Archive for Teams

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Seattle Mariners. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

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When the Mariners took Kyle Seager (638 PA, 4.4 zWAR) in the third round of the 2009 draft, one could have been excused for assuming that the club had acquired him largely to play the role of Dustin Ackley’s Friend. While both players had served as starters on three consecutive College World Series teams at North Carolina, it was Ackley who was considered the real prospect, going second overall to Seattle in the same draft. Indeed, Seager was ranked by Baseball America just 30th among Mariners prospects during that next offseason — a reflection of industry opinion. Eight-plus years later, however, Ackley has become a journeyman, while Seager has become, if not the face of the franchise, then at least its metronome.

Complementing Seager on the current iteration of the Mariners is Robinson Cano (614, 2.9) and a collection largely of average talent. Indeed, ZiPS calls for five hitters — Nelson Cruz (574, 2.2), Dee Gordon (663, 2.3), Mitch Haniger (517, 2.1), Jean Segura (634, 2.1), and Mike Zunino (474, 2.1) — to produce a WAR figure within a half-win of 2.0 on either side. Recent acquisition and prospective first baseman Ryon Healy (619, -0.1) represents the weak link of the starting lineup according to Dan Szymborski’s computer.

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I wrote my first post for FanGraphs on April 14th, 2008. It was about Gabe Kapler’s return from managing to be a productive big leaguer. It referenced WPA/LI as our version of a modern statistic and talked unironically about how Kapler was keeping up with Casey Kotchman. It wasn’t great.

Since then, I’ve published 3,501 other posts (or chats). Hopefully, most of them were better than that first one. In these last 10 years, the site has changed a lot. In 2010, I went from a freelancer to the company’s first full-time employee, then was joined by a host of absurdly talented coworkers, many of whom now also get to do this for a living. FanGraphs went from a niche site into the mainstream, and along the way, I’ve seen our little corner of the baseball world help change the language of baseball fans.

It’s been a remarkable run. But for me, it comes to an end today. This will be my last post at FanGraphs.

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Late in the 2017 season, I approached Sergio Romo to ask about backup sliders. More specifically, I wanted to know if he’s ever thrown one intentionally. A handful of pitchers to whom I’ve spoken have experimented with doing so. It can be an effective pitch when well located; hitters recognize and react to a slider, only to have it break differently than a slider. As a result, they either jam themselves or are frozen.

Romo, of course, has one of the best sliders in the game. The 34-year-old right-hander has lived and died with the pitch for 10 big-league seasons, throwing his signature offering 52.4% of the time. Among relievers with at least 250 innings, only Carlos Marmol (55.5%) and Luke Gregerson (52.7%) have thrown a slider more frequently over that span.

What I anticipated being a short conversation on a narrow subject turned into wider-ranging, and often entertaining, meditation on his slider (with a look at Zach Britton’s sinker thrown in for good measure). It turns out that Romo’s backups are all accidental — the exact mechanics behind them remain a mystery to him — but he does know how to manipulate the ones that break. He’s also knowledgeable about his spin rate, thanks to his “player-profile thingy.”

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There has been considerable handwringing this offseason about the way the new Marlins ownership group has gone about dismantling any hopes of a competitive club the near future. The front office inherited a borderline playoff contender — one featuring the reigning NL MVP, as well as multiple young, talented, and cost-controlled players — and made no attempt to build a winner in what should be a wide-open Wild Card race in 2018 as well as a wide-open National League East at the start of the following season.

That the Marlins chose a different path is unfortunate for baseball and unfortunate for long-suffering Marlins fans — not to mention the potential Marlins fans who could have been cultivated with a commitment to winning in the long term.

Now that it’s clear that the Marlins have chosen not to field a competitive team in the near term, it is time to examine their current options with J.T. Realmuto and Christian Yelich and begin to analyze their decisions up to this point. As Dave Cameron noted in the aftermath of the Giancarlo Stanton trade to the Yankees, the Marlins did okay with their market value salary dumps.

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On Saturday, the Padres sent INF Yangervis Solarte to Toronto in exchange for 21-year-old Venezuelan OF Edward Olivares and 24-year-old org reliever Jared Carkuff.

Olivares is the prospect centerpiece of the deal. He had a fairly significant breakout in 2017 after he barely played affiliated ball in 2016 due to injury. He was hurt after just 15 games at Bluefield in 2016 and, aside from those organizations that had extended spring-training coverage in Florida, many clubs didn’t see him until last year. In 2017, he went to Low-A and hit .277/.330/.500 with 17 homers and 18 steals in 101 games. He was promoted to Dunedin in mid-August and struggled there for the final three weeks of the season.

Olivares has an exciting, but volatile, skillset. He’s a free swinger with mediocre breaking-ball recognition and a pull-heavy approach to contact. He takes his share of ugly, unbalanced hacks at pitches that aren’t anywhere near the strike zone. So while he struck out in just 17% of his Low-A plate appearances last year, scouts are concerned about how undercooked Olivares’s feel to hit is right no, and worry that it could become an issue against more advanced pro pitching.

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The Blue Jays traded a couple prospects for a versatile infielder this weekend following a season during which their own infielders had trouble staying on the field. That much about the Yangervis Solarte trade makes sense.

What makes a little less sense? A Toronto team projected to finish almost 10 games worse than the best two teams in their division just improved their 2018 roster at a potential cost down the road. It might be a fine trade in a vacuum, but is it a well-timed one?

