Archive for Teams

The Padres are going to be bad next year.

There, I said it. I know, it’s a controversial stance, and I’ll likely be roasted on a spit in the comments for so boldly stating it at the top of the article like that. But I’m a man of principle, damn it. I stick to my guns. The Padres are going to be bad and I’m not afraid to say it.

Of course, that’s not a controversial take, at all. In fact, it hasn’t been a hot take to say that the Padres are going to be bad since, oh, 2011. San Diego won 90 games in 2010 and haven’t topped 77 wins since then. Some of us got a little excited before the 2015 season because A.J. Preller showed up and decided to spruce up the joint with some interesting warm bodies, but then we quickly realized, no, wait, Matt Kemp can’t play defense, Wil Myers can’t play center field, and one can’t rely on James Shields to lead a rotation anymore. Oops.

So here we are, two years later. The Padres are once again rebuilding after their first effort crashed and burned. Myers and Brandon Maurer are the only remaining members of that group of players that was brought in. The Padres are going to be bad, but at least they won’t be entirely uninteresting. Austin Hedges, Manny Margot, Hunter Renfroe and a few others will be getting the keys to the car this time. The kids are here, and they’re going to play. These could be good players at some point. The Padre lineup could be worth keeping an eye on.

Each member of the Padre pitching staff has the air of an extra in Major League, each with the body of a real player, but a face one can’t immediately place. Quick, without looking, how many of the Padres’ starting pitchers can you name off the top of your head? One? Two?

Here’s what the club’s official depth chart looks like. Here’s what ZiPS thinks of that group.

That’s not great, Bob. But really, who are these guys? As in literally, who are they? I’m glad you asked.

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With regard to the ZiPS projections for Cleveland that appeared at this site earlier in the day, a few commenters have observed the statistical curiosities for which outfielder Brandon Guyer is responsible. One reader notes, for example, that Guyer is forecast for a .358 on-base percentage despite just a .272 batting average and 5.6% walk rate. The difference, of course, is a product of the copious hit-by-pitches for which he’s projected. Another reader correctly notes that, in 2016, Guyer was more often hit (20 times) by left-handed pitchers than struck out (17) by them.

Because all of us are beautiful and unique like a snowflake, it’s not surprising to learn that Brandon Guyer is also beautiful and unique like a snowflake. The purpose of this post is to celebrate Guyer’s particular set of skills, while also allowing the author to experiment with the splits leaderboard introduced earlier this week by unassuming hit man Sean Dolinar.

What I’ve done to fashion the definitive Brandon Guyer Leaderboard is to identify both hit-by-pitch and strikeout rate against left-handed pitchers for every batter season (minimum 60 plate appearances) since 2000. The full results of that search can be found here.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cleveland Indians. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Chicago NL / Detroit / Houston / San Diego / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Despite having just completed only his age-22 season, shortstop Francisco Lindor (681 PA, 5.9 zWAR) has become pretty decisively not only the strongest of Cleveland’s field players, but among the strongest in the league. A brief examination of the nine clubs for whom a ZiPS projection has been published here reveals that only three batters — Kris Bryant (672, 6.9), Carlos Correa (682, 6.5), and Josh Donaldson (657, 7.0) — have received a more promising forecast for 2017.

If one takes for granted that every WAR projection possesses an implied error bar, then it stands to reason that Michael Brantley’s projection (339, 1.6) features a larger error bar than most. ZiPS, the product of an algorithm on Dan Szymborski’s computer, does not account for the precise nature of Brantley’s injuries over the past couple years. What it does account for, however, is that Brantley recorded only 43 plate appearances in 2016. That both (a) suppresses his playing-time projection for 2017 and (b) creates uncertainty in general.

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Over the past couple months, I’ve felt somewhat bullish regarding the Angels’ chances of being competitive in the season ahead. They’re not a great team, and they’re maybe not even a good team, but they feel to me like an underrated team. Everyone points to a shaky pitching staff and, indeed, there’s not much in the way of depth there. The bullpen could use some assistance. But there should, at least, be solid arms in the starting rotation. Matt Shoemaker ought to make a successful return from his brain injury, as crazy as that sounds as a sentence. Tyler Skaggs is finally all recovered from his elbow surgery. And Garrett Richards is going to pitch. That’s the way things look right now, anyway.

