Archive for Teams

Simplicity can be a good goal to have, but often the real world won’t allow it. Life creates uncertainty and complexity and this can be a problem when attempting to determine the proper path to take. For example, should I put down the computer right now and find out what my son is repeatedly slamming into the wall, or should I try to finish this thought? The answer, in this case: probably just finish this thought while simultaneously hoping not to see a hammer on its way through the living room sheetrock. It might not ultimately be the optimal decision, but it’s the best one at which I can arrive given the information at my disposal.

The White Sox are in a similar situation. Fortunately for them, it has nothing to do either with my feral child nor the hammers he’s always carrying, but rather their major league roster — and, specifically, whether to rebuild or restock it (which can, in some ways, be even more daunting). As things currently stand, they don’t know what to do this offseason. Are they rebuilding? Adding on? What does Ken Williams think about the definitive direction of the team?

Are the White Sox rebuilding? Adding on? Ken Williams told reporters last night that definitive direction hasn’t been decided upon yet

— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) November 18, 2015

Thanks, Scott Merkin! That sure was timely. I’m not here to argue that the White Sox should blow things up or stand pat. They could go either way, but regardless of whether they take the We-Want-to-Win-Now direction or the We-Want-to-Win-Later direction, they’re going to have to do something about their defense.

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In some seasons, the Most Valuable Player award is a close race between a few worthy position players with a pitcher thrown into the mix if the circumstances align. This year, in the National League, the voting was unanimous for the MVP, and for good reason. In the American League, there were only really two serious candidates for the award, with one fact underlining that point: in MVP voting, each voter ranks players from one to ten, and this year in the AL, every ballot except for one had either Mike Trout or Josh Donaldson in first or second place.

Given that there were only two serious candidates in the AL, there was a fair amount of discussion about who was the worthier of the two players. We could say this was a battle of statistics versus context: a better statistical season (Trout) versus the offensive lifeblood of a playoff-bound Toronto team (Donaldson). Defensively, Donaldson had a better season, but Trout was clearly superior on the offensive side of the ball. Take a look at their full stats side-by-side (wRC+ uses 100 as league average, while UZR is how many runs better the player was than a league average defender):

In the end, the context that is often added to the MVP award won out: Donaldson led his Toronto team to the playoffs after the city had endured a 21-year postseason drought, compiling an incredible offensive and defensive campaign in the process. As is so often the case, there was no true right or wrong answer on who should have won the award; it was close enough to where both players could have deserved it, and it was a matter of opinion that separated them. When all is said and done, baseball is about winning games, however, and Donaldson benefitted from being a key piece of a team that won more games than Trout’s Anaheim Angels.

Discussing the worthiness of each player winning the AL MVP has already been covered at length. If you’ve paid attention to this award season, you probably know the arguments for and against both Trout and Donaldson: we’ve even recapped a few of them here. What is well-known is who Donaldson currently is. What is less-known is who he Donaldson was, and where he now stands among historical MVPs. In context, who he was is a huge part of the story, and we’ll see that it’s pretty rare that he turned into who he is.

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Sometime soon, Aroldis Chapman is going to get traded. But don’t just take my word for it:

#Reds Walt Jocketty said there’s ‘nothing close’ with Aroldis Chapman. Hopes to get something done by the Winter Meetings

— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) November 19, 2015

I mean, yeah, on the one hand, nothing close. But on the other hand, how often do front offices establish public timelines? The Reds want to trade Chapman, and they want to do it soon, and they want to get a certain type of package back:

@jaysonst Other teams say Reds are targeting big-league ready young players in any package they get back for Frazier or Aroldis Chapman — Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) November 16, 2015

That’s not surprising. Every team wants more big-league-ready young players. Those are some of the game’s most valuable assets. Nick Cafardo, meanwhile, offered something that raises the eyebrows:

The Reds listened to Boston’s pitch for Chapman but required more than the Red Sox offered for Kimbrel, and the Sox weren’t comfortable going the extra mile for a pitcher who can become a free agent after 2016.

That’s too much. It’s unconfirmed, but regardless, that’s too much. Still, it brings to mind the question: what’s the right price? If you’re looking to trade for Aroldis Chapman, how far should you go before things stop being reasonable?

