Archive for Teams

We officially learned yesterday that John Axford had a tipping problem. Specifically, the Cardinals scouting staff noticed he had been tipping his pitches nearly the entire time they had scouted him. This is actually something that Axford himself hinted at during an interview in early September, as he explained to FoxSports Ohio.

Axford, who had lost his job as the Brewers’ closer early in the season, found another reason to be glad to land with the Cardinals in his first meeting with his new coaching staff. The Cardinals gave him some pitching advice — the specifics of which he declined to discuss — that he says immediately helped his performance. “When a team has been looking at you for five years, trying to kill you every single time you’re out there on the mound, they pick up on every little detail they can — what you may be showing, or tipping, or what you’re doing different,”

Maybe this quasi-intervention was what Axford needed to get the message, because this was not the first time this issue has come up in his career.

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Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Milwaukee Brewers.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Brewers or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Arizona / Baltimore / Chicago AL / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Minnesota / New York NL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Toronto.

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In a sense, the pitching market is still at a standstill. Masahiro Tanaka has little reason to sign before his deadline, and other pitchers have little reason to sign before Tanaka does, so for about another week and a half, we could be dealing with a whole lot of nothing. And it’s not just free-agent pitchers. There could be renewed runs at David Price and Jeff Samardzija, but only after Tanaka goes. And free-agent position players might wait for financial clarity as well. The short-term result of all this is that we’re not seeing changes in the 2014 projected standings, because teams aren’t making moves. But something did happen to shake things up right before the weekend.

That something is that Derek Holland hurt himself on his own staircase. It sounds too absurd to take real seriously, but the fact of the matter is that Holland needed knee surgery and he’s projected to be out until midseason. To hear Holland talk, he’s determined to beat those projections back to the field, but medical timetables aren’t made up out of thin air. Holland is going to be out for a significant amount of time. Holland is good, and his replacement will be worse. The Rangers are in a fragile position, and this is a bigger deal than it might seem like.

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After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. 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: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Detroit / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay.

Batters
Crafting a definitive depth chart for the current edition of the Rockies presents some difficulties. DJ LeMahieu might be the club’s starting second baseman, but also so might Josh Rutledge. Corey Dickerson and Drew Stubbs will probably split starts in left field, but Charlie Blackmon has a chance of making the opening-day roster, as well. Were manager Walt Weiss to rely on ZiPS exclusively, he’d probably choose just Stubbs in the former situation and Rutledge in the latter. The odds of him doing that are low and lowest, however.

Of note regarding Jordan Pacheco: as the attentive reader will note, Pacheco is projected on the tables below as a first baseman (in which capacity he recorded the majority of his starts in 2013) but as a catcher on the depth chart (in which capacity he’s likely to record the majority of his starts in 2014). As a first baseman, his projection is pretty miserable (-1.2 zWAR in 483 PAs), very probably owing to the large negative runs adjustment for that position. Which is to say, projected as a catcher (for which position he’d receive a large positive adjustment, provided his defense there isn’t atrocious), his forecasted value is likely quite a bit higher. Positive, even, maybe.

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I’ve always been fascinated with how teams and players react to advance scouting reports. I love to read up on how players incorporate the reports into their game plan and how managers use the information to inform their decisions. But it’s an aspect of baseball that is difficult to access for an outsider. Generally speaking, we don’t know what scouts are saying about any player. We can look at the data and do a little amateur scouting in order to make a guess, but we don’t know.

What I wondered was if by looking at the data, we could find some examples where it appeared that a scouting report was dead wrong. Since sample size issues make it a necessity, I had to look for players that every team scouted incorrectly. One of the things contained in an advance scouting report is how aggressively an opposing hitter should be attacked, so the first place I went looking was plate discipline data to see if any hitters were pitched more or less aggressively than the data suggests was wise. To my surprise, I found somebody immediately – Carlos Gomez.

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As we sit here in mid-January, there seems to be no more obvious free agent fit than the idea that Stephen Drew should sign with the Mets. It’s such an obvious pairing that the internet has been talking about it with such regularity that it almost seems like he already was a Met, and is now looking for his next new home.

It’s obvious because the Mets made some moves to improve this winter, importing Bartolo Colon, Curtis Granderson, and Chris Young, and still have a hole at shortstop. It’s obvious because their first-round pick is protected and they already gave up their second to add Granderson, so giving up a third-rounder seems to be a minor annoyance. It’s obvious because these are the guys who have started at least one game at short since Jose Reyes left following 2011 — Justin Turner, Omar Quintanilla, Ruben Tejada, Jordany Valdespin, Wilfredo Tovar, and Ronny Cedeno — and because that group has combined to contribute all of 2.8 WAR over two seasons. It’s obvious because a below-market return to Boston seems to be Drew’s only viable alternative at this point, his free agency waylaid by the qualifying offer.

