Yesterday, Marcus Stroman accepted the Mets’ qualifying offer, returning to the team on a one-year deal worth $18.9 million. Later in the day, Kevin Gausman accepted his own qualifying offer, making them the only two players to accept their QOs this year. Gausman reportedly had multi-year offers in hand but chose to stay with the Giants anyway, taking the guaranteed $18.9 million salary over any long-term security a multi-year contract would provide. It’s not a surprising decision on Gausman’s part, especially since he and the Giants have made some progress on negotiating an extension already.

Stroman’s decision to accept the QO wasn’t exactly a surprise either. The Mets traded for him a year earlier than expected, in July of 2019, when he still had a year and a half of club control remaining. He pitched well enough down the stretch last year, but the Mets were already looking forward to 2020 when they acquired him. Unfortunately, a calf injury sustained towards the end of summer camp sidelined him to start this season, and he eventually decided to opt out of the entire campaign in early August. Because he didn’t pitch in 2020, he would have entered the free agent market at a serious disadvantage. Taking the QO defers some of that risk since he’ll be a free agent again after the 2021 season, but the hope is that he’ll have another full year of innings under his belt at that point.

For the Mets, this was their first major move since Steve Cohen finalized his purchase of the team. Stroman’s QO was offered by the outgoing executive vice president and general manager Brodie Van Wagenen before he was dismissed by Cohen, making for a potentially awkward situation. But in his announcement, Stroman voiced great enthusiasm for Cohen and the winning culture he laid out in his first press conference as owner. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll admit it: I think about Corbin Burnes way more often than is healthy. Not in a Swimfan way, or anything; his blowup 2019 and standout ’20 are just my favorite example of a pitcher adjusting his pitch mix to match his natural talents, and Burnes has no shortage of talent. His fastball sits in the mid-90s with a naturally robust spin rate, and his slider turns batters into pretzels. He also posted a 6.09 FIP in 2019, driven by allowing 17 home runs in only 49 innings.

What was Burnes’ problem? While his fastball has a lot of spin, it’s not the same kind of spin as your average fastball. His fastball is heavy on gyroscopic spin — the football spin that gives sliders and cutters their signature “dot” — and light on transverse (or “active”) spin, which imparts movement. Of the 601 pitchers who threw at least 250 fastballs in 2019, Burnes’ active spin percentage ranked 585th.

That’s not a death knell for pitchers. The bottom of the list is dotted with sinker-ballers (the two types of fastballs are grouped together), and sinkers are unlike four-seamers in two ways. First, they have less transverse spin in general. Second, they don’t need as much transverse spin, because the effect they produce is a pitch that rises less than a batter expects. As they’re still thrown with backspin, less movement means less rise. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Oakland Athletics.

Batters

Marcus Semien’s BABIP-aided regression to the mean was unwelcome, but Oakland received surprising production elsewhere from sources such as Robbie Grossman. That being said, the loss of Semien to free agency does create a bit of a vacuum, as a fair amount of the team’s depth at shortstop from the last few years (Franklin Barreto, Jorge Mateo, Jurickson Profar theoretically) has moved on to other organizations. Chad Pinder is likely the de facto shortstop if the season started today, but there’s a good chance that Oakland’s starter in 2021 is not in this set of projections, unless Semien returns. Normally I’d think a player of his caliber would be loath to sign a one-year deal, but given the circumstances of baseball in 2020, who knows if a multi-year deal is in his future. Suffice it to say, it would have been highly useful for the minor leagues to exist last season so that the A’s could have seen more of Vimael Machín or Nick Allen.