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The Colorado Rockies are acting like a team with expectations for 2018. Before the start of the offseason, Cot’s Contracts projected a salary of $131 million for the team, an all-time high for the franchise. That was before they added $40 million in average annual value by signing Wade Davis, Chris Iannetta, Jake McGee, and Bryan Shaw. The players seem to expect big things as well, and have used this energy in their pursuit of free agents. McGee, according to Patrick Saunders, helped sell Wade Davis on the Rockies saying, “[T]his was a team that was going to win now.”

Now, many questions remain for the Rockies, and those questions have led some to doubt Colorado’s ability to contend. Can the pitching keep up its pace from last year? Can Charlie Blackmon repeat his MVP-type performance? Is Jonathan Lucroy back? While all three of those uncertainties can be addressed by playing the actual games, there’s another question that might have been answered recently.

#Rockies outfielder Dahl (rib/back) cleared to swing bat https://t.co/YEDOKU62RT via @MLB

— Thomas Harding (@harding_at_mlb) January 4, 2018

David Dahl saw only 82 plate appearances in 2017, all at the minor-league level. After a breakout 2016 rookie campaign in which he slashed .315/.359/.500 over 237 plate appearances while adding average defense in the outfield, Dahl was expected to be a key contributor to the Rockies going into the year. There were thoughts of a .300 hitter with 20-20 potential, enough to get most fanbases excited.

Unfortunately, those fantasies had to be postponed. On March 6th of 2017, the Rockies released a seemingly innocuous announcement that Dahl had suffered a stress reaction in his ribcage and would be reevaluated in two weeks. That injury would persist for basically the entire season.

Reports concerning Dahl’s return to health give the Rockies some hope of improving an outfield that was horrendous outside of the aforementioned Blackmon; however, the combination of Dahl’s profile as a hitter and the consequences of missing a full year suggest that enthusiasm ought to be curbed.

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Kansas City Royals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

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One will notice, upon a cursory examination of the projections below, that five of the Royals’ position players are forecast to produce roughly two or more wins in 2018. A closer inspection of the names attached to those figures, however, reveals that three of them — Lorenzo Cain (579 PA, 3.1 zWAR), Eric Hosmer (654, 1.9), and Mike Moustakas (559, 2.5) — appear here not because they’re currently employed by the Royals, but rather because they were formerly employed by the Royals, have been granted free agency, and simply remain unsigned as of January 8th.

Indeed, of the players currently under contract with the club, only Whit Merrifield (648, 2.5) and Salvador Perez (525, 2.6) are projected to record more than two wins next season. Perhaps more remarkably, ZiPS calls for only a single other hitter, Alex Gordon (498, 1.4), to cross even the one-win threshold. Five of the club’s most likely starting nine, meanwhile, feature WAR projections that round to zero. As presently constructed, this team appears almost to be an experiment designed to test the validity of “replacement level” as a concept.

Of some interest here, in a way that isn’t wholly relevant to the Royals, is ZiPS’ assessment of Eric Hosmer. On Friday, Craig Edwards endeavored to give Scott Boras the benefit of the doubt in the latter’s appraisal of Hosmer’s value. With a number of caveats and conditions, he was nearly able to support Boras’s claims with logic, but even that optimistic calculus was based on the assumption that Hosmer is at least a three-win player right now. Dan Szymborski’s model suggests that isn’t the case.

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When I talked to Brady Aiken in August, he claimed that he wasn’t concerned with his radar gun readings, nor was he worried about ”trying to please people with velocity.” He was just trying to get outs any way he could, “regardless of whether (he was) throwing 100 or throwing 80.”

Two years after the Indians drafted him in the first round — and two years post Tommy John surgery — Aiken spent his summer pumping low-octane gas. A heater that touched 96 in high school was now hovering in the high 80s, and only occasionally inching north of 90. Other numbers were a concern as well. The 21-year-old southpaw had a 4.77 ERA and walked 101 batters in 132 innings for low-A Lake County.

Aiken was amiable yet defensive when addressing his performance and his velocity. With the caveat that “everyone wants to throw hard,” he allowed that he’s not where he once was. And while he’s not sure what to expect going forward, he sees positives in what is hopefully a temporary backslide.

“I’ve had to learn to become more of a pitcher, because I can’t just blow balls by guys anymore,” said Aiken. “At this level, you’re also not facing high school or college guys — this is their job, and you have to be better at your job than they are at theirs. If you can command the ball well at 90-92 you should be able to find holes in bats, and be able to get outs.” Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Alexander threw his power sinker 91.9% of the time last year — the highest percentage among pitchers to toss at least 40 innings — and for good reason. It was an elite offering. Working out of the Kansas City bullpen, Alexander logged an MLB-best 73.8% ground-ball rate and snazzy 2.48 ERA over 58 appearances covering 69 frames.

His worm-killing weapon will be on display in a new location this coming season. In a deal examined by Travis Sawchik last night, the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired Alexander in a three-team trade that also involved the Chicago White Sox.

The 28-year-old southpaw qualifies as a late-bloomer. A sixth-round pick by the Royals in 2010 out of Sonoma State University (he was originally at Pepperdine), Alexander went into last year with just 25 big-league innings under his belt. Thanks to a velocity jump and increased usage of his sinker, however, he emerged as one of the best under-the-radar relievers in the junior circuit.

Alexander discussed the evolution of his signature pitch when the Royals visited Fenway Park last summer. Also weighing in on the southpaw’s development was Kansas City bullpen coach Doug Henry.

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Alexander on learning his sinker: “I throw a one-seam sinker. The grip was taught to me in college by Scott Erickson. I think he might have been trying to make a comeback at the time, and he’d come over to our field, at Pepperdine, to work out. I was throwing a bullpen and he saw that my ball had natural movement to it, kind of a natural tail. He asked me what I was throwing, and I showed him my grip, which was a four-seam. He showed me his one-seam grip.

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