One of the things people enjoy about sports is the role they role they play in starting conversations and debates. People enjoy arguing, especially about trivial matters like “who was the best hitter of all time?” and “who’s the best shortstop in the game right now?” These exchanges satisfy one’s desire to engage in battles of wits without challenging someone’s moral character, which is what often happens when debates turn to more sensitive topics such as politics or religion.

Sports allows for fierce debate with extraordinary low stakes. Think about how much time we’ve spent arguing about the difference between Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera! While you might think those conversations were tremendously unproductive, I would submit that they provided many people with a confrontational, emotional, and intellectual outlet. We’re a species blessed with language and reason, but cursed with imperfections in both. Arguing about the performance of athletes allows us to exercise those muscles without inadvertently causing real damage to society.

In that realm, I would like to present a baseball question to which you have probably devoted almost no attention. If you could take the best attributes of baseball’s backup catchers and fuse them into a single, lovable backstop, what components would you choose and how valuable would the resulting Frankenstein Catcher be?

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You smell that? It’s baseball’s prospect-list season. The fresh top-100 lists — populated by new names as well as old ones — seem to be popping up each day. With the individual rankings coming out, some organization rankings are becoming available, as well. I have always regarded the organizational rankings as subjective — and, as a result, not 100% useful. Utilizing the methodology I introduced in my article on prospect evaluation from this year’s Hardball Times Annual, however, it’s possible to calculate a total value for every team’s farm system and remove the biases of subjectivity. In what follows, I’ve used that same process to rank all 30 of baseball’s farm systems by the surplus WAR they should generate.

I provide a detailed explanation of my methodology in the Annual article. To summarize it briefly, however, what I’ve done is to identify WAR equivalencies for the scouting grades produced by Baseball America in their annual Prospect Handbook. The grade-to-WAR conversion appears as follows.

Prospect Grade to WAR Conversion

Prospect Grade	Total WAR	Surplus WAR
80	25.0	18.5
75	18.0	13.0
70	11.0	9.0
65	8.5	6.0
60	4.7	3.0
55	2.5	1.5
50	1.1	0.5
45	0.4	0.0

To create the overall totals for this post, I used each team’s top-30 rankings per the most recent edition of Baseball America’ Prospect Handbook. Also accounting for those trades which have occurred since the BA rankings were locked down, I counted the number of 50 or higher-graded prospects (i.e. the sort which provide surplus value) in each system. The results follows.
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Major League Baseball is a profitable enterprise, and (not surprisingly) MLB owners tend to benefit from that profitability, generally through revenues directly related to operating those franchises. However, MLB owners have also profited from ventures only partially related to MLB ownership, as well. They’ve made money owning television stations that also happen to air the games of teams they own. Owners are also in the process of spinning off the non-baseball related arm of MLBAM for billions. Notably, MLB owners have begun capitalizing on another revenue stream: developing the land near their teams’ ballparks.

When the Atlanta Braves announced they were leaving a 20-year-old Atlanta-based stadium for a new one out in the suburbs of Cobb County, it took many by surprise. Cobb County made an appealling offer to the Braves, and one of the Braves’ promises was a $400 million mixed-used land development surrounding the stadium. While this has some likely benefits for Cobb County, it has the potential to be very beneficial for the Braves, as well — and it was one of their reasons for leaving Atlanta.

Bucking the trend of pro teams seeking stadiums and arenas closer to the city center, the Braves’ new facility will be part of a 60-acre development near Cobb Galleria mall. Plant compared it to new ballparks in Cincinnati, San Diego and Houston, as well as L.A. Live, which hosts the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers and the NHL’s Kings at Staples Center.

“With our current location, we couldn’t control that process,” Plant said. “This site allows us to do that.”

In Cincinnati, the Reds have their Hall of Fame across the street. In Houston, the Astros took over Union Station. However, the first major attempt to control an entire area of land around the stadium had mixed results. In San Diego, real estate developer JMI, owned by John Moores, the previous owner of the Padres before a messy divorce forced the sale of the team, built up the area around the park, mainly with housing after original plans for more office buildings had to be scrapped due to economic conditions. The area is still in flux, as it was also a potential site for a new stadium for the San Diego Chargers.

