International baseball has been in the news often lately with the ongoing saga of Yoan Moncada (he’s in America now), the signing of Yasmany Tomas and yesterday’s news that Cuba-U.S. relations could be getting much better.  In recent news, at the yearly international scouting directors’ meeting at the Winter Meetings last week, sources tell me there was no talk about the recent controversial rule change and no talk about an international draft, as expected.

So much has been happening lately that you may have temporarily forgotten about last summer, when the Yankees obliterated the international amateur spending record (and recently added another prospect). If the early rumors and innuendo are any indication, the rest of baseball isn’t going to let the Yankees have the last word.

I already mentioned the Cubs as one of multiple teams expected to spend well past their bonus pool starting on July 2nd, 2015.  I had heard rumors of other clubs planning to get in the act when I wrote that, but the group keeps growing with each call I make, so I decided to survey the industry and see where we stand.  After surveying about a dozen international sources, here are the dozen clubs that scouts either are sure, pretty sure or at least very suspicious will be spending past their bonus pool, ranked in order of likelihood:

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The Winter Meetings revelry has passed. We’re still waiting on a few big trades to finally ‘consummate,’ but the list of free agents is less attractive by day. Before you turn down a chance at glory with the guys left waiting for a team, it’s probably a good idea to look at how badly you need them. This is not dating advice, but it sort of feels like it.

To that end, I’ve taking our depth charts and calculated a quick stat for ‘neediness.’ By averaging team WAR over 13 roster spots — the portion of the 25-man roster usually used for offense — and then looking at the difference between that average WAR and each position WAR, I’ve found a way to show where the biggest remaining lineup holes are.

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If you’re a baseball fan and you spent any amount of time on Twitter on Wednesday night, then you probably spent as much time hyperventilating as the rest of us. A new Dodger front office that had spent its first few weeks stealthily upgrading around the fringes of the 40-man — guys like Joel Peralta, Chris Heisey and Juan Nicasio — turned the entire sport upside down with trade after trade after trade, followed by more trades.

Three of those moved served to massively shake up the middle infield. Jeff has you covered on the Dee Gordon–Dan Haren–Andrew Heaney deal, which removed a second baseman from Los Angeles. Dave did a quick InstaGraph on the ensuing Howie Kendrick-Heaney trade with the Angels, which brought one right back. Right here, we’ll talk about how after 15 years and 2,090 games in Philadelphia, Jimmy Rollins is reportedly heading west, joining with Kendrick to make for a fascinating new infield duo. A 36-year-old shortstop well past his prime isn’t exactly the type of player you’d expect this front office to go for, but it makes all the sense in the world for both the player and the team.

For the Dodgers, the appeal is clear. To say shortstop was a need is a massive understatement. With Ramirez gone and top prospect Corey Seager probably another year away, the current situation was so dire that it ranked No. 31 — that’s last, because “free agents” count as a team right now — in our depth charts. Gaze upon the horror: Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Philadelphia Phillies. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Philadelphia’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Phillies system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Phillies system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. J.P. Crawford, SS (Profile)

The Phillies’ first pick of the 2013 draft, Crawford is the only player among the five present here who hasn’t made an appearance above High-A. In terms of Steamer’s computer math, that’s significant, as level of competition is a non-negligible variable in the model — and yet, despite that handicap, Crawford’s production in the low minors (along with his place on the age curve) renders him basically a replacement-level player at this point. That makes him more valuable than Ryan Howard, among a small collection of other major-league regulars.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Reds, Phillies, Rays & Mets

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

The Phillies are an easy target for the Internet and you’d expect the system to not be very strong, given the way the organization is characterized online.  The system isn’t great and the production from the draft hasn’t been very strong, which is a big reason why they recently hired a new scouting director.

It is worth pointing out that the Latin program is propping up the system right now, despite not having huge budgets, producing 6 of the top 16 prospects in the system.  Of the other ten, one is from a trade, eight were first or second round picks and the last one was a third round pick.  The Latin program run by Sal Agostinelli is propping up a system that only stands out right now because of two recent first round picks in Crawford and Nola.

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We’re used to making little adjustments all the time. Most commonly, it’s because of ballpark environment. A .350 wOBA in San Francisco is a hell of a lot more valuable than a .350 wOBA in Arizona. Sometimes you’ll also see adjustments for era, which is relevant now given increasing strikeouts and decreasing runs. There are raw stats, and there are adjusted stats, like, say, wRC+, but there’s one adjustment we seldom talk about even though it’s right there in front of our faces. What about the opposition a player actually faces?

