Archive for Teams

A few weeks ago, I found myself messing around on one of the projections pages, and I happened upon something I didn’t expect: the Mariners were projected for the highest team WAR in the American League. I wrote all about it for Fox, and while people made their jokes about the Mariners only looking like a contender after the end of the season, I thought it was neat to be able to establish a sort of pre-offseason baseline. What the numbers say right now isn’t meaningless. At the start of the offseason, the Mariners looked solid. How they look at the end depends on their own moves, and on the moves of the others.

So, about those others. Consider the Mariners knocked out of first place, if only until the next domino falls. The Red Sox have reached an agreement with Hanley Ramirez, and he will play some position. The Red Sox have also reached an agreement with Pablo Sandoval, and he will play third base. Go into the numbers now and you see a new best team in the American League. It’s only based on projections, and it’s not even December, but last year the Red Sox finished in last, and that doesn’t look real likely to repeat.

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There’s kind of a talking point here, about how much the qualifying offer cost Adam LaRoche a few years ago. Following a career year in 2012, LaRoche was extended a qualifying offer, and a market never developed, so he re-signed with the Nationals for two years and $24 million. LaRoche now is older, and he’s coming off a similar offensive season with seemingly worse defense, and with no threat of compensation attached, he signed with the White Sox for two years and $25 million. Imagine what he might’ve been able to get before, were it not for the draft-pick concerns?

A few things. Firstly, yeah, markets get depressed by qualifying-offer extensions. That’s just a part of things right now. Secondly, inflation. The $24 million and $25 million aren’t directly comparable. Thirdly, LaRoche’s contract with the Nationals was actually quite reasonable. He projected for about 2.4 WAR the next year, so his contract projected to pay him about $5.6 million per win, near the average at the time. As I look right now, LaRoche is projected for 1.5 WAR in 2015. So this deal projects to pay him about $10 million per win, well above the assumed average. It’s not that LaRoche was necessarily underpaid before; it’s that now he seems likely to be overpaid.

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If you focus on his age and overall production so far, the reported near-$100 million that the Red Sox are handing Pablo Sandoval for his next five years are reasonable. He’s a young man with an established bat at a scarce position. But if you focus instead on some of the aspects of his production, things look a little different. They look a little scarier.

First, read Dave Cameron on why even a sixth year wouldn’t have been crazy, given the right salary numbers. Basically, as the number of years go up, average annual value goes down. The sixth year might be the premium that gets the signature, but it’s not a sixth year at the same price as year one. Given that the salary pretty much exactly follows the breakdown that Cameron showed, this isn’t a terrible contract if you call Pablo Sandoval a 3.5-win 28-year-old third baseman. Even if it’s a little more than the median five-year $80 million contract the crowd wanted to give him.

But what if you call him other things?

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Heading into the 2009 draft, Baseball America wrote the following about Kyle Seager’s future while rating him as the 97th best prospect in the draft.

A three-year starter for North Carolina, Seager is an area scout favorite, not to mention a player opposing coaches respect immensely. National evaluators have a harder time pegging him because he doesn’t fit a neat profile. His best tool is his bat. He has a smooth, balanced swing and makes consistent contact with gap power. He ranked third in the nation in 2008 with 30 doubles and was on a similar pace in 2009. He has a patient approach but doesn’t project to hit for much home run power because of his modest bat speed and flat swing plane. While he’s a fringy runner, he’s a fine baserunner.

Seager played second base for his first two seasons and moved to third this year, where he has played good defense. Featuring an average arm and impressive agility, he’s an average defender at third, if not a tick above. Scouts who like him see a Bill Mueller type who doesn’t fit the profile but grinds out at-bats and outs in the field. His detractors see him as a safe pick with low upside and a future reserve or utility player.

Major League teams agreed with the assessment, and Seager went 82nd overall, sandwiched between Trevor Holder and Jerry Sullivan. He was a classic low upside guy, taken because he looked like he could provide some value with minimal risk, but no one expected Seager to turn into a star.

After three seasons (and some change) in the big leagues, though, it’s probably time to throw that profile out the window. In 2,200 big league plate appearances, Seager has now launched 70 home runs, or an average of 19 longballs per 600 plate appearances. For comparison, Pablo Sandoval has averaged 20 home runs per 600 plate appearances through his career, and has been the focus of a pretty significant bidding war for his services. The market recognizes Sandoval as a significant offensive force, and is paying him as such; given that, we probably have to recognize Seager as a legitimate asset at the plate as well.

