Archive for Teams

Here on the site, we’re currently doing a series called the Positional Power Rankings, going through each team’s strengths and weaknesses at each spot on the field. Well, this is also a positional power ranking of sorts. The position is each team’s financial health. The ranking? More like placing the teams in tiers: the teams most constrained by their finances; the teams in the middle; and the most financially-successful teams.

We can’t get to the same level of precision on team finances because we have to rely on publicly-available information that we haven’t generated, and that publicly-available information lacks the kind of details we’d need to really flesh out the small differences between franchises in the same tiers. However, we do have enough information to paint with broad strokes, so as part of our attempt to give an overview of where each team stands as 2013 begins, we’ll look at their access to monetary resources for the upcoming season.

Today we begin our look at the financial health of all thirty major-league teams, starting with the bottom ten. Tomorrow we will look at the middle ten and on Friday the top ten. We will focus on ticket-generated revenue (attendance), local TV revenue, and player payroll. That leaves some holes, to be sure, particularly where team owners are carrying significant debt. Some of that information is publicly-available, but not all, and even the publicly-available information may not accurate or verifiable. This isn’t precise, but hopefully, it’s still informative.

With those caveats, let’s begin.

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I was just down in Arizona with a lot of the rest of the FanGraphs crew, and as such, I found myself involved in a number of baseball conversations, with people from the crew and with others as well. One of the many conversations turned to Jesus Montero as a defensive catcher. One person who covers baseball on a daily basis for a newspaper couldn’t believe that Montero managed to throw out Mike Trout as a would-be base-stealer. One respected baseball talent evaluator referred to Montero as perhaps the very worst defensive catcher in the majors. Immediately, I knew this would be something worth exploring in greater depth.

The newspaper guy actually made the mistake of saying Montero threw Trout out twice. That didn’t happen, but it did happen once; Miguel Olivo managed to throw Trout out twice. One other time, Trout stole successfully off Montero, meaning for the season Trout was 1-for-2 with Montero behind the plate. He was nabbed on October 3, in the final game of the regular season.

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If it seems like you’ve read dozens of articles about Aroldis Chapman potentially being a starting pitcher over the years, it’s only because you’ve missed hundreds more. This is an old topic, as is usually the case with relievers who appear to have the potential for more. The Reds invested a lot in Chapman when they first signed him, and as of 2012 he’s mastered the bullpen. Coming into 2013, Chapman was to move into the rotation, but now it’s a question again. Sometime within the next few days, the Reds hope to decide whether Chapman will open as a starter or a reliever. We’ve done this before, and we’re doing it again.

This has all come to a head once more because of something Chapman said over the weekend. From an AP article:

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In addition to scouting a trio of young Mariners pitching prospects, a number of top position prospects also made the trip to Goodyear Stadium.

Nick Franklin batted second and played shortstop alongside Brad Miller. Franklin struggled at the plate and in the field as he failed to make hard contact and booted two balls on the infield. Read the rest of this entry »

When arriving at Cleveland camp to scout future Indians, a trio of A-Ball infielders were tops on my list of “must see” players. Francisco Lindor, Dorssys Paulino and Ronny Rodriguez stretched and ran sprints on back fields and I was content to watch them doing morning drills.

Then, a conversation with volunteer field staff forced a change of plans.

In the “B-Game”, the Indians would be playing the Mariners. Out of curiosity, I hurried to the far field to see which Seattle prospects made the trip.

Taijuan Walker? Check.

James Paxton? Check.

Nick Franklin? Check.

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Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

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What’s all this, then? For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Third base is a little deeper than it used to be, and only a handful of teams have little to no hope of being productive at the position. The devil is in the details at the hot corner, as there has been very little turnover among the top 20 teams here. Teams that have quality reserves or prospects coming up the pipeline see a bump here, as we’re looking holistically at the position and not just at the nominal starter. This is an important consideration across the diamond, but particularly so at third given how physically demanding the position is. Only six third basemen suited up in 150 or more games last year. Compare that to 13 at second base and 11 at first base and shortstop, and it becomes clear that depth is important at third base. Unfortunately, most teams don’t have adequate depth, hence the bump for the teams that do.

Let’s get on to the rankings!

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Carlos Gomez will be a Brewer for another four years, it looks like.

With 3 year $24 million extension thru 2016 #Brewers have committed 4 years and $28.3 million to Carlos Gomez over next 4 seasons.

— Tom (@Haudricourt) March 13, 2013

There aren’t many players that fit his contract situation perfectly — Gomez is being extended for three years with one year of arbitration left, and not at a superstar rate — but we can talk about him as a player and whether or not the Brewers will remember this deal fondly anyway.

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Bill James headlined the second annual SABR Analytics Conference in Phoenix last weekend. Brian Kenny from MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential acted as a roving emcee of sorts.  Joe Posnanski was there. Rob Neyer was there. And our own Dave Cameron and David Appelman were there. The three days of sessions led to lively discussions about WAR and knuckleball academies and the mythical analytics-scouting divide.

But this year’s conference wasn’t limited to questions about how best to measure and project on-the-field performance. Analytics have moved to the business side of the front office. And it’s your off-the-field performance in watching, listening to, and attending ballgames that is now the subject of intense study. Sports marketing isn’t new but the techniques used to measure fans, create new ones, and motivate both groups to purchase tickets and merchandise have become much more sophisiticated.

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Begin with the principle that spring-training stats are meaningless. Use that as your rule of thumb and far more often than not, you’ll end up in the right. Player X mashes a dozen dingers before the end of camp. It’s probably meaningless. Pitcher Y finishes with an unheard-of strikeout-to-walk ratio. It’s probably meaningless. Team Z ends up with a really good or really bad record. It’s probably meaningless. We know this. If you’re reading FanGraphs, you know this. People try to tease meaning out of spring-training statistics, but the meaning is almost impossible to find.

Still, we talk about spring-training statistics, mostly because they’re our first new statistics after months of desolation. By and large we can’t help ourselves, and we trick ourselves into believing we’re better than we are at separating signal from noise. We look for numbers that seem to be out of character. We consider other factors that might give numbers more substance. I turn your attention now to Rick Porcello.

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It’s safe to say there’s general acceptance that using a small sample in data sets has the potential to result in spurious correlations or unreliable conclusions. Yet every Spring, there’s a long list of reclamation projects who will no doubt be judged on a very small sample size of data. Just ask Kelvim Escobar who found himself looking for a new team after two-thirds of a Spring inning, perhaps setting a new standard for small sample size decisions. There’s just not a lot of time for pitchers to demonstrate they can rediscover their velocity, recapture their control, or that they have discovered the fountain of youth. I’m sure Jon Garland can relate.

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