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Last week, Robinson Cano’s name found itself in the news, because someone decided to ask a presumably drunk former coach for his opinions while someone else was recording. The news cycle subsequently spent its weekend worshiping at the altar of football, but now we’re back to Cano again, this time for a different reason. John Harper wrote a piece for the Daily News, and within, former coach Rich Donnelly came to Cano’s defense. That’s not what’s grabbed attention, though; what’s grabbed attention would be this:

But even if Cano has had the best intentions as a Mariner, one long-time friend who spoke to him recently says the second baseman is not happy in Seattle, especially with a new regime in charge there now, and that he’d love to somehow find his way back to New York.

It seems like a powerful sentence. A feeling of regret for a one-time superstar who followed the money away from New York to the other side of the continent? Great for the area media. Great for the area readers. Helps New York feel better about itself, which tends to be the city’s primary interest. And for all I know, this might even be true. There was speculation Cano was “homesick” for New York in June. The Daily News made Cano sound unhappy in March 2014. Granted, Cano might’ve been somewhat unhappy in New York in 2013. He did leave, after all.

The Seattle-area media has never reported having the sense that Cano was unhappy. He happens to be coming off a disappointing year. Not just for himself, but also for the team, which underachieved while Cano’s old Yankees squeaked into the playoffs (for a day). My guess is this is nothing. It’s something to talk about on a Monday morning when there’s nothing else going on. Of course Cano would’ve preferred a stronger 2015, individually and as a group. If he was unhappy in 2014, it didn’t stop him from having a terrific year. If he was unhappy in the middle of 2015, it didn’t stop him from having a terrific second half.

I’m actually more interested in something else from the same article. Forget what one person says about Cano’s emotional state; it’s indirect, and uncorroborated, and not as important as his performance. More to the point of his performance: consider the following excerpt.

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Ben Zobrist has been something of a polarizing figure in the game for seven years now. Ever since his 2009 breakout — where a 28 year old with -0.4 career WAR put up an +8.6 WAR season — his place among the game’s best players has been a point of discussion, with some pretty wide ranging opinions regarding his value. To the sabermetric community, he was a legitimate superstar, putting up +35 WAR over a six year stretch, coming in behind only Miguel Cabrera among position players in MLB during that time. To those who evaluate players more by their physical tools and traditional performance markers, Zobrist was a good player but an archetype of the guy overrated by FanGraphs-style analysis, with too much emphasis placed on his defense and baserunning and not enough on his moderate power.

During those six years where he graded out as an elite performer by WAR, he only made the All-Star team twice, and his only top 10 MVP finish was in 2009, the year he led the majors in WAR; he finished 8th on AL ballot that year, and his next-best MVP finish put him 16th. Zobrist is about as close to a litmus test as you’re going to find for how much emphasis someone puts on metrics versus tools.

This winter, we’re finally going to get to see how the market evaluates Zobrist’s abilities, but because he signed an extension with Tampa Bay that sold a few free agent years in exchange for some guaranteed income, we still won’t really get to find out what the market thought of peak-Zobrist. Instead, Jason Heyward is taking the role of being the defense-and-baserunning superstar this off-season, and Zobrist’s market will give us more of an idea of how teams see the late-career aging curve in the post-PED era.

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For the third time in four years, Mike Trout finished as a runner-up MVP. Trout had a compelling case, but Josh Donaldson was a deserving winner. Even if you think Trout should have won, you’re probably fine with Donaldson winning. More than one guy can deserve it, after all.

Regardless, the outcome of an award vote doesn’t change what Trout’s achieved through his first four seasons. And what Trout’s done through his first four seasons is unprecedented. Already, he’s arguably accomplished more than any player in history through his age-23 season. Already, he’s had a top-10 all-time four-year peak, and those are the only years we’ve seen him have. The next question, naturally, is a biggie. Don’t lie — you’ve thought about it. Even if you’re a skeptic, it’s a thought that’s crossed your mind, if even for a fleeting moment.

“What if this guy is the best that’s ever done it?”

What if? Never hurts to wonder. Could Trout be the greatest? If he ends up as the greatest, what would that even take? What would that career look like? What could that career look like?

The all-time leader in position player Wins Above Replacement, according to our leaderboards, is Babe Ruth, at 168.4 WAR. Let’s have a little fun.
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*EDIT: After a strong showing from internet commenters, I added a couple changes to this piece. You’ll see that Austin Riley and Kolby Allard were both added to the list, as well as some notes under Ryan Weber’s report.