Oakland’s offense will go as far as their current Big Three — Matt Chapman, Ramón Laureano, and Matt Olson — take them. Second base and right field do show up as weaknesses in the projections, and this is another place where the lack of a minor league season hurts the A’s; they don’t sign free agents to big contracts, so getting to look at some of that Quadruple-A talent is a valuable exercise. ZiPS is sort of optimistic about Khris Davis, but after a second down season, the ceiling has been lowered farther than that early scene in the Wonka factory. Oakland’s top-level talent still keeps it in the high-80s in wins without a single move, but I’m quite uneasy about the team’s overall depth. Read the rest of this entry »

Devin Williams won the NL Rookie of the Year Award with 27 innings of pitching. They were 27 historically great innings, but 27 innings all the same — 22 appearances out of the bullpen, the equivalent of five or so starts if he were placed in the rotation. You could fit all of Williams’ 2020 inside one month if you wanted to; the only reason that wasn’t considered a more serious demerit is that the actual regular season only lasted two months. This year was about accomplishing as much as possible in a very short amount of time. With that in mind, let’s talk about Ke’Bryan Hayes.

Hayes, the Pirates’ 23-year-old third baseman, finished sixth in Rookie of the Year voting, trailing the three finalists as well as Dodgers right-handers Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May. You just saw a lot of Gonsolin and May, but there’s a good chance you still haven’t watched Hayes at all. He didn’t debut for the Pirates until September, after the team was already well on its way to securing the No. 1 pick with the worst record in baseball. No one sought this team out on MLB.TV, and two thirds of all teams didn’t even have Pittsburgh on its schedule. In case you haven’t updated yourself on Hayes outside of his annual prominence on top prospect lists, here’s what he did in his first game:

The very next inning, Kris Bryant decided to test out Hayes’ arm at third by charging home on a ground ball. It was a mistake: Read the rest of this entry »

Title: Junior Quantitative Analyst

Department: Quantitative Analysis
Status: Full Time
Reports to: Director, Quantitative Analysis
Deadline: November 20, 2020

The Quantitative Analysis team is responsible for researching and developing data-driven metrics and tools that enhance decision-making throughout baseball operations. The Dodgers are seeking to hire a Junior Quantitative Analyst to join the team. As a member of the team, you will work with and learn from experts in statistics, computer science, biomechanics and other disciplines. This position offers growth potential and the opportunity to see the impact of your work on the field.

Job Functions:

• Maintain models and products previously developed by the Quantitative Analysis team
• Review new code and models developed by the Quantitative Analysis team
• Perform ad hoc data analyses to answer urgent questions from front office leadership and other groups within baseball operations
• Prepare presentations and reports to communicate model results to the front office, as well as staff from coaching, scouting and player development
• Learn about industry software tools and advanced statistical models as guided by other members of the Quantitative Analysis team
• Assist with and manage personnel-related manners, such as reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates and overseeing intern projects

Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Analyst, Baseball Operations

Location: Detroit, Michigan

Job Summary:
The Detroit Tigers are currently seeking a full-time Analyst in the Baseball Operations Department. This role will be responsible for performing analyses and conducting research within Baseball Operations. This position will report to the Director, Baseball Analytics.

Key Responsibilities:

• Perform advanced quantitative analysis to improve Baseball Operations decision-making, including predictive modeling and player projection systems.
• Complete ad hoc data queries and effectively present analysis through the use of written reports and data visualizations.
• Assist with the integration of baseball analysis into the Tigers’ proprietary tools and applications.
• Contribute to baseball decision-making by generating ideas for player acquisition, roster construction and in-game strategies.
• Support the current data warehousing process within Baseball Operations.
• Monitor, identify and recommend new or emerging techniques, technologies, models and algorithms.
• Meet with vendors and make recommendations for investment in new data and technology resources.
• Other projects as directed by Baseball Operations leadership team.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a chart I used for a story I wrote last week:

I came across this while writing about Houston Astros left-hander Brooks Raley, whose 2020 season is marked by the dot in yellow. But had you come across this chart in the wild, Raley’s dot wouldn’t be the one that gets your attention. That would be the dot in the upper left, isolated all by itself with baseball’s best whiff rate and one of its lowest exit velocities allowed. If you’re the dot in yellow, it means you had a sneakily good year. If you’re the one off by itself, you’re probably one of the best pitchers in baseball.

