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Over his first full season, back in 2011, Jeremy Hellickson ran a mediocre 115 FIP-. It wasn’t a particularly awful mark for a rookie, but that doesn’t suggest the kind of talent you build around. Yet, the same year, Hellickson also posted an ERA- of 76. By the numbers you don’t notice while watching, Hellickson was 15% worse than average. By the numbers you do notice while watching, Hellickson was 24% better than average. The ERA-/FIP- difference of 39 points was, to that point, the biggest full-season difference since 1996. Hellickson became a pitcher of intrigue.

And then he went and doubled down. As a sophomore, a 117 FIP-. As a sophomore, an 80 ERA-. That’s a difference of 37 points, which is basically tied with his first difference of 39 points, and it’s also one of the greatest single-season differences in recent history. One time, you might be comfortable writing off as a fluke. But twice in a row? That’s twice the sample size. Oh, the questions we all asked. Through his first 400-some innings, Hellickson looked like one of the fabled breakers of modern analytics.

Now it’s November 2014 and Hellickson is property of the Diamondbacks. Some things have changed.

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In case you were wondering, yes, you’re already used to this. The biggest contract in the history of North American sports is being handed out by perhaps the most famously cheap organization in the history of North American sports, and with a press conference scheduled, that means we’ve got something official: the Marlins are giving 13 years and $325 million to Giancarlo Stanton. Potentially. It’s complicated. But the contract’s agreed to, which is amazing, and almost as amazing as the fact that many of us have already moved on from the news given it was almost done late last week. This is the day to discuss Russell Martin or Jason Heyward or Shelby Miller. We already processed the Stanton stuff, but it feels like we should make a conscious effort to process a little more. This is a big deal. It’s also a big deal.

Fresh off of the Twitter, we have Buster Olney making a relevant guess:

Unofficial guess on industry opinion on the Stanton $325m deal:98 pct. think the Marlins are crazy. As you would expect w/ a deal that size.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 17, 2014

Seems like the industry usually reacts with astonishment, early in offseasons, before going on to make similar decisions later in offseasons. It’s always startling to recognize how much money there is in this game. The Stanton deal, though, is obviously exceptional — this is a new level of commitment. You can’t not stare at the potential maximums. What does 13 years even mean? How many dollars is three hundred twenty-five million dollars? This contract would conceivably end in 2027. By then, current eighth-graders could be getting PhDs in microbiology. It’s crazy to think about the commitment because the future is overwhelming. None of us know what’ll happen tomorrow. 13 years is almost 5,000 tomorrows.

Something we can’t do easily with our own lives is compare ourselves to similar people in the recent past. I can’t develop a profile of my neighbor and analyze a bunch of other people to see what might be going on with my neighbor in four or five years. But we can do this with athletes, at least in terms of their athletic performances. So let’s follow through with this pretty basic concept. How crazy a contract is this, that the Marlins are giving out? We don’t know anything about Stanton’s next 13 years, but what about the next 13 years, for previous Giancarlo Stantons? How did those go?

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This past year, as a regular for the Pirates, Russell Martin was worth 5.3 WAR, according to our data. Here’s the list of Blue Jays catchers who’ve had five-win seasons:

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The year before, also with the Pirates, Martin was worth 4.1 WAR. Here’s the list of Blue Jays catchers who’ve had four-win seasons:

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Looking ahead, over almost 500 trips to the plate, Steamer projects Martin to be worth 3.8 WAR. Here’s the list of Blue Jays catchers who’ve had 3.8-win seasons:

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It’s a bit of a dreary history. Ernie Whitt was worth 3.6 wins in 1983. Pat Borders was worth 3.5 in 1990. Whitt was worth 3.4 in 1987. And then that’s it for even three-win seasons. The Blue Jays have never employed a star-level catcher. Now they have one in Russell Martin, who they plucked away from the National League for $82 million over five years. It’s not a sure-fire bargain — no long-term contract to an aging catcher can ever look like a bargain — but with the splash, the Blue Jays have moved up in the AL East, committing to a run toward a tournament the franchise hasn’t seen since 1993.

