Archive for Teams

For the Mets, three years of Jason Bay was enough. This afternoon, they announced that they have agreed to part ways with Jason Bay, meaning he’s being released from his contract. Joel Sherman has the details.

Bay is getting all $21M he is owed, the $16M salary, the $3M buyout and the $2M left on a signing bonus. Some is being deferred #Mets

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) November 7, 2012

The Mets don’t get any financial relief in terms of actual payouts, but by deferring some portion of the money he was set to be paid in 2013, they can reduce the actual value of those payouts and create a little extra flexibility for this off-season. Because the Player’s Association has fought hard for guaranteed contracts, players are unlikely to accept contract buyouts, but this is probably the best result for both parties.

Now, Bay gets to pick his own landing spot for 2013, and he should pick an AL team that can give him some at-bats at DH in hopes of a rebound season. Bay was terrible last year, but he was an average-ish hitter as recently as 2011, and it wouldn’t take a large bounce back to make him a decent enough platoon DH for a team that already had a part-time left-handed bat in their starting DH spot.

At age 34, it’s also quite possible that Bay is just done, but at least now he gets a chance to save his career and get a fresh start in a new organization. And now Mets fans don’t have to watch him play anymore. Win-win, as they say.

Bully for the 2012 Detroit Tigers. While the Tigers fell a little shy of winning the World Series, they did manage to accomplish more than 28 other teams, and they got as far as they did in large part by riding their superstars. Justin Verlander, obviously, was the star of the pitching staff, and Max Scherzer and Doug Fister did more to get noticed as well. In the middle of the lineup were Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder, and in Year 1 of that arrangement, there’s no room for complaints. It was the fault of neither Cabrera nor Fielder that the Tigers finished four games short.

From the beginning, Cabrera and Fielder were regarded as the toughest back-to-back hitters in baseball. On 161 occasions, Miguel Cabrera batted third, and on all 162 occasions, Prince Fielder batted fourth. Cabrera finished tied for tops in baseball in wRC+. Fielder finished sixth, between Andrew McCutchen and Edwin Encarnacion. The 2012 Tigers had two of the top six hitters in baseball. The Brewers had a good tandem, and the Blue Jays had a good tandem until Jose Bautista got hurt, but the Tigers’ tandem was incredible.

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Extreme performances are exceptional performances, so it stands to reason that there are relatively few extreme performers. Granted, there are a lot of different ways in which one can be extreme or exceptional, but still, most players fall somewhere in the middle. It doesn’t make those players uninteresting on its own, but it also definitely doesn’t make those players more interesting. Extremes are interesting.

There are two Chris Youngs in baseball, and they’re independent of one another, linked only by profession and coincidence. Still, it’s fun to compare them on account of their names, and one notes that Outfielder Chris Young has a career 16.3 WAR, while Pitcher Chris Young has a career 16.3 RA9 WAR. It’s never been a secret that Pitcher Chris Young occupies an extreme. Two of them, in fact. Not only is Pitcher Chris Young extremely tall; he’s also extremely fly ball-prone. Since 2002, Young has posted the lowest groundball rate in baseball. I suppose one could argue Young is also extremely fragile.

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So much of what makes pitchers effective at the major league level is their ability to keep hitters off-balance. Sure, a 95 mph fastball with movement and a Lord Charles curveball help, but even these physical tools are only as effective as a pitcher’s ability to create uncertainly in the hitters mind from pitch to pitch.

One — admittedly crude — way of looking at this is whether a pitcher throws the type of pitch that’s expected in a given count. Does a pitcher throw fastballs in “fastball counts”, or do they throw off-speed pitches? Pitchers that throw counter to expectations are often said to “pitch backwards”. The Rays’ James Shields is someone that has been referenced as such a pitcher over the past few years.

But exactly how backwards does Shields pitch? And who are some other pitchers that fit into this category?

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Very late last week, another quality starting pitcher in Hisashi Iwakuma nearly entered the free-agent market. But very late last week, the Seattle Mariners decided “hey we need quality players on our team” and re-signed Iwakuma to a multi-year contract. It was a predictable move, and a sensible move; the Mariners needed a good starting pitcher, and Iwakuma had previously expressed a fondness for Seattle. The two sides reached an agreement right at the end of the exclusive negotiating window, and Iwakuma will end up with either $14 million over two years or $20 million over three years. For the Mariners, it’s a potential bargain, and for Iwakuma, it’s security and still a small fortune.

Now, as for the headline, in your case the answer might be “literally anything.” Iwakuma last year flew under the radar, because he pitched for a nothing team, and he didn’t actually start pitching regularly for a few months. For me, personally, Wei-Yin Chen is a blind spot. For a lot of other people, Hisashi Iwakuma might be a blind spot. I don’t know. One should first acknowledge that he was pretty good. Then there’s something else, something specific.

