Yesterday, Tyler Chatwood signed with the Cubs for $38 million over three years. Given his velocity and run prevention at altitude, there’s a reasonable case to be made that Chatwood comes with enough upside to make this a very intriguing bet by the Cubs.

But while Chatwood remains interesting, one thing he can’t be described as is durable. He’s had Tommy John surgery twice (once in high school), missed nearly all of the 2014 and 2015 seasons, and has never thrown more than 158 innings in a season. The history of guys who have already had Tommy John revision surgeries is not very good, and quite simply, Chatwood’s health is a legitimate question mark. While the Cubs bought some real upside here, there is also a non-zero chance that they just spent $38 million to watch Chatwood spend most of the next three years rehabbing his elbow.

So, if we were plotting all pitchers on a risk/reward graph, Chatwood would be about as far from the middle of the graph as a point gets. Interestingly, though, the market also recently decided that the guy at the very opposite end of this spectrum is also worth $38 million over three years.

Read the rest of this entry »

At long last, the hot stove appears to be heating up. In something of a surprise move, the Mariners have swung a trade with the Marlins to acquire both (a) Dee Gordon, who will apparently play center field for Seattle, and (b) $1 million in international slot money. In exchange, the Marlins receive three lower-tier prospects: righties Robert Dugger and Nick Neidert, plus infielder Chris Torres.

Below are the KATOH projections for the players received by Miami. 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. In total, my KATOH system (both stats-only and KATOH+) projects this trio for 3.6 WAR over their first six years in the majors.

*****

Nick Neidert, RHP (Profile)

KATOH: 2.2 WAR
KATOH+: 2.7 WAR

Seattle took Neidert in the second round out of high school back in 2015, and he promptly began mowing down low-minors hitters. Neidert opened 2017 as a 20-year-old in High-A, where he pitched excellently — his strikeout rate, walk rate, ERA, and xFIP were all top-five in the Cal League among pitchers with at least 80 innings pitched. Neidert’s performance cratered following a late-season promotion to Double-A, but his body of work is impressive. He rarely walks anyone and has shown an ability to miss bats against much older competition.

Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani. Giancarlo Stanton. Something about Shohei Ohtani, and something about Giancarlo Stanton. Given the nature of the rumor mill these past few weeks, it would’ve been easy to forget that teams have other needs. Take the Mariners, for example. The Mariners badly need a good starting pitcher. That could be Ohtani. They’re right in there, among the seven finalists. But the Mariners have also needed a center fielder. Finding a center fielder is less interesting than trying to land Ohtani, sure, but it doesn’t mean it could just be ignored. Not everything has to do with Ohtani, or Stanton. And so on Thursday, the Mariners have made a trade with the Marlins. A trade to address the other need. A creative one!

Mariners get:

• Dee Gordon
• $1 million in international slot money

Marlins get:

• Nick Neidert
• Chris Torres
• Robert Dugger

The Mariners’ roster lacked a center fielder. Dee Gordon isn’t a center fielder. He’s a second baseman. The Mariners will ask him to convert, so I guess that means he is a center fielder, at least by label. The Mariners are taking the chance that Gordon can pull this position switch off. From the Marlins’ side, does this need to be explained? Gordon turns 30 next April. He’s due at least $38 million over the next three years, and that could turn into $51 million over four. The Marlins wanted out. They’re all about cutting costs right now, so this is a normal trade for prospects. If, that is, you believe the Mariners had prospects to give. It’s debatable.

Oh, and there’s slot money, too. Turns out this is connected to Ohtani after all. He just can’t be escaped.

Read the rest of this entry »

The hot stove is warming up, and as always, Jerry Dipoto is the one stoking the fire.

Source: #Mariners acquire Dee Gordon from #Marlins.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2017

Now, you might say, don’t the Mariners already have the most expensive second baseman in baseball? Why yes, yes they do. So why are they trading for Dee Gordon? Because they’re not acquiring him to play second base.

Dee Gordon will play CF for the #Mariners according to club source

— Jim Bowden??? (@JimBowdenGM) December 7, 2017

The Mariners have put a heavy emphasis on athleticism in the outfield under Dipoto’s regime, and with Jarrod Dyson now a free agent, the team is apparently betting on Gordon’s speed translating into similar results in the outfield. And there’s no question that Gordon is one of the very fastest players in the game.