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Maybe we should have seen this coming. It was pretty clear that the Braves were going to trade an outfielder this winter, with both Justin Upton and Jason Heyward entering their final season before they became free agents, and the team apparently preferring to employ Evan Gattis as a left fielder rather than as a catcher. The team tried to re-sign Heyward when they spent last year locking up their young core, but found his price prohibitive, so he almost certainly wasn’t staying in Atlanta beyond the 2015 season, and the Braves probably aren’t good enough to be pushing all of their chips in for the upcoming season.

So, trading Heyward now makes a good amount of sense for the Braves, and they made it clear that acquiring starting pitching was their #1 priority this winter. A natural trade partner would have a hole in right field, some rotation depth, and the potential desire and ability to try and sign Heyward to a long-term deal before hit the open market next winter. No team in baseball fit that description as well as the St. Louis Cardinals, so while we didn’t hear any pre-deal rumors of the deal that sent Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins to Atlanta for Heyward and Jordan Walden, it feels like we should have anticipated something like this. It’s the kind of move that seemingly makes a lot of sense for both sides.

We’ll start with the Cardinals side of things, since they’re acquiring the best player in this deal. Jason Heyward is a stud, and you don’t even have to buy into defensive metrics to agree with that statement. For 2015, Steamer projects him at +4.5 WAR per 600 plate appearances, the 16th highest total of any position player in baseball, and that’s with him grading out as just a slightly above average defender: the +10 fielding projection right field adds up to a +3.5 DEF rating, which includes the positional adjustment for playing a corner spot. In terms of forecast defensive value, Heyward’s projection puts him in roughly a similar group to guys like David Wright, Robinson Cano, Pablo Sandoval, and Josh Reddick.

It’s also a significant step back from what he’s done previously, as his career DEF/600 PA rating is +10. In other words, Steamer is projecting Heyward to take a big step back defensively and still be one of the best players in the game, because the forecast sees a 25 year old with a career 117 wRC+ and positive contact rate trends, so it thinks Heyward is on the verge of a big offensive breakout. From a purely offensive standpoint, Steamer expects Heyward to be as good (or slightly better than) the good Upton, Matt Kemp, Ryan Braun, or Hanley Ramirez. If you combine the offensive level of those players with above average defensive value, well, you’re left with a superstar.

And that’s why the Cardinals have to be pretty thrilled with this move. They’re legitimately getting one of the best young players in baseball, and at the only position where they had a glaring need. Adding Heyward to fill their right field hole will end up being one of the largest improvements any team makes this winter. The question for the Cardinals is how long they’ll get to keep him.

Because of how quickly he got to the big leagues, Heyward is in line to hit free agency after his age-25 season, and he’s going to have roughly +25 career WAR when he reaches the open market. Barring a disastrous 2015 season, he’s going to get paid, and you can be certain that his agents will be pointing to the 13 year, $325 million deal that Giancarlo Stanton has agreed to as the new precedent. Sure, Heyward isn’t going to get 13/$325M, given the massive differences in power, but it seems likely that he’ll demand a deal that starts at 10 years and goes north of $200 million.

Robinson Cano got $240 million as a similarly valuable player entering his age-31 season; Heyward might not have Cano’s offensive track record, but he’s going to be selling his prime years, and the deal won’t extend into the period of his career where you’d expect him to essentially be worthless. If the Cardinals want to lock up Heyward before he gets to free agency, it’s probably going to take something like the contract they refused to give Albert Pujols. Maybe they might be able get him to take a slight pre-free agent discount and get him for 9/$200M or something in that range, but let’s dispel the notion that the Cardinals are going to be able to sign Heyward for anything other than a mountain of cash.

The team definitely has the means to take on a contract like that. They only have $73 million in committed contracts for next season, and Matt Holliday’s contract expires at the end of the 2016 season, so they have the flexibility to make Heyward a franchise-player type offer. And they do have a history of acquiring players on the cusp of free agency, only to convince them to stick around instead, but stretching for a single player the way Heyward will require would be something new for this front office.

For now, this has to be viewed as a rental. A rental with a chance to purchase, perhaps, but this isn’t a trade-and-sign deal like we’ve seen with the R.A. Dickey or Martin Prado trades the last few years. The Cardinals are getting a great right fielder, but they’re only guaranteed to get him for one year, and then it’s either a really large long-term commitment or settling for the compensation pick that comes from letting a premium free agent walk away at year’s end. There’s a non-zero chance that the long-term return on this deal for St. Louis will be minimal.

