Archive for Teams

On Friday night, the Dodgers made their latest calculated gamble, taking on $260 million in future salaries from the Red Sox in order to acquire Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto. In the write-up I did on Friday, I noted that the best way to explain this trade from the Dodgers perspective is that they are attempting to capitalize on their current contender status under the hope that they can achieve a significant revenue bounce from a playoff run that could offset a large part of the costs of these acquisitions.

There’s another theory floating around, however, that has to do with the upcoming free agent class. If we accept that the Dodgers were going to spend this much money at some point in the near future, the argument is that the relatively unimpressive group of free agents set to hit the market this winter made this a better choice than spending the same money on free agents in three months and getting inferior players without the added bonus of their production down the stretch in 2012.

So, let’s go through the options, and see what else the Dodgers could have potentially done with their giant wad of cash.

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At the end of May, when his seasonal numbers were still pretty ugly, Max Scherzer was interviewed by our own David Laurila. At the time, people were puzzled by Scherzer’s high strikeout rate (12 per nine innings) accompanied by a very high ERA (5.67). In the interview, Scherzer acknowledges the problems he has had, and does not use BABIP “luck” as an excuse. But he also says that “My stuff, right now, is where I want it to be.”

That may have seemed a bit cocky coming from a pitcher with a 5.67 ERA. But after April’s 7.77 ERA mess, Scherzer’s performance as measured by ERA, at least, has improved each month: 4.04 in May, 3.86 in June, 3.62 in July, and 2.25 so far in August. All the problems of ERA are exacerbated by dividing an already spartial-season sample into months, but it does catch the eye. Did Scherzer change something that spurred the improvement, or is this just the vicissitudes of in-season variation striking again?

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The phrase “fire sale” has been frequently heard in the same sentence as “Red Sox” this weekend, as the trade that sent Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Nick Punto to the Dodgers had the tenor of one that gutted the team, and looking at their starting lineup on Sunday only reinforced that notion. But while the rest of 2012 may feature a slide not seen in New England since “Joe Kerrigan, Major League Baseball Manager” happened back in 2001, things won’t be quite so gloomy for the ’13 incarnation of the Olde Towne Team.

The trade brought the Red Sox down to approximately $46 million in guaranteed contracts, and many of those players are key cogs in Boston’s mainframe. Aside from those players, the team has 12 arbitration-eligible players, and they figure to double the payroll. Conservatively, let’s say that brings the payroll to $95 million. Let’s also allocate a conservative $18 million to David Ortiz, based on the assumption that losing Ortiz would be one public relations disaster too many for John Henry and his cohorts to handle.

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The Milwaukee Brewers have been one of the biggest disappointments of the 2012 season, underperforming expectations that had them contending for back-to-back divisional crowns in the mediocre NL Central. The bullpen imploded in spectacular fashion, Alex Gonzalez suffered a season-ending knee injury early on, Zack Greinke is now pitching in Los Angeles, and Shaun Marcum threw for the first time in more than two months on Saturday.

Despite all of those misfortunes, the Brewers’ starting rotation has not been part of the problem — well, other than the recently-released Randy Wolf — and owned a combined 3.78 FIP coming into Sunday’s games.  That’s only ticks above their 3.75 FIP from last year, when they reached the NLCS.

The unit as a whole has improved in some aspects, though. Coming into Sunday, Milwaukee’s starting rotation has compiled the best strikeout rate in all of baseball.

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While nothing has been made official yet, it appears that the Red Sox and Dodgers are going to soon finalize one of the largest (and most interesting) deals in baseball history. The deal is believed to inclue Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto heading to Los Angeles, with a group of five players (including James Loney, Rubby de la Rosa, Jerry Sands, Ivan DeJesus and “a prospect”) headed back to Boston.

We knew a shake-up was coming in Boston. We’re a year into the team badly underperforming their talent level, and the general circus atmosphere around the organization couldn’t be sustained much longer. A shake-up was inevitable. Beginning the demolition in one fell swoop was less predictable, however.

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Source: FanGraphs

Baseball statistics can be very quirky, especially the ones we carry here at FanGraphs. Players can be worth half-a-win, a hit can produce fractions of the run, stuff like that can be difficult to accept at first. Things happen in wholes in the real world — a team gets credited either with one full win or no win in any single game, that hit either drives in a run or it doesn’t — and understanding that these bits and pieces contribute to the whole isn’t exactly something that gets explains clearly or often enough.

