Archive for Teams

A year ago, the Arizona Diamondbacks went 79-83. Over the winter, they signed Zack Greinke and Tyler Clippard as free agents, plus they notably traded for Shelby Miller and Jean Segura. Reinforced with one of the game’s best pitchers, a quality starter, a good reliever, and a middle infielder with a pulse, we currently have the 2016 Diamondbacks projected to go… 79-83. And not surprisingly, Arizona’s GM doesn’t think we’re going to be right on this one.

Q: Does that make any sense to you? You add Greinke, you add Miller, and the math boys say you are not going to win any more games?

Stewart: “Jack, I think out there there are a lot of people that don’t want us to win. For those people that don’t want us to win, that’s OK. We’re still going to play the game the same way. We embrace the challenge every day of coming out and playing and doing the things that we’re capable of doing. And those who think that we’re a 78-win team, you know what? That’s what they think. When you start making predictions like that and you keep coming up wrong, you lose credibility.”

Q: Why do you think there are people who want you to lose?

Stewart: “I think the way that we do things. We’re a baseball team here. We believe in our team and how we play the game. I just think, in everything, there is always everyone who doesn’t want to see you do well. Obviously, anybody who says we can only win 78 games, they’re either not thinking or they’re not believing that what we have here is a team that’s capable of winning more games than that. So when I say that there are people out there who do not want us to win, that’s a prime example of that. To think we will only win 78 games? That’s a joke.”

Q: Do you think they are taking a shot at the old school, fundamental approach?

Stewart: “I try not to even think with people like that. I try to think with the people who think logically. And if you are thinking logically and we won 79 games last year, with the additions of Greinke, Miller, Clippard, Segura, people that make your team better, I think it is impossible for us to only win 78 games. Like I said, they predicted we would lose 96 last year.”

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Other clubs: Astros, Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, White Sox.

Let’s get this out of the way up front: this is not a high-potential system. Joe Gatto sits at the top of these rankings because someone had to. That’s not meant to demean Gatto’s abilities, or anyone else’s in the Angels’ minor league pool, but it’s just a product of owner Arte Moreno’s and upper management’s decisions the last five years. Most of the top talent has been included in trades to bring in less volatile assets at the big league level. A lot of early picks have been given up to sign present-value free agents, and the draft philosophy has been mostly focused on safety rather than upside.

That said, the system isn’t designed terribly to the end of supplementing their strategy for the parent club. They get their stars from outside the organization, and they will be able to fill in the gaps with a lot of role players, upside bench bats and decent pitching depth that this group should be able to provide. So while, in a vacuum, the system may seem like a disappointment, it just puts a little more pressure on the front office to make sound major league signings and hold them over for a few acquisition seasons. Management deserves credit for bringing in some projectable talent in the last couple drafts, with many of them figuring to restock the upper levels of the minor leagues in due time.

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From what any of us can tell, the American League is going to be close, and maybe closer than ever. It wouldn’t appear that there are any great teams, and it wouldn’t appear that there are any bad teams, and my favorite thing about this kind of landscape is it means a whole season could conceivably be determined by the fate of one single player. One player greatly under-achieving could knock a given team out of the hunt. On the other side of things, one player greatly improving could push a given team into first place. The closer the pack, the less it could take to emerge. That’s the theory, anyhow.

The White Sox are one of those teams you can look at and imagine 90 wins or 90 losses. Last year’s version almost got to 90 losses, but then this year’s version promises to be better and deeper. And as you get to thinking about the White Sox’s upside, you get to thinking about Carlos Rodon, who’s going to slide into the rotation behind Chris Sale and Jose Quintana. It wouldn’t be a total shock if Rodon were to struggle. But then, if Rodon were to put his skills together, that could send Chicago to the playoffs. So Rodon should be what people like to call an “x-factor,” and in thinking about Rodon, I’ve come up with two other names. One name you can link to Rodon’s signature pitch, and one name you could maybe consider as Rodon’s future.

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You can give it this — the Orioles’ signing of Yovani Gallardo seemed like it was going to be pretty dull all-around, but now it’s becoming fascinating, thanks to a recent and familiar little twist. See, Gallardo still isn’t officially signed, and word is it’s because the Orioles aren’t comfortable with what they’ve seen so far in his medicals. I believe they’re waiting on results from more tests; I believe the issue is the health of his shoulder. So for the time being, the Orioles don’t yet have a starting pitcher they want, and that same starting pitcher is having to worry about an even further depressed market for his services. Nobody roots for these things.

It feels familiar because it’s the Orioles, and this is far from the first time the organization has wound up in a place like this. This further cements the team’s reputation for having an almost impossibly rigorous physical, and it can be rough, on Orioles players and fans alike. No one likes having the rug taken out from under them, and that’s exactly how it feels when these issues come up. It seems like it reflects poorly on ownership, and Peter Angelos has certainly taken a large amount of crap over the years. I’m not here to broadly attack or defend Peter Angelos. It just feels like it’s time to talk about the Orioles’ reputation, how true it is, and what it could mean.

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You can probably be forgiven if you heard about a possible Blake Snell contract extension and your first reaction was to wonder, “Who?” Snell has never pitched in a major-league baseball game. He is not one of the top-ten prospects in baseball. Rather, he’s made just 21 starts above Class-A, has produced a walk rate above 10% in every year of the minors, and (perhaps as a result of playing in the Tampa Bay Rays organization) is generally unknown to the masses. However, Snell is one of the top-20 prospects in baseball, his walk rate has moved down as he’s moved up the minor-league ladder, he struck out more than 30% of batters last season, and he allowed just 21 runs in 134 innings last season (1.41 ERA). He’s also likely to see the majors this season, and the Rays have had talks with Snell about a contract extension.