But the short-term upgrade is huge, especially if they flip Peter Bourjos for a starting pitcher to replace Miller, which shouldn’t be too terribly difficult. Having Heyward/Walden/Pitcher To Be Named instead of Bourjos/Miller/Jenkins could be a three or four win upgrade in 2015, depending on what kind of starter they get in return, and that’s three or four wins in a year in which marginal upgrades are going to be extremely valuable to the Cardinals.

Adam Wainwright is probably just about finished as an ace, and is headed for a decline. Yadier Molina won’t be able to hit forever. Holliday isn’t a spring chicken anymore. The Cardinals have plenty of good young talent, but their best players are getting worse, and the Cardinals needed a significant upgrade to put themselves in position to win the NL Central once again. This move does just that.

The long-term cost will essentially boil down to what you believe Shelby Miller is. Is he a top-flight young pitcher, the guy who has produced +6 WAR by runs allowed in 370 big league innings, and just turned 24? or is he a two-pitch tease, overrated by run prevention, heading for a short-term crash when his mediocre peripherals catch up with him? A strong case could be made for both outcomes.

Miller throws a lot of fastballs up in the zone, and as Eno noted through multiple conversations with pitchers this year, high fastballs can produce some terrific results, often inducing a lot of useless contact that isn’t captured in FIP-type metrics. If Miller’s approach to pitching up with a good fastball makes him a guy who can sustain a BABIP in the .270-.280 range, the underwhelming strikeout rates become a lot less problematic. If you’re a Braves fan who wants to be excited about this deal, here’s the first ~400 IP comparison you want to use.

Cain was always better at home run prevention than Miller, but the template is similar, and it’s certainly possible that Miller is a (somewhat worse) new version of the Cain skillset. If Miller’s FIP-beating ways prove sustainable to a significant degree, picking up four discounted years of a quality young arm is a very solid return for a single year of Heyward, especially if the Braves don’t see themselves as strong contenders in 2015.

But Cain is notable because most pitchers can’t do what he’s done, and not every young hurler who posts a low BABIP for 400 innings is definitely going to follow in his footsteps. Here’s another, less-rosy comparison for Miller, again with career performance through the equivalent of two full seasons.

A couple of years ago, the arguments for Hellickson were the same as they are for Miller today. Maybe he’s just good at inducing a lot of popups, and because he’s a flyball guy, he’s always going to run lower than average BABIPs, so he’s underrated by metrics that focus only on walks, strikeouts, and home runs or ground balls. Hellickson managed to keep things going through age-25, and then promptly fell apart, pitching poorly and getting injured. The Rays just shipped him to Arizona for two lower level prospects rather than bet on him returning to prior form.

More often than not, guys who post big gaps between their ERAs and their FIPs regress towards the latter, which is why FIP and xFIP work for most pitchers. It doesn’t mean Miller is definitely not an outlier, but he probably isn’t at outlier to the degree that he’s been so far, and he’s probably more of an okay pitcher than a very good one.

But even four years of an okay young arm is pretty valuable. After all, we’re looking at league average starters making $10-$12 million per year in free agency, and Miller will a little more than the league minimum this year, with three below-market arbitration years to follow. Even if Miller is more of a solid arm than a future ace, the Braves are getting a lot more quantity of value here, and they’re allocating it into the years where they think they might be more able to contend.

And Miller isn’t the only thing they’re getting. Tyrell Jenkins was a first round pick a couple of years ago, and while he’s battled arm problems since, Kiley McDaniel remains somewhat intrigued by his potential. Here’s Kiley’s updated take on Jenkins:

Jenkins missed the first half of 2014 recovering from shoulder surgery on a muscle in his shoulder (not the joint itself), something that had been bothering him for years. He turned 22 in the middle of this season and was understandably a bit rusty in half a season at High-A, but started to find his stride in the Arizona Fall League, where I scouted him a few weeks ago. He sat 92-94 and hit 96 mph, flashing above average fastball life at times, with an above average 80-83 mph hard curveball and a changeup at 81-84 mph that’s average when he keeps it down in the zone.

