Archive for Teams

This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but if you’re a position player and your team asks you to pitch, it’s pretty likely that they don’t see you as a critical piece for the future. Even though position players usually just walk to the mound and keep it simple when called upon, the risk of injury prevents clubs from letting truly valuable players fall on the sword which is why the Pirates let Josh Harrison toss one-third of an inning in 2013.

Legend has it that it was the first time he had pitched since Little League (although it doesn’t appear that anyone called his high school’s official historian to verify that) and he faced one batter and induced a fly out against the Rockies Corey Dickerson. Harrison was the utility guy the Pirates turned to in order to avoid burning through an arm in a blowout in 2013, but his 2014 went in a very different direction.

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This morning, Ben Badler of Baseball America reported that the Diamondbacks have agreed to sign Cuban right-handed pitcher Yoan Lopez to a deal that includes an $8.25 million signing bonus. In comparison to the types of dollars we’ve seen for previous Cuban defectors, that number might seem somewhat small, but because of Lopez’s age and the rules surrounding international free agents younger than 22, Arizona has actually agreed to pay an extremely high price for the rights to sign the 21 year old hurler.

First, a quick refresher on the rules. Because MLB wanted international signings to somewhat mimic the way the amateur draft works, foreign players under the age of 22 are subject to bonus pool allocation limits. Like with the draft, these bonus pools are sliding scales based on prior season record, so teams that finished with the worst records get the most money to spend. Because the Diamondbacks finished with the worst record in baseball last year, they are going to receive the largest international bonus pool of any team for the signing period that begins on July 2nd.

However, by signing Lopez, they just punted the opportunity that comes with having the most money to spend, because the $8.25 million bonus that they gave Lopez pushed them way over their limit for the current signing period. The penalty for exceeding their pool allocation is a 100% tax on their overage and an inability to sign any player for more than $300,000 during either of the next two international signing periods, so while the Diamondbacks will be given a bonus pool in the range of $5 million for the upcoming July 2nd crop of talent, they won’t be able to spend it; there just aren’t enough legitimate prospects who will want to sign with Arizona for $300,000 apiece for them to use up their ~$5 million allocation.

And realistically, the 2016-2017 signing period will probably be similar. The Diamondbacks project as one of the worst teams in baseball for next season as well, so they’ll likely also have one of the larger bonus pools for the signing period that begins in 18 months, and again not be able to utilize it due to the restriction imposed by signing Yoan Lopez. Because of their poor Major League performances, the Diamondbacks were in a position to be able to make some significant international signings over the next two years, but they’ve decided that signing Lopez now will provide a better return than the chance to sign impact talents over the next two signing periods.

Now, there is some potential logic to this move, even beyond just the fact that Lopez might be really good. The signing restriction isn’t the same thing as the pool allocation being stripped away, as it is when a team forfeits a draft pick to sign a free agent; the Diamondbacks will still get the largest pool allocation for next year even after this signing. And because you can trade international bonus slots, Arizona will now have some pretty interesting trade chips to play with the next two summers. Any team who wants to sign a prospect for more than their own allocation, but without having to take the signing restriction policy, can now call up Dave Stewart and attempt to acquire some extra bonus money, and the Diamondbacks should be able to extract some prospects in return for the bonus money they can’t use.

And, there is some chance that MLB will just tear this whole system up in the next CBA, since it’s very clear the roadblocks the league tried to put in place to stop this kind of spending aren’t working. The current CBA expires on December 1, 2016, so if a new international system is put in place, it’s possible that the second year signing restriction could be eliminated, or at least converted into some other kind of penalty under whatever new system is adopted. Perhaps Tony LaRussa has some inside information on the likelihood of this system getting abolished before the second year restriction gets put in place, and so Arizona will take less of a hit for signing Lopez than currently appears.

And, of course, there’s always the possibility that Lopez just turns out to be a dominant #1 starter, which would make all of this a footnote; if he’s an elite talent, then these are easy prices to pay to acquire six years of team control. So, it’s not like this is a guaranteed disaster. Lopez could easily justify his acquisition cost if he turns into a good big league starter.

But don’t let the $8.25 million figure fool you; the Diamondbacks are paying far more than that to sign this kid. They had already previously announced five international free agent signings this period, with Badler reporting that two of the signings received $350,000 apiece, so they had already spent close to $1 million of their $2.3 million in allocated funds. By adding Lopez’s $8.25 million to the total, they’re looking at an overage tax of roughly $7 million, so the pure financial cost of signing him is really more like $15 million. And that’s without factoring in the opportunity cost of surrendering the largest pool allocation in next year’s international signing period, and potentially one of the largest bonus pools in the signing period after that as well.

