Just about anyone reading FanGraphs probably knows about the debate surrounding defensive statistics. About the only thing everyone seems to agree on is that all defensive statistics are inadequate reflections of defense, or at least need extremely large sample sizes to attain reliability. This is especially true with regard to catchers, whose defensive contributions are quite the riddle to solve.

These issues extend even more in the minor leagues, where the sole widely available statistics are the traditional ones–assists, putouts, errors, double plays, range factor, and fielding percentage. Needless to say, these are not broadly effective arbiters of defensive aptitude. Again, catcher defense is arguably even more elusive, with passed balls and caught-stealing percentage the only remotely notable metrics. The desperate search to link numbers to potential leads these stats to often stand for “receiving skills” and “throwing arm,” respectively, which is a gross overstatement of their utility.

In this post, I want to examine just how meaningful, or perhaps meaningless, the passed ball statistic is for catching prospects.

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For five years now, Bronson Arroyo has been better than his peripherals. Since 2009, only three pitchers have a bigger gap between their fielding independent numbers and their ERA, and those three didn’t come close to pitching as many innings. It’s tempting to say the free agent 36-year-old has figured something out… but what has he figured out, exactly? How has he become more than the sum of his parts? It has to be more than a whimsical leg kick.

Let’s use some basic peripherals to find comparable pitchers. His fastball struggles to break 90 mph, he doesn’t strike many out, and he doesn’t have great worm-burning stuff — but the control has been elite. Here are a few other pitchers that fit that sort of mold.
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Free agent closers are the most expensive single player type in baseball. When Matt Swartz did his price calculations for different positions a couple of years ago, he found that teams were paying approximately three times the average $/WAR for relievers as they were for the general population of players. And a disproportionate amount of the money going to relievers was paid to the “proven closers” who hit free agency coming off strong seasons with big save numbers. While solid setup guys might collection a few million and get a two or even three year deal occasionally, big name closers were racking up paychecks that paid them like above average everyday players, with the crazy Jonathan Papelbon contract ($50 million over four years) as perhaps the height of the market’s absurd closer valuations.

The days of Papelbon-style contracts for brand name closers seem to be over. Last year, Rafael Soriano got the largest contract of any free agent reliever, at $28 million for two years, and besides Mariano Rivera’s final one year contract with the Yankees, no other reliever got more than $7 million per year. This year, Joe Nathan was the #1 closer on the free agent market, and he signed for $20 million over two years after the Rangers opted not to make him a $14 million dollar qualifying offer. Nathan’s age was always going to keep him from getting a long contract, but Nathan isn’t the only closer on the market, and now Grant Balfour is showing that the market for closers might not be what it used to be.

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Logan Morrison came up with glove, power and patience and a big twitter presence. It was exciting. Then he was injured, the power waned, and he used that twitter account to upset his franchise. Now he’s a Mariner, traded for Carter Capps. And all of this means something for the Mets and Ike Davis.

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After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Baltimore Orioles. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Boston / Cleveland / Philadelphia / St. Louis.

Batters
Whether by design or not, Baltimore appears to be doing a bit of work with the stars-and-scrubs model of roster construction at the moment. Chris Davis, J.J. Hardy, Adam Jones, Manny Machado, Matt Wieters: these are the names of five Oriole position players who are projected to record something better than three wins in 2014. Meanwhile, no other batter both (a) presently employed by Baltimore and also (b) expected to begin the season as a starter — no other such player is projected by ZiPS to produce anything better than even one win.

Provided the club is still looking to add talent, this actually isn’t an entirely unenviable state of affairs. Where it might be difficult to upgrade a roster full entirely of average players, there are very clear means by which to improve this roster. Like at DH, for example. Or second base, for other example. Or left field. Or even right field, where starter Nick Markakis has managed just three wins over the last three seasons.

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Ryan Webb was one last week’s more surprising non-tenders. Miami decided Webb wasn’t worth his projected $1.5 million salary, according to Matt Swartz’s arbitration projections. In the past two seasons, Webb was worth 1.2 wins for the Marlins while working in 131 games. But don’t feel bad for Webb. He didn’t stay unemployed long: Baltimore added the reliever on a two-year deal for $4.5 million.

The team reportedly liked how Webb’s ground-ball skills compared to the freshly-traded Jim Johnson, and acknowledged Webb’s career splits while also noting he made improvements in that department this past season. Pitchers can change the type of pitcher they are, such as Edward Mujica’s transition from an extreme fly-ball pitcher to a heavy ground-ball pitcher. But how does a pitcher  improve his ability to get out opposite-handed batters without adding a pitch?

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Jim Johnson led all of baseball with 101 saves over the past two seasons. On September 27th, Dan Duquette told Roch Kubatko of MASN that, “Jim Johnson is one of our core players,” and it was the team’s intention to keep him despite the $10.8M projected salary for 2014. Fast forward to late last week when Buster Olney tweeted that the Orioles were willing to listen to offers on Johnson. After a flurry of rumors yesterday, Duquette decided to allocate his resources to balance the roster to make it more competitive.

Doing so creates a large hole in the back of the Orioles’ bullpen as Johnson also led all of baseball in games finished over the past two seasons. Johnson stepped in to fill the void left by Kevin Gregg’s ineffectiveness two seasons ago, and now someone else has the opportunity to do so. When Johnson did so, it was the easy choice as he had displayed the skills to do so while getting the ball to Gregg to attempt to save games. In looking at the current 40-man roster for Baltimore, there does not seem as clear a choice this time around.

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Most rumors, of course, are nonsense, or at least things that won’t come true. We all know this to be the case, but a lot of the time, it’s difficult to tell from the outside what’s part of the signal and what’s part of the noise. Then there are the rumors that are just immediately, obviously ridiculous. This is the way I choose to feel about the chatter that the A’s have strong interest in Nelson Cruz — Cruz looks like the opposite of a free-agent bargain, he’s going to cost a draft pick, and the A’s have a full outfield. There’s no part of my rational mind that would link Nelson Cruz to Billy Beane’s ballclub. Not one bit of it seems logical, so the rumor’s dismissed.

I had a similar reaction when I first saw word that the A’s were interested in trading for Jim Johnson. Johnson, like Cruz, has his uses, but he’s a Proven Closer due to make eight figures next season. Closers tend to be the most overpaid players on the market, so I didn’t see Beane falling for this, in reality. Then Beane actually traded for Johnson, giving the Orioles Jemile Weeks and a little bit else. The A’s deliberately acquired an eight-figure Proven Closer, and now the more I think about how it happened, the more I see how it makes some sense after all.

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The author has published a weekly statistical report for the Arizona Fall League each week since its brief season commenced back in October — not necessarily because such a thing is of great utility to prospect analysis, but more because, for those of us not currently present in the Greater Phoenix area, it’s one of the few ways to participate in that very compelling league.

What follows is the entirely last statistical report for the AFL, following that league’ championship game this past Saturday.

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The 2013 season was a banner season for players going on the disabled list. The DL was utilized 2,538 times, which was 17 more than the previous 2008 high. In all, players spent 29,504 days on the DL which is 363 days more than in 2007. Today, I take a quick look at the 2013 DL data and how it compares to previous seasons.

To get the DL data, I used MLB’s Transaction data. After wasting too many hours going through the data by hand, I have the completed dataset available for public consumption.  Enjoy it, along with the DL data from previous seasons. Finally, please let me know of any discrepancies so I can make any corrections.

With the data, it is time to create some graphs. As stated previously, the 2013 season set all-time marks in days lost and stints. Graphically, here is how the data has trended since 2002:

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