Archive for Teams

With so much analysis and similar thinking taking over the game, it’s easy to imagine a reality where, down the road, every player in every organization is assigned a number that reflects his total value, and trades are made based on nothing more than balancing value numbers until they match. Even if that’s an exaggeration, you can see how things could come to feel that way, like trades are just the results of equations being run. In this hypothetical future, we’d see trades a lot like the one that’s just gone down between the A’s and the Brewers. Needs have been met on both sides. Everything makes very obvious sense.

I know the A’s and Brewers just finished with the same record, but the A’s don’t do the whole rebuilding thing, while the Brewers are in deep. Oakland wanted to add power from the right side and they were seeking help in the outfield, so that’s where Khris Davis fits. From Milwaukee’s side, if anything they had too many outfielders, and they didn’t have any catching depth behind Jonathan Lucroy, so that’s where Jacob Nottingham fits. Lucroy’s basically a goner anyhow, and Nottingham might not be that far away. And Bowdien Derby, known as Bubba? Live arm. Lottery ticket. More talent for the system. The A’s win the trade for the certainty; the Brewers win the trade for the upside. The A’s wanted certainty. The Brewers wanted upside.

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Most of the discussions surrounding the Cincinnati Reds during the past calendar year has centered around what to do with an aging core of players that are careening toward free agency on a club with little chance of competing. That’s the right type of conversation to have in the Reds’ situation – a situation in which Joey Votto had a historically great season on a last place team. We’ve known for a while what the Reds should do, and they’ve already started the rebuild by trading Aroldis Chapman and Todd Frazier. There is unquestionably more to be done, and more that will be done. There’s another interesting angle to their 2015 season, however, and it’s an issue that turned a season that was expected to be not-so-great into the second-worst record in baseball: the issue of clutch hitting.

“Clutch” — as we are discussing it today — is the measure of how well a player or team performs in high leverage situations vs. context-neutral situations. I implore the interested reader to examine the full rundown on our glossary page, but what we’re really talking about is the importance of the situations in which players produce or don’t produce. There has been some evidence that a “clutch skill” might exist – that some players are simply better in certain situations than others – but there is usually a lot of variability for players from year-to-year, and any true skill is likely to have a small impact.

Take, for example, Josh Reddick: he had a Clutch rating of -3.89 in 2012, the worst since Bob Bailor in 1984 (-3.84). That means he was responsible for “losing” his team almost four games due to his performance in high leverage situations. The next year (2013), Reddick had a Clutch rating of just -0.18, or right about average. Poor fortune, bad timing – these things happen, and sometimes they happen an extreme number of times in the same year. Because of this, Clutch isn’t really predictive, and is much better utilized as an indicator of what has already happened.

That brings us to the Reds, and measuring team-wide Clutch statistics. There are two versions of Clutch for teams: pitching Clutch and batting Clutch. The Reds were actually above average when it came to pitching Clutch, sitting just below the middle of the pack with a 1.16 rating. For comparison, the Oakland A’s were the worst Clutch pitching team in 2015 at -6.05; this is one of the reasons why they were so terrible in one-run games, and it’s the main reason why they were the biggest underperformer in recent BaseRuns history.

However, on the other side of the ball, the Reds were historically terrible in Clutch situations. How terrible? Let’s just cut straight to the chase — here are the 15 worst Clutch hitting teams since 1974 (the first year we have Clutch data available):

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It might be the biggest debate in baseball, statistically speaking. We’re well past RBI and pitcher wins, by now. WAR is a big debate, but not so much because of the offensive statistics, or the baserunning figures. WAR is debated largely due to the thing I had in mind when I wrote that first sentence, the one about the biggest debate in baseball, statistically speaking: defense.

There’s still a strong “eye test” contingent. Folks who believe you just can’t put a number on defense. On the other side, there’s a staunch numbers crowd. The crowd that argues, well, you can’t see every play from every defender, and you also can’t ignore or probably even be aware of your own internal biases; I’ll stick with the numbers. Where it gets real tricky is that, even within the numbers-oriented crowd, there’s some skepticism of those very numbers. There’s some concerns with the methodology. Defensive shifts make things extra tough.

So for the most part, we shrug our shoulders and accept that, for as far as these things have come over the years, we’ve still got to do some leg work. If we really want to gain an idea of a player’s defensive ability, we’ve got to just take it all in, and look for clues along the way. What does each defensive metric say? When they agree on one thing or another, we’ve got ourselves a clue. How about errors? They’re not the best, but they’re not worthless. Do they line up with what we saw in the advanced stats? Clue. Check out some spray charts, or Inside Edge. Watch some film, and read some scouting reports. Plenty of clues to be found in there, especially given all you’ve learned along the way. Do all this, and you’ll have a pretty good idea. Even if one number or one play or one quote goes against what you’ve concluded, that’s the point; your body of research holds more weight than that one thing that purports to invalidate your findings.

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Each year, Tom Tango does a fun little project called the Fans Scouting Report. The nature of the project, essentially, is to crowdsource the eye test. There’s plenty of ways to use the data, and I’ve settled on one, for now. I wanted to look for improvement, and I wanted to look for agreement, using both the eye test, and the advanced numbers. I used three sources of defensive metrics (UZR, DRS, FRAA) for fielders with at least 500 innings in 2014, and 2015. I averaged those to get component defensive runs above average figures, and then, I compared against the Fans Scouting Report’s numbers. Using some z-scores, I could come up with an overall ranking of agreed-upon improvement.