Contract extensions for players with no service time are incredibly rare. The last one was Jon Singleton in June 2014, and prior to Singleton, Evan Longoria’s contract extension in April 2008 — which was not announced until after a week in the majors — was the closest comparison. The Rays are not strangers to similar deals. Matt Moore is in the final guaranteed year of his contract that he signed after pitching just 9.1 innings back in the 2011 regular season. They also approached Melvin Upton as a teenager, but were unsuccessful in reaching an agreement. Since 2010, there have only been four contract extensions for players with under one year of service time and the Rays are responsible for two of them in Moore and Chris Archer. (Singleton and Salvador Perez are the others.)

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Mike Scioscia has a reputation as an old-school manager who has little interest in analytics. He doesn’t want you to believe that. The extent to which you should is subjective. Scioscia certainly isn’t cutting edge — at least not by today’s standards — but he’s by no means a dinosaur. His finger is on the pulse of what’s going on in today’s game, even if he isn’t always pushing the same buttons as his more progressive contemporaries.

On Monday, I had an opportunity to ask the Angels manager for his thoughts on analytics. Here is what Scioscia had to say:

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Scioscia on analytics: “Analytics have been around forever in the game of baseball, from when Connie Mack would use spray charts and move guys around from the dugout, to now. Analytics for projecting player performance have mushroomed over the last five years. Analytics in dugout probabilities have increased. We’ve had data, we’ve had analytics, since I’ve been in the game. And they’ve evolved.

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A couple weeks back, Dave Cameron wrote about how Dexter Fowler would be a good fit for the Orioles in the wake of the presumed Yovani Gallardo signing — and when he did so, the post began like this:

“While nothing is officially done yet, it seems reasonable to assume the Orioles are going to sign Yovani Gallardo, with reports that a deal just needs some tweaks before it is finalized.”

Dave had no reason to believe the Gallardo signing wouldn’t work out, but now it hasn’t, as the Orioles seemingly have a higher expectation than most when it comes to physicals, and so you understand that I’m cautious to say anything is set in stone between Fowler and Baltimore.

That being said, it sure looks like Dexter Fowler’s going to be playing in Baltimore next year! Just need to see that physical! Operating under the assumption Fowler does indeed pass his physical, it sounds like the Orioles will pay him $33 million over three years. That’s a year and some AAV fewer than the crowd’s estimation of four years and $56 million back in November. The qualifying offer strikes again.

If the Gallardo deal falls through, and it looks like it could, then the Orioles will surrender the 14th-overall pick in next year’s draft for Fowler. With Gallardo in the mix, it would be 14 and 28. Doesn’t much matter who’s responsible for the loss of which pick — 14 is gone either way. The 14th pick is worth something like $15 to $20 million, and so you can factor that into Fowler’s cost, if you’d like. Even with an extra $20 million tacked on for the pick, Fowler’s total guaranteed money falls short of the crowd, and so it’s easy to think of this as something of a bargain price for a quality outfielder who’s still on the right side of 30 for another 27 days.

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Previous editions: Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston.

Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Kansas City Royals. In this companion piece, I look at that same Kansas City farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Royals have the 20th-best farm system according to KATOH.

There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their first six major-league seasons, those who receive a projection between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their first six seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

1. Cheslor Cuthbert, 3B (Profile)

KATOH Projection: 4.1 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 40+ FV

Cuthbert hit .277/.339/.429 as a 22-year-old in Triple-A last year, which earned him a late-season cameo with Kansas City. Cuthbert likely won’t be a star, but he makes a lot of contact, plays a semi-premium defensive position and is young enough that he still has time to improve. Statistically, he looks like a future everyday player, and those don’t grow on trees.

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We don’t really know what to make of hitting coaches, but we know what to make of hitters, and we know what to make of Barry Bonds, so Bonds linking up with the Marlins is at least greatly intriguing. If you let yourself get carried away by your own imagination, you can see Giancarlo Stanton breaking Bonds’ own dinger record. Perhaps more realistically, it’s going to be interesting to see whether Bonds can tap into Marcell Ozuna’s considerable offensive reserves. With Ozuna sticking around in Miami after an active stretch of rumors, which way he goes will play a big role in which way the Marlins go.

For my taste, though, I’m the most captivated by Christian Yelich. It doesn’t need to have anything to do with Bonds, necessarily; I’d be equally captivated if Bonds were somewhere else. But, I think we know about and have observed Giancarlo Stanton’s ceiling. Marcell Ozuna has been good before, but I get the sense he’ll always be streaky. Christian Yelich seems steady, and he seems like he is what he is, yet I think his upside is massive. And I think Yelich stands a good chance of getting there. Quietly, Yelich has hinted at a star-level future.

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The 2010 Mariners were a dreadful baseball team, and an unexpectedly dreadful baseball team at that. They were designed to be competitive — they should’ve been competitive — and from a fan’s perspective, I’m not sure I’ve witnessed a bigger letdown. It was a difficult season for countless different reasons, but what’s been most upsetting, both now and back at the time, is that the Mariners being terrible cost me the opportunity to watch more Cliff Lee on my favorite team. I knew he was awesome when he was first brought in, but I didn’t appreciate the extent until I got to watch him every five days.

I bring this up because Lee is in the news:

Sounds like Cliff Lee’s career is over. His agent, Darek Braunecker, told me, “We don’t anticipate him playing at this point.”

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 23, 2016

Lee hasn’t officially retired, and you never know when someone might have a change of heart. Yet it’s never been less likely that Lee will return, so I want to take this chance to offer a quick retrospective. Not everyone is deserving of the treatment, because not everyone is equally interesting, but Lee developed into the perfect pitcher. It took him some time, and he’s not going to end up in Cooperstown, but for a good six-year stretch, there was nothing else you could’ve wanted Cliff Lee to be.

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