It’s beyond evident the Seattle Mariners are trying to win in 2015. That’s the only reason you’d commit $58 million to a guy like Nelson Cruz, and even after that acquisition, the Mariners continue to look to add another bat. If they find one, it’s probably going to be an outfielder, and as the Mariners explore the trade market, some names keep popping up. Names of people to be traded for, but also names of people to be traded away. It seems unlikely the Mariners will elect to move James Paxton. Yet there’s also Taijuan Walker, whose inclusion in a trade could open a lot of doors. Walker might be best described as not unavailable, so it’s worth thinking about how much value he might possess at the moment.

There’s obviously a lot to like. Walker’s young, and a year ago, he was ranked by Baseball America as the No. 11 prospect in the game. As a starter in the bigs in 2014, over limited time, Walker showed his usual great velocity, averaging a fastball almost as fast as Stephen Strasburg’s. Walker was sidelined by a shoulder issue, but he recovered and resumed pitching, so that seems like a thing of the past. Those who evaluate young players by their ceilings see in Walker a potential future ace. That’s also not a great way to evaluate young players.

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The winner’s curse can often be used to describe the free-agent market. Generally speaking, a free agent will sign with the team that offers the most, and the team that offers the most will generally be the team that most overrates the given free agent. After Pablo Sandoval signed with the Red Sox, I found myself wondering whether the winner’s curse would apply, since according to reports, the Giants and Padres more or less made the same offer. Sandoval didn’t necessarily go to the high bidder. Nelson Cruz? Nelson Cruz went to the high bidder.

That high bidder being the Seattle Mariners, who are giving Cruz four years and $57 million. The Orioles wanted Cruz back, but they weren’t willing to match the Mariners’ aggressiveness. The Orioles didn’t want to go from three to four years, and the Orioles are reportedly interested in giving four years to Nick Markakis. It’s the Mariners who most highly valued Cruz, making for a pretty significant immediate overpay. It’s never really fun to analyze contract terms, but that’s the natural starting point, as Cruz has landed the contract he’s wanted for more than a year.

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The Boston Red Sox, as you might have heard, currently have an outfield glut. There is ten pounds of outfield meat in their five pound bag. Something has to give, and that something is likely Yoenis Cespedes.

When the Sox acquired Cespedes from Oakland in the Jon Lester trade, it felt more like a rental than a long-term investment in the player. Cespedes’ unique contract allows him to become a free agent at the end of the 2015 season, so Boston put themselves in an enviable position. They received an established big leaguer in exchange for their walk-year ace and got an up-close and personal look at a potential big free agent bat.

Whether or not a look under Cespedes’ hood informed their decision to sign both Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, that’s the route they went down. Now Cespedes is trade bait, the precious “right-handed power” commodity in a marketplace clambering for those skills. He’s headed into his age-29 season, he’s owed $10.5 million this year, and there’s going to be a line around the block to bid for his services. Where might he land?

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Heading into the 2009 draft, Baseball America wrote the following about Kyle Seager’s future while rating him as the 97th best prospect in the draft.

A three-year starter for North Carolina, Seager is an area scout favorite, not to mention a player opposing coaches respect immensely. National evaluators have a harder time pegging him because he doesn’t fit a neat profile. His best tool is his bat. He has a smooth, balanced swing and makes consistent contact with gap power. He ranked third in the nation in 2008 with 30 doubles and was on a similar pace in 2009. He has a patient approach but doesn’t project to hit for much home run power because of his modest bat speed and flat swing plane. While he’s a fringy runner, he’s a fine baserunner.

Seager played second base for his first two seasons and moved to third this year, where he has played good defense. Featuring an average arm and impressive agility, he’s an average defender at third, if not a tick above. Scouts who like him see a Bill Mueller type who doesn’t fit the profile but grinds out at-bats and outs in the field. His detractors see him as a safe pick with low upside and a future reserve or utility player.

Major League teams agreed with the assessment, and Seager went 82nd overall, sandwiched between Trevor Holder and Jerry Sullivan. He was a classic low upside guy, taken because he looked like he could provide some value with minimal risk, but no one expected Seager to turn into a star.

After three seasons (and some change) in the big leagues, though, it’s probably time to throw that profile out the window. In 2,200 big league plate appearances, Seager has now launched 70 home runs, or an average of 19 longballs per 600 plate appearances. For comparison, Pablo Sandoval has averaged 20 home runs per 600 plate appearances through his career, and has been the focus of a pretty significant bidding war for his services. The market recognizes Sandoval as a significant offensive force, and is paying him as such; given that, we probably have to recognize Seager as a legitimate asset at the plate as well.

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Though we won’t know the winner of the 2014 American League Cy Young Award until later Wednesday, we’ve already been given some clues. The BBWAA has told us the three finalists are Felix Hernandez, Corey Kluber, and Chris Sale. Based on the association’s own precedent, Sale isn’t going to win because he didn’t throw enough innings, so this is coming down to Felix vs. Kluber, as we’ve been assuming for months. The feeling is that Felix is going to win, and ESPN agrees with that pretty strongly, but Kluber’s case only got stronger as the season wore on, so it’s hard to imagine a bad choice. Which, from another perspective, means it’s hard to imagine a good choice.

