Archive for Teams

Episode 277
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron analyzes all baseball — and, in particular, the part of baseball concerning how the Marlins have made a mistake by abandoning all hope so far as the 2013 season is concerned. Also: both guest and host make multiple unsubstantiated claims regarding the art world. Also-also: Your 2013 Blue Jays, Toronto.

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 29 min play time.)

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Spend a little while thinking about Tyler Colvin. Since you’re all FanGraphs readers, I’m going to assume that you’re at least somewhat familiar with who he is. That is, if you think about the things you know about Tyler Colvin, number one is that you know he’s a major-league baseball player. You probably have a good idea that he played for the Cubs, and plays for the Rockies. You’ll probably recall that he was nearly killed on a baseball field by a flying and stabby shard of a bat. But whether you know the bare minimum about Tyler Colvin, or whether he’s your favorite player ever, he did something in 2012 you likely didn’t realize. Or at least, things happened in 2012 involving Tyler Colvin you likely didn’t realize.

Colvin, this year, was one of few things about the Rockies that wasn’t a disappointment. He played in a whole lot of games and slugged .531, with a 117 wRC+. Though he didn’t walk and though he did strike out, he still managed to produce, even after you adjust for the ballpark insanity. Officially, he reached base 122 times on hits. Officially, he reached base 21 times on walks, and another two times on hit-by-pitches. Yet these were not the only times that Tyler Colvin reached base, and everyone was safe.

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I recently attended scout day for the University of Florida and while the Gators still have a lot of talent on campus, they lost some major talent in the 2012 draft. Between departing upperclassmen and recruits that signed out of high school, the Gators lost 11 players in the top three rounds of the draft (Michael Zunino, Lance McCullers, Lewis Brinson, Brian Johnson, Nolan Fontana, Jesse Winker, Max White, Steven Rodriguez, Austin Maddox, Avery Romero, Jonathan Sandfort) along with two top notch college players that received six figure bonuses (Preston Tucker, Hudson Randall) and two solid senior signs (Daniel Pigott, Greg Larson).

Even with all that talent departing or not making it to campus, Florida has two potential high first round picks in their Friday and Saturday starters, junior right-handers Jonathon Crawford and Karsten Whitson. Depending on the schedules of Ole Miss righty Bobby Wahl and Arkansas righty Ryne Stanek, the scout day intersquad matchup of Crawford and Whitson may end up being the best pitching matchup in the SEC this season.

Crawford came out of nowhere last season hitting 98 mph often and flashing a plus slider while he slowly integrated a changeup as the season wore on. All systems were go in his two-inning outing, as all three pitches and his location were crisp. Crawford sat 92-94, hitting 95 with above-average two-seam life, backing it up with an 84-86 mph slider with three-quarter break and sharp, late darting action, flashing 65 potential (on the 20-80 scouting scale). His 84-86 mph changeup has improved and turned over consistently, flashing plus potential to give Crawford three plus pitches, among the best stuff in the draft class.

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The Red Sox organization has been known in recent years for having great, homegrown talent, along with a minor league pipeline which flows freely to Boston. When Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz are developed from within, it’s impossible to blame fans for having that perception. However, my reality is the Red Sox prospects scouted in Greenville over the past few years have become less and less exciting to discuss with prospect followers and Red Sox fans alike.

Case-in-point Garin Cecchini, the fifth best prospect in the entire organization per Marc Hulet. In 2009, the young third baseman might have been the fifth best prospect on a Greenville team featuring Casey Kelly, Anthony Rizzo, Will Middlebrooks and Ryan Lavarnway. With the Red Sox reputation for churning out big league talent, Cecchini’s high ranking might have prospect followers expecting him to become an impact talent. Unfortunately, I don’t think he is.

Video after the jump

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News Corporation is reportedly set to buy a 49 percent stake in the YES Network and it may be a hedge against losing its local TV contract with the Dodgers.

The YES Network broadcasts Yankee games and a full slate of Yankees-related programming. It is also the broadcast home of the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA. YES is considered the most successful and profitable regional sports network in the country.

