Archive for Teams

In at least one way, Kevin Youkilis is a perfect fit for the Yankees. They’re trying to stay under the luxury tax threshold in 2014 in order to reset their tax rate and there aren’t many other third basemen willing to take one-year deals on the market. Beats trying to coax Chipper Jones out of retirement, probably, and Youkilis has retained enough of his skill to be an asset, even coming off his worst year.

In at least one other way, Youkilis is less than an ideal fit.

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After the Marlins and the Blue Jays swung that gigantic trade some time back, I found myself researching something with regard to Emilio Bonifacio, since if there was one thing people wanted to read about after that trade, it was Emilio Bonifacio. My research led me somewhere, but it didn’t lead me where I wanted — it led me to Willy Taveras, and I couldn’t think of any reason to write a FanGraphs post about Willy Taveras. The guy hadn’t played in the majors since 2010. The guy didn’t play pro ball anywhere in 2012. Nothing was groundbreaking, and everything was abandoned.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found out today the Royals had signed Taveras to a contract. It’s only a minor-league contract, but it comes with a spring-training invite, which means Willy Taveras might be back. He is, at least, back on the big-league radar. Here, now, is the rest of a post about Willy Taveras. Because to my knowledge, the Indians and Reds haven’t yet completed a Shin-Soo Choo pseudo-blockbuster.

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Somehow, Shin-Soo Choo has yet to make an All-Star Game. The 2009 and 2010 seasons saw him as the fourth-best outfielder in the game by both WAR (11.2, behind Carl Crawford, Ben Zobrist, and Matt Holliday) and wRC+ (139; behind Holliday, Jose Bautista, Ryan Braun).

But an injury-racked and ineffective 2011 — .259/.344/.390 in 85 games — was just part of a disappointing Indians campaign. Choo hit a sharp .283/.373/.441 in a rebound 2012, but at 30 years old, his fielding skills may be declining and he’s projected to earn $7.6 million in his final arbitration season according to Matt Swartz at MLB Trade Rumors. A 68-win season for Cleveland in 2012 has left Choo squarely on the trade block.

It appears the Indians have found a taker in Cincinnati — Danny Knobler of CBSSports.com reported the Indians are in talks to acquire center fielder Drew Stubbs and shortstop prospect Didi Gregorius from the Reds.

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In the wake of the Kansas City and Tampa Bay trade from Sunday night, many have speculated upon — and Jeff Sullivan has considered with something not unlike aplomb — how Wade Davis might perform in his return to the starting rotation (i.e. the role he’s likely to assume with the Royals). As Sullivan notes, Davis was a not particularly excellent starter from 2009 to 2011. Then, he (i.e. Davis, not Sullivan) was a considerably above-average reliever in 2012. One is compelled to wonder, naturally, if Davis learned something from his year as a reliever that will aid him as a starter — or, alternatively, if he was merely benefiting from the sort of improvement one sees while working out of the bullpen.

That, as I say, is something a person would wonder. It is not, however, my ambition to meditate on that question at the moment. One reason is because Sullivan mostly did that. A second reason is because the answer (see: “we don’t know”) merits only so much attention.

Instead, what I’d like to examine here — with the aid of, like, 10 or 50 animated GIFs — is what Davis’s likely ceiling is. What, in other words, does Wade Davis look like — and what, in particular, does his repertoire look like — when he is being the best possible Wade Davis.

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The Tampa Bay Rays may be great at pitching and defense, but they do not score many runs… Right? MLB Trade Rumors thinks so:

The Rays could address multiple needs by dealing a top-of-the-rotation starter. Their offense ranked 18th in MLB in runs scored, so there’s clearly room for improvement.

-Ben Nicholson-Smith, 10/31/12

ESPN suggested just as much:

…[Justin] Upton would give Rays a badly needed presence in the middle of their lineup.

-Buster Olney, 11/11/12

And even in the sabermetric sphere, we tend to hold that axiom:

Alas, the Rays’ hitting was an entirely different story, as they finished just 11th in the league in scoring. Yes, they certainly were undone by crummy luck in close games. But the crummy luck might have gone largely unnoticed if the Rays had scored 30 or 40 more runs.

-Rob Neyer, 10/27/12

But the consensus does not gel with the very leaderboards that ranked them the No. 8 MLB offense in 2012, according to wRC+. The disconnect between popular perception and the reality of their past and future production comes from two key sources: (1) Three especially cold months of run production in 2012 and (2) the under-appreciated pitcher’s haven, Tropicana Field.
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Episode 285
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron analyzes all baseball — and, in particular, the part of baseball concerning the James Shields-for-Wil Myers (etc.) trade. Also: the Dodgers. Also-also: how the guest refuses to read the host’s work even once.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min play time.)