The Richards case is going to be a big one. If he’s able to regularly take the mound and throw five or six innings, that could prove to be a game-changer, in the smaller and bigger pictures. Richards’ health won’t affect only Richards and the ballclub around him. All of baseball is going to be paying attention closely, because a successful future could spark a revolution.

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The Minnesota Twins have a different, and far more analytical, front office than in years past. Following the World Series, the AL Central club formally introduced Derek Falvey as executive vice president, chief baseball officer, and Thad Levine as senior vice president, general manager. Falvey, who has an economics degree from Trinity College, had been an assistant GM with the Cleveland Indians. Levine, who earned an MBA at UCLA, was an assistant GM with the Texas Rangers.

The new leadership team stressed collaboration when I talked to them during the Baseball Winter Meetings.

According to Falvey, he, Levine and (former interim Twins general manager) Rob Antony “shared practices from all three organizations” during November’s GM Meetings. He explained that the newly formed front office “is taking unique things from each place, and trying to blend the best of all operations together.”

Levine concurred, saying, “The combination of those three mindsets can lead us down a path of building a sustainable winner.” The former Rangers assistant GM went on to say that he and Falvey “wouldn’t have engaged in this partnership if we weren’t open-minded to the evolution of what we’ve been exposed to leading to something even greater. It’s not rigid.”

It’s also not without levity. Both are adept at tongue-in-cheek, especially Levine. He piggy-backed his comments with a wry, “We view it as very organic and evolutionary, and we hope that it will continue to grow. For one thing, we brought almonds to this meeting. We did not have almonds. That’s a ‘for instance.’ I’m not saying it’s the extent of what we’re doing here.”

Here are highlights from the Winter Meetings conversations, which took place in a group setting in the Twins suite.

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Impact Players

Falvey: “We factor it all in. Every aspect. We’re not making decisions in a vacuum. We talk about some of the metrics we know and what a player’s value is. We can quantify some of that, but we can’t quantify all of it. It’s our job to be thoughtful about that — the long-term culture that we’re looking to build and how it impacts our team.”

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Given the headline I just wrote, there’s no real beating around the bush in this introduction. The Dodgers are reportedly close to re-signing Justin Turner for $64 million over four years. I think he’s worth way more than that, and that the Dodgers just got a huge steal despite shopping in a market bereft of impact talent. So, let’s try to figure out why 29 other MLB teams just let the Dodgers sign Justin Turner on the cheap?

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The Houston Astros figure to be one of the better clubs in baseball this next season. They had a strong team last year and have added Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann, and Josh Reddick in the meantime. Presumably, that makes them a stronger team.

As for the pitching side, they don’t appear to be content yet. They have Dallas Keuchel at the front of the rotation. Lance McCullers is good, but had elbow problems last season. Collin McHugh is fine, Mike Fiers a little bit less fine. Charlie Morton and potentially Joe Musgrove also appear in the mix. The team could probably use one more good pitcher.

As such, it should come as no surprise that, according to Brian McTaggart of MLB.com, that the Astros have tried to trade for a starting pitcher. From McTaggart’s piece:

The Astros are trying to land a starting pitcher, but aren’t willing to trade Bregman. That has made things rather difficult. Among some of their targets are Jose Quintana, Jake Odorizzi, Chris Archer, Danny Duffy and Yordano Ventura. The team has the prospects to get a deal done and is likely to make a move at some point.

One of these things is not like the other. Here are those pitchers’ WAR totals from last season.

It would certainly appear from the data here as though Yordano Ventura isn’t particularly good. At the very least, you could say he had pretty forgettable season in terms of creating wins. He did incite a benches-clearing brawl earlier in the season — and, after multiple, similar incidents, it’s certainly possible he deserved more than the eight-game suspension he received for throwing at Manny Machado.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Atlanta Braves. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Chicago NL / Detroit / Houston / San Diego / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
If one were to calculate the compensation practices of Major League Baseball merely by examining Atlanta’s roster, he or she might arrive at the conclusion that players are rewarded for producing as few wins as possible. Consider: at $21.8 million, Matt Kemp (601 PA, 0.6 zWAR) possesses the club’s highest salary, but is also projected to record the lowest WAR among Atlanta’s starting field players. Ender Inciarte (596, 3.4) and Dansby Swanson (580, 3.3), meanwhile, are likely to receive just over $3.0 million together — and yet Dan Szymborski’s computer suggests that they represent two-thirds of the team’s above-average field players.

