I was just down in Arizona with a lot of the rest of the FanGraphs crew, and as such, I found myself involved in a number of baseball conversations, with people from the crew and with others as well. One of the many conversations turned to Jesus Montero as a defensive catcher. One person who covers baseball on a daily basis for a newspaper couldn’t believe that Montero managed to throw out Mike Trout as a would-be base-stealer. One respected baseball talent evaluator referred to Montero as perhaps the very worst defensive catcher in the majors. Immediately, I knew this would be something worth exploring in greater depth.

The newspaper guy actually made the mistake of saying Montero threw Trout out twice. That didn’t happen, but it did happen once; Miguel Olivo managed to throw Trout out twice. One other time, Trout stole successfully off Montero, meaning for the season Trout was 1-for-2 with Montero behind the plate. He was nabbed on October 3, in the final game of the regular season.

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In addition to scouting a trio of young Mariners pitching prospects, a number of top position prospects also made the trip to Goodyear Stadium.

Nick Franklin batted second and played shortstop alongside Brad Miller. Franklin struggled at the plate and in the field as he failed to make hard contact and booted two balls on the infield. Read the rest of this entry »

When arriving at Cleveland camp to scout future Indians, a trio of A-Ball infielders were tops on my list of “must see” players. Francisco Lindor, Dorssys Paulino and Ronny Rodriguez stretched and ran sprints on back fields and I was content to watch them doing morning drills.

Then, a conversation with volunteer field staff forced a change of plans.

In the “B-Game”, the Indians would be playing the Mariners. Out of curiosity, I hurried to the far field to see which Seattle prospects made the trip.

Taijuan Walker? Check.

James Paxton? Check.

Nick Franklin? Check.

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Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

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What’s all this, then? For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Third base is a little deeper than it used to be, and only a handful of teams have little to no hope of being productive at the position. The devil is in the details at the hot corner, as there has been very little turnover among the top 20 teams here. Teams that have quality reserves or prospects coming up the pipeline see a bump here, as we’re looking holistically at the position and not just at the nominal starter. This is an important consideration across the diamond, but particularly so at third given how physically demanding the position is. Only six third basemen suited up in 150 or more games last year. Compare that to 13 at second base and 11 at first base and shortstop, and it becomes clear that depth is important at third base. Unfortunately, most teams don’t have adequate depth, hence the bump for the teams that do.

Let’s get on to the rankings!

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It’s safe to say there’s general acceptance that using a small sample in data sets has the potential to result in spurious correlations or unreliable conclusions. Yet every Spring, there’s a long list of reclamation projects who will no doubt be judged on a very small sample size of data. Just ask Kelvim Escobar who found himself looking for a new team after two-thirds of a Spring inning, perhaps setting a new standard for small sample size decisions. There’s just not a lot of time for pitchers to demonstrate they can rediscover their velocity, recapture their control, or that they have discovered the fountain of youth. I’m sure Jon Garland can relate.

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Sometimes it’s worth unpacking something that seems like it’s fairly cut and dry. Like, for example, the Mariners are showing quite a bit of power in spring training right now, but it seems like folly to put too much stock in those numbers. That statement alone can send you on a journey.

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Last week, the Seattle Mariners inked their ace, Felix Hernandez, to a $175 million extension for the next seven years. The dominating righty will be entering his age-27 season this year, meaning the contract will through his age-33 season. That is, unless, he injures his right elbow.

Embedded within Hernandez’s contract is a clause that gives the Mariners a club option for an eighth season — at a paltry $1 million — should Hernandez miss at least 130 consecutive days due to any kind of procedure to his right elbow. The Mariners negotiated this clause after some concern over what their doctors saw in the pitcher’s MRI.

Apparently, the club was reassured enough by their medical staff to sign the mammoth deal, even though the track record for long-term pitcher extensions isn’t the greatest. But how confident should the team be?
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The impossible finally happened. Miguel Cairo retired. Cairo hung on for 17 seasons — he made his debut the season after Mariano Rivera. One would be hard-pressed to find one season in which he was much good. His highest seasonal WAR came in 1998 with the good ol’ Devil Rays at 2.7, and that was mostly due to 22 Total Zone fielding runs. That season and 1999 were the only seasons in which Cairo received more than 500 plate appearances, and he only got more than 400 in one other season — 2004 with the Yankees. Cairo could not really play shortstop, he was no defensive whiz at second, and as his career .264/.314/.361 (77 wRC+) line shows, he was, outside of a few lucky seasons, a pretty lousy hitter. Yet he hung on. And on. And on. And now he is going to be a working for the Reds. I think it is safe to say that teams liked and like having Cairo around.

Despite his limitations, over 17 years Cairo managed to have some very dramatic hits. In honor of his passing on to the next phase of his career of baseball, here are three of the biggest.

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Colorado might be the place that most made people aware that baseball works differently in different ballparks. It was pretty hard to deny the fact that, in Colorado, hit baseballs just took off. Since people became aware of Colorado playing in a hitter-friendly stadium, many people have also become aware of San Diego and Seattle playing in pitcher-friendly stadiums. Petco Park and Safeco Field are two of baseball’s newer parks, and to date they’ve played reasonably extreme. Because of their established pitcher-friendliness, both Petco and Safeco are having their dimensions adjusted this offseason. The idea isn’t to make the ballparks hitter-friendly — it’s to make them more hitter-friendly, or basically more neutral. You bring the fences in, and it follows that offense ought to go up.

Yet it’s interesting what we can observe in recent history. I can identify four instances in which fences were moved in somewhere with the idea of helping the hitters. Between 1994-1995, the Royals made adjustments at Kauffman Stadium. Between 2002-2003, the Tigers made adjustments at Comerica Park. Between 2005-2006, the Padres made an adjustment at Petco, which obviously wasn’t enough. And, between 2011-2012, the Mets made adjustments at Citi Field. Though simple park factors are imperfect and while in certain cases we’re working with limited data, the relevant numbers are of interest. We’ll go in order.

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On Monday, we looked at three vetoed trades, and I thought today we’d look at three more.

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