Drew’s not a great player, but he is a good one, and almost certainly better than what the team currently has. So obvious! And yet just last week, GM Sandy Alderson reiterated his feeling that the team isn’t likely to sign Drew, instead intending to go into the season with Tejada and the .236 wOBA he put up last season. Merely media posturing, hoping to drag things out and get Scott Boras to lower his demands? Sure, possibly. Maybe even probably. Yet there’s also the not-small possibility that Alderson is just a bit smarter than the rest of us, and he really doesn’t have any intention of adding Drew. Read the rest of this entry »

The suspension portion of the Alex Rodriguez Legal Battle Royale Season One has finally been resolved. The Yankees and the writers who analyze them can officially remove the A-Rod variable. Yesterday, arbitrator Frederic Horowitz released his decision that Rodriguez’s suspension would be reduced from 211 games to 162 games. While Rodriguez benefits in the decision, it’s quite a bit less than he anticipated. A-Rod will appeal to federal courts, but as Wendy Thurm noted in her article yesterday:

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Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Los Angeles Angels.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Angels or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Arizona / Baltimore / Chicago AL / Houston / Miami / Minnesota / New York NL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Toronto.

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When you are the 726th player drafted in a draft, your odds of making it to the major leagues are incredibly slim. Only two players drafted in that spot (and signed) in the history of the draft have donned a major league uniform: Milt Hill and Dane De La Rosa.  It took De La Rosa five seasons of pitching, in any league, to throw his first pitch above A-ball. That time frame included stints in places such as Yuma, Helena, Long Beach, and Victoria with stops in between. It also included a stop in the real estate market in 2006 trying to close deals on houses.

The Rays gave him another chance in 2010, and he finally reached the major leagues on July 20th, 2011. He went on to pitch 11 more games in Tampa Bay before being traded to the Angels late in the 2013 Spring Training season. De La Rosa went to the Angels as a pitcher that struggled to command his fastball.  Yet another new location for De La Rosa, but with it came a new approach to his craft.

In looking at video of De La Rosa from the past two seasons, he has made some minor tweaks to his delivery. The first changes come in his setup for his delivery (click all images to enlarge).

The first image is from 8/27/12 when De La Rosa mopped up a 13-3 blowout against Boston while the second one came in his second save of his career against his former team. The 2013 image shows that De La Rosa has changed where he starts on the rubber while also starting his hands a bit higher, and closing off his front side more than he did in 2012.

At the max lift portion of his delivery, he now resembles the man he was called up to replace on the roster in 2013, Jered Weaver.

De La Rosa has more bend in his back leg, has brought his hands closer to his body, and has more twist in his upper body as he shows his back to the opposing hitter. These adjustments allowed him to stay closed easier in order for him to open his hips up to come to the plate in rhythm with his delivery.

One of the thing that stands out in reviewing De La Rosa from 2013 is his increased velocity.

The data from BrooksBaseball shows that shows that the average velocity on De La Rosa’s four-seam fastball rose nearly each month of the season in 2013, continuing the trend that started in 2012.

The data also shows that De La Rosa was throwing from a bit of a higher release point, which pitchers can use to add velocity while sacrificing horizontal movement. The increased velocity led to increased results. Opponents slugged just .277 against him last season, which was in the top tenth percentile of all relief pitchers that faced at least 200 batters in 2013. His Contact% as well as his opponents wOBA were both in the top-third of the same sample size. The improvements led to more success against right-handed batters as his swing and miss rate against those batters (35.5%) was higher than the likes of Koji Uehara (35.1%) and Craig Kimbrel (34.0%).

The Angels have had their issues in recent years harvesting pitching talent from their farm system, but they appear to have done quite well thus far here. They’ve turned an undrafted organizational middle reliever into an opportunity for a home town kid to go good. So far, so good.

After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. 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: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Detroit / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Minnesota / New York AL / Philadelphia / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay.

Batters
A commitment of four years and $60 million was required to sign outfielder Curtis Granderson this offseason, while just one year and $7.25 million were sufficient for other outfielder Chris Young. Equally valuable, is more or less how ZiPS regards the pair, who are entering their age-33 and -30 seasons, respectively. Projected to save five runs as a center fielder, Young might reasonably be considered a candidate to save something like 10-15 runs given a full season in right field for New York.

It’s not unthinkable that certain readers will take exception to David Wright’s projection of 4.4 zWAR, after the last two seasons recorded by that handsome Face of the Franchise. “Ridiculous,” one might say. “Pffft,” another is likely to add, probably covering his monitor in saliva at the same time. While unqualified to comment at length about Dan Szymborski’s precise methodology, the present author understands enough about these projections, generally, to know that some combination of BABIP regression, aging curve, and Wright’s decidedly less impressive 2011 campaign are likely the main influences here.

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