By sprint speed, he’s nearly equal to Byron Buxton and Billy Hamilton, maybe the two best defensive outfielders alive. Of course, it has to be noted that he’s also right next to Delino Deshields, another exceptionally fast former second baseman who moved to the outfield, but has split his time between LF and CF because he hasn’t impressed enough to be handed a regular job in CF. Speed obviously matters, but it is not, in and of itself, determinative of outfield ability.

That said, Gordon was a very poor defensive SS early in his career and worked to make himself into a strong defensive second baseman, so he’s already learned a new position and made himself more valuable once. If Gordon can do it again, turning his raw speed into upper-tier range in center field again, then he could be a nice player for the Mariners.

Gordon isn’t a great hitter, but his baserunning is so valuable than he’s been an above-average offensive player throughout his career, and he’s at +26 runs of offense over the last four years, since his 2014 breakout in LA. If you pair an above-average offensive player with potentially above-average center field defense, that’s an impact player, which is obviously what the Mariners are hoping for.

In order to bring Gordon to Seattle, they took on the rest of the $38 million he’s owed and surrendered one of the few good pieces they had left in their farm system.

Nick Neidert is a good prospect. Saw him at 87-91 this year. Plus changeup, plus command. Fastball's movement, Neidert's 3/4s slot, and his cross-body delivery allow it – and his breaking ball – to play up against RHH. Think's he's a weird, reverse splits, #4 starter. A 50.

— Eric Longenhagen (@longenhagen) December 7, 2017

Nick Neidert was one of the team’s best arms, even without a super high ceiling, while Chris Torres and Robert Dugger are low-level lottery tickets who aren’t without value. This wasn’t a straight salary dump for the Marlins, who got three guys worth watching in return.

But along with Gordon, the Mariners also get another $1 million in international bonus money, which is obviously being acquired to try and get Shohei Otani to sign with the Mariners. They gave up another prospect last night to acquire $1 million from the Twins, so the plan is pretty clearly to surrender whatever necessary to give the organization the best chance possible to win the Ohtani derby.

And given how valuable he is, any marginal improvement in that sweepstakes is probably worth surrendering decent-but-unspectacular prospects. Ohtani is probably worth some team’s entire farm systems by himself. He’ll instantly become one of the most valuable resources in whatever organization he joins. If this deal helps the Mariners land Ohtani, the price paid becomes inconsequential.

And if Gordon turns into a good defensive CF, then this could very well be a nice move on its own merits. So there’s clearly upside here for Seattle.

But there’s plenty of downside too. Ohtani might go elsewhere. Gordon might end up not taking well to the OF, and then the team would have an expensive corner outfielder with a light bat, or a second baseman who pushes Robinson Cano to first base, both options limiting their offense. And the farm system continues to be strip-mined for short-term gains, so if the Mariners don’t win, all this borrowing from the future won’t look so good in a few years.

It’s not entirely correct to say that the Mariners are “Ohtani or bust” at this point, but they really need him. And if they get him, they won’t care that they don’t have a farm system anymore.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you had Jerry Dipoto in the pool of which GM will make this off-season’s first trade, congratulations, you win nothing because of course he did. Trader Jerry is baseball’s version of the red paperclip guy, attempting to take his team from mediocrity to contention by making a million small upgrades. And his latest deal is particularly interesting, even if it wasn’t exactly a swap of household names.

The deal’s particulars.

Seattle Gets:

Ryon Healy, 1B

Oakland Gets:

Emilio Pagan, RHP
Alexander Campos, SS

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re currently in the midst of a lull in the baseball calendar. The offseason has officially arrived and yet the Hot Stove hasn’t really been lit yet. I suppose I could get excited for Awards season, but the painfully slow roll out and the heated arguments wear me down fairly quickly.

So, instead, I try to make my own baseball entertainment. For me, one exercise is simply to look over the league and attempt to identify the players about whom I’m most excited for next season. Not superstars, necessarily: everyone is always excited to watch the game’s brightest lights. And not prospects who haven’t yet reached the Show, either. I’m not really qualified to talk about those players in a meaningful way, so I’ll leave those players to Eric (and Chris) and all the scouts out there.

Outside of those groups, though, there are still hundreds of players from which to choose. I’ll be excited to watch more than these 10, of course, but in surveying the league, these are ones who caught my eye. Note that this isn’t in any particular order. I’m equally excited about all 10. Perhaps you’ll agree with me, perhaps not. Feel free to conduct your own exercise and let me know who your 10 players are in the comments.

