Taylor Hearn is the top left-handed pitching prospect in the Pittsburgh Pirates system. Long and lanky, the 23-year-old native of Royse City, Texas possesses a high-octane heater and a changeup that he considers his best pitch. He also has a background unlike that of any other player in professional baseball.
According to the young southpaw, his grandfather was the first African-American to attend Oklahoma State on a rodeo scholarship, and the first professional black cowboy. Dubbed “Mr. Black Rodeo,” Cleo Hearn joined the calf roping circuit in 1959.
The tradition was passed down, both within the family and throughout Texas. Robby Hearn followed in his father’s footsteps, and he went on to teach his own son the tricks of the trade.
“Growing up, it was kind of bred into me to do that,” Taylor Hearn told me. “I did it until I was 17. It’s still a big thing in Texas, including for African Americans. Cory Solomon has been in the national finals the past few years.”
Hearn doesn’t do much calf roping these days —“only now and then, because I don’t have the time” — but he does hope to get back into it down the road. For now, he’ll settle for (ahem) showing his girlfriend the ropes. Read the rest of this entry »
The team that eventually signs Neil Walker will be getting a player who has been consistent and dynamic over the course of his career. Those descriptions come courtesy of the 32-year-old free agent himself — and they’re pretty accurate. In his eight full big-league seasons, Walker has averaged 2.7 WAR annually, with the ebbs and flows remaining within a reasonably narrow range. Ditto his OPS, which has always been higher than league average, but never north of .823.
A first-round pick by his hometown (give or take a few miles) Pirates in 2004, Walker was Pittsburgh property prior to being traded to the Mets in December 2015, and then to the Brewers last August. Along the way, he’s remained steady-as-she-goes productive, as well as a positive influence in the clubhouse.
“I’ve been able to fit into many roles with the teams I’ve been on,” Walker told me at the tail end of last season. “I’ve hit at the top of the order and the middle of the order. I’ve been a run producer and a run scorer. I’ve played pretty decent defense. I feel I’ve been a fairly dynamic and consistent player.”
You might remember Rob Mains from the work he contributed to this site’s Community blog. More recently, he’s been doing great things over at Baseball Prospectus. Just this past month, he was nominated for a SABR award.
Mains wrote a piece over at BP in the middle of January that I found to be of interest. It came shortly after the Pirates shedded Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen, with Pirates owner Bob Nutting claiming he couldn’t afford to keep star players around at market rates.
Asked Bob Nutting what it will take for #Pirates to break cycle of "develop, then sell when gets too costly." Answer: "I think you'd have a fundamental redesign of the economics of baseball, that's not what we're going to have."#Pirates
Mains’ piece is, in part, a meditation on what we ought to expect of a pro sports team’s ownership — and, in particular, if there should be a moral obligation, or civic responsibility, inherent to holding such an asset.
The Mets reportedly continue to look for infield help this winter with a view to improving their team for the 2018 campaign. According to Ken Rosenthal, three of the targets for New York are free agents — specifically, Todd Frazier, Eduardo Nunez, and Neil Walker. Pirates infielder Josh Harrison is a fourth. The cost of acquiring any of the first three is pretty straightforward: about $30-40 million, according to our crowdsourced estimates. As for Harrison, the issue of “cost” is more complicated.
According to Rosenthal, the Pirates want Brandon Nimmo in return for their versatile infielder. Superficially, that seems to make sense for the Mets. Nimmo is probably a fifth outfielder after Michael Conforto gets healthy. As for Harrison, he’d probably start. That’s a good trade-off for New York, right?
In one way, yes. But then there’s also that agonizing question every club is compelled to face when pondering the trade of a young player: what could he become? What’s his upside?
One way of answering that question with regard to Nimmo, specifically, is to focus on his process and look at other players who have a similar one. Nimmo is a player with a good eye, a nearly even batted-ball mix, and a certain degree of power. Also, his outfield defense looks decent. Let’s get exact about those facets of his game and look at other players with similar games.