I’m going to leave the overall grades the same here, though AS WITH EVERYBODY overall grades may change by the time I get to the composite prospect list. I originally wanted to put three overall grades in these reports, then thought about leaving them out entirely because of their likelihood to change, before finally settling on putting a likely future value in for some comparisons. The innernets say no. I’m new here.

I’m reserving the right to change grades as I go along, this being the first time I’ve compiled reports on a volume this scale, though I have decided to put three values in for overall grades in the future lists. This should help clear up some of the questions people have about how I can agree that pitcher Mel Clark has a high ceiling, but only makes it on the list in the 45+ section. Enjoy!

The Braves have made some headlines this year with a number of trades to bring in young talent. While the short-term picture suffers with the loss of some popular, productive players, they are setting their future up with a lot of depth in their farm system. With a few players on the verge of contributing to the big league team, the next year or two may not be as bad as it could be trading away so much present value.

The big push of prospects could come from players at A-ball Rome and below. There are a lot of interesting talents who have entered the system in the last year or two that haven’t yet revealed how high their ceilings could be. The lower-level collection of players has a lot of risk involved, but the sheer volume of players with talent should ensure the Braves will reap the benefits of the work they’ve put into the farm.

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Three winters ago, we got into a lot of arguments about James Shields. He was at the center of a very polarizing trade and people took sides. You remember it, so I won’t rehash things other than to remark on how funny it is that the James Shields-Wil Myers blockbuster has actually become the Wade Davis trade. Wade Davis! The guy who gave up 5.92 runs per nine in the season following the deal.

Life’s little insanities aside, Shields was very good for the Royals during his two seasons in Kansas City. He was worth 4.0 and 3.3 WAR, respectively, and helped push them over the hump and back into relevance. Would they have gotten there without him? It’s entirely possible, but he was a key player on the team during their renaissance and deserves some recognition for it. You will note, however, that Shields signed elsewhere after the Royals lost the 2014 World Series and then the team won the 2015 title without him.

One of Shields’ hallmarks, and one of the main reasons the Royals acquired him, was his consistency. You were pretty much assured more than 200 innings of good, non-elite run prevention and above-average fielding independent numbers. Shields was as predictable as a person could be in baseball. Then he signed with the Padres.

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Bryce Harper was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player. This is because he was almost certainly the National League’s most valuable player. I don’t want to get into the argument about the definition of “value,” and there are some halfway decent arguments that might conclude Harper got topped, but Harper is a wonderfully deserving winner, and his win comes absent any real controversy. The voting was unanimous, I should probably say. Harper got every single first-place vote. Which meant zero first-place votes for Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto, who each had maybe the best seasons for a first baseman since Albert Pujols in his prime. The National League had some awesome players! Harper ran away with things.

This was the year Harper reached a new level. It was a level people long suspected would be achievable for a player with Harper’s skills, but you have to realize how uncommon it actually is for a player to perform around his ceiling. Mike Trout has spoiled us, but now Harper’s up there, too, having broken out. Here’s an easy way to visualize this: Before the year, at FanGraphs, we published player projections. Player projections are everywhere, and we had our own numbers. Then players subsequently posted real numbers. It can be fun to compare the actual numbers and the projected numbers, and here’s a table of the 10 hitters who batted at least 500 times and who beat their projected OPS figures by the most:

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

The title of this post is a question I asked in my own head yesterday. As to what precise set of circumstances led to the question, I can’t say — nor does the effort required to conduct a full audit of my memory seem justified. The main virtue of the question is that it’s led to the production of Content, which one finds below and which has allowed the present author to delay briefly his perpetually imminent dismissal from FanGraphs. And perhaps it possesses a second virtue, as well: that those, having wondered idly the same thing, might now observe an attempt at supplying an answer.

And, in fact, the answer probably does have some real-live implications. Yesterday in these pages, for example, Craig Edwards performed an examination of Chris Davis’s free-agent candidacy. Edwards found something that isn’t likely to surprise anyone — namely that, whatever Davis’s virtues, a broad base of skills isn’t one of them. His power is prodigious; his contact abilities and defensive acumen, decidedly less so. To whatever degree Davis is compensated this offseason, he will be compensated for his power on contact. To the degree that Davis is successful in the future, it will be for that same trait.

Meditating on Davis in this way naturally leads to the equal and opposite line of inquiry: which player is least dependent on a single skill or trait?

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