Archive for Teams

With very rare exception, walks are bad, for the pitcher and for the pitcher’s team. Sometimes a pitcher will walk an opposing hitter on purpose, but sometimes that’s not even the right thing to do. Walks are just bad, as a general principle. But, of course, some walks are worse than others. There’s an entire spectrum, from okay walks to awful walks, from forgivable walks to unforgivable walks. It’s usually worse to walk a guy on four pitches, unintentionally. It’s usually worse to walk a guy with the bases loaded. It’s usually worse to walk an opposing pitcher, since pitchers are like the worst hitters ever. Now combine all three of those things.

It seems to me — and, upon checking, it seems to Dave Cameron — that the most unforgivable walk would be a four-pitch walk of the opposing pitcher with the bases loaded. Obviously, that’s something that wouldn’t happen very often, because you’re selecting for a few unlikely scenarios. But this past season, that happened two times. Two times, a pitcher was walked on four pitches to bring home a run. Once it even happened in a one-run game. Both times it happened, it happened in Arizona, in the Diamondbacks’ favor. We review, in no order. An order wouldn’t even really make sense. We’re reviewing two events. We have a list of two.

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Earlier this week I posted about the Best Bunts of 2012 according to Win Probability Added (WPA). Nothing like that is really complete, however, without talking about the worst. So here, divided into some rather arbitrary categories, are some of the worst bunts of 2012.

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Major League Baseball’s general managers are meeting in Palm Springs, Calif., this week, which kicks the Hot Stove burner from simmer to medium-low. The burner will turn to high next month at the Winter Meetings in Nashville.

Even on simmer, there is word from the Bronx that the Yankees won’t pursue “big time” — or even “less-than-big-time” — free agents this winter, despite rotation and outfield needs. We can debate whether to accept the “word from the Bronx” as true or just a negotiating ploy. What we do know is this: Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner has said repeatedly that he wants to bring the Yankees below the $189 million luxury tax threshold in 2014. Why? Well, that takes some explaining.

The luxury tax is a shorthand term for the Competitive Balance Tax provisions in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. It imposes a penalty on teams with player payrolls above a set threshold.  The tax is levied only on the portion of a team’s payroll that exceeds the predetermined amount. The luxury tax was first introduced in the 2003-2006 CBA and was designed to keep player payrolls from skyrocketing, without setting a hard salary cap.

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The Indians might be shopping some of their players. The newest rumor has the Red Sox interested in Shin-Soo Choo, whom the Indians have under team control for one more year of arbitration. Assuming the team won’t be in contention for the division title next year — they haven’t had a winning season since 2007 and, in related news, their starting staff has the second-worst FIP in the American League since that year — he seems to be an ideal player to trade away. Except for the fact that he owns a spotty track record and his value has been all over the place.

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Just last season, Maicer Izturis wrapped up a three-year, $10-million contract. On Thursday, Maicer Izturis signed a three-year, $9-million contract. There’s also a fourth-year option — worth $3 million — for one of the very newest Toronto Blue Jays. Maybe that isn’t enough of a hook. Maybe this will make for a better hook.

It’s the first multiyear contract that Anthopoulos has guaranteed to a free agent since becoming general manager in the fall of 2009. The biggest handout prior to Izturis occurred last offseason, when the Blue Jays signed lefty Darren Oliver to a one-year, $4.5 million deal.

Under Alex Anthopoulos, the Blue Jays’ biggest free-agent investments have been Darren Oliver and Maicer Izturis. Granted, free agency is not the only means by which one may construct a major-league roster. On the other hand, Darren Oliver and Maicer Izturis. This is one of those things that’s funny if you think about it for five seconds and a lot less funny if you think about it for five minutes.

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R.A. Dickey was just recently announced as a finalist for the 2012 National League Cy Young Award. Depending on who you ask, he might well be the favorite to win. R.A. Dickey was just earlier Thursday reported to be the subject of trade conversations. Joel Sherman talked about it, Ken Rosenthal talked about it, and others have talked about it. Right now team executives are all hanging out in the same place, and the Mets are gauging the trade value of maybe the league’s best starting pitcher. It probably goes without saying that this is an unusual situation.

