Archive for Teams

In the weeks when between Billy Butler’s contract was bought out and today, with Kendrys Morales brought to Kansas City on a two-year, $17 million deal, the Royals ranked dead-last in FanGraphs’ projected Designated Hitter Depth Charts. Not dead-last amongst American League teams: Dead. Last. Less projected WAR from their DH spot than 15 NL teams, none of which actually employ a designated hitter.

With Morales now in Kansas City, one can see that the Royals have now soared up the depth chart rankings…up to the #24 position, with an estimated 0.6 WAR now due to emit from this spot in the lineup. The Texas Rangers now have the dishonor at being the lowest-ranked AL team, headlined by the light-hitting combination of Mitch Moreland and Rougned Odor. The Royals are now only just ahead of the Miami Marlins (featuring a rotation of Justin Bour/Jeff Baker/Donovan Solano/Derek Dietrich) and the Philadelphia Philles (Darin Ruf/Grady Sizemore/Cesar Hernandez/Cameron Rupp/Maikel Franco).

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By the time the Jeff Samardzija trade became official Tuesday at baseball’s winter meetings in San Diego, Chicago White Sox general manager Rick Hahn was fielding secondary questions about the chances of extending Samardzija’s contract beyond 2015. Most — if not all — of the questions reporters asked Hahn pertained (fairly) in some way to Samardzija, who gives the White Sox a formidable top of the rotation with left-handers Chris Sale and Jose Quintana. It’s possible, however, that another player the White Sox received in the deal with the Oakland Athletics will get a chance to help his new team long after the coming season.

Billed in 2008 as a generational talent who had the signing bonus to prove it, 6-foot-7 right-hander Michael Ynoa is getting a fresh start with the White Sox after struggling with serious injuries, reaching bloated expectations and getting frustrating results since turning pro. In a secondary scrum with reporters that came after the TV cameras shut off, Hahn was excited to talk about Ynoa after trying to explain — for a third or fourth time or 20th time — that the matter of Samardzija’s contract wouldn’t be resolved that day.

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The story of the week was all about the Dodgers, whose new front office pulled off a trading frenzy that dramatically re-shaped the look of one of baseball’s strongest rosters. Before the Dodgers took over, though, all the conversations had to do with the Cubs, who added Jon Lester, Miguel Montero, and Jason Hammel within a matter of a couple days. The Cubs moved to open their contention window early, and one of the possible side effects involved the plan of the Reds. There was thought that, with the Cubs loading up, the Reds would be more motivated to sell pieces off and build for the future.

Indeed, with the winter meetings wrapping up, the Reds made a couple of trades that dealt away members of the starting rotation. Though they might’ve gotten lost in the insanity, Cincinnati sent Mat Latos to Miami, and it sent Alfredo Simon to Detroit. Both are due to become free agents in a year, and the moves signaled to some that the Reds are ready to tear down. But in reality, the Reds are preparing to give contention one more go in 2015. With the two quiet trades, the Reds trimmed payroll and added to the long-term outlook, and the roster didn’t actually lose much of anything.

The Reds have occupied one of the most difficult positions in the game. It’s been pretty clear their window is closing. Yet, the roster contains a number of high-impact, quality players. There’s been too much talent to tear it all down, but the team hasn’t had the money to supplement the talent already in house. So they’ve been stuck in between, with almost an entire rotation looking at one final year of team control. The Reds had difficult waters to navigate.

And if you examine the team projections we have at FanGraphs, the Reds look like they might be the worst team in the NL Central. They’re projected for as many wins as the Twins, barely surpassing the Padres and Diamondbacks, so on that basis the Reds don’t appear like a team that should be focusing still on the one season ahead. But there are reasons for optimism here. Legitimate, short-term optimism. And the moves they made added longer-term pieces at the same time, helping the Reds stay relevant while improving 2016 and the seasons beyond.

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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 Colorado Rockies. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Tampa Bay.

Batters
For those who haven’t dedicated much time of late to the study of the Colorado Rockies, finding that ZiPS projects outfielder Carlos Gonzalez for fewer than two wins in 2015 might be a surprise. It’s less surprising, of course, in light of Gonzalez’s 2014 season, during which he recorded a -0.3 WAR in 281 plate appearances. The cause of that uncharacteristically poor performance was largely a BABIP about 60 points lower than his career average. The cause of his limited playing time was some combination of a damaged patella tendon, a finger tumor, a calf contusion, and a sprained ankle. It’s reasonable to assume that there was some interaction between the injuries and the deflated offensive numbers.

With regard to how Colorado might best deploy their other three outfielders, ZiPS’ computer math would appear to advise a platoon of Charlie Blackmon and Drew Stubbs, with Corey Dickerson occupying left field by himself. Blessed with less athleticism than Gonzalez, Dickerson nevertheless features a similar offensive approach, dependent upon power on contact, but with something less than ideal plate discipline.

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The Red Sox have tried to erase the painful feelings of their botched Jon Lester negotiations by completing a flurry of pitcher transactions. While that’s unlikely to fool people who still just want Lester back, the pitchers acquired (or reportedly acquired) — Wade Miley, Rick Porcello and Justin Masterson — all have one thing in common in that they generate a lot of ground balls. Before that, they acquired Joe Kelly, who also generates a great deal of ground balls. Are ground balls the hip new thing on Yawkey Way?

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As was made evident by the Giancarlo Stanton extension, the Marlins are trying to build up to win. On Wednesday, they added Dee Gordon, a player who has been good in one year. On Thursday, they added Mat Latos, a player who has been good in several. There’s another difference, though — in 2014, Gordon was at his best. Latos, meanwhile, missed half the season due to a variety of injuries. The Marlins are betting on him to be successful in his last year of team control before free agency. To Cincinnati go Chad Wallach and Anthony DeSclafani.