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On Saturday, the Los Angeles Dodgers gave one of the biggest contracts in baseball history to Zack Greinke. On Sunday, the Dodgers gave a big contract to Ryu Hyun-Jin, who has never before pitched in the majors. The Dodgers still might not even be done, and neither of the moves this weekend came as a surprise, because as we’ve established, the Dodgers have all of the money. The Dodgers have money and a baseball team, so it only makes sense that they would spend liberally to improve the baseball team. These Dodgers aren’t your daddy’s Dodgers. These Dodgers are your older brother’s Yankees.

As the Yankees have made a goal of exhibiting financial restraint, the Dodgers have been like “**** that” and they’re prepared to enter 2013 with the highest payroll that baseball’s ever seen. It was not very long ago that the Dodgers were bankrupt. Then there was the Hanley Ramirez trade. Remember the Hanley Ramirez trade? Then Brandon League, and Shane Victorino, and Joe Blanton, and acquiring the Red Sox. Then Greinke. Then Ryu Hyun-Jin. Yasiel Puig was in there somewhere. So was an Andre Ethier extension. Of course, like everyone else, the Dodgers have their limits, but we’ve been given no indication that the limits are being approached.

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One move over the weekend is getting all the negative attention today, but there was another big acquisition that might have an even slimmer chance of working out for the organization in question: The Dodgers signed Korean lefty Ryu Hyun-Jin to a six-year, $36-million contract. When added to his $25.7 million posting fee, that outlay means that the Dodgers are locked into more than $60 million for a pitcher that hasn’t yet touched the minor leagues. That’s starter money, and it’s unclear that Ryu is a lock to be a starter. But, yah, it’s only money… right?

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Were you to read FanGraphs, and only FanGraphs, you might be led to believe there’s only one opinion one might have on Sunday’s trade between the Rays and the Royals. And that one opinion would be “that’s a bad trade, for the Royals.” Indeed, many feel that way, but many also do not feel that way, for reasons I won’t bother to get into. Those people don’t write here. While there’s a spectrum of thought on the deal, though, there’s one thing all opinions have in common: Wade Davis is kind of the forgotten guy. James Shields is the rotation ace the Royals were after. Wil Myers is maybe the top hitting prospect in baseball, and the other prospects are other prospects. But Davis is in there, and the Royals have plans for him. Big plans. Starting plans!

In 2012, Davis lost a spring-training rotation battle to Jeff Niemann, and shifted to relief. As a reliever, Davis came to excel, but all along there was talk the Rays still saw him as a starter long-term. Now Royals property, it appears as if Davis will be looked at as a starter. The Royals’ press release announcing the trade, at least, referred to Davis as a starter. This is a re-conversion that’s probably worth exploring.

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The Blue Jays took a unique approach to the new draft slots this year, spending almost all of their top 10 rounds bonus allotment on their 7 picks in the top 3 rounds, then spending no more than $5,000 each on players selected in rounds 4-10. I’ve already covered Marcus Stroman and Matt Smoral, the top two pitchers the Jays drafted in 2012, but they also selected hurlers in the supplemental first round (Tyler Gonzales) and the second round (Chase DeJong).

Gonzales is a 6’2, 170 pound righty out of a San Antonio area high school that signed for $750,000. He’s got a cleaner delivery than DeJong due to his more compact frame and the fact that he’s nearly a year older, turning 19 before his senior season started. Gonzales has a thin and long-limbed frame with some projection but his stature limits how much you can dream on him. Gonzales has an elbowy, clean arm action with a slight wrist cock early in the stroke and his throwing and lead elbows get higher than you’d like to see before foot strike. It isn’t a red flag, but with pitching prospects, there is so much attrition and uncertainty, you’d like everything to be as clean as possible to increase your odds of success.

Gonzales sat 91-93 in the outing I saw, with occasional run to his arm side and cut to his glove side helped by a slight crossfire in his delivery, but normally he throws pretty straight four-seam fastball. He compliments his heater with a slider at 83-85 mph that, at its best, had 11-to-5 tilt, depth and hard late bite for above average potential. Early on especially, Gonzales would get around the pitch and it would flatten out with three-quarters tilt, an occasional loop and frequently would leave it out wide to his arm side. He didn’t have great feel for his off-speed pitches in this outing and scouts relayed that they had seen his slider better in other outings, so there may be some room for growth from what I saw out of his slider.

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