We’re now in the thick of the annual Winter Meetings, and we saw a handful of free-agent starters fly off the board on Tuesday. First, Andrew Heaney signed with the Rangers. Then the insatiable Phillies gobbled up Taijuan Walker. And before an eventful day came to a close, the Cubs finally opened their wallet by inking Jameson Taillon to a four-year deal worth $68 million.

This has been a player-friendly market, and one that’s been particularly rewarding to starting pitchers. All three listed above tore through their crowdsourced contract estimates and Ben Clemens’ own: Heaney got not one but two years with an opt-out; Walker beat his projected contract total by $30 million; and Taillon also exceeded expectations by a similar margin. It’s clear teams have been willing to spend, but it’s also evidence of just how scarce starting pitching is nowadays. There’s nary a pitcher who can carry the burden of 200-plus innings, so the 170–180 mark seems like the new gold standard. Heaney’s appeal lies in his upside, not durability, but you could count on Walker and Taillon to provide a full season’s worth of starts.

The Cubs needed a rotation stalwart. That their most reliable starter last season was Marcus Stroman, who recorded a 3.50 ERA across 138.2 frames, isn’t great news. Late-bloomer Justin Steele had the best rate statistics, but he’ll probably only see a minor increase to his workload. Kyle Hendricks is on the last year of his contract and well past his prime, and counting on Adrian Sampson for a second season would be most unwise. Chicago has a couple of pitching prospects on their way, and Hayden Wesneski looked promising in his first big league forays. But as always, the issue is innings, innings, innings. The Cubs would most definitely prefer to protect their young starters and test their potential in abbreviated outings. Taillon is the big brother who can absorb the second and third times through an order. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days after signing Jacob deGrom to lead their rotation, the Texas Rangers continued to bolster their pitching staff, signing Andrew Heaney to a two-year contract that could be worth up to $37 million total. The base salary is $25 million with up to $12 million in additional incentives; the deal also includes an opt-out after 2023.

After limping to a 5.83 ERA in 2021 while pitching for the Angels and Yankees, Heaney signed a one-year, bounce-back deal with the Dodgers, and bounce back he did. With a 25.4% career strikeout rate, he’s had no problems sending batters down on strikes over the years. He took that ability to new levels in 2022, pushing his strikeout rate to a career-high 35.5% while also logging career bests in ERA (3.10) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.79).

However, that penchant for Ks comes with a really nasty habit of allowing far too many home runs. Over the last five seasons, his 27.2% strikeout rate ranks 28th among all qualified starting pitchers, while his 1.64 HR/9 ranks 12th. He was able to offset some of that damage with his improvements this year, but it’s a real sticking point that has held him back from becoming one of the premiere starters in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

You might have heard that the Mets got hit by a record 112 pitches in 2022, but New York wasn’t the only record breaker in that particular category. Cincinnati’s pitching staff breezed by the 2021 Cubs’ modern era record of 98 HBPs with weeks left in the season, and they kept right on plunking. In the last game of the year, Graham Ashcraft sailed a sinker into both the triceps of Patrick Wisdom and the record books, giving the Reds 110 hit batters for the season. That number edged them past the 1899 Cleveland Spiders as the most contact-oriented team of all-time.

Those bloodthirsty Spiders hit 109 batters and lost 134 games, then folded just before the invention of the zeppelin. Eleven of those HBPs and losses were credited to Harry Colliflower, a former carpenter who won his first start, then lost 11 straight decisions and his spot in the big leagues. That’s the company the 2022 Reds kept. Read the rest of this entry »

No team hates hitting for power as much as the Cleveland Guardians.

Roughly a league-average offense overall, the Guardians ranked near the bottom — and absolute rock bottom among offenses that were worth a damn — in home runs and ISO. You’d hope that such a team would also be particularly good at putting the ball in play, and you’d be right; Cleveland had the highest team contact rate and lowest strikeout rate in baseball. José Ramírez has been the Guardians’ franchise player for several years, and by 2022 the team had basically been built in his image: short guys with high contact rates.

Three Cleveland hitters — Ramírez, Steven Kwan, and Myles Straw — finished in the top 13 in strikeout rate among qualified hitters and were among the 21 hardest hitters to strike out. The team leader in strikeouts was Andrés Giménez, a 5-foot-11 middle infielder who hit .297 with a strikeout rate of just 20.1%. For comparison, the Braves, who won 101 games and scored the third-most runs in baseball, had nine hitters with 300 or more plate appearances last year; every single one of them had a higher strikeout rate than Giménez did.

This is the last team in baseball you’d expect to sink big money into a 260-pound first baseman with a 37-homer season in his recent past, particularly considering the franchise’s famous frugality. Cleveland ran a payroll of just $69 million last year, after all. But Josh Bell isn’t your garden variety big fella. If he were, the Guardians would not have signed him to a two-year, $33 million contract, as Jon Heyman reported Tuesday afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »

MLB’s annual winter meetings usually prompt free-agent signings. The last time they were held before COVID-19 interrupted the league’s yearly schedule, Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, and Anthony Rendon all signed. This year feels like more of the same; Jacob deGrom signed in the leadup to the meetings, Trea Turner and Justin Verlander signed during them, and several other top free agents are rumored to be next.