It’s like strength-of-schedule, on the player level. No one debates the utility of strength-of-schedule measurements. Now, in baseball, what’s convenient is that the samples get pretty big so we can generally get away with assuming that things even out. Over broad windows, no one’s going to face exclusively awful opponents or awesome opponents. But in certain cases, it’s worth digging in when we have a suspicion. As such, I want to go into more detail on something I noted about Cole Hamels earlier.

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Boy is it ever easy to trade away other people’s stuff. From a distance, it’s easy to recognize when a guy has to go, as things are uncomplicated by memories and emotions. It sucks the Philadelphia Phillies just about have to trade Cole Hamels. He’s great, and he’s been there forever, through some really good times, and people have developed an attachment to him. Even the Phillies have officially recognized the era is over, but moving Hamels would be a painful kind of closure. The front office doesn’t want to deal Hamels for younger, unfamiliar talent. But it has to happen. As popular as Hamels is, from an objective standpoint, he’s not getting better. And he’d mean a lot more to a team with a prayer of winning something over the next couple years.

So the Phillies ought to be looking to cash in on Hamels. More seriously than they did around the deadline, I mean. The Phillies are poised to gut what there is to gut, and Hamels is a front-line starter who’d hit a market thirsty for front-line starters. Probably the most popular rumor so far: Hamels leaving the Phillies for the Boston Red Sox, in exchange for a package that involved young players. Clearly, nothing has yet been agreed to, but clearly, there will be some more negotiations. So what could we conceivably see as a trade? Let’s design a Red Sox move for Cole Hamels.

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The days of having to rail against runs batted in as a particularly useful indicator of individual offensive value are long behind us. That does not mean there might not be potentially interesting research to do on situational hitting or the like, but simply that the straight-up use of RBI is not something that really needs to be debated.

Nonetheless, it is still interesting to see what sorts of hitters can accumulate high numbers of RBI, something we recognize with an award named for two players who managed big RBI numbers despite less than impressive advanced hitting metrics: the John Carter-Tony Bautista Award.

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Yasmany Tomas, LF

Hit: 40/45+, Game Power: 55/65, Raw Power: 70/70, Speed: 45/45+, Field: 45/50, Arm: 45/45+

Upside: .275/.350/.480 with 25-30 homers, fringy defense & baserunning value in left field

Note: The “upside” line is basically a 75 percentile projection as explained here, while the tool grades are a 50 percentile projection. See the scale here to convert the hit/power tool grades into production.

Tomas is the latest Cuban defector to hit the market: he should be declared a free agent shortly and is holding private workouts in the Dominican this week after a big open workout for over 100 scouts from all 30 clubs on Sunday at the Giants Dominican complex. The above video is from last summer when the Cuban national team faced college Team USA in Durham, North Carolina. The Cuban team had a lot of trouble making contact against a loaded USA pitching staff (five pitchers from the staff went in the first round last June) and Tomas in particular struggled, going 3-for-19 with 3 singles, 1 walk and 8 punch outs over the 5 game set. Tomas was in bad shape and looked lost at the plate at times when I saw him, but he has shown big league ability in other international tournaments and as a professional in Cuba.

The carrying tool here is raw power, which draws anywhere from 60 to 70 grades on the 20-80 scale from scouts, but the question mark is how much he will hit.  Tomas has a short bat path for a power hitter and quick hands that move through the zone quickly.  The tools are here for at least an average hitter, but Tomas’ plate discipline has been questioned and he can sometimes sell out for pull power in games (here’s video of a particularly long homer in the WBC).  Some scouts think it’s more of a 40-45 bat (.240 to .250 average) that may keep Tomas from getting to all of his raw power in games, while others see a soon-to-be-24-year-old with the tools to hit and think the hot streak of Cuban hitters in the big leagues will continue with him.

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Sometimes, you talk with a guy and there isn’t a great narrative that ties it all together. That’s what happened when I talked to Jimmy Rollins before a game with the Athletics this month. Sure, the general question was how he’s been able to stay fresh and relevant and productive through the latter part of his career. How he’s known what to change and what not to change. But Rollins has enough character to leave it alone and let him speak in his own words.

Eno Sarris: I noticed that last year you had 666 plate appearances.

Jimmy Rollins: Did I? Wow.

Eno Sarris: That explains everything!

Jimmy Rollins: I thought it was me! That’s crazy.

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