Latos is a player of particular interest. Previously in his career, he was moved from San Diego in a blockbuster. Twice, he’s hit 4 WAR, and two other times, he’s come in around 3 WAR. He’s now coming off a half season in which he was worth 1.5 WAR. In a full season in 2015, Steamer projects Latos to be worth 1.2 WAR. It’s a surprisingly pessimistic figure, for a pitcher who just turned 27, so it’s worth explaining why Steamer thinks the way it thinks. Why is Steamer so down on a front-of-the-rotation starter?

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Scooter Gennett of the Milwaukee Brewers is among those players participating in an innovative cancer charity drive that ends Thursday night and benefits LUNGevity, “the largest national lung cancer-focused nonprofit.” An online auction, coordinated by Major League Baseball media and public relations offices, is awarding scores of unusual prizes to winning bidders. Pitching lessons with CC Sabathia or Dwight Gooden, for example. Rather than a game-used jersey or an autographed baseball, Gennett is donating his time and his noteworthy skills with ceramics, giving a pottery lesson to the winner of his auction.

MLB took this initiative in part to celebrate the life of Monica Barlow, who died earlier this year at age 36 because of lung cancer. Like a majority of people who get lung cancer, Barlow did not smoke. Gennett has gotten involved in part because his father is a cancer survivor. He discussed all of that and more in a phone conversation with FanGraphs during baseball’s winter meetings. In addition to the charity work, he also discussed how he’s preparing for the upcoming season, and further explained how Ryan Joseph Gennett became — sometimes — “Scooter.”

David Brown: Were you into Play-Doh as a kid?

Scooter Gennett: Yeah, when I was younger, I liked those kind of toys where you’d make something. I wasn’t the type of kid to play with action figures. I guess I was a Play-Doh type of kid. But once I turned 8 years old, until high-school age, there really wasn’t much for me other than playing baseball. So I didn’t take many art classes, certainly ceramics, until high school. It was all baseball.

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Everyone knew heading into the offseason that the Red Sox starting rotation was going to need some help, and so the first thing they went and did was sign Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval. Those guys are not pitchers, so while it gave the Red Sox perhaps the best lineup in the MLB, they still needed pitching.

The Red Sox rotation essentially consisted of a bunch of question marks — plus Clay Buchholz and Joe Kelly, who are question marks themselves. Buchholz is 30 years old, has never thrown 110 innings in consecutive seasons and had a 5.34 ERA last year. Kelly’s numbers as a starter aren’t particularly impressive. Some clubs entered the offseason looking for a frontline starter. Some clubs needed depth to fill out their rotation. The Red Sox needed both.

A Cole Hamels trade or James Shields signing are still possibilities for the Red Sox, as they’re still in the market for that frontline starter after whiffing on Jon Lester, who was the crowd favorite to return to Boston and fill the void at the top of their rotation.

The depth, on the other hand, appears to be shored up. As I was writing this post, the Sox dealt Yoenis Cespedes to the Tigers in exchange for Rick Porcello. (By the time I was done, they’d inked Justin Masterson). A full analysis of the Porcello deal will come in a different post, but for now we’re going to focus on Wade Miley, who the Sox are expected to acquire in the very near future for starting pitchers Rubby de la Rosa and Allen Webster. de la Rosa and Webster are both guys who had higher stock a couple years ago. Both have electric stuff, both have serious command issues, and both may be destined for the bullpen. Dave Cameron wrote up a quick InstaGraphs post on the deal last night, which you can read here.
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Unpopular opinion time: the Miami Marlins are the not a band of penniless rubes ready for the exploitin’ by the Dodgers slick-talkin’ front office army. The Marlins are a lot of things, but clueless is not one of them. They don’t have much in the way on field success — minus a couple of championships — but the Marlins could very well have the best player development record in baseball. The Marlins never-ending prospect churn seems to have produced more than its share of talent, and that’s probably not an accident.

At some point, even the thrifty Marlins decided to roll up their stake and make a move. The moves are still Marlins-sized, but this isn’t your typical Marlins deal. This time, the Marlins are trading pre-arb players OUT and bring established players IN, so this is not the run-off-the-mill Marlins sell-off. Something is afoot. Something is amiss. Could they be making their team…better?

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This isn’t one of those deals that came out of nowhere. The Padres have been rumored to be the most aggressive Matt Kemp suitor for a couple of weeks now, and all other interested parties seemingly dropped out as the asking price kept getting higher and higher. Over the last few days, this deal felt somewhat inevitable, so we’ve had plenty of time to process the trade and figure out what to say about it. And yet, I’m still kind of stumped.

The 2015 Padres are going to be bad. We currently project them at around a 75 win level, putting them in the same group as the Astros, Twins, Diamondbacks, and Braves. The only team demonstrably worse is the Phillies; you could reasonably argue that the Padres are something like the second worst team in baseball. And they could very well make themselves worse on purpose before the offseason ends, as they’ve reportedly been shopping their veteran starting pitchers, including walk-year guy Ian Kennedy.

It makes plenty of sense for the Padres to trade Kennedy, and if they’re worried that Tyson Ross‘ elbow will blow up from all the sliders he throws, there’s a good case to be made for trading him too. Non-contenders should generally be incentivized to move their short-term assets, especially ones with a significant chance of losing value, in exchange for players who will stick around longer and might increase in value in the future. Given the state of the Padres talent base, they should probably be focusing more on the future than the present.

Which is why I have a hard time understanding why they prioritized adding Matt Kemp. Yes, it’s clear that the team wanted to add a “big bat” to their line-up this winter, and Kemp is legitimately one of the best right-handed hitters in baseball. He gives them something they didn’t have before. I just don’t see how adding Kemp makes them a significantly better baseball team.

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