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If you’ve recently spent time with other humans, it’s likely that you noticed that they tend to be overconfident about how well they understand the world around them. Think of all of the people you know who have tried to weasel their way out of admitting they were wrong even when presented with strong evidence that they had misinterpreted a situation. Humans are bold and unapologetic in their declarations and do not like it when you point out that they’ve made a serious error.

It’s hard to criticize people for that when it seems to be a pretty fundamental aspect of the species. It’s not good or bad, it simply is. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy little moments when someone makes a compelling argument and then the world totally destroys their hard work by changing around them.

For example, two political scientists once wrote a book called Congress’ Permanent Minority? Republicans in the U.S. House which was the first major scholarly account of how a minority party operates when it expects to be in the minority for the foreseeable future. It’s a well-researched book and was well reviewed when it came out. Unfortunately for the authors, it came out in January of 1994, just 11 months before the Republicans would win control of the House for the first time in 40 years. It was a perfectly fine analysis, it was just totally detached from the reality of American politics almost immediately.

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The Padres last week designated outfield prospect Rymer Liriano for assignment to clear a roster spot for the newly signed Alexei Ramirez. The move became yet another curious move in a string of questionable decisions by A.J. Preller and his front-office staff. Not only does Liriano have a prospect pedigree, but San Diego had multiple outfielders on its 40-man roster who could be described as “fringy,” namely Jabari Blash, Alex Dickerson and Travis Jankowski. Yes, Liriano is out of options, but I have a hard time thinking he’s a worse prospect than Blash, who — as a Rule 5 pick — also is out of options.

In some ways, Liriano looks the part of an exciting prospect. The 24-year-old’s power, speed and throwing arm grade out as better than average. Relatively few prospects have such a strong and diverse collection of skills. Furthermore, he’s parlayed those tools into some nice numbers in the high minors. He hit .291/.375/.466 with nearly 40 steals between Double-A and Triple-A in the past last two seasons.

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This has been a weird off-season. Because the gap between the end of the World Series and the start of the winter meetings was shorter than usual, we ended up with a pretty slow start, as teams ended up waiting until December to really kick the market into gear, and even then, most of the money ended up getting thrown at the available pitchers. The market for hitters dragged out, leaving guys like Chris Davis, Justin Upton, Yoenis Cespedes, and Ian Desmond looking for long-term deals in January. And teams who should be looking to upgrade their rosters have largely sat out free agency, leaving the big spending to teams who aren’t traditionally players at the top of the market.

But maybe the weirdest part of the entire off-season is how rarely we’ve said A.J. Preller’s name. Last winter, the first-year GM dominated the news cycle like Donald Trump is now, making headlines with a frenetic series of moves to revamp his team’s roster and try to put together a contender. In the span of a week, he traded for Matt Kemp, Derek Norris, Wil Myers, and Justin Upton; a few months later, he’d also sign James Shields and trade for Craig Kimbrel. The always-boring Padres were anything but boring.

Of course, the net effect of all those moves was to put the organization in a far worse place than they’d been if they’d taken the boring approach, as the Kemp deal saddled them with a disaster of a contract for a mediocre player, the Myers deal cost them Trea Turner and Joe Ross, the Upton deal thinned out their farm system for a rental, and Kimbrel showed that even an elite closer doesn’t move the needle much on a bad team. The Padres stumbled to a 74-88 record, and without much in the way of prospects or a young core to build around, it became pretty clear that Preller was going to have to start over.

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To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t think about park factors very much anymore. Obviously, they matter as much as ever, but you just encounter them less since so many advanced numbers automatically fold them in. They go somewhat unseen, but they’re important, and I was recently reminded that three years ago, Petco Park and Safeco Field debuted new dimensions. There are other factors that affect how stadiums play, like weather patterns and nearby construction, but what’s most important tends to be the shape of a given field itself. So now that we have a good amount of data, let’s see how Petco and Safeco have played more recently.

