Archive for Teams

Tim Anderson and the Chicago White Sox have agreed to an extension that will pay the young shortstop $25 million over six years and which includes two team options that could double the amount of the contract.

The deal is both big and small. It’s the largest contract ever given to an MLB player with less than a year of service time. So that’s significant. On the other hand, the contract also figures to pay Anderson an average annual value that equates to an amount less than deals signed this winter by Boone Logan and Mitch Moreland. If Anderson doesn’t progress as a major-league player and is out of the league in a couple years, he’ll have at least made $25 million — a substantial figure, in other words. If Anderson is good, then the White Sox will have themselves a huge bargain.

Contracts like Anderson’s aren’t very common. While extensions are signed with some frequency by players who’ve recorded a year-plus of service time — and occur with similar frequency for players at each year of service time until free agency — that’s not the case for players like Anderson, who have little experience in the majors.

Consider: since 2010, there have been 143 extensions of three or more years given to players who’ve recorded less than six years of service time, per MLB Trade Rumors. Of those deals, Tim Anderson’s is just the fifth signed by a player with less than a year of service time. That’s a rarity, as the graph below reveals.

As to why these contract extensions are so rare, one likely explanation is the lack of incentive for a team to pursue a deal any earlier. While extensions such as these can certainly represent bargains for team — and while teams certainly like bargains — clubs can frequently secure players for similar terms after a year or two of play. That allows them to gather more information about the player in question.

Read the rest of this entry »

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Atlanta Braves president John Hart sports a tan this spring, which in itself isn’t particularly strange for someone in the baseball industry. In Hart’s case, the cause is the time he’s spent on the back fields, perhaps his favorite spot in the organization’s Disney-based complex. He rose to front-office prominence via an unorthodox path, having started on a managerial track in Baltimore until Hank Peters identified him as an executive candidate and brought him to Cleveland. He’s spent countless hours evaluating, coaching and encouraging on chain-link fields. It’s where the future is this time of year. But he also loves the back fields of the Braves’ complex this spring because of what he sees. It’s there where a small army of tall, lanky, projectable pitchers resides.

The Braves are the third franchise Hart is attempting to transform into a winner, and this rebuilding approach has been more pitching focused than his previous efforts in Cleveland and Texas. The Braves have four pitching prospects ranked in Baseball America’s top-100 rankings, five among Eric Longenhagen’s top 100, where two more just missed the cut in Sean Newcomb and Joey Wentz.

While the Braves have top-end positional prospects like Dansby Swanson (acquired via trade) and Ozzie Albies (signed by the previous regime), prospect talent acquired under Hart and general manager John Coppolella — particularly through the draft — has been pitching heavy.

I was curious to ask Hart about the subject after having interviewed him previously on the topic of the risk/reward dilemma presented by pitching prospects — particularly those drafted out of high school — back when Hart was an MLB Network analyst and I was a beat reporter covering the Pirates. At that time, I’d asked him about Pittsburgh’s Pitch-22 philosophy — i.e. the notion that most pitching prospects fail, but small- and mid-market teams must develop their own pitching.

The Pirates had made a historic commitment to pitching at the time. In three drafts from 2009 to -11, Pittsburgh expended 22 of their first 30 picks on pitchers. Seventeen were prep pitchers. The Pirates signed 18 of them to bonuses totaling $25.6 million.

Said Hart at the time:

“A truism is if you have 10, you can really count on two of them making it,” Hart said. “I came up in the (1980s) and never believed it. I said, ‘Come on, there can’t be that much attrition.’ Then bang: This guy gets hurt. This guy doesn’t develop a third pitch. … You can never have enough pitching.”

Hart’s estimate is pretty much in line with the success rate for pitchers rated as 100 prospects.

Read the rest of this entry »

The masses are encouraged by Bryce Harper’s spring. Everyone’s looking for a big bounceback season, so it seems like a good thing that Harper is second in spring-training home runs, with six. Well, Greg Bird is looking for a bounceback season of his own — not because he was bad in 2016, but because he wasn’t anything in 2016. Surgery’ll do that to a player. After Wednesday, Bird is right there with Harper, at six home runs. Let’s just continue to try to ignore that Peter O’Brien is ahead of both of them, with seven.