He’s incredibly athletic and the breaking ball has flashed plus at higher velocites, so there could still be even more in the tank than what I saw. I’d like to get a full, healthy 2015 on the books for Jenkins before i give a projection with some certainty, but he seems to be headed in the right direction now with enough starter traits to project him in a rotation. I’d grade him as a 50 FV/#4 starter now, but I could edit that up a notch by the middle of next season.

The combination of Miller and Jenkins give the Braves two live-arms that they’re buying somewhat low on, and if both end up pitching to their previously-believed potential, this would turn into a huge win for Atlanta. If either of them turn into quality mid-rotation starters, or if you think Miller is already that now, then this probably is a smart enough move for a somewhat-rebuilding team to divest a short-term asset into some future value.

Of course, if Miller is Hellickson 2.0 instead of Cain 2.0, and Jenkins is just another power arm who can’t miss bats, then this could look pretty terrible for the Braves as well. If Steamer is correct about Hewyard’s impending breakout, this could turn out to be a franchise player for a couple of arms with legitimate question marks who might turn out to be nothing at all. This move could be great, okay, or terrible for Atlanta, and it all depends on how the young arms develop, which is maybe the most difficult thing to project.

The fact that there’s no obvious most likely outcome suggests this is a pretty fair move for both sides. I probably prefer this a little bit from St. Louis’ perspective, since I lean more towards assuming Miller’s strikeout regression is a concern, but even I’d still say this is a fair return for a single year of a player looking at a monster paycheck next winter. The Cardinals get better now, and get a chance to make Heyward the new face of their franchise, while the Braves probaby get better for the future.

And that makes this seem like a smart trade for both teams. The Cardinals get the better player and a chance to extend a player the Braves weren’t going to keep, while the Braves get some good young pitching to make a stronger run in 2016. This is a deal that serves the purposes of both sides. It might end up favoring one or the other, but at the time of the deal, it makes sense for both Atlanta and St. Louis.

You might think the rarest pitch in the game is the knuckleball — only two pitchers regularly throw it right now. But there is a pitch that only Brad Ziegler throws often.

Ziegler throws a changeup — out of a submarine arm slot. Nobody else throws the same pitch with the same mechanics.

Only six sidearmers threw at least 25 changeups last year, and if you up that number to 100 thrown, there’s only Ziegler and (lefty) Aaron Loup on the list. If you limit the list to just submariners, Ziegler’s the only one that throws a changeup regularly.

Turns out, the physics of throwing a ball from that angle could be the reason so few sidearmers boast a solid changepiece.

Take Ziegler’s slider as an example. Back when he threw overhand, before 2007, he was putting traditional slider spin on the ball from his old arm slot. Thanks to Matt Lentzner at The Hardball Times, we know what that slider spin looks like. From his piece, here are the spins on the ball on pitches leaving from your traditional three-quarter arm slots:

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Over the summer at ESPN and FG+, I wrote a piece that investigated just how terribly the recent trend of long-term extensions for players at least two years away from free agency had gone. While Ryan Howard was the obvious poster boy for “Wow, that was a bad idea,” the future deals given to Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, Joey Votto, Justin Verlander, Evan Longoria and others all look a little questionable now, either because of unexpected decline/injury in the period between the signing and the actual start date, or because of how much payroll space it’s taking up. Not all have gone badly — Felix Hernandez and Troy Tulowitzki have been worthwhile investments — but many have, and that’s without even knowing what’s going to happen when Miguel Cabrera’s eight-year extension kicks off in 2016.

Teams can’t exactly always wait until precisely one minute before free agency to give extensions to valuable players, but giving out these deals so far ahead of time is such a hugely risky proposition, because so much can go wrong, both on and off the field. Organizations may be buying the security of knowing that their player can’t walk away in the near future, but they’re trading off the very valuable ability to gain an extra year or two of information on that player, and it’s easy to see that some of these deals never would have been signed if the teams knew at the time what they knew when the original contract would have ended.