To be straight, what follows isn’t very rigorous. I didn’t make adjustments or regressions, and almost anyone would tell you that the ideal involves more than three years of information. There are ways to do this more precisely. But, three years are three years, and it shouldn’t be hard to observe any significant changes. Off we go!

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The Padres have been linked to two shortstops this offseason. One was four years younger than the other, and still in some command of the tools that made him an All-Star-level player. But Ian Desmond is risky, and more expensive than $4 million guaranteed over one year with a mutual option for 2017. According to multiple sources, that’s the deal the Padres have agreed to hand Alexei Ramirez, who should be worth that price, no matter which Alexei Ramirez shows up.

One year, Alexei Ramirez hit 15 homers and stole seven bases. The next year, he hit nine homers and stole 20. And that’s not the only place where we’ve seen wild swings from Ramirez. He’s walked 2.6% of the time in a year, and 8.1%. He’s produced an isolated-slugging figure of .185, and also of .096. He’s swung and missed 10.7% of the time, and 6.5% of the time. He’s hit nearly one grounder per fly ball and also nearly two grounders per fly ball. He’s pulled the ball 38% of the time, and also 54% of the time. He’s shown below-average defense, and league-leading defense. He’s swung at 60% of the pitches he’s seen, and 49%.

Throughout it all, he’s recorded nearly 5,000 plate appearances and been above-average with the stick for a shortstop, and the third-best overall glove since he debuted in 2008. Even with all the oscillating, all the bad plate discipline, all the weird changes to his game, Ramirez has been above-average in all of his years save two — his first and his last.

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A year ago today, things were looking pretty good in Ian Desmond’s world. He was 29 years old and the starting shortstop for the Washington Nationals, heavy favorites to win the National League East. A few months earlier, Desmonds completed his third straight season of at least 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases. Defensive metrics indicated he was roughly average to above average at shortstop, and in terms of overall value, he was sitting on three straight seasons of more than four wins above replacement. In matters related to his bank account, he was just one season from free agency with no other big-name shortstops and a big payday.

But now, after a disastrous year, Desmond is still unsigned and his market is unclear.

There were some signs heading into last season that Desmond was in decline. His wRC+ went from 128 to 116 to 107 from 2012 to 2014, and his strikeouts moved in the opposite direction: 20% in 2012, 22% in 2013 and way up to 28% in 2014. Noticing a decline and expecting a collapse are two different situations, however. This is the list of players who, along with Ian Desmond, produced at least four WAR in each season from 2012 to 2014: Andrew McCutchen, Buster Posey, Dustin Pedroia, Ben Zobrist, Adam Jones, Alex Gordon, Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera, and of course, Mike Trout. A year ago at this time, MLB Trade Rumors rated Desmond as the fourth-best pending free agent and mentioned a potential $200 million contract with another good season.

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During the most recent baseball season, 389 players received at least 150 plate appearances. That’s a low and arbitrary threshold, but it will serve to make an important point: Austin Hedges was a terrible hitter. Among those 389 hitters, Hedges was dead last with a 26 wRC+. Taylor Featherston, Rene Rivera, David Ross, and Christian Bethancourt were the other members of the under-40 wRC+ club last year, if you’re looking for some indication as to its infamy.

To put it mildly, Hedges did not deliver at the plate. He slashed .168/.215/.248. By comparison, National League pitchers hit .132/.159/.169 (-16 wRC+). Hedges didn’t hit like an average pitcher, but he didn’t exactly hit like a position player either. Fortunately for the young catcher, baseball is a robust competition and there are other aspects to the game beyond hitting. While Hedges failed to provide value at the plate, he had occasion to provide value behind it, which he seemed to do. But when digging into some of the particulars on Hedges’ season, an odd fact surfaces: teams tried to steal many, many bases against the Friar backstop.

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