Last night, Red Sox closer Alfredo Aceves lost more than one game. The Sox and Angels played a wild back-and-forth affair with seven total lead changes, including five after the seventh inning. The 29-year-old Aceves was on the mound for three of those lead changes despite only being credited with one full inning of work. He allowed three runs in the top of the ninth to blow a two-run lead, was let off the hook when Cody Ross hit a solo homer to knot things up in the bottom half, then went back out to the mound in a tie game in the tenth only to surrender two more runs.

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Through the whole course of baseball history, several thousand players have managed to bat at least 200 times. An enterprising position player might reach that mark in less than two months. Given that minimum, nobody’s been a better hitter, relative to the rest of the league, than Babe Ruth, who had a career wRC+ of 197. All right, not learning a whole lot so far. Given that minimum, nobody’s been a worse hitter than one Don Carman. The long-time Phillie batted 239 times and recorded a dozen hits, racking up a wRC+ of -79. After Carman, there’s Ron Herbel, at -73. And after Herbel, there’s Tommy Hanson, at -70. Keep in mind that these are large negative numbers and wRC+ has a plus sign built right into the name. By this measure, current Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Tommy Hanson has been the third-worst hitter in baseball history.

Thursday night, facing Barry Zito in San Francisco, was another normal game at the plate for Hanson. He batted twice. The first time, he grounded back to the mound with two runners in scoring position. The second time, he struck out swinging at a curveball. There wasn’t a third time, because Hanson also pitched poorly, and while the Braves surely would’ve preferred that Hanson pitch better, at least he spared them a third time watching him hit.

Hanson has now batted 47 times this season. That’s roughly a quarter of his career total. There are no signs that his offense is getting better. To his name this season, Hanson has a -78 wRC+ and one hit. What follows is the story of that one hit.

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My first trip to the Appalachian League brought me to two parks in Elizabethton and Greeneville which could not have been more different. Elizabethton, a small town outside of Johnson City, Tennessee housed the Twins at an older parks & recreation facility. Considering the high school football opener happening a couple of miles away, about a thousand people showing up for the ballgame was a solid crowd.

Two things about the Elizabethton Twins struck me as interesting. At a time when minor league baseball is big business, the franchise was still run by the city. The General Manager of the club was also the city Parks and Recreation Manager. Ron Swanson most certainly would have been proud!

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In a start earlier Thursday, Justin Verlander just abused the Blue Jays for nine innings. In fairness to the Blue Jays, theirs was a lineup missing Jose Bautista, J.P. Arencibia, and Brett Lawrie, and it was a lineup with Omar Vizquel batting sixth and Jeff Mathis batting seventh, but outside of one pitch Verlander cruised, as he’s so often cruised. He threw another nine frames, with another dozen strikeouts and another paltry two runs allowed. Verlander is a leading Cy Young candidate, and every time he takes the mound, you expect him to do something not unlike this.

What Verlander has done is build a reputation of being perhaps the most consistent starter in baseball. He’s not just excellent; he’s routinely excellent, and a Google search for “Justin Verlander” + “consistent” yields nearly a million results. Of course, a Google search for “A.J. Burnett” + “consistent” yields more than 700,000 results so maybe this isn’t good science. Look at the performance record. I can’t pinpoint the precise moment that Justin Verlander became Justin Verlander, but it’s easy to put it somewhere between 2008 and 2009. Since 2009, Verlander hasn’t posted a FIP below 2.80 or above 2.99. He hasn’t posted an xFIP below 3.12 or above 3.52. He keeps starting and he keeps thriving. He keeps on being Justin Verlander.

Statistically, one can’t deny that Verlander has been consistent, nor should one want to. Perhaps consistency isn’t predictive, but we can identify it in retrospect. On the surface, Justin Verlander has hardly changed at all. Yet it’s interesting to see what turns up when you dig.

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The author attended Wednesday night’s game — or, at least, the first eight innings of it — between the Class A Midwest League affiliates of the Minnesota Twins (the Beloit Snappers) and Chicago Cubs (the Peoria Chiefs) in Beloit, Wisconsin. Below are some notes on same.

Please note: none of what follows constitutes Official Prospect Analysis.

Regarding Miguel Sano and Jorge Soler
Miguel Sano and Jorge Soler are presently the most high-profile prospects on Beloit and Peoria, respectively, the former having been ranked 27th by Marc Hulet on his (i.e. Hulet’s) midseason top-50 prospect list and the latter having signed a nine-year, $30 million contract with the Cubs after having defected from Cuba earlier this year.

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