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

Earlier this week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Detroit Tigers. In this companion piece, I look at that same Detroit farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. 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. Michael Fulmer, RHP (Profile)

KATOH Projection: 3.8 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 50 FV

Fulmer enjoyed a breakout season with the Mets last year and kept it going after he came to the Tigers in the Yoenis Cespedes deal. Both his strikeout rate and walk rate improved as he made the jump from High-A to Double-A in 2015, giving him the lowest ERA — and second lowest FIP — in Double-A last year.

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It shouldn’t take a lot to understand why the Rays went and picked up Corey Dickerson. In general, it was a pretty classic Tampa Bay move: they dealt more expensive and conspicuous talent for under-appreciated talent and team control. Jake McGee is very obviously good, but Dickerson is his own brand of productive, and he ought to remain affordable for years. The Rays have been doing things like this for the better part of a decade.

That’s what’s most important: Dickerson should remain a quality hitter, and he fits within Tampa Bay’s budget, whereas McGee was pricing himself out. Yet you can find even more appeal in the specifics. Dickerson’s also a good match for an organizational trend, a trend that’s being mirrored by the rest of the league.

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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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In my regular Wednesday chat this week, this question popped up:

Interestingly, a few days before, I’d been thinking about the narrative of the Yankees heading into 2016, and how so much of it is being driven by their lack of free agent spending this winter. It’s almost historically unprecedented for the Yankees to sit out an entire free agent class, but this winter, the team decided to make their upgrades through the trade market instead, and thus have not signed a single player to a major league contract this off-season. With the Red Sox stocking up for another run, the Blue Jays likely to still be a force, and the Rays and Orioles doing enough to keep themselves around .500, the Yankees are in the unusual position of being something of an afterthought in the AL East.

Thus, we get questions like this one from Christian, asking for some hope that his team might contend in 2016. Well, fear not, Christian; not only do I think there are reasons to think the Yankees are legitimate contenders, I think they might actually be the most underrated team in baseball heading into the season.

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As of Wednesday night, there were 57 position players projected via our depth charts to produce three wins or more. The Astros had four of them: Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Carlos Gomez and George Springer. That they had four of these 57 players isn’t especially unique. Houston is one of five teams to have at least four such players. But what is interesting is just how much room these four have to grow. If they hit their strides at the same time, the Astros could end up being a scary team.

How am I measuring who has the most room to grow? Via the FANS projections, of course. One of the things that I love most about our FANS projections is that they are good for pegging guys who may be on the cusp of a breakout or breakdown. In other words, they generally take into account some of the context that the computer-generated projections don’t (or can’t). We generally like to highlight some of the differences between the FANS projections and the projection systems like Steamer and ZiPS, and often this can be a good way to frame the upcoming season.
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Other clubs: Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, White Sox.

To say the Tigers have had a “type” is an understatement. They have consistently brought in hard-throwing pitchers with either command or secondary-pitch questions, and most of them have ended up as relievers by the time they make it to the big leagues. As Kiley pointed out in last year’s rankings, it’s hard to fault the Tigers’ process, as they continue to develop enough talent to reinforce their big league team via trades, and Mike Ilitch has had no problem spending money to fill in the gaps with free agents.

When 2015 didn’t go according to plan, they were able to replenish their stock by trading from the underachieving parent club. And to their credit, they have started to target a more diverse group of players in the draft and internationally. There is still a lack of impact talent in this group, but a lot of depth and interesting prospects that will contribute to a winning club.

I would draw attention to the rankings that differ from other lists, but honestly, most of the grades are so similar you could shuffle them around and we would be saying the same thing. For just a few from the top end, I buy into Christin Stewart‘s power potential despite him being a recent draftee who didn’t used to have much pop. I would bet I also have more faith in Mike Gerber’s steady skill set than most. Otherwise, some guys are lower, some are higher… I can’t argue with anyone who disagrees on these guys because there aren’t big differences between a lot of them, especially on the pitching side.

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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. The Orioles are reportedly giving Gallardo a three year deal, but more significantly, they’re sacrificing their first round pick (#14 overall) since he rejected the Rangers qualifying offer at the beginning of the off-season. After losing Wei-Yin Chen, the Orioles certainly had a hole in their rotation, and so after months of talking about replacing him internally, they’ve apparently decided that Gallardo’s price has come down enough to justify surrendering the draft choice in order to sign him.

Given the Orioles position as a bottom-tier AL club, in a league where all 15 teams are trying to win in 2016, giving up the 14th pick to sign an average pitcher in decline is a questionable move. Currently, our forecasts have the Orioles as a 78 win team, and while adding Gallardo will help, he realistically can’t be expected to push them much past 79 or 80 wins. This is still a team with some significant flaws, and while they’re good enough to contend if things break their way, Gallardo isn’t really a put-them-over-the-top kind of acquisition.

But signing Gallardo does present a potential opportunity. By surrendering the 14th pick to upgrade their rotation, they’ve also lowered their acquisition cost of making a second move, and Gallardo isn’t the only free agent on the market still tied to draft pick compensation. In fact, there’s one more free agent out there who makes a ton of sense for the Orioles. Read the rest of this entry »