That lonesome dot in the corner belongs to Milwaukee Brewers right-hander Devin Williams, who won the National League Rookie of the Year Award on Monday. Among the finalists he defeated for the award were a former third overall pick who reached based 40% of the time in his debut and an out-of-nowhere breakout utility player who helped lead his team to its first playoff appearance in 14 years. From where I sit, the decision shouldn’t have been all that controversial. Read the rest of this entry »

I had the honor of voting for this year’s American League Rookie of the Year award, and the biggest challenge was — not unpredictably — how to weigh performances over a 60-game season. Adding a layer of difficulty was the fact that some of the best numbers were put up by players who weren’t with their team for the duration of the campaign.

Willi Castro and Ryan Mountcastle excelled with the bat — especially Castro — but each had only 140 plate appearances. Sean Murphy, who augmented his solid offense with strong defense behind the plate, had exactly that same number. Are 140 plate appearances enough in a truncated campaign? Following a fair bit of deliberation, I decided that they aren’t. As a result, all three players fell off my consideration list.

And then there were the pitchers. Not a single rookie in the junior circuit threw as many as 65 innings, and the most dominant of the bunch totaled just 27 frames. This made for an especially difficult dilemma. Would it be reasonable to give one of my three votes to a lights-out pitcher whose relative workload was akin to that of the position players I’d chosen to discount? Moreover, had any of the higher-innings hurlers done enough to preclude me from making what amounts to a contradictory choice? We’ll get to that in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »

As the offseason moves forward, we hear mostly about teams reining in spending. Searching out aggressive teams is a bit more difficult, particularly when there’s little benefit in broadcasting those intentions. But one team expected to be aggressive is San Francisco, with Farhan Zaidi entering his third winter as president and the club trying to end a streak of four straight losing campaigns. The Giants are lacking a bit in talent on paper, but some recent fliers have worked out, top prospect Joey Bart received some MLB experience, and a few of the holdovers from the more competitive squads of years previous showed they still have something left. Whether it’s possible to make a big leap forward in one offseason is the big question.

San Francisco acquitted itself fairly well in 2020, missing out on the expanded playoffs due to a lost tiebreaker. The Giants scored more runs than they allowed, and by BaseRuns (stripping out sequencing in results), they were the fourth-best team in the National League. They excelled on the position-player side, where their 9.8 WAR ranked sixth in baseball. But what they did in a 60-game sample in 2020 isn’t likely to carry over into next season. Here are the offensive numbers for Giants with at least 100 plate appearances this past season: Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I noted that Marcus Semien was the highest-ranked player from our Top 50 Free Agents list who did not receive a qualifying offer. He heads what projects to be the strongest free-agent class at any position this year, but for teams willing to shop for a shortstop via trade, Francisco Lindor presents a tantalizing alternative. The Indians have reportedly informed teams of their intent to trade the four-time All-Star, who would be at the top of an even stronger crop of free-agent shortstops next year and who almost certainly isn’t going to receive a competitive offer to stay in Cleveland.

Lindor, who turns 27 on November 14, had the weakest season of his career on the offensive side in 2020, hitting just .258/.335/.415 with eight homers and six steals; his 100 wRC+ represented a 14-point dip from 2019 and a 19-point drop relative to his previous career rate. He did overcome a slow start to finish strong, batting .212/.264/.353 (60 wRC+) through his first 21 games and then .285/.371/.450 (122 wRC+) over his final 39. That’s a rather arbitrarily chosen point of inflection, but it’s not far removed from acting manager Sandy Alomar Jr.’s suggestion that Lindor was pressing at the plate early in the season. Even while shedding 1.1 mph of average exit velocity, Lindor wound up underperforming his Statcast expected batting average and slugging percentage (.278 and .441, respectively), though that kind of variance is unremarkable.

Beyond the bat, Lindor was a career-worst 2.5 runs below average via his baserunning, his second year in a row in the red. Thanks to his 5.8 UZR, he still finished with 1.7 WAR, ranking eighth among shortstops and prorating to 4.6 WAR over the course of a full season. His two-year total of 6.1 WAR places him fifth at the position (Semien is first at 8.8), and his three-year total of 13.7 WAR is tops. Read the rest of this entry »