Archive for Teams

The St. Louis Cardinals selected Paul DeJong in the fourth round of the 2015 draft. DeJong was taken more for his bat than his defense. According to his alma mater Illinois State, for example, DeJong spent time at “second base, third base, catcher, right field, and as the team’s designated hitter” during his third and final season with the Redbirds. While suggestive of positional flexibility, that’s not the usual path of a defensive wizard. During that same campaign, however, DeJong also slashed .333/.427/.605 in 246 plate appearances. That kind of offensive performance can play at multiple positions.

The Cardinals used DeJong mostly third base after drafting him. He played 62 games at the hot corner in his first pro season and followed that up with 112 more starts at third in 2016 — but also 11 starts at shortstop. After some more work at short in the Arizona Fall League and a couple months in Triple-A, DeJong became the starting shortstop for the actual Cardinals, a contending major-league club. He finished second in balloting for the National League Rookie of the Year.

Minor-league third basemen don’t generally develop into major-league shortstops. If playing first base is incredibly hard, playing an adequate shortstop is nearly impossible. Even so, MLB is a copycat league. If an experiment works once, others will try it. Which brings us to the Cincinnati Reds and top prospect Nick Senzel.

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It’s not that I advise always taking teams at their word. Teams have an interest in pushing obvious agendas, and much of what they put out there is essentially some kind of propaganda. Teams always have to be selling themselves, which means emphasizing optimism while downplaying any negatives. But I trust the Rays on what they say they’re doing. Over the weekend, the Rays added C.J. Cron while losing Corey Dickerson and Jake Odorizzi. They said they slashed payroll without getting meaningfully worse, and I agreed. That post was promptly followed by news of the Rays trading Steven Souza Jr. for prospects, but the Rays said that was a baseball trade, not a money move, and that it would be the end of the selling. I believed the Rays; it just didn’t feel like an actual tank-job. There was also the room to make an addition.

An addition has already been made. The Rays have plugged the Souza void by signing Carlos Gomez for a year and $4 million. Gomez is signing from out of the bargain bin, so this isn’t a franchise-altering transaction. And there’s always the chance that, tomorrow or next week, Kevin Kiermaier or Chris Archer is swapped for younger players. The Rays still could tank, if they wanted to. But Gomez will actually earn more in 2018 than Souza will. And I think this is just more evidence of how the Rays are forever attempting to thread the needle. What is Carlos Gomez, as a ballplayer? He’s just an older and more fragile Steven Souza. It’s not the worst exchange, given the four new prospects from the trade.

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If you ask a player what his goal is going into a season, there’s a decent chance he’ll tell you that he wants to be more consistent. It’s a reasonable enough answer, but what does it really mean? Everyone wants to perform well, so would it be just as accurate to say, “I want to be good more often and bad less often?”

Regardless of how you word it, avoiding slumps — particularly prolonged ones — is what players are ultimately looking to do. With that in mind, I asked Andrew Benintendi and Alex Cora how to go about doing so as expediently as possible.

Benintendi began by bringing up the dreaded 0-fers.

“It’s catching those little slumps earlier, before they become a thing,” expressed the Red Sox outfielder, who slashed .271/.352/.424 last year in his first full big-league season. “I went through a few 0-for-20s (he had one such stretch in mid May, and another in early September), so I probably need to be attacking those a little earlier.”

What was at the root of the problem? Cora wasn’t around Benintendi last season — he was A.J. Hinch’s right-hand man in Houston — but he does recognize the inevitability of ebbs and flows within a long season. He also knows they happen for different reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about another volcanic comment by Scott Boras, the Eric Hosmer and J.D. Martinez signings and the Rays’ sudden sell-off, MLB’s latest pace-of-play initiatives, why spring training intentions often go awry, and sabermetric trailblazer Sherri Nichols, then preview the 2018 Nationals (23:46) with the Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes, and the 2018 Tigers (50:44) with MLB.com’s Jason Beck.

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The Yankees entered the offseason determined to stay under the luxury-tax threshold. The Rays, meanwhile, have appeared intent recently on cutting payroll. As for the Diamondbacks, their moves this winter seem to indicate a club looking to quietly build on its first postseason appearance in six years.

On Tuesday night, the aforementioned organizations came together to accomplish their individual objectives in a three-team trade. Nick Piecoro reported on the most notable players involved in the deal.

Steven Souza Jr. should immediately assume Arizona’s starting right-field job, while Brandon Drury represents an option at second and third base for a club that lacks experience at both positions. With regard to Tampa Bay, they both shed Souza’s $3.6 million salary and land a small collection of prospects, including Nick Solak from the Yankees and Anthony Banda and two PTBNL from Arizona. Another prospect, Taylor Widener, goes from New York to Arizona. Our own Eric Longenhagen evaluates the merits of the prospects involved here. It’s not a franchise-altering return for Tampa.

So what to make of all this?

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Below are scouting reports on the prospects who changed hands in the three-team trade on Tuesday night that sent OF Steven Souza, Jr. from Tampa Bay to Arizona and INF Brandon Drury from Arizona to the Yankees.

