Archive for Teams

Entering the 2012 season, Red Sox prospect Keury De La Cruz was a relative unknown after two years of modest production in short season baseball. At 20, De La Cruz burst onto the prospect scene by posting a .308/.352/.536 line in the South Atlantic League before earning a late season promotion. Is De La Cruz a legitimate prospect? Sure, but the amount of hype he has received due to coming out of nowhere is a phenomenon repeated every winter. The names change, but the excitement… and eventual let down… is the same.

Just last winter, fellow Red Sox Brandon Jacobs posted nearly identical numbers at the same age in Greenville. That success earned him multiple top-100 rankings highlighted by his being named the 46th best prospect on Baseball Prospectus’ top-101 prospects list. This isn’t to say Jacobs did not earn those lofty rankings. He did, and was one of my favorite bat first prospects in 2011. However, the hangover from his 2011 success was a nasty one as slightly above average production at the High-A level has caused his prospect stock to crater — Probably unfairly as he battled injuries in 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

Back on October 1st, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported the Pirates may not tender a contract to Jeff Karstens despite his success in limited action this season. The 30-year-old posted a 3.97 ERA and 3.32 FIP, including an impressive 4.40 K/BB (a career high by nearly a point and a half). But he only made 15 starts and threw just 90.2 innings. He has yet to throw more than 162.1 innings in a season, leading to durability questions:

“He’s doing everything he can to get the best out of his abilities,” [GM Neal] Huntington said. “Unfortunately at times, his body lets him down, and it’s been various body parts.”

Considering the Pirates will have to pay Karstens somewhere around $5 million — he made $3.1 million in his second arbitration season last year — it isn’t surprising nor irrational to see the club mulling nontendering him. Despite his success last season, he doesn’t have a good history — just a 4.44 ERA and 4.55 FIP in 592.1 career innings — and the Pirates are in their usual payroll crunch thanks to the small market.

Most seasons, it probably wouldn’t be worth paying much mind to this situation. But a look at this year’s dreadful free agent class suggests otherwise.

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Episode 267
Grant Brisbee is the talented editor of SB Nation’s San Francisco Giants blog McCovey Chronicles and a contributor to SBN’s main baseball page Baseball Nation.

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 1 hr 15 min play time.)

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It’s decision time for the Los Angeles Angels. It’s decision time for everybody, but the Angels are a part of everybody, and like everybody else, they’re trying to figure out what their 2013 big-league roster might look like. They just traded Ervin Santana to the Royals. They were going to decline his option, and this way they effectively declined his option and also added a potential reliever. Now the Angels have to figure out what they’re doing with Dan Haren and Torii Hunter. A Haren decision in particular will have to be made quickly.

The Angels have until tomorrow to decide whether to pick up Haren’s $15.5 million 2013 option, or whether to buy it out for $3.5 million. Thus the Angels have until tomorrow to decide whether Dan Haren is worth $12 million over one year. From many reports, the Angels are currently trying to trade Haren, just as they did with Santana. Doing so would free up money for Zack Greinke, who is supposedly the Angels’ top offseason priority.

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With the final pitch of this past world series in the book, we now have two iconic series-ending takes in recent memory. Miguel Cabrera was frozen by a Sergio Romo fastball when he was perhaps thinking slider, and Carlos Beltran famously flinched at an Adam Wainwright curveball in game seven of the 2006 NLCS.

Of course that’s just two data points, connected only tenuously by situation (last out) and outcome (strike three taken), but it is enough to spawn a digression. Even if it would be kind of crazy to find out that batters swing less often as your average game progresses based on this starting point, crazier things have been born of less consequential moments.

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Four years ago, Joey Devine was a sensation with the Oakland Athletics. The 24-year-old rookie torched the American League for 45.2 innings, allowing just three earned runs to cross the plate in his 42 appearances.

In professional baseball history, there have been 24,553 pitcher seasons with at least 40 innings thrown. In 1911, Buck O’Brien of the Boston Red Sox set an ERA- record that has never been broken. He allowed two earned runs in five complete game starts (covering 47.2 innings, even), enough for an 11 ERA-. Many have come close, but none closer than Devine in 2008 — his 0.59 ERA translates to a 14 ERA-, the second-best mark in history.

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Earlier this week, the great NPB prospect maven, Patrick Newman, ran down a list of the 2013 NPB free agents of interest. He identifies five free agents as likely candidates for impact in the MLB:

1. RP Kyuji Fujikawa
2. SS Hiroyuki Nakajima
3. SS Takashi Toritani
4. 2B Kensuke Tanaka
5. RP Hideki Okajima (who is poised for his second tour of MLB duty)

Newman — a Japanese speaker and a far more qualified scout — offers about the best scouting and contract analysis for which one could ask. But today, let us study the coin’s tail and examine the stats of these players in context with their leagues.

NOTE: My wOBA+, FIP+ and BABIP+ calculations are league adjusted only, not park adjusted.

RP Kyuji Fujikawa
Newman calls Fujikawa, rightly, the head of the class. I have previously examined Fujikawa’s impressive numbers and prognosticated on how his numbers would transition in the MLB. My conclusion, based on his numbers, is that he could easily be a high-leverage reliever in the MLB, starting on day one:

Two of the last three seasons have not been particularly his best years, but even at his worst, Fujikawa is an excellent NPB pitcher. I think we can expect anything from 70 FIP- to 90 FIP- from him in the MLB — at least for a season or two.

SS Hiroyuki Nakajima
I have written about Nakajima on several occasions (when the Yankees paid his posting fee, when the Yankees looked like they might execute a sign-and-trade, and when he put up another great year in the NPB in 2012), and I suspect he could be a starting infielder for a good number of MLB teams.

