggest that the Giants offer is two years with a vesting option, not three years. So, adjust accordingly.

There are times when a player undergoes a dramatic transformation and essentially forces us to abandon everything we knew about that player previously. Cliff Lee. Jose Bautista. R.A. Dickey. It happens. Guys reinvent themselves, and as a result, their new contracts reflect the recent reality, not the average of all their Major League seasons.

And sometimes, guys have monster rebound seasons, reminding everyone of their previous levels of success, and enable teams to have confidence to pay premium prices to get them under contract. Adrian Beltre, for instance. Giving a veteran player a huge raise is not always an overpay. Sometimes, he’s just done enough to change the market’s opinion of his skills, and his performance requires a drastic change in compensation.

So, I’m not willing to say that every big raise for a veteran is a de facto overpay. But, even with all that said, I can’t say I understand what Marco Scutaro did in 2012 that has made the market drastically reevaluate his value.

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Angel Pagan just signed with the San Francisco Giants. $40 million for four years might seem like a slight overpay in terms of years, but this is obviously a team trying to win now, and they did just make a little extra coin that they can spend in order to stay competitive.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Similar justifications were probably made when Aubrey Huff helped power the Giants to their first World Series title and was subsequently signed to an ill-fated deal. This is Angel Pagan, though. Not Aubrey Huff.

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A couple of minor transactions have floated by mostly un-noticed on the wires recently, and probably for good reason. Mickey Storey was claimed by the Yankees from the Astros, and Cory Burns was traded to the Rangers from the Padres for a player to be named someday. Neither of these relievers cost much, nor will they end up closing for their new teams. They’re mostly just flotsam pieces of spaghetti to fling at the wall. There’s a link between these two relievers, and it’s a thread that will run through most fungible, cheaply acquired players in baseball — neither reliever has a fastball.

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Early Sunday morning, Twitter was abuzz with news that the Dodgers and Fox Sports West had agreed to a 25-year broadcast deal valued between $6 billion and $7 billion. By Sunday afternoon, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times had confirmed the outline of the deal, but cautioned that the Dodgers and Fox were still negotiating, with a November 30 deadline looming.

As I explained last week in this post, the parties’ existing agreement gave Fox an exclusive, 45-day window in which to negotiate a new deal to govern the 2014 season and beyond. Hence, the November 30 deadline. If an agreement isn’t inked by Friday, the Dodgers must submit a final offer to Fox by December 7. Fox then has 30 days to accept or reject the offer. If Fox rejects the offer, the Dodgers are free to negotiate with whomever they want.

However the negotiations play out, it’s clear now that the Dodgers’ local TV revenue is about to enter the stratosphere. A 25-year deal worth between $6 billion and $7 billion would net the Dodgers between $240 million and $280 million per year. Per year. That’s more than any team has ever spent on player salaries in a single season — even the Yankees. And it’s nearly double the amount of local TV revenue pulled in annually by the team with the second-most lucrative deal — the other Los Angeles team (the Angels) — which entered into a 17-year deal with Fox Sports West worth $2.5 billion.

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