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The Red Sox are reportedly on the verge of signing Hanley Ramirez for something “in the range” of $90 million over five years, according to Ken Rosenthal. The vagueness associated with the “range” wording means that we don’t know exactly how many years or how many dollars Ramirez is getting, but it seems like anything in the range of $90 million for Ramirez is going to be a pretty good deal for the Red Sox. That said, we’ll hold off on a full analysis of the contract until we actually know what the contract is going to look like.

So for now, let’s talk about what this move does to the Red Sox roster and the rest of their offseason plans.

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In his final season as the face of baseball, Derek Jeter wasn’t the best player in baseball. He generated a forever memorable moment to close out his time in New York, but the year saw him finish with a wRC+ that was 46 points below his career average. Since Jeter’s retirement, people have openly wondered which player might take over as the new face of the game. I don’t know. I don’t care. This just serves as a strained introduction. Jose Molina might’ve just finished his final season as the face of pitch-framing. He might not have been the best pitch-framer in baseball, but he was close, because framing, unlike hitting, doesn’t follow a dramatic aging curve. The year saw Molina finish with a wRC+ that was 41 points below his career average. That’s dreadful, for a player whose career average is bad.

Molina’s 39. The Rays didn’t simply elect not to keep Molina. The Rays had Molina under contract, and they’ve designated him and his $2.75-million salary for assignment. So this isn’t a move to save money. This is a move to try to be better, and the Rays think they have a capable tandem in Ryan Hanigan and Curt Casali. That much is perfectly defensible. This isn’t interesting because the Rays are letting Molina go; this is interesting because no one else offered to pick Molina up at his salary.

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Nick Swisher is, in a word, divisive. His larger-than-Brohio personality tends to overshadow his abilities on the field. Put another way: almost everybody has an opinion on Swisher, few of which are based solely on his playing ability.

After you post a .208/.278/.331 line with 8 home runs in just over 400 plate appearances, perhaps you want more folks focused on your broisterous off-field brosona than an injury-plagued disappointment.

If the rumors drifting out of the GM meetings are to believed, Cleveland isn’t swayed by their popular player’s personality, instead focusing on what it might take to be rid of the remaining two years and $30 million (plus a $14 million vesting option for 2017) left on the contract he signed in ahead of the 2013 season. Ken Rosenthal intimates that Cleveland would like to free themselves of Swisher’s deal, perhaps taking a different bad contract coming back the other way.

Is there any daring or deep-pocketed team out there willing to roll the dice with Swisher’s age-34 and 35 seasons? Is $30 million of their precious payroll worth the gamble that Swisher returns to his previous levels of production?

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Justin Upton is probably going to get traded. If you believe Joel Sherman’s source, there’s no probably about it; Upton is the next Brave out of town. And it makes sense; the team is clearly retooling for the future, while Upton is entering the final year of his contract. If the Braves don’t think they’re going to sign him long-term, better to trade him now than settle a compensation pick next year.

The question will be the price. Sherman reports that the asking price for Upton is going to be higher than the return they got for Jason Heyward, and that was already a pretty solid package. As I noted this morning, teams are paying through the moon for right-handed power right now, and so Upton will be an attractive option for teams looking to balance out their line-ups.

But even with the advantage of his handedness, I’d like to suggest that the price for Upton should be less than what St. Louis gave up for Heyward. And I promise, this isn’t another discussion of Heyward’s defensive metrics. I can make the point without even needing to cite UZR or DRS, because the offensive gap just isn’t as large as people think. Here are their respective lines over the past three seasons.

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Ten years ago, everyone wanted young pitching. It was the considered the currency of baseball, the thing you could always trade if you needed to acquire something else. But these days, random kids on the street can throw 100 mph, the strike zone is gigantic, and preventing runs is now the easy part of the game. What everyone wants now is offense, and seemingly, offense in the form of good right-handed hitters.

This seems a reaction to the fact that the league’s platoon splits have gotten larger over the last few years; specifically, left-handed hitters have been exploited more often by left-handed pitching. Here is the league average wRC+ for LHP vs LHB match-ups in each year since 2002:

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A month and a half ago, Yasiel Puig was struggling. In the playoff series against the Cardinals, Puig struck out seven times in a row at one point, and there was a pretty clear book on him: try to beat him with heat, away. He was having trouble catching up, so the Cardinals were having less trouble putting him away, and that’s among the reasons the Dodgers were unable to advance. Anyway, nevermind the bigger context. Nevermind the Dodgers. It’s interesting how Puig was being pitched.

Because the book on Puig late in 2014 was sort of the opposite of the book on Puig late in 2013. A year ago, it seemed like pitchers solved Puig by busting him with fastballs inside. That was the scouting report at the time, and there’s no reason to think it wasn’t valid. It’s just, accurate scouting reports can be temporary scouting reports, sometimes. Over the course of 12 months, Yasiel Puig changed his own book.

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