But not every signing can be thunderous. The Pirates aren’t going to make the World Series next year. They probably won’t win 80 games; they went 62–100 in 2022 and haven’t approached .500 since they went 82–79 in 2018. But they made two signings on Tuesday in San Diego, adding Vince Velasquez and Jarlín García on one-year deals worth $3.15 million and $2.5 million, respectively. García’s deal also contains a club option for 2024 worth $3.25 million.

Neither of these deals will alter the balance of power in the NL Central, but I think both make plenty of sense for Pittsburgh. Let’s start with the starter — or at least, the pitcher who more resembles a starter. Velasquez flashed tantalizing potential over five-plus seasons with the Phillies, but inconsistent command and secondaries held him back. He spent 2022 on the White Sox as a swingman, jumping to the rotation when injuries hit the projected starters. Read the rest of this entry »

Free-agent reliever Carlos Estévez has signed a two-year contract worth $13.5 million with the Angels, continuing a busy offseason in Anaheim that has already seen Tyler Anderson, Gio Urshela, and Hunter Renfroe join the roster.

#Angels sign Carlos Estevez to a 2-year deal for $13.5-million.

Don’t know yet if they plan for him to close, but Bud Black just said he has closer stuff and a closer mentality.

— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) December 5, 2022

Estévez, who turns 30 next month, has spent his entire professional career with the Rockies, playing his first six seasons in the hitter’s paradise of Coors Field. His 4.59 ERA and 4.21 FIP in 302 career innings appear a bit inflated, but they’re actually a touch better than league average (94 ERA- and FIP-). His 2022 campaign, while normal-looking on the surface, was statistically odd in many ways. Despite earning fewer strikes than ever, he set a career best in terms of overall run prevention with a 3.47 ERA, making him the second-most effective reliever on Colorado’s staff.

Wait — a .247 BABIP allowed while pitching in Coors, a stadium whose .323 BABIP ranked highest among all parks? And an above-average 10.1% HR/FB rate in the sixth-most homer-friendly park in baseball? And that was despite it being easier to make contact against Estévez than at any other point during his career? Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and today’s team is the Washington Nationals.

Batters

If there’s any silver lining for a team that will likely be at the bottom of the division, it’s that this is a fairly decent floor for a last-place squad, unless it faces particularly bad injury luck. There are no projected stars remaining anywhere on the roster, but the Nationals do have a pretty good front line of fringe options at most positions. When we mash-up the ZiPS projections and the current iteration of the depth charts, no individual position combines for three wins, but no position comes in at under a win either. Players like Victor Robles, Joey Meneses, and Jeimer Candelario may not have exciting upside, but they’re at least major league players. I’d be midly surprised to see Washington lose 107 games, which it did last season even with a half-season from Juan Soto and Josh Bell.

ZiPS still sees CJ Abrams as risky and is just about out of hope for Carter Kieboom. There’s a bright spot in the form of Jake Alu, who destroyed pitchers in the high minors, even when you take the 2022 helium out of those numbers in the form of a translation. ZiPS doesn’t see him being a near-star offensive player, but the probabilistic measure I use had him as one of the best defensive minor league players; he’s listed as +5 runs at third base, and if ZiPS had been as confident about the translated defense estimate as it is about MLB defensive measures, the projection would actually be +12. Meneses gets a better projection than similar veteran surprise Frank Schwindel got after 2021, and ZiPS sees Alex Call as a legitimate stopgap corner outfielder of the Anthony Santander variety. Abrams, along with Keibert Ruiz and Luis García, has significant upside, and it wouldn’t take much to see any of these projections blow up in a positive way with some real steps forwards from these youngsters. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Carlos Beltrán was the quintessential five-tool player, a switch-hitting center fielder who harnessed his physical talents and became a superstar. Aided by a high baseball IQ that was essentially his sixth tool, he spent 20 seasons in the majors, making nine All-Star teams, winning three Gold Gloves, helping five different franchises reach the playoffs, and putting together some of the most dominant stretches in postseason history once he got there. At the end of his career, he helped the Astros win a championship.

Drafted out of Puerto Rico by the Royals, Beltrán didn’t truly thrive until he was traded away. He spent the heart of his career in New York, first with the Mets — on what was at the time the largest free-agent contract in team history — and later the Yankees. He endured his ups and downs in the Big Apple and elsewhere, including his share of injuries. Had he not missed substantial portions of three seasons, he might well have reached 3,000 hits, but even as it is, he put up impressive, Cooperstown-caliber career numbers. Not only is he one of just eight players with 300 homers and 300 stolen bases, but he also owns the highest stolen base success rate (86.4%) of any player with at least 200 attempts.

