When plans were revealed for Marlins Park’s left-center home run sculpture, people freaked out. When the sculpture was actually constructed and emplaced, people freaked out all over again, having been given a better sense of scale. The thing drew criticism from all corners, and while I’m sure some of that was just piling on, and while I’m sure some more of that was just standard Internet overreaction, people had a lot to say about the aesthetics of the monstrosity. People were not prepared to see in real life what they would…see in real life…in left-center field, and for a while it seemed the Marlins’ sculpture was more frequently discussed than the actual Marlins.

But it wasn’t only the beauty of the thing, or the lack thereof, that made for a topic of discussion. There were also some on-field concerns, some actual baseball concerns, that I believe were first voiced by Greg Dobbs. Quote:

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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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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Three Very Recent Transactions
2. GIFs of Enthusiasm: Yoshi Tateyama’s Screwball
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Australian Baseball League

Three Very Recent Transactions
Tateyama Re-Signs with Texas
The Texas Rangers have re-signed right-handed reliever Yoshinori Tateyama to a minor-league contract, reports MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan. Over two major-league seasons, the soon-to-be 37-year-old Tateyama pitched 61.0 innings, posting this precise line: 23.7% K, 6.6% BB, 37.5% GB, 3.01 SIERA, 88 xFIP-, 0.2 WAR. Also, he throws a screwball ca. 6% of the time last season — an example of which spectacle one can see below.

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Remember when the Playstation 2 came out, and then Sony released a newer, smaller version of the original Playstation, called the PSone? After that, people started calling the original Playstation console the PSX, or Playstation X. Today, we are going back to the original console version of the De-Lucker, so grab your nearest mint copy of Final Fantasy VII and buckle in!

Why DLX?

FanGraphs recently re-did how we calculate wOBA for all the players. In an effort to give base-running its own stand-alone category and run/win value, we reduced wOBA to a hitting-only metric and took out SB and CS. That’s where the problem with the De-Lucker 2.0.

DL 2.0 used the Fielding Independent wOBA formula, which includes stolen bases. In order to keep things parallel, we now must revert back to the Should Hit formula — essentially:

The De-Lucker part comes in when we plop an xBABIP in the place of yonder true BABIP. Jeff Zimmerman and Robert Boden (slash12) have been working on and promoting what I believe is the best xBABIP formula out there, so let us once again use that.

Beneath the jump: More caveats! All sorts of data! Downloadable Excel spreadsheets! Fewer video game references!
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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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It might not be fair to say the Tampa Bay Rays don’t care about player makeup concerns. You could conceivably come up with a hypothetical talented player so awful the Rays wouldn’t take a chance. Based on precedent and indications, it might be fair to say the Rays care the least about player makeup concerns of any team in the league. Almost by necessity, if you figure the Rays need to identify exploitable inefficiencies in order to survive. Given such, perhaps the least surprising move of the winter meetings so far is that the Rays acquired Yunel Escobar from the Marlins in exchange for Derek Dietrich.

Strip away the traits that make this deal unique and it makes plenty of sense on the face of it. Escobar wasn’t much of a fit with Miami, since the Marlins prefer Adeiny Hechavarria at shortstop. The Rays were looking for an everyday shortstop, the acquisition of which would allow Ben Zobrist to go back to roaming. The Rays wanted someone good now; the Marlins wanted someone potentially good later. Escobar is affordable, at $5 million in 2013, with $5 million options for each of the next two years. If the offseason is about front offices answering as many questions as they can, the Rays and Marlins both just answered questions by swinging this deal.

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Is Josh Johnson still an ace?

The 2012 season had some encouraging signs after shoulder injuries cut short potential Cy Young campaigns in 2010 and 2011. Johnson posted a 3.81 ERA and 3.40 FIP, but more importantly he took the mound 31 times, showing he at least has the ability to make it through an entire season without major issue.

But the results have to be considered unsatisfactory relative the the prior three seasons. In 458 innings from 2009 to 2011, Johnson managed a brilliant 2.64 ERA and 2.74 FIP. I watched one of Johnson’s more typical starts from 2012 — September 12th against Philadelphia (7 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 6 K, 3 BB, 1 HR) — and I came away with two questions, the answers to which will determined if Johnson can return to his prior ace level.

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There’s a fair amount of belief out there that the Marlins should finish the job they started with the Blue Jays and trade their biggest chip for a huge package now. And the 23-year-old masher now named Giancarlo Stanton is quite the chip. He enters his final seasons at the league minimum just seven home runs short of triple digits, and still has three years of team control remaining after the upcoming one. It’s those years of control that provide room for the most debate about his value.

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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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Episode 278
Prospect analyst Mike Newman considers, among other topics, the impact a deep minor-league system can have on an organization’s ability to acquire major-league talent — not unlike what happened in the recent trade that saw Toronto acquire Mark Buehrle, John Johnson, and Jose Reyes from Miami.

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 53 min play time.)

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