Episode 797
The White Sox recently invited media to attend a hitting camp at their complex in Glendale, at which camp lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen — himself a well-regarded member of the media — observed Jake Burger, Yoan Moncada, and (in particular) Luis Robert all exhibiting impressive power on contact. Longenhagen waxes poetic on Robert’s talents in this edition of the program while also addressing the interesting case of Angels catching prospect Taylor Ward and the ascent of new Pirates prospect Colin Moran.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
I noticed an underlying theme in both pieces I’ve written since coming back, along with many others written this offseason at FanGraphs. If you are a fan of a small- or medium-market team that will never spend to the luxury-tax line and thus always be at a disadvantage, do you want your team to try to always be .500 or better, or do you want them push all the chips in the middle for a smaller competitive window? In my stats vs. scouting article I referenced a progressive vs. traditional divide, which was broadly defined by design, but there are often noticeable differences in team-building strategies from the two overarching philosophies, which I will again illustrate broadly to show the two contrasting viewpoints.
The traditional clubs tend favor prospects with pedigree (bonus or draft position, mostly), with big tools/upside and the process of team-building is often to not push the chips into the middle (spending in free agency, trading prospects) until the core talents (best prospects and young MLB assets) have arrived in the big leagues and have established themselves. When that window opens, you do whatever you can afford to do within reason to make those 3-5 years the best you can and, in practice, it’s usually 2-3 years of a peak, often followed directly by a tear-down rebuild. The Royals appear to have just passed the peak stage of this plan, the Braves hope their core is established in 2019 and the Padres may be just behind the Braves (you could also argue the old-school Marlins have done this multiple times and are about to try again now).
On the progressive side, you have a more conservative, corporate approach where the club’s goal is to almost always have a 78-92 win team entering Spring Training, with a chance to make the playoffs every year, never with a bottom-ten ranked farm system, so they are flexible and can go where the breaks lead them. The valuation techniques emphasize the analytic more often, which can sometimes seem superior and sometimes seem foolish, depending on the execution. When a rare group of talent and a potential World Series contender emerges, the progressive team will push some chips in depending on how big the payroll is. The Rays have a bottom-five payroll and can only cash in some chips without mortgaging multiple future years, whereas the Indians and Astros are higher up the food chain and can do a little more when the time comes, and have done just that.
What we just saw in Pittsburgh (and may see soon in Tampa Bay) is what happens when a very low-payroll team sees a dip coming (controllable talent becoming uncontrolled soon) and doesn’t think there’s a World Series contender core, so they slide down toward the bottom end of that win range so that in a couple years they can have a sustainable core with a chance to slide near the top of it, rather than just tread water. Ideally, you can slash payroll in the down years, then reinvest it in the competing years (the Rays has done this in the past) to match the competitive cycle and not waste free-agent money on veterans in years when they are less needed. You could argue many teams are in this bucket, with varying payroll/margin for error: the D’Backs, Brewers, Phillies, A’s and Twins, along with the aforementioned Rays, Pirates, Indians and Astros.
Eleven clubs were over $175 million in payroll for the 2017 season (Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Tigers, Giants, Nationals, Rangers, Orioles, Cubs, Angels), so let’s toss those teams out and ask fans of the other 19 clubs: if forced to pick one or the other, which of these overarching philosophies would you prefer to root for?
Pirates ownership failed to build upon its core. Now the core has broken up. (Photo: Chappy02)
My book Big Data Baseball was published back in 2015. For those unfamiliar with it, it chronicles the Pirates’ 2013 campaign, when the club broke a string of 20 straight losing seasons (a North American pro sports record) and advanced to the NLDS.
There was a misnomer back then that the Pirates were a young team coming of age. They were not. Gerrit Cole was the only prominent prospect who debuted that season, while 90% of the roster was composed of holdovers from 2012. The book documents how the Pirates made a dramatic pivot, in part by residing on what represented the cutting edge of analytical thought at the time.
Pittsburgh’s transformation came in the form of a three-pronged approach, based on framing, shifts, and ground balls. They were the first club to invest significant dollars on the open market in pitch-framing when they signed Russell Martin to a then-club-record, free-agent deal of two years and $17 million. (Yes, that was a record amount.) They increased their defensive-shift usage by 400%. And while they were not the first club to more frequently employ a shift, they were the first — through sequencing, location, and pitch type — to consciously spike their ground-ball rate, to coerce more ground balls into the shifts. The Pirates led baseball in ground-ball rate from 2013 to -15.
The Pirates were also on the cutting edge of communication, the first known club to integrate a quantitative analyst full-time, even on road trips, into their clubhouse. Mike Fitzgerald was there not only to enhance scouting material but to be a conduit in exchanging ideas between the clubhouse and front office. Of course, having peak Andrew McCutchen didn’t hurt either.