With regard to Inciarte and Swanson, one finds that the ZiPS projections for the Arizona Diamondbacks appeared in these pages at the beginning of the month, providing an opportunity to re-visit the trade that sent those two players — plus Aaron Blair (139.1 IP, 0.5 zWAR) — to Atlanta in exchange for Shelby Miller.

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So much of what we do is try to tell the future. So much of what we do is get the future wrong! But still we keep on plugging away, with any noteworthy trade, or any noteworthy signing. One noteworthy signing last week reunited the Yankees and Aroldis Chapman, with the closer getting a five-year guarantee. The history of relievers getting long-term deals isn’t great, but one thing we can’t ignore is that Chapman is kind of extraordinary. By some measures he’s even unique. Baseball doesn’t have an extended track record of Aroldis Chapmans (Chapmen?). Projecting his future is tricky, as it always is.

We know that, if Chapman stays the same, he’ll remain nearly unbelievable. That much, he’s proven. We know that he could snap something after any given pitch. That much, countless other pitchers have proven. But what else might we able to say?

One issue that’s come up is imagining Chapman throwing at lower velocities. Every pitcher eventually loses his zip. Some start at 25, and some start at 35, but it’s a guarantee. There’s no getting around it. For Chapman in particular, there’s one positive sign. Last year, his average fastball was 100.4 miles per hour. That’s the highest mark of his career, and he was around 98 in his first full season. So Chapman hasn’t lost anything yet. Maybe he’ll continue to hang around triple digits for a while to come.

Inevitably, though, there will be decline. And what then? To attempt to answer that, I want to try something. How might Chapman perform at lower velocities? Well, we can look at how he’s already performed at lower velocities.

Tables, ahoy! I looked at Chapman’s game log from 2012 to 2016. For every single game, I grabbed Chapman’s average fastball velocity, and then it was a matter of putting numbers together. In this first table, Chapman’s numbers are split into six groups.

That’s fairly informative already, but let’s increase the sample sizes. We’ll do that by condensing from six groups to three.

Surprise! When Chapman has thrown his hardest, he’s been his best. He hasn’t allowed many hits, and he’s allowed only two home runs. The home-run category here might be the most dramatic, but it’s also the noisiest, since Chapman hasn’t allowed many homers overall. Even when Chapman has worked around 96-97, he’s still been a strikeout machine. For reference, he’s a top-10 table since 2012, looking at strikeout rate minus walk rate. Chapman leads all pitchers, overall, but I took him out and replaced him with the three versions of himself.

The hardest-throwing Chapman is in first, easily. The medium-throwing Chapman is in fourth. The slowest-throwing Chapman is in ninth, out of 776 pitchers. Ken Giles just missed this table. So did Sean Doolittle. And maybe that’s older Chapman: some kind of healthier Sean Doolittle equivalent. Doolittle has sometimes given up his home runs, and he hasn’t been considered one of the highest-tier relievers, but he has been excellent when he’s pitched. So Yankees fans can be somewhat encouraged.

Aroldis Chapman, at some point, will lose some velocity. Aroldis Chapman, at some point, will get worse. But, of course, he has a lot of velocity to give. And when he’s worked at lower speeds before, he’s been only somewhat less incredible. Chapman comes with a lot of what you might consider wiggle room.

We all agree that Kenley Jansen was never going to leave the Dodgers, right? Certainly not after Aroldis Chapman agreed to terms with the Yankees. The Nationals might’ve been a player, but they have their limits. It was almost unimaginable that Jansen could choose to join the Marlins on purpose. As long as the Dodgers were in there, they had to be considered the heavy favorites, and now there’s an agreement in place. All three of the big free-agent closers have signed new contracts in the span of a week.

Mark Melancon is really good, but he just doesn’t work as a comp. Chapman works a lot better, and his deal made these negotiations easy. Chapman and Jansen are basically the same age. They’ve been similarly dominant, and Chapman signed for five years and $86 million, with an opt-out. So Jansen is getting five years and $80 million, with an opt-out, taking a small penalty because Jansen had a draft pick attached. Do you value a pick around $5 – 10 million? Voila! We’re all agents.

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