Rafael Devers

The new Red Sox third baseman enjoyed a meteoric debut month, swatting his way to a 224 wRC+ in his July call-up. That covered just 27 plate appearances, though, and as we moved into August and September, he cooled off significantly. He hit safely from his second game (July 26) through his eighth game (August 4). At that point, he was hitting .389/.463/.694, for a 205 wRC+. From August 5 through the end of the regular season, though, he hit .263/.312/.441, for a 92 wRC+. Doom and gloom, right? Not entirely, no, because in Boston’s abbreviated playoff run, he was one of the few bright spots, slashing .364/.429/.909. He slugged two homers — one off of Francisco Liriano and one off of Ken Giles. The latter was of the inside-the-park variety, but it was impressive nonetheless:

So, it’s hard to know what to expect from young Devers. Andrew Benintendi was similarly hyped coming into last campaign and was decidedly mediocre for large swaths of the season. Will that be Devers’ fate too? And what of his fielding? He made seven throwing errors and seven fielding errors in his short time in Boston. If the Red Sox acquire a legit first baseman this winter (or a legit DH and move Hanley Ramirez to first) and it turns out that Devers can’t hack at it at third, the Red Sox will have a conundrum to solve.

Read the rest of this entry »

“The best for the group comes when everyone in the group does what’s best for himself and the group.”

–American mathematician John Nash

Shohei Ohtani is fascinating for a number of reasons. We start with the dual talent, of course.

While injury limited him to just five starts as a pitcher in 2017, he struck out 29 and allowed only 13 hits in 25.1 innings — as a 22-year-old. He produced a .332/.403/.540 slash line in 230 plate appearances. In 2016, he went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA over 20 starts in the NPB. He struck out 174 and walked 45 in 140 innings. He also OPS’d 1.004 with 22 home runs in 323 at-bats in 104 games.

He was named the league’s best pitcher and best DH.

While Clay Davenport’s deadly accurate statistical translations don’t appear to be available for 2017 NPB play, Davenport’s 2016 translations are available to the public.

Read the rest of this entry »

Zack Cozart is going to be an interesting free agent. I mean, at the major-league level, they’re all interesting free agents, but Cozart’s case is particularly intriguing, given his late-blooming power. Cozart seems like one of those guys who was built to take full advantage of a slightly livelier baseball, and given that he’s also a capable shortstop, he’s a valuable asset as long as his power exists. Cozart might not strike it super rich in the coming months, but he’ll get a healthy guarantee from someone. Teams like shortstops who can hit.

Speaking of which, kind of: Zach Vincej. I admit that this is going out on a limb. Not only was Vincej claimed by the Mariners off waivers from the Reds; the Mariners then outrighted Vincej to Triple-A, meaning he’s not on the 40-man roster. Vincej has been freely available, and I wouldn’t say there’s been a feeding frenzy. You probably haven’t heard of him. I hadn’t heard of him. Vincej is not, and never has been, a top prospect. He’s a 26-year-old with nine major-league at-bats.

But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. So I felt compelled to put this in writing. Vincej seems like a run-of-the-mill minor-league infielder. Yet he might be just the sort of player who’d most benefit from a promotion.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve written about a possible sea change in baseball over the last few years here, using phrases like “point of contact” and “attack angle” to better articulate the emergence of a Fly-Ball Revolution, itself another relatively new expression. Add those phrases to all the ones we’ve been compelled to learn for the benefit of Statcast alone — terms like “launch angle,” “exit velocity,” “spin rate,” etc. — and it’s obvious that our baseball dictionaries are getting an update on the fly.

Simply because we’re using a new lexicon, however, doesn’t mean we’re using it correctly — or, at the very least, that some of our assumptions couldn’t benefit from an update, as well.

With that in mind, I decided to examine some of the most notable and commonly used terms in this new language of hitting. With the help of the players themselves, perhaps we can better see what lies beneath each of them and attempt to reach something closer to a common understanding.

Fly-Ball Revolution

“I wish you wouldn’t call it the ‘fly-ball revolution,'” Daniel Murphy told me earlier in the year. “Coaches then think we’re talking about hitting the ball straight into the air. Call it the ‘high-line-drive revolution.'”

Read the rest of this entry »