Archive for Teams

Heading into last season, Devin Mesoraco was a consensus top-15 prospect, and it was thought that he would see significant time behind the dish with the Reds. After all, they had traded their other top catching prospect — Yasmani Grandal — away in the Mat Latos trade in order to supposedly clear the way for him. But instead, Mesoraco spent most of the season sitting on the bench, and things haven’t been much different this year. In doing so, Cincinnati and manager Dusty Baker may have squandered one of the rarest assets in baseball.

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Last year, Mike Trout was 20-years-old, and he did things that no other 20-year-old in history had ever accomplished. He’s the only 20-year-old in baseball history to post a +10 WAR season, and it wasn’t just driven by his positive fielding numbers, as his 166 wRC+ was the best hitting performance any 20-year-old has ever posted. It was an historic season in many ways, but it was also the kind of season that didn’t look repeatable.

His BABIP was .383, and both his fielding and baserunning numbers were among the best in the game, but all of those variables are heavily influenced by speed, and speed peaks very early. During his run last year, I repeatedly noted that I thought Trout would probably settle in as more of a +6 to +7 WAR player, because his defense and baserunning would regress faster than his offense would improve.

And, really, his BABIP, his defense, and his baserunning have regressed somewhat. Trout’s UZR is just +0.5 despite spending about half of his games in left field, his BABIP is down to .357, and he’s only stolen 16 bases this year after swiping 49 last season. Trout noticeably bulked up over the off-season, and he doesn’t appear to be quite as fast as he was last year. He’s still a burner, but he’s probably not in the fastest player in baseball conversation anymore. So, in that sense, my expectations for Trout regressing have been vindicated.

Except, you know, his wRC+ has fallen from 166 last year all the way down to 163 this year. The BABIP correction has essentially been canceled out by an improvement in his contact rate, so he’s just not striking out as often as he was last year and the increase in balls in play has allowed him to maintain his offensive levels from last season. And, while his stolen base totals are down, he’s still taking a ton of extra bases, which shows up in his league leading +3.3 UBR, the part of our baserunning calculation that measures value from advancing my means other than stealing a base. Trout had a +5.0 UBR last year, so he’s actually on pace to get more value from his non-steal baserunning this season than he did in 2012.

Last year, Trout was the best 20-year-old in baseball history. This year, his performance is going to give him a shot at being the best 21-year-old in baseball history.

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Right now, Gregor Blanco is on his way to his second above-average year as a key (if underrated) component in a championship outfield — “a dream come true” as he puts it. Just two years ago, though, he didn’t get a single major league plate appearance and found himself in Venezuela without a job. There was a moment, though, that sparked the change. A single decision, about a single body part, and Blanco found himself on the road to where he is now.

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The most exciting play in baseball, within context, is presumably the walk-off grand slam with two outs and a three-run deficit. Within context, I imagine it’s almost a perfect correlation between play excitement and Win Probability Added. This is why WPA works as both a baseball statistic and emotion statistic. Any immediate reversal of deficit to victory is going to be outstanding. From the other side, perhaps a game-ending and game-preserving strikeout or double play. Context leads to leverage, which leads to excitement, which leads to viewing satisfaction.

The most exciting play in baseball, removed from context, is up for debate. Some people say triples; some more adventurous, aggressive people say inside-the-park home runs. Some people say steals of home. Some people say other things. What a lot of these have in common is maximum hustle, or maximum effort. People respond well to players putting everything they have into a play, because then you’re watching world-class athletes at their most athletic. That’s one of the points of all this.

As it happens, there was particular hustle on display on Wednesday. And hustle from two of baseball’s premier emerging stars, in Mike Trout and Yasiel Puig. On the road in Yankee Stadium, Puig gathered for himself a hustle double. At home in Anaheim, Trout managed a hustle double of his own. To have two hustle doubles on the same day by different half-player/half-phenomenon entities — the two can’t not be compared. So, below, they’ll be compared, somewhat or mostly arbitrarily.

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As we sneak up on July, we’re at a point where the buyers are starting to contact the sellers. As White Sox GM Rick Hahn said to MLB.com:

“Given the way we’ve played thus far, it’s not a real surprise we’ve had some phone calls — more of the vulture-type phone calls, the type that traditionally we’re more accustomed to making,” Hahn said. “But that’s part of the hole that we’ve dug for ourselves, that teams are going to look at us as potential sellers when the deadline comes, and they’re starting to lay a little bit of that ground work now.”

While the addition of a second wild card incentivizes bubble teams to hang onto their players a bit longer to see if they can make a second half run, there are eight organizations that shouldn’t have any false aspirations about how the rest of their 2013 season is going to go: The Astros, Marlins, Mets, Cubs, White Sox, Mariners, Twins, and Brewers. Minnesota has the best record of the group at 32-36, but they know they’re in full scale rebuild mode, and they shouldn’t diverge from the path-to-the-future that they began by trading away veterans for prospects over the winter. The other seven teams all have winning percentages below .440, and even if they had some pre-season optimism about their own club, they need to admit that it’s not happening this year.

Our rest of season forecasts have each team finishing with 75 wins or less, and given the 90+ wins it will likely take to secure a wild card spot, it’s time to face the music and start prioritizing 2014 wins. While the other 22 teams retain some chance of playoff glory, these are the eight franchises that should be putting their players on the market as we head into July. However, that list of sellers presents a problem for the teams looking to buy, especially teams who are hunting for a rotation upgrade: these eight clubs don’t really have good pitching to trade.