There were two Cy Young winners in 2013. There were two Cy Young winners in 2012! There were two Cy Young winners in 2011, and in 2010, and in 2009, and in 2008, and in…you get it. There have been two Cy Young winners every year since 1970. In 1969, there were three, as AL voting was split between Mike Cuellar and Denny McLain. That’s our one existing case of there being co-Cy Youngs, meaning I think it’s safe to presume Wednesday will reveal a single winner. That’s too bad when you’ve got a pair of guys who are equally worthy.

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Perhaps my favorite players to stumble upon betwixt my scouting escapades are the “Conversion Guys”, players who are undergoing a positional change because shortcomings in their skill set force them to find a new path to the Majors if they hope to achieve that dream at all. Most often this occurs when a position player with superlative arm strength struggles to hit so mightily that his employer abandons all hope in his ability ever to learn how and moves him to the mound.

These conversions happen at various stages of development and have any number of useful results. Jacob deGrom moved off of shortstop between his sophomore and junior year of college and is a budding rotational mainstay. Kenley Jansen spent four years catching as a pro before moving to the mound in 2009 and exploding to the majors as a reliever. Tony Pena Jr. moved to the mound at 28 and became a minor league depth arm who ate innings at upper levels for a few years and made Veteran Minor Leaguer Money for a little while longer than he would have if he would’ve been a stubborn, punchless shortstop.

Plenty of these developmental journeys begin in the Rookie-level Arizona League (AZL), where I was lucky enough to observe a handful of them this summer.

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We’ve got a lot of weeks ahead of debating Felix Hernandez vs. Corey Kluber, as the Cy Young race seems like it ought to be a dead heat. Several different elements come into play, and to be perfectly honest it’s basically impossible to separate the two from one another, but something that’ll get talked about is Felix’s ERA advantage. While Kluber has outstanding peripherals, people also care about actual runs, and Kluber’s allowed a dozen more runs than Felix has. Some of this is probably because of defense. Some of this is probably because of ballpark environment. But you also have to consider this:

Felix Hernandez 2014 splits

Bases empty: .259 wOBA allowed
Runner(s) on: .215
Scoring position: .208

In run-scoring opportunities, Felix this year has stepped up his game. With the bases empty, that wOBA allowed ranks tied for 22nd. With runners on, that wOBA allowed ranks first, and by a whole 17 points. As you could guess, this sort of thing needs to be regressed, and it won’t surprise you to learn that Felix’s BABIP is also lower in run-scoring situations. But this goes beyond just a BABIP thing. Felix probably deserves some credit for this, because that doesn’t all seem like a fluke.

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The winner of the 2014 American League Cy Young Award is going to be either Felix Hernandez or Corey Kluber. Yes, indeed, there are other worthwhile candidates, and yes, you can argue whether Chris Sale should be penalized that heavily for his injury early on, but it’s a virtual lock that this is coming down to one of the two guys. So let’s just accept that assumption, and move forward. Which of the pitchers is going to win? And just how big will the winning margin be?

When we talk about awards, I don’t think we really care about the awards. I think it’s about the fun of trying to solve a problem, and about seeing how other people try to solve the same problem. It’s basically mental exercise, and in many cases there’s no obviously clear deserving winner and you can get as detailed as you like. For example, let’s take Felix vs. Kluber. You know one way to get really detailed? What’s Felix’s benefit of having pitched to Mike Zunino, against Kluber’s benefit of having pitched to Yan Gomes? That’s a question worth asking. This is really the fun of it every year, but for purposes of this post, let’s not try to figure out our own preferred winner. Rather, let’s consider the actual voters’ processes. What will the results tell us about how the BBWAA feels about splits?

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It’s a sign of the times that, when you think about Mike Zunino, you might well first think of his defense. He’s proven himself to be a tremendous receiver of pitches, and when you fold in the rest of his defensive skillset, Zunino has a lot of value, even independent of his bat. There’s evidence to suggest that Zunino is one of the people behind Felix Hernandez’s Cy Young-caliber campaign, and Zunino’s been trusted as a staff leader in his first full year in the bigs. Behind the plate, and off the field, Zunino scores high marks. At the plate, he’s also been interesting, but in more of a peculiar way.

It’s easy enough to look at the normal numbers. An 84 wRC+? He’s young, and, good thing he plays a premium defensive position. A .199 average, a .254 OBP, and a .404 slugging? This provides more insight on the sort of hitter Zunino is — he’s the picture of an over-aggressive power hitter, and you can see why his offensive profile has drawn comparisons to J.P. Arencibia. We’re familiar with this kind of hitter, and most teams probably have at least one or two of this kind of hitter. But it’s in the more minute details that Zunino’s season really stands out.

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They encountered one another on a major-league field for the first time this past weekend — the first two picks of the 2009 draft, the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg and the Mariners’ Dustin Ackley. The two names are forever linked in Mariner lore, as it was their ill-timed winning streak at the end of the 2008 season that landed both players in their eventual homes. Strasburg made the Mariners look silly on Saturday night, but Ackley got in a solid counterpunch, drilling a late homer that cost the Nationals’ righty his shutout, ending his night a bit earlier than expected. Truth be told, the Mariners’ return on their first-round selection has looked better of late, as Ackley’s second-half surge has helped keep his club firmly entrenched in the wild-card race. Which is the real Dustin Ackley? The one that struggled for the better part of the last three seasons, or the guy who has shown up for the last month and a half? Read the rest of this entry »