Anthony Banda, LHP
In 2017, Banda struggled at notoriously unforgiving Triple-A Reno, where he posted a 5.39 ERA. He made a spot start in Arizona in July and then was up again in August for a three-start look before he finished the year in the D-backs bullpen. Despite his poor on-paper production in 2017, his stuff remains intact and he profiles as a No. 4 starter. Banda sits 92-95 and will touch 96 with his fastball. He has an above-average changeup that he should probably throw more often and an average curveball in the 77-82 mph range. In light of what’s going on with Tampa Bay right now, he’ll probably exceed rookie limitations in 2017. He’s a 50 FV prospect who appeared within the honorable-mention section of our top-100 list.

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It got kind of lost on Saturday, because Eric Hosmer signed with the Padres on Saturday, and that became baseball’s big news. But the Padres weren’t the only team active over the weekend, as the Rays pulled off a trio of transactions. Jake Odorizzi was traded to the Twins for a low-level infielder. Additionally, C.J. Cron was acquired for a player to be named later, and, to make roster room, Corey Dickerson was designated for assignment. The moves all happened so fast it got confusing, but the sequence made an unpleasant impression. Dickerson was a 2017 AL All-Star, and Odorizzi had been a regular starter for four years. It looked as if the Rays were partially tearing down.

Indeed, in a sense, that’s true — ownership was looking for the front office to cut payroll. Even though the Rays’ payrolls have always been modest, money is a factor in everything, and the 2017 club apparently got a little pricey. The owners asked for a payroll reduction, and an ownership ask is an ownership demand. This is how the Rays have long operated. Ideally, it wouldn’t be the case, but it is what it is. I can’t compel the owners to spend more than they do.

But while many have been upset by the departures of Odorizzi and Dickerson — including Kevin Kiermaier — it should also be understood just where the Rays are. The Rays now aren’t really worse off compared to where they were. The team isn’t tanking, as far as I can tell, and they’re not planning to lose 95 games. Two big contributors from the past are now gone, yet the roster is still okay. That’s not a bad outcome after shedding $10 million.

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The Los Angeles Angels aren’t responsible for any of the biggest moves of the past few days. They didn’t sign Eric Hosmer or J.D. Martinez. They didn’t trade for Jake Odorizzi. They didn’t even DFA Corey Dickerson.

That said, the Angels have taken a few steps recently towards improving their club — and, not coincidentally, towards clearing a path for Shohei Ohtani to receive playing time when he is not on the mound.

A brief review of their latest transactions:

• Traded C.J. Cron to the Tampa Bay Rays for a player to be named later.
• Signed outfielder Chris Young to a one-year deal for $2 million.
• Signed Chris Carter to a minor-league deal.

Over a series of three moves, the team essentially swapped out first-base/designated-hitter depth for outfield depth and then addressed the 1B/DH depth, too. Chris Young and C.J. Cron possess several similarities and a few obvious differences. At 34, Young is six years older than Cron. Young plays the outfield while Cron can only play first base. As for the similarities, both have been slightly above-average right-handed hitters over the last two seasons. They will earn roughly $2 million each in 2018, and both are projected as average hitters next season. For the Angels, swapping in Young for Cron has several advantages despite Cron’s youth and team control though 2020.

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The last time the Reds won more than 80 games in a season, they actually won 90 games in a season — and a spot in the 2013 National League Wild Card game. They lost that game 6-2 to the Pirates and then lost another 86, 98, 94, and 94 games in each of the four seasons that followed. In 2018, the Reds are projected to lose 90 games, and the incomparable Joey Votto is projected to produce another 4.4 wins for the club for which he’s recorded a line of .313/.428/.541 over his 6,141 big-league plate appearances.

Votto is 34 this year, and while his skills profile suggests he’s got at least a few good seasons left in him, he won’t be around forever. So what’s the plan in Cincinnati to make best use of the years he has left? It’s really not entirely clear.

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Position: New York Mets Intern, Analytics

Location: New York

Description:
The New York Mets are seeking an intern to work with the club’s Research and Development team. The employee will analyze baseball data and use their findings to support different areas within Baseball Operations. These may include player development, amateur and international scouting, and Major League advance scouting.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct research in the field of baseball analytics and communicate insights with Baseball Operations department.
• Research, develop, and test predictive models to support Baseball Operations decision-making (i.e., player evaluation, roster construction, player development, in-game strategy).
• Assist development team in creating new analyses and tools and integrating with existing Baseball Operations web application.
• Write scripts for the purposes of data collection, automation, and report generation.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree (applicant may be a current upperclassman pursuing degree) or equivalent experience in Statistics, Data Science, Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Operations Research, or similar quantitative field.
• Strong experience querying and managing data with SQL.
• Demonstrated experience using statistical tools and packages in R or Python.
• Strong understanding of baseball specific datasets (i.e., Trackman, Statcast, PITCHf/x) and knowledge of current baseball research. Please provide a sample of your work.
• Preference for candidates who have demonstrated experience building web applications in Python, Java, PHP, Javascript, etc. Please provide a link to the application and/or codebase (Github) if possible.

To Apply:
Interested applicants should apply through this link by March 18, 2018.