Out of sight usually means out of mind, as fandom goes, and Bird, for a while, was sort of a forgotten young Yankee, what with the group emergence of Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge, Tyler Austin, and so on. It’s nothing Bird could help, but labrum surgery kept him from playing, and it was all he could ask for to have a successful spring. Suffice to say Bird is back in the picture. Suffice to say he’s generating at least as much enthusiasm as anybody else. Through 47 exhibition trips to the plate, Bird’s hitting .439, with a four-digit slugging percentage. He’s been the very best spring-training hitter, and while that’s not something anyone actually cares about, there is significance here. It would sure seem that Bird’s shoulder is fine.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the year 2016, pitchers continued to hit, even though they are very bad at it. This is not good for the pitchers’ own teams, but this is good for science. It stands to reason the most terrifying pitcher for another pitcher to try to hit against would be Aroldis Chapman. That doesn’t happen. Among the matchups that do actually happen, it stands to reason the most terrifying pitcher for another pitcher to try to hit against would be Noah Syndergaard. Let’s look at how that just went.

Over the course of last season, including the playoffs, Syndergaard had more than 50 matchups against opposing pitchers. As this particular split is concerned, that’s a fairly large sample size. How do you think the pitchers all did? You might be tempted to believe they all struck out. No, that’s not realistic. They didn’t even go hitless! So maybe the data won’t raise your eyebrows in the least, but don’t be mistaken — Syndergaard was dominant. (Obviously.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Getting better at something can open you up to new risks. Or maybe it’s more correct to say that getting better at something can make you realize that you have to get even better at it. Addison Russell has worked hard to become a decent breaking-ball hitter. He’s made strides. Pitchers have responded, though — and used his confidence against him. So he’ll have to take another step forward to keep pace.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 726
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he discusses Toronto’s Steve Pearce, matters relating to Steve Pearce, and also matters that possess no relevance to Steve Pearce at all.

A reminder: FanGraphs’ Ad Free Membership exists. Click here to learn more about it and share some of your disposable income with FanGraphs.

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.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Previous editions: AL East / AL Central / NL East.

The World Baseball Classic is in its final stages, meaning that both the end of spring training and the start of the regular season are in sight. We’d better get through the remaining installments in this series quickly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brady Anderson was a fascinating – and curious – player, most notably for his outlying 1996 season when he hit 50 home runs, a number he never before or again approached in his career. While the performance came under a cloud of suspicion, there was no evidence tying him PED usage.

He now has a fascinating and curious presence in the Baltimore clubhouse, as documented in an excellent profile by Ken Rosenthal .

Anderson is a controversial figure this spring. He holds an unusual sort of hybrid role with the Orioles. Technically employed as a high-ranking member of the front office, Anderson also has a locker in the clubhouse, wears a jersey, and plays roles in coaching, dealing with agents, and in strength and conditioning

The story is well worth a read, but I took away two main points — namely, that (a) we might see more hybrid-type roles in the future, further blurring lines and testing clubhouse sovereignty, and (b) Anderson is yet another voice challenging conventional coaching practices.

It’s true Anderson’s situation is an unusual one due to his cozy relationship with ownership. He operates with little oversight or constraint. But what has become less unusual is the practice of a front office infiltrating integrating itself in the clubhouse. As front offices have trended in a more analytical direction, they’ve hired more like-minded managers. They’ve hired forward-thinking strength and conditioning staffs. And in Pittsburgh, a quantitative analyst — Mike Fitzgerald — was believed to be the first such employee to be freed of the shackles of an office cubicle in order to travel with a club, complete with his own locker in road clubhouses (although he didn’t wear a jersey). The Pirates viewed Fitzgerald’s role as significant enough that they have hired a former Amherst College shortstop and pitcher, Bob Cook, to fill the role after Fitzgerald departed for Arizona, as MLB.com’s Adam Berry reported.

Read the rest of this entry »

Who’s going to have the better season: Bryce Harper or Manny Machado? That’s the question posed to you at the end of this post. Which means this is a poll post. Poll post!

Years ago, the debate used to be about Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, and Mike Trout. It’s safe to say Trout is now excluded from the conversation, on account of having become too good. That leaves Harper and Machado to battle, and while they’re not actually in direct competition with one another, what’s the downside here of matching them up? Below, I’ll present the respective cases, before getting to the question. This does not mean I think these are the only great players. Kris Bryant is great. Mookie Betts is great. Corey Seager and several others are great. But Harper vs. Machado is a fun one, and I think we’ll be able to learn from whatever these poll results might be.

Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of years ago, the Blue Jays were blown away by the spring training performances of a couple of 20-year-old flamethrowers, and because they were the team’s two best pitchers in the Grapefruit League, the team decided to carry both Roberto Osuna and Miguel Castro on the Opening Day roster. Castro even took over as the team’s closer for the third game of the season; the Blue Jays bet big on talent over experience, and while Castro is a reminder that spring training success doesn’t always carry over to the regular season, the team struck gold with Osuna, who has been one of the game’s best relievers the last two years.