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Last night in Anaheim, Josh Hamilton had a really bad game. In five trips to the plate, he hit into three double plays, and in the two at-bats where he didn’t make two outs, he struck out, including a ninth inning whiff with the winning run in scoring position. For the day, he finished with a -.48 WPA, so while he didn’t single handedly cost them the game, he was the primary reason the Angels ended up dropping a 3-2 contest to the Mariners.

But I’m not here to lament Josh Hamilton again. His terrible performance is noteworthy, but I think it’s also worth acknowledging that Hamilton was fighting an uphill battle last night, because as a left-handed hitter in a game with John Hirschbeck behind the plate, he was screwed before he ever stepped up to the plate.

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The Royals allowed four runs Tuesday night. Fairly ordinary total, four runs. Not too few to score; not too many to allow. There were 16 games on Tuesday. In 13 of them, at least one team scored at least four runs. In two of them, both teams scored at least four runs. Four might be the least remarkable run total. But then, there’s a thing about these Royals. That was only the second time all month the Royals allowed more than three runs in a game. The other time, they allowed five. It’s been a good month for the Royals’ pitching staff, and so it’s been a good month for the Royals.

It was an impressive streak they put together. Between June 1 and June 14, the Royals played 13 games, never allowing four or more runs. In 2010, the Giants had such a streak of 18 games, but previous to that, you have to go back to the 2002 Diamondbacks to find a streak of at least equal length. Then you have to go back to the 1993 Braves. A few weeks ago, people wondered whether Ned Yost was on the hot seat. Now the Royals have pulled themselves back into the race, and they own the American League’s fourth-best run differential. Thanks in large part to their run prevention, the Royals presently have the look of a contender.

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During 2011 and 2012, Vinnie Pestano was one of those stud relievers who flew under the radar because he did not have the “closer” tag. Some probably noticed him, as he averaged almost 11 strikeouts per nine innings during those seasons, a 2.45 ERA, and did a nice job keeping the ball in the park. Some probably wondered if Pestano, rather than Chris Perez, should have been Cleveland’s closer.

Currently, Pestano is getting something of a shot with Perez on the disabled list for the last few weeks. Given that Perez is not exactly lighting it up in his AA rehab assignment (well, at least not lighting it up on the mound), Pestano may be needed in higher-leverage situations for a while longer. In the past, Pestano might have seemed a great candidate for that, but he is struggling this season. His 4.05 2013 ERA is not great for a reliever to begin with, but more troubling is his 5.30 FIP. Pestano has only had 20 innings of work, and we all know the mantras of reliever volatility, but there are some troubling indicators here.

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Matt Harvey didn’t throw a no-hitter against the Braves on Tuesday, but he did almost do that, not allowing a hit until the bottom of the seventh. It’s not that Harvey relied entirely on the strikeout — of the batters he faced, 13 didn’t whiff. But then, of the batters he faced, 13 did whiff, and Harvey’s season rate is verging on 30%. Matt Harvey was already good a year ago. Since then he’s only induced more grounders and cut his walk rate in half. Harvey, at this point, is in the argument for being the most valuable young pitcher in all of baseball.

Against the Braves, Harvey registered 15 swinging strikes on secondary stuff, which is outstanding. Yet he also picked up eight whiffs on his heater, which is kind of par for the Harvey course. No other starter’s fastball has led to so many swinging strikes, as Harvey can just be completely overwhelming. Instead of just using his fastball as a foundation, Harvey uses it also as a weapon, which is a rare gift. To have a swing-and-miss fastball is to have one hell of an advantage, and though fastballs tend to get slower over time, for now, at least, Harvey’s elite.

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After months of threats and saber-rattling, the City of San Jose sued Major League Baseball and its 30 constituent teams on Tuesday over MLB’s refusal to allow the Oakland A’s to move to San Jose.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in San Jose, is a direct challenge to MLB’s federal antitrust exemption. San Jose claims that MLB places unreasonable restrictions on competition by giving each team its own exclusive territory (or in the case of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, shared territory) and veto power to prevent any other team from moving into that territory. As I explained in this FanGraphs post last September, under MLB rules, a team can move into the territory of another team only when the following conditions are met: a vote of three-fourths of the owners approving the move; the two ballparks are located at least five miles apart; the move results in no more than two teams in a single territory; and the team moving compensates the team already in the territory.

In addition to the federal antitrust claims, San Jose also charged MLB with violations of California antitrust law and with state law claims for interference with prospective economic advantage based on San Jose’s agreement to allow the A’s to buy certain parcels of city land, if the A’s plan to move is approved by the league.

You can read the lawsuit in its entirety here.

San Jose is represented by Joe Cotchett and his law firm, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy. Cotchett is a nationally well-known and well-regarded attorney with experience in antitrust cases. In fact, Cotchett represented the National Football League and the (former) Los Angeles Rams when the Oakland Raiders sued the league for antitrust violations in 1982 when the league voted against allowing the Raiders to move to Los Angeles. The Raiders won that lawsuit, and paved the way for other professional sports franchises to move from city to city more easily.

Except, that is, in baseball.

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