Newman reports Nakajima’s aging range will lead to an infield job outside of shortstop, and I have little reason to doubt that. In all likelihood, he will sign as a utility player, but I think he very well could play himself into a starting job, much like Norichika Aoki did in 2012.

I am bullish on Nakajima and think he could reasonably do as Aoki did and translate much of his offensive numbers cleanly into the MLB. If not a perfect 1:1 translation, Nakijima should still have no problem hitting in the 100 wRC+ to 110 wRC+ range, which is great for a middle infielder.

SS Takashi Toritani
According to Newman, Toritani has a better hope of sticking at shortstop than Nakajima, but since his offensive production is so walk-heavy — a trait that does not bode well for (domestic) minor leaguers since walk-rates do not translate cleanly into the MLB — teams may not offer him much in the way of either playing time or remuneration. If he can bring his strong offense and decent defense to the States (or Canada), he would make for a healthy catch:

He had a particularly good 2011 season, but the 119 BABIP+ was clearly a departure from his recent norm, so I think we can consign him to a a 115ish wOBA+ in the NPB. It is hard to say exactly how those numbers would translate into the MLB, but my developing rule of thumb is to make it worse by 20 points, which would be about 95 wRC+, which is 10 wRC+ points better than the league average shortstop.

SS Kensuke Tanaka
Tanaka may be the only second baseman of the three infielders testing the MLB markets, but he grades as the best defender. Also, Newman says Tanaka is possibly willing to sign a minor league contract, which should essentially guarantee he will be in the US (or Canada) within the year. His numbers do not suggest he would make for a suitable starter in the MLB, but given his versatility and small ball skills, he could make for a quality utility player for many teams:

Tanaka profiles much like a 75 wRC+ to 95 wRC+ infielder. If his defense is as good as Newman suggests, and if he is able to hitting in the upper levels of that range, then Tanaka will have no problem competing for a bench spot — or even a starting role on a team struggling for infielders. In all likelihood, though, he is Kaz Matsui with even less offense, but more defense.

RP Hideki Okajima
Blast from the past! Okajima has finished his one-year spirit journey through the NPB and is poised for an MLB comeback. He lasted only 7 MLB games in 2011, and then the Yankees released him in February 2012, but in Japan, he dominated like an MLB veteran should. He appears well-poised to play a valuable role out of an MLB bullpen in 2013:

Okajima’s first three seasons in the MLB were exceptional. If he is healthy and feeling younger, he could again post numbers in the 80 to 90 FIP- range.

Much of these projections are optimistic. There is always a chance any one of these players could have their leg snapped within the first month and never be the same again. They might also have certain skillset that for whatever reason just does not translate into MLB parks or against MLB hitters/pitchers. But regardless of the possibilities, the relatively thin infield market and the, as always, wealthy reliever market may be richer than we might think.

David Wright experienced a resurgence of sorts in 2012. After four straight outstanding offense seasons, Wright’s offensive production dipped significantly in 2009 — from a 141 wRC+ to 125. In 2011, Wright’s wRC+ declined all the way to 116.

But this year, the old David Wright reappeared and the 29-year-old third basemen posted a 140 wRC+. The Mets, encouraged by Wright’s year at the plate, have not only picked up his 2013 option (which was predictable), but have also continued discussions for a long-term contract extension.

How likely we are to see Wright put up similar numbers in the future is debatable.

Regardless, one thing was clear: Wright was making better decisions at the plate in 2012. And while his plate discipline numbers were positive (e.g. -2.1% O-Swing), the overall change didn’t seem to capture how well Wright’s plate approach improved.

In an effort to tease this out beyond the basic plate discipline metrics, R. J. Anderson used Mike Fast’s “correct” decision-making approach to look at how Wright’s decision-making improved in the past three season. Anderson calculated the percentage of “correct” pitches Wright swung at in 2012, compared to the two previous seasons. He found Wright had improved his decision-making by 7%.

I decided to take an even narrower view than Anderson and focused only on the location of balls Wright swung at that were just off of the plate, or that were off the black.

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The Angels had until today to decide whether to exercise Ervin Santana’s $13 million option or pay him a $1 million buyout and make him a free agent. After a miserable 2012 season, it was pretty obvious that they weren’t interested in picking up the option, so today, they shipped him to Kansas City.

The deal, as reported by Ken Rosenthal, is Santana and cash for LHP Brandon Sisk. Given that the Angels could have made Santana go away for $1 million and that Sisk is a 27-year-old reliever who has never pitched in the Majors, it’s a pretty safe bet that the Angels aren’t kicking in much more than that $1 million they would have owed either way. The Royals are almost certainly going to have to pay $11-$12 million of Santana’s salary in 2013.

So, is he worth that kind of cash? Well, maybe.

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Following Sunday’s conclusion of the World Series, there began the relatively brief Quiet Period — a period of time during which teams have exclusive negotiation rights with pending free agents. After the Quiet Period, anybody can reach out to anybody. Any player can sign with any team that he wants. The Los Angeles Dodgers had a pending free agent in Brandon League, and they didn’t want to risk exposing him to the open market, so Tuesday night, word got out that the Dodgers had signed League to a three-year contract.

With a fourth-year vesting option, based on games finished. As is, the three guaranteed years are worth $22.5 million. That is, the Dodgers signed League to a three-year, $22.5 million contract. The contract could end up being bigger than that, when it’s all said and done. We can all agree that paying this sort of money for a non-elite setup man would be ridiculous. And that isn’t what the Dodgers have done, as Ned Colletti says that League will be the team’s closer going forward. Closers make more money. It’s in the very definition of “closing”.

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