Archive for Teams

It’s too bad it won’t be Roy Steele’s voice ringing this post’s title from on high — wherever the Athletics are playing — but the declaration itself does seem like more of a lock to happen eventually. Nineteen-year-old Addison Russell has had some doubters in the past. After playing his way to an all-star berth in the Arizona Fall League, the bat has successfully made fans at every stop.

The most interesting aspect of his play might be on the other side of the ball, though, where some feel his body type may move him off the position. After talking to the young man about his craft, though, and assessing his skillset and the values of his major league team, it seemed obvious to me that he’ll be a shortstop when he’s announced into the lineup for the first time in the big leagues.

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The polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet — with assistance from celebrity guest Jason Churchill — has published today his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Seattle Mariners.

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 Mariners 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: Chicago AL / Miami.

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As first reported by the Bay Area Sports Guy, the Giants are going to sign former Braves hurler Tim Hudson to a two year, $23 million contract. This is slightly higher than the FanGraphs Crowd’s expected price of $17 million over two years, but still in the same ballpark, essentially. And there are plenty of reasons to like this deal for the Giants.

Yes, Tim Hudson is heading into his age-38 season, and missed almost the entire second half of the season due to a broken ankle. And yes, the 108 ERA- he posted last year was the highest of his career. There are going to be assumptions that these factors suggest that Hudson is headed for serious decline. Don’t believe it.

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Heading into the winter, it wasn’t entirely clear what the market for Carlos Ruiz was going to look like. He’s headed into his age-35 season, coming off his worst offensive year since 2008, and served a 25 game suspension for failing a drug test (for using amphetamines, specifically Adderall) last year. However, Ruiz proved to be a popular early market target for many teams, and after a week or two of a mini-bidding war, the Phillies have re-signed Ruiz to a three year, $26 million contract, a bit more than the FanGraphs Crowd’s 2/$17M forecast.

Because the Phillies have a long history of overpaying for aging players, the easy narrative is that Ruben Amaro strikes again. He just guaranteed Ruiz $8.5 million for his age-37 season, and the list of catchers who have been productive at that point in their careers is very small indeed. This deal, like almost every other contract signed by the Phillies in recent years, is unlikely to end well.

However, I will continue to point out that we should not evaluate a free agent contract by how it looks in the last year of the contract. Free agents on multi-year deals often take less money in AAV than they are worth for the beginning of the contract in exchange for being overpaid at the back end. This is entirely normal, and nearly every free agent contract is going to work the same way: value up front, albatross at the end. We cannot simply state that the Ruiz signing is a poor one for the Phillies because Ruiz will be overpaid at the end of the deal.

And while Ruiz is an aging catcher coming off a poor season, I think it would be useful to keep the lessons of Russell Martin in mind when talking about this deal for Ruiz, and perhaps hold off on the easy shots at Amaro for re-signing yet another old guy, since this old guy might still be a good player.

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Earlier this year, Jack Moore reviewed Josh Johnson’s inability to get hitters out while pitching from the stretch. Johnson and the Jays were very much aware of the situation, but even still, it did not improve as the season went on. In the end, Johnson limited batters to a .315 wOBA and a .307 BABIP when he worked out of a full wind-up, while opposing batters had a .440 wOBA and a .450 BABIP when Johnson worked out of the stretch. His BABIP while pitching from the stretch was 73 points higher than any other pitcher that made at least 15 starts in 2013.

The simple answer this dramatic split would be to simply point at Johnson’s BABIP and say he was unlucky. If one were to review the video from the first inning of his July 27th start against Houston, one could certainly believe that:
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A couple of days ago, the Oakland A’s signed Nick Punto to a one year contract that will pay him $2.75 million in 2014 and then either pay him $250,000 to go away or an additional $2.75 million in 2015, so the deal is either $3 million for one year or $5.5 million for two. The A’s are not looking at Punto as a regular player, as they already have Jed Lowrie, Eric Sogard, and Alberto Callaspo as middle infield options, but Punto gives them additional depth and reinforces their bench. He’s a good reserve, capable of playing high level defense and getting on base enough to not be a complete zero as a hitter, but the A’s ideal plan for him likely involves him getting roughly 250 plate appearances next year. If he gets more than that, something probably went wrong.

So, $3 million for a quality bench guy seems reasonable. It’s about what you’d expect given how reserve position players have generally been priced in the free agent market. Last year, similar deals were given to Ty Wigginton, Eric Chavez, Raul Ibanez, Jack Hannahan, Placido Polanco, and Geovany Soto. This is, essentially, the market rate for an aging bench guy. Even if teams value their contributions, they don’t play enough to really command much more than a few million dollars on a one year deal.

A Major League can expect to send a hitter to the plate about 6,200 times in a season. A bench player who hits 250 times will comprise about 4% of the team’s total number of plate appearances. $3 million for that kind of marginal role seems perfectly fair.

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Last week, the Texas Rangers caught many off-guard when they announced they had signed young left-hander Martin Perez to a four-year deal that guarantees the pitcher $12.5 million dollars. Perez has thrown just over 162 innings at the major league level, but the club made him the fourth member of its current rotation that now under team control through the 2016 season.

The benefits for Perez are obvious. The contract eliminates any financial risks that come from injury, a frequent occurrence with younger pitchers. Perez willingly sacrifices potential greater income knowing that he can take care of himself and his family with his new contract. The deal also gives Perez the potential to stay with the organization that has drafted and developed him through the 2020 season. For the Rangers, the deal allows them to control the costs of a pitcher they obviously think very highly of should he continue to show the improvements he did in the second half of the 2013 season.

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The official 2013 National League Most Valuable Player is Andrew McCutchen, who was terrific. From what anyone can tell, he’s a very deserving winner, but the voting still came with a few little controversies. For one, Paul Goldschmidt didn’t pick up a single first-place vote, and all season he was incredibly clutch. For two, a pair of first-place votes went to Yadier Molina, both of them coming out of St. Louis. One of those writers put Matt Carpenter second, and it’s easy to write that off as simple bias. If you’re the only people to vote for a guy, and it’s a guy on your hometown team, and everyone else votes for another guy, that’s going to be pretty conspicuous.

My first impression, though, was that, even if they followed the wrong process, they might well have stumbled upon the right answer. Or at least, a good answer. Those people in St. Louis see Molina more than anybody else, and Molina, more than anybody else, seems to have value that’s tricky to measure. Catchers are hard, and Molina might be the best one, and he’s a leader who has the pitching staff’s full respect. Pitchers don’t shake Molina off. They say he’s the heart and soul of the ballclub, and I’m open to the idea that a bunch of Molina’s real value is basically hidden in other numbers. But I wasn’t satisfied with just a belief.

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Nine months ago, Marlon Byrd could not secure a major league deal from any team leading him to sign a minor league deal with an invite to camp with the New York Mets. Two days ago, he parlayed a 136 wRC+ into a guaranteed two-year deal with the Philadelphia Phillies. As Dave Cameron pointed out, Byrd reinvented himself in 2013 at age-35 by swapping contact for power. The result of of this change was a .220 ISO, which was both a career-high and the first time he eclipsed the .200 plateau for his isolated power. After seasons of a relatively firm baseline for Contact% and Z-Contact%, Byrd changed his ways and made himself more attractive on the free agent market. 30 clubs were not willing to guarantee him money as a high contact batter with a good batting average, but one was quick to give him a guaranteed contract after one season of a grip it and rip it approach.

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The polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet has published today his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Miami Marlins.

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 Marlins 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.

Read the rest of this entry »