Alas, two years after Beltrán’s career ended, he was identified as the player at the center of the biggest baseball scandal in a generation: the Astros’ illegal use of video replay to steal opponents’ signs in 2017 and ’18. He was “the godfather of the whole program” in the words of Tom Koch-Weser, the team’s director of advance information, and the only player identified in commissioner Rob Manfred’s January 2020 report. But between that report and additional reporting by the Wall Street Journal, it seems apparent that the whole team, including manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, was well aware of the system and didn’t stop him or his co-conspirators. In that light, it’s worth wondering about the easy narrative that has left Beltrán holding the bag; Hinch hardly had to break stride in getting another managerial job once his suspension ended. While Beltrán was not disciplined by the league, the fallout cost him his job as manager of the Mets before he could even oversee a game, and he has yet to get another opportunity.

Will Beltrán’s involvement in sign stealing cost him a berth in Cooperstown, the way allegations concerning performance-enhancing drugs have for a handful of players with otherwise Hallworthy numbers? At the very least it appears likely to keep him from getting elected this year. What remains to be seen is whether voters treat him like Rafael Palmeiro and banish him for a big mistake (a positive PED test) in the final season of an otherwise impressive career, or like Roberto Alomar and withhold the honor of first-ballot induction for an out-of-character incident (spitting at an umpire) before giving him his due. Read the rest of this entry »

After overcoming a slow start and firing manager Joe Girardi, the Phillies made it all the way to the World Series for the first time since 2009. On Monday, they took a significant step toward improving their chances of returning, and of upgrading their oft-shaky defense, signing shortstop Trea Turner to an 11-year, $300 million deal, one that includes a full no-trade clause.

Turner, who turned 29 on June 30, spent the past season and a half with the Dodgers after coming over from the Nationals in the 2021 trade deadline blockbuster that also brought Max Scherzer to Los Angeles. In 2022, he earned All-Star honors for the second time, batting .298/.343/.466 (128 wRC+) with 21 homers, 27 steals (in 30 attempts), and 6.3 WAR. He played 160 games and led the NL in plate appearances (708) and at-bats (652) and ranked fourth in steals.

While Turner’s offensive performance represented a dip from his 2021, when he won the NL batting title (.328/.375/.536, 142 wRC+), led the league in steals (32), and ranked third in WAR (6.8), he was still an impressive ninth in the last of those categories in ’22. Bolstered by average defense at shortstop — no small accomplishment or attraction for a team that has employed Didi Gregorius in the recent past — he was third in WAR among shortstops behind Francisco Lindor (6.8) and fellow free agent Dansby Swanson (6.4), but his longer track record for strong production than Swanson, and the added dimension of his speed, had to make him the more attractive of the two for a long-term deal. Toward that end, it’s worth noting that Turner placed second on our Top 50 Free Agents list below only Aaron Judge, one spot ahead of Carlos Correa, four ahead of Xander Bogaerts, and six ahead of Swanson.

The size of Turner’s contract outdid both our median crowdsource estimate (seven years, $210 million) and that of listmaker Ben Clemens (nine years, $288 million), a common theme from among the early deals so far. That should’t surprise us within an industry that appears to have set a record in revenues (just shy of $11 billion) and that just got a $900 million windfall ($30 million per team) from MLB selling its remaining 15% stake in the BAMTech streaming platform to Disney. Read the rest of this entry »

Clubhouse Analyst

Location: Boston, MA
Department: Baseball Operations
Status: Full-Time

Position Overview:
The Boston Red Sox are seeking a Clubhouse Analyst for the team’s Major League Strategic Information (MLSI) department. The role is a clubhouse-based position that works closely with department leadership to support the Major League coaching staff. The role will primarily use all MLSI materials to help drive progress in the process of improving internal player production and advance scouting in support of the Major League staff. These duties include but are not limited to creating and automating reports, operating technology that aids in player development and communicating data-driven insights to Major League staff and players.

Responsibilities:

• Effectively present analyses through the use of written reports and data visualization to disseminate insights to the ML coaching staff, players and other members of Baseball Operations Leadership.
• Travel with the Major League team throughout the season, including to our spring training facility. During the offseason this position will be based in Boston working with Baseball Analytics.
• Create and automate reports that aid in player development and advance scouting.
• Remain up-to-date with league transactions so all materials include current rosters and daily lineups, including any last-minute changes prior to that day’s game.
• Support pre-game and pre-series advance meetings with the ML coaching staff.
• Set up and operate technology that aids in player development (i.e. portable TrackMan) during bullpens and batting practice.
• Create and track progress of player-specific goals, and provide regular feedback to the players directly.
• Generate one-off summary reports as requested from coaching staff or Front Office.

Characteristics / Qualifications:

• Demonstrated understanding of baseball data analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate technical ideas to non-technical audiences using data visualization.
• Experience working for a Major League club preferred.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office.
• Experience with programming languages (e.g., R) and modern database technologies (e.g., SQL) a plus.
• Ability to work evening, weekend, and holiday hours is a must.

The Red Sox (or FSM) requires proof of being up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment, subject to applicable legal requirements. Up-to-date means having received all recommended COVID-19 vaccination doses in the primary series and a booster dose(s) when eligible, per CDC guidelines.

Prospective employees will receive consideration without discrimination based on race, religious creed, color, sex, age, national origin, handicap, disability, military/veteran status, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or protected genetic information.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Boston Red Sox.