Carson Cistulli remains away, so us the other writers shall — as the Necronomicon suggests we might — play.

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

1. Selected Televised Games
2. Japanese Baseball Wonderments
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Get Your Vote On

Selected Televised Games
Notable games available on MLB.TV.

Mariners at Athletics AL | 6:10 ET
By the time your eyes hit these digital words, this game will should have expired — because this Regular Season series is taking place in yonder JAPAN. But, through the magic of Internet, you can watch this game anytime today and at your leisure! The contest will also be re-broadcast on MLB Network at 9 a.m. (with a three-hour delay, that is), so people looking to get their Yoenis Cespedes / Ichiro Suzuki fix have some options here.

The game is still in progress at the time of publication. I don’t want to give anything away, but suffice it to say: The game involves pitching performances! and multi-hit efforts! and diving/jumping catches!

Read the rest of this entry »

Last season, the Nationals stuck to a strict plan with Jordan Zimmermann’s workload. This season, the team has another workload to manage with intense scrutiny in the person of Stephen Strasburg. While the Nats have hinted at to how they will proceed with him — they don’t want to jerk him around, they will likely keep him to the same 160-inning cap as Zimmermann last year — they have not laid anything down in stone. The reason for that is likely twofold — one, they can’t predict the future, and don’t know how Strasburg will respond as the year progresses, and two, the Nationals are thinking playoffs this year. So the question is, can the team spread out Strasburg’s innings in a streamlined fashion and still be able to use him in the postseason?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Nationals optioned top prospect Bryce Harper to Triple-A Syracuse on Sunday afternoon, ending the discussion of whether or not the 19-year-old phenom would begin the season in the major leagues or back down in the minors.

Harper lost some time due to a calf injury this spring. Although the injury was deemed nothing serious, it appears that it may have affected his performance. After all, he has only gone 3-for-17 with nine strikeouts at the plate since returning to the lineup. Everything needed to go perfectly this spring for Harper to break camp with the Nationals’ big league club. Both the injury and plate discipline issues made the decision to option him to Triple-A for more seasoning extremely easy.

In Triple-A, the Nationals will reportedly attempt to groom Harper in center field. With Mike Morse entrenched in left field and Jayson Werth in right field for the foreseeable future, squeezing Harper into center field is a natural fit for the organization. Most scouting reports believe he possesses the natural athleticism to survive in center — though a corner outfield position will still be his eventual home — and his bat profiles as plus-plus in center, as well.

The time frame for a potential big league call up for Harper remains unclear. If he dominates Triple-A pitching as he did in the Arizona Fall League — where he hit .333/.400/.634 with six home runs — his time with the Syracuse Chiefs will be relatively short-lived.

Keeping the seat warm in the big leagues will be 27-year-old Roger Bernadina. Last season, Bernadina hit .243/.301/.362 and was worth +0.8 wins in 337 plate appearances. ZiPS projects approximately the same output in 2012, which follows historical precedent as the young man has not been worth a single win in any season throughout his career. He also plays poor defense in center field, too, which makes his lack of bat a bit more concerning.

Of course, Rick Ankiel could also see some time in center field. His bat leaves quite a bit to be desired, as well. He only hit .239/.296/.363 last season with the Nationals. Defensively, though, he does play a much better center field (+6.9 UZR in CF in 2011) than does Bernandina (-5.2 UZR). That significant upgrade could net Ankiel more playing time than currently projected at this point in the spring.

Whether Bernadina or Ankiel plays the majority of innings in center field for the Nationals this season, though, they will merely serve as a placeholder for Harper. The organization is perhaps only a few months away from trotting out a big league lineup with both of their hyped young players, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper. The future of the organization is almost now.

About eight years ago Major League baseball saw the influx of a host of high quality third baseman. The arrival started with the debut of players like Kevin Youkilis and David Wright in 2004 and continued with Ryan Zimmerman in 2005. The string of hot corner studs slowed after this stretch and was capped by the arrival of Evan Longoria in 2008.

Baseball is a cyclical game and the development of young third baseman has stagnated over the last several years. That trend may be shifting as the minor leagues play host to several players that have impact potential. The Nationals’ Anthony Rendon and the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado are two of the top hot corner prospects in the game, and they are joined by players like Miguel Sano, Nick Castellanos and Mike Olt, among others. These players appear poised to ascend upon the Major Leagues and become the next wave of great third baseman.