For those who haven’t been following, what makes this more unusual is that there were just reports that the Mets and Dickey had made progress in contract extension negotiations. Dickey’s locked up for just one more year, and he’s interested in returning, while the Mets are interested in having him return. It’s all just a matter of price, as it pretty much always is. At present, Dickey wants more than the Mets are willing to give, which is obviously why they haven’t reached an agreement.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this before; the Diamondbacks are listening to offers for Justin Upton again. These aren’t even just courtesy phone calls to check in on his availability, or speculation from other teams about his availability – Kevin Towers flat out confirmed that he’s in trade negotiations with other teams about his star right fielder.

“I’m open-minded and I’m going to listen to what people have to say,” he said. “If a deal presents itself that makes the Diamondbacks better, I think I need to be open-minded. The last two years, there has not been a deal that we felt made us better. That’s why we’ve retained him and we’ve kept him.”

“He will not be an easy guy for us to move. I think we’ve said it’s probably unlikely we end up doing something with him, but if somebody is willing to step up and we think it’s a deal that’s going to make the Diamondbacks better next year and going forward, we’ll talk about trading him.”

When you keep making a player available every winter, the differentiation between “shopping” and “listening” becomes meaningless. And so, with Upton back on the market, the search for a logical trade partner has once again brought the Texas Rangers back into the rumor vortex.

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Earlier Wednesday, it was announced that Padres catcher Yasmani Grandal would be suspended 50 games for testing positive for testosterone. In the event that you don’t believe me for some reason, here’s Ken Rosenthal, and you probably believe Ken Rosenthal:

#Padres’ Grandal gets 50-game suspension for testing positive for testosterone. Not good for a team that needs all offense it can get.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 7, 2012

See? Literally the exact same thing. Previously the day had belonged to Jason Bay and Mark McGwire, but Grandal grabbed headlines like few Padres ever do.

The direct consequences are clear. The most direct consequence is that Grandal will be suspended for 50 games, instead of serving as the Padres’ regular catcher right out of the gate. That’s a full third of a season, for an important young player, and that could have a meaningful impact on the Padres’ final totals of wins and losses. Additionally, the Padres now have to wonder about what they might have in Grandal. Though he batted .297 last year in his first exposure to the majors with an .863 OPS, this positive test introduces question marks. Just as Melky Cabrera will have to prove himself all over again, Grandal will have to prove himself all over again.

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Apropos largely of nothing — except his notable performance, I suppose, in this past Saturday’s Arizona Fall League Rising Stars Game — I’ve dedicated considerable attention to Reds (now) outfield prospect Billy Hamilton in these electronic pages over the last 48 hours.

Hamilton, because he has a tool (in this case, speed) considered by many to be generational, has produced excitement among prospect analysts. In some cases, that excitement is analogous with optimism about Hamilton’s future as a major leaguer; in other cases, it’s more of an aesthetic judgment than any sort of projection about Hamilton’s career.

I wanted, briefly, to speak to the first point — and, specifically, to establish some sort of framework (however rough) for what speed is actually worth in terms of runs and wins.

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Everyone knows that bunting runners over is the key to scoring and winning baseball games! No, wait, it’s dumb, and should never be done! Okay, bunting is sometimes smart, sometimes not. Isn’t sabermetric analysis of strategy great?

Jokes and stereotypes aside, it does seem that discussion of the pros and cons of bunting around the nerd-o-sphere is more nuanced than it used to be. While the allegedly old-school first inning, runner-on-first auto-bunt has fallen out of favor, we also realize that bunting can make sense for a number of reasons in certain situations: keeping fielders honest, increasing run expectancy, and occasions where playing for one run makes sense. As yet another annual tradition, let’s check out some of the most successful bunts of the 2012 regular season as measured by Win Probability Added (WPA).

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