When the book appeared on shelves, the Pirates were at their high-water mark, en route to a 98-win season. They were viewed then as a model, sabermetric-leaning organization having engineered a remarkable turnaround. Since 2015, though, both the trajectory of the big-league club and the perception of the organization have turned south.
I suppose what I should say is that the Gerrit Cole trade has two perception problems. One, it’s clearly just a bad look for Pittsburgh. It’s generally a bad look when a major-league team has to trade away an established major-league talent, and with Cole and then Andrew McCutchen going out the door, it’s a twin reminder of how the Pirates failed to build on a tremendous run of success. I don’t know how much more the Pirates reasonably could’ve done, but there’s forever that lingering question regarding ownership’s commitment to winning. This is nothing new. It’s a reopening of wounds that never healed.
There’s also, though, another aspect. The Pirates have been heavily criticized for the return package they got for Cole from the Astros. I have no interest in trying to figure out whether the Pirates got the best package possible. I don’t know what else was truly on the table. Maybe more would’ve been available in July; maybe Cole’s stock would’ve dropped. All we know is what the Pirates got. My read of the consensus is that the Pirates didn’t get enough. But my read is also that the Astros have a little something to do with that. Specifically because the Astros are unusually good and deep.
In reality, there is no separating the Pirates from their circumstances. The Pirates are a smaller-market team, and a smaller-budget team, but followers won’t ever let you forget it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. It’s fair to question ownership’s commitment to winning, as the Pirates never spent big to supplement what became an impressive and successful core. Predictably, the Pirates wound up squeezed, hence the trades of both Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen. They were getting expensive, with decreasing team control. Time to reload. That’s the cycle.
But it’s not like Neal Huntington has a choice. He has to operate within the given constraints, so it started to make sense to deal Cole away. And then it made sense to deal McCutchen away. Ideally, the Pirates wouldn’t be here in the first place, but, well, they’re here, and so trades have been made. And trades have been criticized, the Cole move in particular. There’s the prevailing thought the Pirates didn’t get enough back. Certainly, they didn’t receive the classic headliner. Fans would like to see a better haul for their ace.
Me, I’ve come fully around. I likeJoe Musgrove. He’s interesting. I likeMichael Feliz. He’s also interesting. Jason Martin is further interesting, as a fourth piece. But I’d like to shed particular light on Colin Moran. Moran has, in the past, been an extremely polarizing prospect, and at this point he might be considered post-hype. Yet Moran made significant changes in 2017, the kinds of changes you’ve heard about elsewhere. Colin Moran is a swing-changer.
As a small-market club, the Pirates have a limited margin for error to be competitive.
(Photo: Keith Allison)
If you’ve read any of the dozens of articles over the years trying to create a framework for player asset values (putting a dollar amount on a player’s value), you’re aware of the biggest weakness of this genre of article. Take a star player, run him through a marginal-value analysis, and you’ll be disappointed in what it says about his trade value. Before we jump into the Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen trades, follow me down a thought-experiment rabbit hole.
Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball and Steamer projects him as a six-win player next year. Using the roughly $9-10 million at which a win is currently valued on the open market, Kershaw is likely to produce something between $50 and $60 million of value next year; let’s call it $55 million. Would multiple teams bid that amount for his services on a one year deal? Probably yes, because there’s some surplus value at that salary for which the formula fails to account. It doesn’t consider, for example, either extreme payrolls (i.e. the Dodgers’ on one hand, the A’s on the other) or more critical spots on the win curve (moving an 87-win team to a 93-win team is worth far more revenue-wise than 65 to 71).
So what would the A’s bid? They had an $86 million payroll last year, and they obviously wouldn’t give nearly two-thirds of it to one player. Oakland’s value for Kershaw would likely be whatever the maximum is that they would pay for any player, but that number is much lower than what the Dodgers would spend, maybe $20 million. Granted, these are extreme cases, but it illustrates the limitations of using a one-size-fits-all dollar-per-win calculator in specific instances, even if it works fine in aggregate.
More Granular Valuation
I point all that out to illustrate the fact that players aren’t worth the same to every team. Kershaw’s value, on which we all basically agree, varies by $30-40 million from the A’s to the Dodgers on just a one-year deal. So wouldn’t it follow that the A’s and Dodgers would value other players differently, too?