Focusing on Rendon and Arenado offers an opportunity to compare two extremely talented players. Heading into the 2011 college season Rendon was considered by scouts to be the top position player in the draft class and was arguably the top player available overall. After injuring his ankle the prior year, Rendon battled shoulder issues last spring, an injury that ultimately kept him from playing the field for much of the season. Concerns over his injury history and the overwhelming emergence of pitchers like Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer, combined with his Scott Boras affiliation sent him sliding in the draft. The Nationals popped him with the sixth overall pick and signed him to a Major League deal worth north of $7 million. Read the rest of this entry »

With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dare to dream.

On Thursday, we looked at Fielding Independent Offense (FIO) — as well as the Should Hit formula — and decided to toss stolen bases into the equation. The result were, let’s say, brow-elevating.

Today, we are going to put that result — the FIO formula — into action.

In the timeless words of Sir Samuel Leroy Jackson: “Hold onto your butts!”
Read the rest of this entry »

When the Washington Nationals and Ryan Zimmerman began negotiating his $100 million extension, Zimmerman was already bound to the team for 2012 and 2013 seasons. Even still, the Nats decided to give him a $100 million guarantee this weekend in exchange for his services from 2014 until 2019. Zimmerman’s performance through his 34th birthday is now the property of the Nationals. Washington had two years to decide whether to make such an investment in Zimmerman’s health and extended performance — but they decided to take the risk now.

The deal’s critics already pointed out Ryan Howard’s questionable extension in April 2010 — also two years before he became free-agent eligible — but there are a number of recent contracts that may be better comparisons for Zimmerman’s. While Howard’s deal appears that it will be a major overpay, it turns out these contracts generall work out quite well for teams. Instead of being unnecessary risks, they are usually hedges against spending even more money in the future.

Utilizing all contracts of players with at least six years service time from 2007 to 2011, I searched for deals that were signed at least two years before the player was eligible for free agency and that bought out at least three free agency years. I included deals that bought out arbitration years as well — though these  obviously are different than Zimmerman’s new contract — and found 11 contracts that met these criteria. To quantify these contracts’ values, I looked only at performance and pay from 2007 to 2011. This excluded six years of these deals that started before 2007, and 14 years of these contracts that ended after 2011.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals continued to lock up their core talent today, agreeing to terms on a six year, $100 million extension for third baseman Ryan Zimmerman. The extension is tacked on to the end of his current deal, which pays him $26 million over the next two seasons, so he’s essentially now under contract for the next eight years for $126 million, and if a team option is exercised for 2020, the deal could turn out to be $150 million over nine years.

That’s a big paycheck, but Zimmerman is one of the game’s most underrated players, and the Nationals correctly identified his skillset as one worth keeping around. However, there’s continuing skepticism around every player who generates a lot of value with his glove, and people continue to be uncomfortable projecting stardom for guys who rely on their defensive skills to sustain elite performance. Since Zimmerman is a good bat/great glove guy, not everyone is on board with committing $100 million to that skillset, thinking that the value may not be there if the defensive value degrades with age and injury.

So, I figured it’d be instructive to look at how some other players with this skillset have aged recently. Here’s my list of comps, and their performance through age 26 – for reference, Zimmerman’s at a 119 wRC+, +52 FLD, and +30.2 WAR in 3,669 PA, or more generalized, 4.9 WAR per 600 PA.

Read the rest of this entry »

As you undoubtedly know by now, Gary Carter passed away yesterday. The Hall of Fame catcher had an outstanding career as a big part of the star-crossed Montreal Expos’ only playoff team and later a World Champion Mets team. My own first awareness of Carter was one Christmas or birthday long ago, when, although I did not collect baseball cards, someone gave me a pack, and a card bearing the image of a young Gary Carter was included.

Many pieces have been and will be written about Carter in the wake of his passing, pieces that will tell various stories of his memorable on-field exploits. Different people will have their own particular favorite Gary Carter “moment” for which there is no substitute. As a contribution to the ongoing tribute to Carter around the Web, here are Carter’s three biggest regular season hits as according to Win Probability Added (WPA).

Read the rest of this entry »

It is a simple question.

What is sabermetrics?

Not the history of it, but what is it, right now? What is, in our nerdiest of lingoes, its derivative? Where is it pointing? What does it do?

Last Tuesday I created no little stir when I listed the 2012 saber teams, delineating them according to their perceived embrace of modern sabermetrics.

Today, I recognize I needed to take a step back and first define sabermetrics, because it became obvious quickly I did not have the same definition at heart as some of the readers and protesters who gathered outside my apartment.

I believe, and this is my belief — as researcher and a linguist — that sabermetrics is not statistics. The term itself has come to — or needs to — describe more than just on-base percentage, weighted runs created plus, fielding independent pitching, and wins above replacement.

Sabermetrics is the advanced study of baseball, not the burying of one’s head in numbers.
Read the rest of this entry »