Archive for Teams

When I originally published my findings around CLIFFORD — my metric for predicting players that are at a higher risk of experiencing a collapse in their wOBA (defined as a drop of at least .30 points of wOBA) — I presented a limited number of players for 2013. The list only included six players that qualified under the criteria. As a reminder, players that experienced a significant decline in three out of four metrics (Z-Contact%, FA%, UBR, Spd) were tagged as CLIFFORD candidates. These players had 3.4 times the odds of collapse (53% versus 25% for non-CLIFFORD players).

The single largest driver of collapse was change in Z-Contact% — the percent of pitches in the strike zone that a batter swings and makes contact with. Hitters who saw their Z-Contact% decline by at least 1.4% had 1.68 times the odds of collapsing than those that did not experience such a decline. Since there were far more players that qualified with their Z-Contact% than the full CLIFFORD criteria I thought it would be helpful to share that data with everyone.

Behold!

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From the esteemed Dan Hayes of CSN Chicago:

White Sox pitcher Chris Sale confirmed Tuesday his representatives have had discussions with the club about a contract extension.

(snip)

“We’ve been kind of back and forth but nothing too crazy right now,” Sale said Tuesday when asked about extension talks.

Think of the headline potential. “Sale Extended: Now Through 2018!” That is SEO gold right there.

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Already without Alex Rodriguez for an extended period of time, the Yankees have been given a double-whammy of unfortunate injury news still early in camp. Curtis Granderson got one of his bones broken, and he will be missing for several weeks. Now Mark Teixeira’s got one of his tendons bothered, and he will be missing for several weeks. For at least a little more than a month, the Yankees are going to have a lot of money and a lot of star power sitting helplessly on the disabled list. The Yankees still stand to contend in the American League East and the wild card race. Despite everything, now isn’t the time to abandon all hope. Nor is now the time to abandon all baseball hope as it pertains to the New York Yankees.

It would be easy to dismiss this as an argument that the Yankees are going to be okay because they’re the Yankees. Given how often the Yankees have wound up in the postseason, I understand the sentiment, but that isn’t the main point, here. The Yankees won’t be okay because they’re the Yankees — the Yankees look like they’ll be okay because they still have quality players, and neither Granderson nor Teixeira should be out all season long.

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The Yankees already had a damaged Alex Rodriguez. They already had a damaged Curtis Granderson. They already had a damaged Michael Pineda, and a damaged Phil Hughes, and a damaged general freaking manager. Now they get to deal with a damaged Mark Teixeira on top of everything else. The word:

The Yankees’ injury-riddled spring took another serious hit on Wednesday, as the team announced Gold Glove first baseman Mark Teixeira will miss eight to 10 weeks with a strained tendon in his right wrist.

Teixeira’s going to do nothing for four weeks, then he’ll begin rehabbing, provided everything has healed up. According to the timetable, Teixeira should return to the Yankees around the middle of May. In theory, he’ll be 100%, but this is a wrist injury, so it’s possible Teixeira could play with diminished power. No hitter ever wants a wrist injury. Actually no hitter ever wants an injury at all. Who would?

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Kyle Lohse is a free-agent starting pitcher, and the Texas Rangers are a good baseball team, so off and on there’s been talk about the Rangers potentially making an effort to sign Kyle Lohse. This has picked up in light of the recent Martin Perez injury, as Perez was the favorite to be the Rangers’ fifth starter. Lohse, though, remains unsigned, and it looks like the Rangers might be on the verge of going elsewhere for help:

Source: Rangers on verge of signing RHP Derek Lowe to minor league deal, but he will make club, probably in swing role. Story coming.

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) March 6, 2013

It’s not done, but it’s probably close, if this is the report. It makes a certain degree of sense, too — Lowe could offer short-term services to the rotation, and then get bumped upon the return of Perez or Colby Lewis. Lowe pitched out of the rotation and bullpen a year ago, and he’ll be a cheap investment for a team scared off by Lohse’s price tag. Lowe would cost the Rangers something in the low seven figures, most probably, with some incentives, most probably.

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Over much of the offseason, a lot was said about the Detroit Tigers heading into 2013 with Bruce Rondon slated to close. Rondon, 22, has a big fastball, and is a quality prospect. But it turns out there’s more to pitching than throwing really hard, and Rondon has limited experience in the upper minors and a demonstrated inability to throw strikes consistently, especially against left-handed hitters. Right now, in Tigers camp, Rondon is being given special instruction, and while there’s plenty of time in spring for him to right the ship, it’s looking less likely by the day that Rondon will close out of the gate. The Tigers want to go to the playoffs, see, and a shaky rookie closer isn’t going to help them if he’s sufficiently shaky.