There aren’t any 20-year-olds threatening to crack the end of a contender’s bullpen this year, but over in Washington, the Nationals do look like they’re giving strong consideration to handing the ninth inning job to rookie Koda Glover, who turns 24 a week after the season starts. Like Castro and Osuna, Glover is opening eyes with elite velocity and a fine spring training performance, and since Dusty Baker seems to prefer Shawn Kelley and Blake Treinen in setup roles, Glover is the guy who most looks like a traditional closer, even if he doesn’t have the type of experience that is usually required before earning the job.

Unlike the Toronto pair, Glover already did his A-ball to the Majors climb last year, pitching well at every stop on the minor league ladder before scuffling a bit in the big leagues. But while he ran an ERA over 5.00 in the Majors, and failed to record as many strikeouts as you’d expect with his stuff, it’s also not like he got lit up last year; opposing batters hit just .200/.277/.387 against him, good for just a .284 wOBA. Glover’s minor league performances also suggest the team has some reason to think that this plan might work, as both ZIPS and Steamer think he’s effectively as good as anyone in that bullpen besides Kelley.

And spring training dominance, while often overstated in value, isn’t worth ignoring entirely. As Dan Rosenheck showed a couple of years ago, you can improve pre-season projections by incorporating spring training data, and the effects are largest for young players on whom we have the least amount of big league data, meaning the projections have more room for error. And Glover’s spring numbers thus far are exactly the types of numbers Rosenheck identified as potentially worthwhile predictors of a performance that could be better than the current projections state.

His grapefruit league line, to this point.

8 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 11 K.

The hit and run categories don’t matter much, but that 39% strikeout rate? That’s something to pay attention to. Rosenheck’s study showed that big spikes in spring training strikeout rate did tend to suggest better pitching performances in-season, and all Glover really needs to do to become a high-end reliever is miss more bats. The fact that he’s destroying opposing hitters in spring training should be a very encouraging sign.

But there’s a caveat here, because Dusty Baker has decided to get Glover ready to pitch the ninth inning by having him actually pitch the ninth inning, rather than getting his work in earlier in the game. This means that by the time Glover has pitched, he’s generally been facing minor league hitters, since big leaguers aren’t playing all nine innings in the Grapefruit League. Because MLB.com helpfully has game logs for spring training, we can actually go through and look at the 28 batters he’s faced so far this spring. So let’s do just that.

3/20, NYY: Clint Frazier, Pete Kozma, Billy Mckinney, Kyle Higashioka
3/18, HOU: Max Stassi, Colin Moran, Alejandro Garcia, A.J. Reed
3/16, NYM: Ricardo Cespedes, Jacob Zanon, Andres Gimenez
3/13, DET: Steven Moya, Mike Gerber, Juan Perez, John Hicks
3/10, STL: Breyvic Valera, Wilfredo Tovar, Chad Huffman
3/7, BOS: Mitch Moreland, Chris Young, Jackie Bradley Jr
3/3, MIA: Ryan Jackson, Matt Juengel, Austin Nola, Destin Hood
2/28, HOU: Juan Centeno, Jake Marisnick, Andrew Apin

Among those 28 opponents, exactly four are likely to break camp with a big league team this year, and one of those four is Jake Marisnick, who hits like a minor leaguer. The good news is that, when asked to face the bottom of Boston’s line-up, he struck out all three of the Red Sox big leaguers. The bad news is that I don’t know how much the Nationals have really learned about Glover in the other 24 at-bats, given that we already knew he was capable of blowing minor leaguers away.

So, while it’s better that Glover is carving up the likes of Juan Perez and Matt Juengel than if he was struggling against them, we probably can’t apply Rosenheck’s study directly to Glover’s performance, since most of the players in that study faced mostly big leaguers by playing in the early innings of spring training games. And while Glover didn’t need a big spring training adjustment in order to be a decent enough option to close, the quality of competition should temper the excitement about what he’s done this month.

With a mid-90s fastball and a slider that looks like an out-pitch, the big question facing Glover is probably how well he’ll handle left-handed hitters, which could be the difference between him succeeding as a closer and being more suited to a match-up role. If the Nationals wanted to gather the most pertinent information to help them evaluate his readiness for the closer’s role, they probably should have had Glover face as many big league lefties as possible this spring.

With a few weeks of spring training left, there’s still time for Baker to shift his usage plan, and test Glover against the kinds of guys he’ll actually have to get out if he wants to pitch the ninth inning in D.C. this year. But until that adjustment happens, we probably shouldn’t put too much stock in Glover’s dominant spring training numbers. We already knew he could get low-quality hitters out. If he’s going to be the closer for a contending team, the Nationals need to figure out if he can get big leaguers out too.