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that News Corp. is close to acquiring a 49 percent share of YES, which has been valued for purposes of the transaction at $3 billion. A 49 percent share, then, will cost News Corp. $1.47 billion. Until now, shares in YES were divided among the Yankees (34 percent), investment banks Goldman Sachs and Provident Equity (40 percent) and a group of former Nets owners (26 percent). The deal includes an option for News Corp. to increase its stake to 80 percent within five years.

News Corp. is the parent company of Fox Sports, which owns 19 regional sports networks around the country. One of those regional sports networks is Fox Sports West, the current broadcast partner to both the Angels and the Dodgers. Last December, the Angels hit gold when they signed a new, 17-year contract with Fox Sports West valued at more than $2.5 billion. That deal gave the Angels tremendous financial flexibility when approaching the free-agent market. The result? A  10-year/$240 million contract for Albert Pujols and a 5-year/$77.5 million contract for CJ Wilson.

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Episode 276
Prospect analyst Marc Hulet discusses his first four organizational top-15 prospect lists for the 2012-13 offseason, with particular attention to Daniel Vogelbach (Cubs), Dillon Maples (also Cubs), Matt Szczur (also-also Cubs), and Garin Cecchini (Red Sox). Additionally, Hulet previews his Astros top-15 list (with specific notes on George Springer and Nolan Fontana) — and shares some material/analysis that’s frigging exclusive (!) to FanGraphs Audio.

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 47 min play time.)

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During the 2012 regular season, Blue Jays outfielders combined to be worth 4.6 WAR, which was tied for the sixth-lowest total in baseball. Nearly all of that came from Jose Bautista, who was terrific and then injured. The Blue Jays have some young and talented outfielders in-house, and if they were rebuilding, they might guarantee those players some time. But this week’s mega-trade with the Marlins signaled that the Blue Jays would like to win “sooner” instead of “eventually”, so now they’re going to guarantee some time to Melky Cabrera.

On Friday, the Jays signed Cabrera to a two-year contract worth $16 million, according to Enrique Rojas and later confirmed by others. The deal is not yet official — just like Toronto’s other big deal — but there’s little reason to believe it won’t become official after Cabrera’s physical, so now we analyze.

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Technically, or literally, the year’s longest plate appearance was probably this one, in which a visiting Miguel Cabrera insisted upon the re-drawing of the batter’s boxes. The discussions and subsequent work by the groundskeepers caused something like a nine-minute delay before Cabrera flew out on the very next pitch. So that’s one way of looking at this, but that’s probably the most annoying way of looking at this. Let’s look at this in a more standard way.

On May 12, 2004, Alex Cora batted against Matt Clement in the bottom of the seventh in Los Angeles. The first pitch was a ball, the second pitch was a strike, the third pitch was a ball, and the fourth pitch was a strike. The next 14 pitches were also all strikes, and the 18-pitch at-bat culminated in an Alex Cora home run. Even though video highlights are no longer widely available — I remember first seeing this on RealPlayer — this at-bat has stuck with me ever since. Sometimes I forget the number of pitches, but I always remember Alex Cora, Matt Clement, a long at-bat, and a home run.

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It has been a fun and exciting week of awards and the debates around them. Now it is time to get serious. We have just finished celebrating the best players of the 2012 season, whether or not one agrees with those officially recognized as such. Snarky jerks (present writer very much included) have had fun at the expense of the worst. Only one task remains: acknowledging those in the middle, the most average position players of 2012. One might think this is no big deal. I disagree. Isn’t the bulls-eye right in the middle of the target?

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I’m not overly interested in MVP postmortems. I’m happy it’s over, and we can move on to other things. But, yesterday’s results have inspired me to do one final post attempting to help a center fielder get the recognition he deserves for his 2012 season. And that center fielder is Austin Jackson.

24 different players were named on the 28 AL MVP ballots. Austin Jackson was not among those 24 players. Not a single writer saw fit to even throw him a 10th place bone. Seven writers found room for Alex Rios. Four found room for Jim Johnson. One found room for Raul Ibanez, which… you know, let’s just move on. But no one jotted Austin Jackson’s name down even once, even though he was quite clearly one of the 10 best players in the American League this year, no matter what way you choose to view baseball.

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