Rumor has it the Tigers are exploring the current closer market. How important is a closer to the Tigers? On the one hand, closer Jose Valverde had some memorable meltdowns last October, nearly costing the Tigers their season. On the other hand, with Valverde, the Tigers won their division and advanced to the World Series before getting swept away by San Francisco. So Valverde didn’t bring everything down. But the Tigers want security — security in the person of not-Valverde, it turns out — and among the considered options, Rick Porcello makes for a curious one.

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It might be hard to believe this after Sergio Romo closed out the World Series and probably wrapped up the stopper role going forward for the Giants and Team Mexico, but there was a time when the prognosis for his career was much more negative. After all, he’s a small righty (five-foot-ten and a buck-eighty-five) with a fastball that doesn’t normally crack 90 miles per hour who throws his slider more than half of the time. Given what we might know about injuries and platoon splits, there was probably one role waiting for him in the bigs: ROOGY.

But Sergio Romo is not a Righty One-Out GuY. I asked him why.

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Who do you think is the slowest player in major league baseball? No fair guessing Bartolo Colon. Allow me to re-phrase. Who do you think is the slowest position player in major league baseball? You probably have a few names floating around in your mind. Many of them are probably catchers. I can tell you I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a worse runner than Jesus Montero. Montero wasn’t just slow, but his technique was so bad he had to spend the offseason learning how to run. Montero is a 23-year-old high-level professional athlete. That whole chapter was embarrassing. Maybe it’s still embarrassing; I haven’t seen the new, improved Montero in 2013.

Montero, then, is a candidate for MLB’s slowest player. So are other catchers, like Jose Molina. But allow me to direct your attention to Paul Konerko, who isn’t a catcher, but who is old and defensively unremarkable. Konerko has very quietly had an outstanding career, and Konerko has very quietly been perhaps the slowest player in the league. If he wasn’t the slowest player before, he certainly hasn’t gotten quicker with age.

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Wrigley Field is falling apart. The Ricketts family, which bought the Cubs for $845 million in 2009, has a plan to spend $300 million of their money to renovate the 98-year-old ballpark. There will be structural upgrades, improved clubhouses, new underground batting cages, upgraded luxury suites and club facilities, more and better concessions and restrooms, and a new patio area in left field to serve the new upper deck. The Cubs also want to add new LED signage and billboards in the outfield. The classic Wrigley look will remain the same: the brick, the marquee outside the ballpark, the ivy and the old scoreboard. Cubs blog Bleacher Nation has conceptual drawings, which you can view here.

The Rickettses are prepared to spend an additional $200 million to develop a hotel across the street from Wrigley, an office building and an open-air plaza to be used for neighborhood and family activities. The open-air plaza will be developed in a triangular-shaped plot just west of Wrigley on Waveland and Clark avenues.

Neither the Cubs nor the Ricketts family are asking for a dime of public money. Instead, they expect the renovation plan to add significantly to public coffers. Julian Green, the Cubs’ vice president of communications, has said 800 new construction jobs will be created to complete the project and 1,300 new permanent jobs will be created with the new hotel, the office building and the open-air plaza. Green also estimates that, once completed, the new Wrigley complex will generate an additional $12 million in sales and property taxes for Chicago — plus an additional $3 million in sales tax for Cook County and an additional $4 million in sales tax for the Illinois. Overall, Green said the renovation will result in an additional $1.2 billion in economic activity and taxes during a 30-year period.

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? A privately-funded stadium project that will benefit the city, county and state in the short and long term?

Not so fast.

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Not a whole lot of players were extended a qualifying offer at the end of last season. Those who were extended such offers were good baseball players, and Kyle Lohse was among them. Lohse is a good baseball player, and he turned down the offer, and he remains to this date a free agent. We’re at the point now where Lohse is waiting on a significant injury, because for months he’s been unable to find a new home. This despite the fact that Lohse is good at what he does, and is capable of helping a contender.

There was an injury to a contender over the weekend, when a player you might not have ever heard of broke Martin Perez’s arm with a line-drive comebacker. Perez was in the running to be the Rangers’ fifth starter, and many felt like he was out in the lead. Now the team hopes he’s back and ready to pitch in the majors around the beginning of May. That is, in other words, at least a lost month, and people are wondering whether the Rangers are now more likely to give in to what Lohse demands might exist.

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