This signing just made Lopez one of the most expensive pitching prospects in history. The signing bonus might look like peanuts in today’s baseball economy, but Lopez cost Arizona a lot more than just his $8 mlilion signing bonus.

Adding in a couple of comments from Kiley McDaniel, which he noted on Twitter.

Scout told me Yoan Lopez similar to Nick Howard (19th pick 2014 draft). Another prefers Lopez “by a hair” to teammate Touki Toussaint (16th)

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) January 13, 2015

I repeated those two quotes to a third source, who said he’s much lower on Lopez & he sees RP. Pro debut should clear a lot of this up.

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) January 13, 2015

Clayton Kershaw is coming off what was legitimately one of the best starting-pitcher seasons of all time. Though he would miss a few turns due to injury, that problem was quickly forgotten, as Kershaw still approached 200 innings and finished with both an ERA and an FIP that were half the league average. There was one stretch where Kershaw didn’t allow a single run over four consecutive starts, and that stretch was bookended by a pair of one-run outings. Yet as amazing as Kershaw was, there was one game where he allowed seven runs in under two innings to the Diamondbacks. Those seven runs were 17% of Kershaw’s regular-season total. In July, I tried to investigate what went wrong.

Kershaw, in 2014, had one of the better pitcher seasons ever. Pedro Martinez, in 1999, had maybe the best pitcher season ever. Pedro posted the lowest FIP- ever by a starter, at 28. The next-best mark is 36, also posted by Pedro. The best non-Pedro mark is 45. Over the course of baseball history, that 1999 FIP- is a full five standard deviations better than the mean. Pedro’s strikeout rate that season was 5.4 standard deviations better than the mean. I should note that this doesn’t include what Pedro did in the All-Star Game, or in the playoffs. In the All-Star Game, he struck out five of six batters, with one reaching on an error. In the playoffs, Pedro spun 17 shutout innings, allowing five hits and a .267 OPS. Pedro Martinez, that season, was probably the best that any starting pitcher has been. The statistics are unreal even before you remember to adjust them for the era.

Yet on July 18, Pedro faced the Florida Marlins and couldn’t get out of the fourth. His final line shows nine runs on a dozen hits, with no other season run total exceeding four. That year’s Marlins had one of the worst offenses in either league, and they’d lose 98 games. Just as Kershaw’s disaster was fascinating, so, too, was Pedro’s, particularly in retrospect. How did one of the best pitchers ever, in probably the best pitcher season ever, get killed at home against a bad team on the wrong side of a fire sale?

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Earlier this off-season, the Chicago Cubs began work on their long-awaited renovations to Wrigley Field. The team launched phase one of the project in October, tearing down the stadium’s existing bleachers with the hope of rebuilding and expanding them in time for Opening Day. In addition, the $575 million project will eventually include new clubhouses, luxury suites, concession areas and signage throughout the stadium — as well as the construction of a nearby hotel and office-building complex.

Unless, that is, owners of the rooftops overlooking Wrigley Field get their way. These building owners have filed two lawsuits over the past four months — the first coming this past August, and the second on Thursday — in an attempt to stop the renovations. In particular, the rooftop owners fear that two new scoreboards to be constructed as part of the renovation project will block their views into the stadium, threatening the roughly $20 million in annual ticket revenue the rooftops currently generate.

In an interesting twist, though, rather than suing the Cubs, the building owners have instead sued the City of Chicago in the hopes of having the renovation halted. Understanding why the rooftop owners would sue the city, rather than the team, requires some knowledge of the lengthy history of the dispute.

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Hyun-Jin Ryu isn’t the best Dodger starter, because Clayton Kershaw exists. He’s not the second-best Dodger starter, because Zack Greinke exists. If you can’t even make a case for being one of the two best starters on your own team, it’s going to be very difficult to make the case that you’re one of the better starters in the game. “No. 3 starter” just doesn’t have that much appeal to it, as recent third bananas like Doug Fister or Anibal Sanchez can attest to.

Being fortunate — or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it — enough to be paired with the truly elite starters in the game shouldn’t affect how you’re viewed, of course. Any player should be judged on his own merits and compared to the full population of pitchers, not just those who happen to share a clubhouse. In the same way that it’s foolish to think that Maikel Franco and Addison Russell are equal players just because they are ranked as the No. 2 prospect for their respective franchises, you can’t assume that Ryu and, say, Ricky Nolasco are of equal value because they’re the third-best starter on their team.

All of which is a long way of getting to the point, which is this: Ryu has proven himself to be one of baseball’s outstanding pitchers in his two seasons in America, and none of us — us here at FanGraphs included, unfortunately — seem to talk about him that way.

