Archive for Teams

Big news everyone – Justin Upton is still on the trade block. He has been for about three years now, and he will continue to be until he is mercifully traded to a team that wants him more than Arizona seems to. With yesterday’s reports about Upton’s availability, more than a few people on Twitter asked me about Upton’s home/road splits, and whether or not we should expect him to regress significantly if he’s traded to a less hitter friendly ballpark. In case you haven’t seen them, Upton has enormous home/road splits, and it’s a career trend, not just a one year blip.

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J.T. Chargois and Adam Walker are both players I saw as amateurs in 2012, they both went in the top 100 picks to the Twins and both have interesting tools that had evolved by the time I saw them in instructs. Chargois is a right-handed reliever out of Rice that was a 2nd round pick (72nd overall) and signed for slot, just over $700,000. Walker is an outfielder from Jacksonville University that went in the 3rd round (97th overall) and signed for slot just under $500,000.

I saw Chargois late in the amateur season, shutting down UCF in series that decided the conference championship. He worked at 91-94, touching 95 mph with an above-average changeup that flashed plus and an inconsistent 79-82 mph curveball with three-quarter tilt that was above average at times. Scouts that saw him earlier in the season told me they saw a plus breaking ball and that the changeup was a third pitch, so when you put those two accounts together, you can see what got the Twins excited.

Despite having three above average pitches, Chargois isn’t really a starting option. He was primarily a hitter his first two year at Rice and has an athletic cut from both sides with average raw power. Beyond his lack of experience, Chargois has effort in his delivery and while he’s got a chance to have average command, he is more of a thrower than pitcher.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, will be released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Astros / Athletics / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Rangers.

Batters
The Cubs are projected by ZiPS to have, in shortstop Starlin Castro and first baseman Anthony Rizzo, to have a pair of basically All Star-type players who are also just 23 years old. Those are good kinds of players to have — especially for a team that isn’t likely to be very competitive this season, but has the resources to invest in free agents if and when such a thing is called for in the near future.

The rest of the starting lineup — besides human-shaped albatross Alfonso Soriano, that is — is a combination of decent organizational products (Darwin Barney, Wellington Castillo) and low-risk free agents (David DeJesus, Nate Schierholtz) acquired since the arrival of Theo Epstein et al.

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Brad Lidge is 36 years old. In December, when he was still 35, he announced his retirement from professional baseball. He hadn’t been much of a factor since 2010, so in that sense it felt inevitable that Lidge would hang them up. In discussing Lidge’s career, Mike Axisa wrote up the memorable moment that was Albert Pujols taking Lidge deep. Below, in the comments section of that post, some Phillies fans chimed in to say they most remember Lidge for completing the 2008 World Series. Me, I find both of those to be memorable moments, and when it comes to most memorable, that’s entirely subjective. But when I think of Brad Lidge, I don’t think first of Albert Pujols, nor do I think first of Eric Hinske. I don’t think of any one particular moment. I think of the whole sequence of moments that was Lidge’s 2004 season with the Astros.

Craig Kimbrel is coming off an impossible season with the Braves, in which he struck out more than half of the batters he faced. Opposing batters made some sort of contact 61% of the time that they swung. Aroldis Chapman, too, was incredible with the Reds, collecting 122 strikeouts. Opposing batters made some sort of contact 62% of the time that they swung. Going further back now, Eric Gagne was downright unfair as a Dodger in 2003. He won the National League Cy Young, and opposing batters made some sort of contact 56% of the time that they swung.

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With the move of the Houston Astros to the American League, and the unfortunate fact that both leagues will have an uneven number of teams, interleague play is destined to change this year. As cross-platform play goes from something that happens in the middle of June, once a year, like some sort of strange exhibition mini-season, to something that happens every week, the National League will have to re-evaluate their past strategies for American League parks.

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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Even More Javier Vazquez Baseball Coverage, Crazy!
2. Action GIF: Javier Vazquez’s Curveball
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Puerto Rican League

Even More Javier Vazquez Baseball Coverage, Crazy!
Since last week’s update of the Puerto Rican League leaderboards, former major-league pitcher and potentially-again major-league pitcher Javier Vazquez has made another start (his fifth) for the Leones of Ponce — in which start Vazquez posted the following line (box): 6.0 IP, 25 TBF 7 K, 3 BB, 1 HR, 4:6 GO:AO. The performance further increased the right-hander’s lead over the league’s other starting pitchers, per the regressed pitching metric SCOUT- (below).

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Armed with a new measure for offensive volatility (VOL), I wanted to revisit research I conducted  last year about the value of a consistent offense.

In general, the literature has suggested if you’re comparing two similar offenses, the more consistent offense is preferable throughout the season. The reason has to do with the potential advantages a team can gain when they don’t “waste runs” in blow-out victories. The more evenly a team can distribute their runs, the better than chances of winning more games.

I decided to take my new volatility (VOL) metric and apply it to team-level offense to see if it conformed to this general consensus*.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, will be released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the very newest addition to the American League, the Houston Astros. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Athletics / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Rangers.

Batters
It’s good news for Houston that young third baseman Matt Dominguez — acquired last July in a deal with Miami for Carlos Lee — that Dominguez is projected to post a roughly league-average WAR in 2013. What’s less good news for Houston is that Dominguez is projected to be the second-best player on the team — after Jose Altuve, that is.

Of note regarding Houston’s forecasts is this: there are a number of starters (or two, at least) whose plate-appearance projections are rather low. Shortstop Jed Lowrie (332 PA) and center fielder Justin Maxwell (358 PA), for example, could conceivably produce almost twice as many wins, were they to play something closer to full-time.

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People have expected big things from Freddie Freeman. I know this because Freeman is a professional baseball player, and all of those guys — each and every last one of them — was at one point considered a future star. The backup catcher, the disappointing first baseman, the 36-year-old in triple-A — former superstars, somewhere, thought to have the brightest of futures. Sometimes they fulfill their promise and most of the times they do not.

I know this also because, among professional baseball players, Freeman was and still is highly regarded. He was drafted 78th overall in 2007, two picks after Giancarlo Stanton, and before 2009 he cracked Baseball America’s top-100 list of prospects. Before 2010, he cracked the top-40; before 2011, he cracked the top-20. Freeman debuted in the majors before he turned 21, and he was established as a regular before he turned 22. Players who do that often become good players, relative to the other players, and unbelievably, inconceivably great players, relative to us.

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We begin.

Brett Myers is on the Indians now

On a one-year contract, with a second-year club option. The whole deal is said to be worth $7 million, and Myers will go back to starting after spending all of 2012 in the bullpen. In two bullpens, as it were. Myers has done this before, as he was basically a full-time reliever in 2007, and then a starter between 2008-2011. If the Indians turn out to not like Myers as a starter, they can move him back to relief — he’s their player, after all, and he’s demonstrated his versatility — but he’s a starter first. And the Indians’ top starter is arguably Justin Masterson or Zach McAllister, so, yeah. There’s a need.

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