It’s with all that in mind that today I’m interested in looking at a youthful and valuable shortstop who is just about to start an eight-year extension he agreed to with his team two seasons ago. Texas’ Elvis Andrus is only 26, but he’s also coming off the two worst wOBA years of his career, years that came after ink hit paper. Is this contract doomed to sink the Rangers? Or is he still a valuable asset? Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last few years, the Pirates have developed a bit of a reputation for being exceptional at extracting value from discarded pitchers: Francisco Liriano, Edinson Volquez, and Mark Melancon are three of the more recent examples, for instance. However, before any of those three got to Pittsburgh, the Pirates worked their voodoo on A.J. Burnett, taking him off the Yankees hands in the winter of 2011 and extracting two excellent years from him after New York decided to pay him to play for anyone else but them.

Over the 2012-2013 seasons, Burnett threw 393 innings with a 92 ERA-/85 FIP-/82 xFIP-, providing well above average performance and durability, and because the Yankees were financing his costs, the Pirates paid just $13 million for those two seasons. However, the cost-conscious organization declined to make him a qualifying offer last offseason, and despite some mutual desire for another contract between both sides, Burnett ended up taking a two year contract to go pitch for the Phillies.

It didn’t go well for either side. Burnett was bad, his teammates were worse, and so both sides decided to opt-out of the second year of the contract, allowing Burnett to become a free agent again. And now, with the choice of where to pitch once again, Burnett has decided to go back to Pittsburgh, signing on for the 2015 season for $8.5 million. By opting out of his Phillies deal and signing with the Pirates, he ended up leaving $4 million on the table, so this represents a pretty significant pay cut for Burnett, but as a 38 year old who has made over $100 million in his career, happiness clearly came ahead of maximizing dollars earned.

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The Detroit Tigers are in an unusual position. There’s nothing unusual about a team trying to win now, but there’s something unusual about the Tigers’ particular sense of urgency. We can acknowledge it has something to do with Mike Ilitch, and his age, and that’s a little weird to talk about, but it’s out there. Ilitch wants to see a winner and people don’t live forever, so this is the current line of thinking: the Tigers will do anything to try to win right away, no matter what it means for the future, because what if there isn’t a tomorrow?

It’s pretty obvious where the Tigers’ priorities are. They just gave four more expensive years to a soon-to-be 36-year-old Victor Martinez, and that contract’s been identified as one that’ll look mighty bad pretty soon. But I think people might’ve gotten too far ahead of themselves in declaring that the future will be a mess, myself included. It’s easy to observe some of the parallels between the Tigers and the Phillies, but the future Tigers aren’t sure to be screwed. There’s a way to survive, such that the window doesn’t have to slam shut.

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Yesterday afternoon, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Chicago White Sox. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Chicago’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the White Sox 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 White Sox 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. Trayce Thompson, OF (Profile)

As he had in 2013, Thompson spent all of 2014 in the Double-A Southern League. In roughly the same number of plate appearances as 2013, he recorded roughly the same walk and strikeout rates, roughly the same number of home runs, and roughly the same slash line. Despite the similarity between those two seasons — and seeming lack of development — Thompson’s projection for 2015 is about half a win greater than it was for 2014. Reason No. 1: Steamer puts more emphasis on recent performance, and an adequate season in the high minors is more valuable than a slightly better one in the lower levels. And No. 2: Thompson is still ascending towards his peak, so the any age curve adjustment is bound to help him.

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Did you read the article from a week ago about the Astros trading for Hank Conger? Great, then you’ve already read this article, too. The Pirates just followed a similar path, sending Justin Wilson to the Yankees in exchange for backstop Francisco Cervelli. Wilson’s left-handed and cost-controlled, and he throws hard, so the Yankees see him as a valuable part of the bullpen right away. But it’s Cervelli who’s the more interesting piece, here. He’s the more interesting piece for reasons you might be tired of reading about.

The Pirates, as you know, are probably going to lose Russell Martin to a team with a higher payroll. Listen to them tell it, and getting Cervelli doesn’t close the door on a Martin return; the front office is still hopeful. But the team sounds prepared to give Cervelli the bulk of the playing time, if necessary, just as the Yankees were in 2013. Cervelli is unproven as a regular, but he’s fairly proven as a framer, which is a skill the Pirates appear to value.

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