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You can’t talk about Major League Baseball’s financials these days without hearing about how much money is flowing into the sport. New television contracts are everywhere. MLB Advanced Media is one of the most valuable technology companies in the world. The Dodgers ownership group has their own printing press, apparently. Baseball is rolling in cash, and everyone involved with the sport is getting rich.

Except for Joel Peralta. If he pays attention to any of this stuff, he has to be wondering why his own personal experience is so different than everyone else’s.

In 2010, Joel Peralta threw 49 excellent innings for the Nationals, posting a 50/76/86 ERA-/FIP-/xFIP- line thanks to his excellent command of the strike zone. For his efforts, he was non-tendered, as the Nationals decided they didn’t want to give him a raise that a pitcher with those numbers would get in arbitration. The Rays eventually signed him for $925,000, or about $500K more than the league minimum.

Since joining the Rays, Peralta has thrown 135 innings, with his minus stats lining up nicely – 84 ERA-/83 FIP-/87 xFIP-. His fly ball tendencies finally turned into a small home run issue, but his ability to limit walks and rack up strikeouts allowed him to be a good reliever even while putting the ball in the air all the time. While there is understandable skepticism about putting homer prone pitchers in the game with one run leads, he has basically the same skillset as Huston Street, and he’s had no problems collecting big paychecks throughout the years.

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That’s right: end of the season, time for me to hand out awards based on semi-goofy. questionable stats. Along with the Carter-Batista Award, this is one of the first I started publishing.. In fact, my very first post at FanGraphs (three years this week! Time flies when you’re wasting it.) back in 2009 was a King of Little Things award presentation. You can also check out the 2010 and 2011 versions for the thrilling results. So which 2012 hitter contributed to most his teams wins in ways not measurable by traditional linear weights?

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Last week, the Angels shopped Dan Haren around the league, as it was common knowledge that they weren’t going to pick up his $15.5 million option for 2013, and were willing to trade him to a team that wanted to take a one year flier on a pitcher was among the game’s best as recently as 2011. Because they owed him a $3.5 million buyout, the marginal cost of acquiring Haren was really $12 million, the same amount that the Royals agreed to take on in acquiring Ervin Santana in the same style of trade.

While Santana found a new home, Haren did not, and after a deal with the Cubs fell through — after the Cubs supposedly pulled out of the trade — the Angels allowed Haren to become a free agent. So, now, he’s at the top of everyone’s free agent bargain list. And, given his skills and track record, the idea that a team could sign him for less than 1/12 seems to be a potentially huge bargain. But, given what transpired last week, we have to at least consider that perhaps Haren is more broken than is obvious from the outside.

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The trade and free agent markets are flush with competent centerfielders this offseason. While Josh Hamilton and Michael Bourn are the marquee free agents, the second, third and even fourth tiers of conceivably available centerfielders features players capable of starting for many teams.

B.J. Upton is the most frequently mentioned player after Hamilton and Bourn. Angel Pagan — perhaps the most underrated player in the game — has also garnered plenty of attention in recent weeks. Before getting traded to Oakland, Chris Young was gaining recognition as a potential trade target, and his arrival could put Coco Crisp back on the market. The Angels’ Peter Bourjos plays the position better than mostly everyone in baseball, but he’s blocked by perhaps the best player in the game. Shane Victorino presents an interesting case — as one of the best all-around players at the position — but one who is getting older and coming off of one of his worst seasons.

Denard Span isn’t discussed as much as a potential trade target, but he combines some of the best attributes of everyone mentioned above: He fields the position terrifically, he’s a very good baserunner, he has a high career walk rate and a wRC+ 5% better than the league. He’s also signed to a team-friendly contract.

There’s certainly risk in acquiring him — his health has been questionable during the last two seasons — and the Twins will surely look to bring back a significant haul. But he’s also an underrated player, and he represents the type of cost-effective option teams wary of the Hamilton’s, Bourn’s and Upton’s should seriously pursue.

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For a very long time, the Boston Red Sox were good. Great, even. Then, beginning around September 2011 or so, the Red Sox turned into a disaster. The Sox followed a poor end to the 2011 season with a poor all of the 2012 season, and it became somewhat conceivable that David Ortiz would look for a change. Ortiz was set to be a free agent after the year, and as hard as it is to imagine the Red Sox without him, maybe Ortiz would’ve been sick of the atmosphere. Just recently, Ken Rosenthal wrote that the Texas Rangers would have interest in Ortiz as a potential free-agent DH. It wasn’t impossible that Ortiz would go somewhere else, is the point.

But that’s not happening, as it turns out. Friday was the end of the exclusive negotiating window for teams and their free agents. Recently there were reports that Ortiz and the Red Sox were close to an agreement, then there were reports that Ortiz and the Red Sox weren’t really close to an agreement. But Friday, word’s out that an agreement is in place. David Ortiz is not hitting the open market — David Ortiz is staying in Boston.

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