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

Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Oakland / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
Mets batters produced 18.2 WAR collectively in 2014, an almost precisely average figure among the league’s 30 clubs. Given the projections below, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them replicate that effort in 2015. All eight of the team’s likely starters are forecast to produce something between 0.9 and 3.8 WAR — and six of them, between 1.8 to 3.1 WAR.

An area of some interest with regard to the club seems to be how Terry Collins et al. contend with Lucas Duda and Lucas Duda’s difficulties with left-handed pitching. Despite a strong 2014 season, the Mets first baseman produced only a 54 wRC+ against left handers. By way of comparison, the worst overall figure among the game’s 146 qualified batters in 2014 was Zack Cozart’s 56 wRC+. Either John Mayberry (333 PA, -0.1 WAR) or even Eric Campbell (416 PA, 0.5 WAR) are candidates to platoon with Duda.

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The White Sox have had an incredibly busy offseason, but the goal’s always been clear. The Padres, too, have had a busy offseason, striving for an obvious purpose. Right before the Padres took the industry by storm, it was the Dodgers who were making moves every half hour, toward, again, a clear goal of contention. The A’s have had their own busy offseason, but theirs had been more confusing. Giving three guaranteed years to Billy Butler seemed like a move for a team trying to win. Dealing away a long-term asset like Josh Donaldson seemed like the opposite. To Oakland’s credit, though, they stuck to their own message — they weren’t trying to rebuild. They don’t believe in rebuilds. And now we can see how things all come together.

When the Rays signed Asdrubal Cabrera, after having acquired Nick Franklin last summer, they were provided the flexibility to move Ben Zobrist in advance of his contract year. Zobrist, of course, appealed to just about every team in baseball, on account of his talent and flexibility. Now Zobrist has been moved, and he’s been moved to the A’s, along with Yunel Escobar, in exchange for John Jaso, Daniel Robertson, and Boog Powell. The trade’s interesting from the Tampa Bay side, just because it involves moving one of the best players on the team. And the trade’s interesting from the Oakland side, because it adds a great player at little short-term cost. Score yet another point for those who issue reminders that you shouldn’t judge offseasons until they’re complete.

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Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Miami Marlins. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Miami’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Marlins system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Marlins system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. Arquimedes Caminero, RHP (Profile)

Caminero is part of a small collection of minor-league pitchers whose fastball has been identified independently as hitting 100 mph or higher. It’s possible to fail even with that sort of velocity, but the margin of error is larger. Caminero hasn’t thrown quite that hard in limited major-league exposure, sitting more at 95-96 mph. But he’s generated sufficient whiffs both with that and his changeup to compensate for a relative paucity of strikes.

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Back in last year’s playoffs — we’re going to think for a minute about last year’s playoffs — Mike Trout hit a big home run off James Shields. The pitch was a fastball, pretty high and pretty far inside, and though there’s nothing immediately unusual about Mike Trout hitting a dinger, that particular brand of dinger was unexpected. The pitch, to that point, had been a weakness for Trout. An increasingly-exploited weakness. You remember — we wrote about it like a thousand times. The Mike Trout scouting report started going around in April or May, and from there it never really corrected itself.

You’ll recognize this image, or at least something kind of like this image. Trout’s run-value heat map for 2014, from his player page:

The best player in baseball. Seemingly the most obvious Achilles’ heel in baseball. Who wouldn’t be fascinated? And, if you were a pitcher, why not try to adjust, if for no other reason than just to see? There were adjustments, indeed.

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I want you to look at three pictures. They’re all from the same play, and it would appear to be a fairly unremarkable play. But it was a remarkable play indeed, for reasons I’ll share with you right after the pictures. If you want to make a game of it, when you look at the pictures, try to figure out the significance before I tell you what it is!

Let’s go in order. What other way is there? One:

Two:

Three:

Some of you have surely guessed why this matters. Most of you, presumably, haven’t. This is a sequence in which Howie Kendrick popped up. More specifically, this features the very last time that Howie Kendrick popped up. For timing purposes, I don’t spot useful visual clues — Jonathan Villar, Marwin Gonzalez, and David Martinez all played for the Astros in 2014. But, see, I can cheat, because I know the answers. This didn’t happen anywhere in 2014. This happened in the middle of September in 2013. Howie Kendrick hasn’t hit a pop-up since September of the year that came before last year.

So Kendrick didn’t pop-up once over a full season. Now, he wasn’t the only one. Last year, Shin-Soo Choo didn’t register a pop-up. Neither did Joe Mauer. Christian Yelich only popped up on the very last day of the season. But, Kendrick batted a lot more often than Choo or Mauer did. And, this isn’t just a 2014 phenomenon. It’s not just that Kendrick didn’t pop up — it’s that Kendrick has always only very seldom popped up. And that’s an indicator of the very thing that makes him successful at the plate.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.