Three years ago, Kris Bryant ranked as the best prospect in baseball. Then 23 years old, Bryant had brutalized minor-league pitching the year before and destroyed the competition in spring training with nine homers and 17 total hits in 44 plate appearances. Despite a clubhouse that now included Jon Lester and manager Joe Maddon among others — part of the Cubs’ signal to the world they were ready to compete — Bryant was easily one of the best 25 players in the organization, probably among the top five, and eventually proved during the season he was Chicago’s best position player.

And yet, the Cubs opted not to start the season with Kris Bryant on the roster. Once Bryant had spent enough days at Triple-A to extend his team control by a year — to become a free agent after the 2021 season instead of the 2020 campaign — the future MVP received a callup to the majors.

Bryant is still the most famous and most obvious case of a team’s effort to manipulate player service time to the potential detriment of the on-field product, but it happened before Bryant, has happened since Bryant, and is likely to keep happening. This season, there are several prominent players who might be kept off their major-league rosters for a time so that the team might save money and gain control of the player for an extra season.

For those unfamiliar with how service time works in these instances, here it is briefly. Players achieve free agency once they have six years of service time. Although the season lasts 187 days, a player is considered to have played a full season if he appears on an MLB roster or disabled list for 172 days. In any season where a player hits the 172-day threshold, that counts as one season of service time. If a player belongs to the roster for fewer than 172 days, he must combine those days with days from another campaign to reach the official “full season” mark.

Kris Bryant’s case is a useful example of this work. In 2015, he was on the roster for 171 days. That time counts only as a partial season. In the last two years, Bryant has been on the roster for more than 180 days each year, and each of those seasons count as one year of service time. At the end of the 2020 season, Bryant will have five seasons and 171 days of service, one day short of the six seasons necessary for free agency. As a result, he will need to play in 2021 to become a free agent. An extended discussion of service time appears in the FanGraphs glossary.

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One year ago this month, the Seattle Mariners signed Gordon Beckham to a minor-league contract, hoping that he could jumpstart a career in decline. That didn’t happen. The 31-year-old infielder slogged his way to a .706 OPS in Triple-A, then went an uninspiring 3 for 17 after a September call-up.

Despite those doldrums — and a lackadaisical track record that has seen him slash just .239/.303/.369 over parts of nine big-league seasons — Jerry Dipoto’s club is giving him another chance. So far he’s making the best of it. Going into yesterday, Beckham had nine hits, including a home run, in 13 spring training at bats.

The University of Georgia product was refreshingly honest when I asked him to assess his career thus far.

“I would describe it as having underperformed,” admitted Beckham, who was drafted eighth overall by the White Sox in 2008. “I started off well, and did some good things for a few years, but since then I haven’t played anywhere near my capabilities. If I don’t get it right soon, I probably won’t be playing much longer.”

Beckham was equally candid when asked why he hasn’t fulfilled his potential. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Texas Rangers. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

50 FV Prospects

Calhoun doesn’t have a position (he’s been tried at third, second, and in the outfield since college), but he’s going to rake. Scouts have him projected for plus hit and power. He takes huge, beer-league-softball hacks but has the hand-eye coordination and bat control to make it work. He could yank out 30 or more homers as soon as he’s given regular at-bats. The corner-outfield and DH situation in Texas is pretty crowded, but he should start seeing regular big-league time this year. There’s some risk that Calhoun’s aggression is exploited the way Rougie Odor’s has been, but otherwise Calhoun looks like a stable mid-order slugger.
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Pardon our inconsistency. On the one hand, we love having projections. Projections allow us to have an idea of what the future could bring. Projections let us think we know what’s going to happen, and we believe in them because they’ve proven themselves. On the other hand, we love the exceptional. That which doesn’t follow, that which takes us by surprise. We don’t want to actually know the future. We want for the world to mostly make sense, I suppose, but no one wants to close the door on the unpredictable. It’s the surprises that bring life to the living.

Tim Lincecum is back. Tim Lincecum is signing a major-league contract, having been inked by the Rangers. When Lincecum last pitched in the bigs, he might’ve been the very worst pitcher at the level. His ERA soared over 9, and the Angels couldn’t bring themselves to give him ten starts. If you want to get right down to it, the last year Lincecum was an effective major-league pitcher was 2011. That year’s best players by WAR were Jacoby Ellsbury and Matt Kemp. It’s been a long time since Lincecum was Lincecum, but hope blows on the embers of a dying fire. Baseball is better with Lincecum in it. There’s renewed reason to think he could surprise.

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The Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants have been two of the most successful franchises of the last decade, with a combined nine playoff appearances, five World Series appearances, and three titles — all to the Giants — but both teams had disappointing seasons this past year and face uncertain futures. Each was connected to a trade earlier this offseason for a major, high-salaried player — Giancarlo Stanton in the Giants’ case, Zack Greinke in the Rangers’ — although neither deal came to fruition.

Neither team’s strategy has been readily apparent. After a deal on Friday, however, their paths forward have become a bit more clear, even if neither club’s intentions appear crystallized.

Rangers receive

• LHP Matt Moore
• $750,000 of the Giants’ international bonus pool

Giants receive

• RHP Sam Wolff
• RHP Israel Cruz

The main piece in the deal, Matt Moore was a part of an underachieving rotation in San Francisco last season. Johnny Cueto couldn’t repeat his great 2016 campaign, and Madison Bumgarner missed a chunk of the season due to an off-field injury. Matt Moore was pretty good in 2016, putting up an ERA and FIP right around four — including an even better 3.53 FIP in his partial stint in San Francisco — and completed that season with average numbers and a 2.3 WAR. After that, though, his velocity dipped — by more than 1 mph on his fastball. His swinging-strike percentage declined down from 10.4% in 2016 to 8.6% last year, and batters made contact on 90% of swings in the zone, his worst career mark.

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I will admit that I haven’t, at any point this winter, thought about the Diamondbacks trading Zack Greinke. They just won 93 games and reached the NLDS. They have Paul Goldschmidt under team control for two more years, but A.J. Pollock and Pat Corbin for just one. Their window to win with this group is not going to be open very long, but they haven’t made any real noise about rebuilding, at least not publicly. And if they’re going to try to win again in 2018, they probably need Zack Greinke to do it.

Right now, we have the Diamondbacks projected for 84 wins, putting them two wins behind St. Louis for the top Wild Card spot in the NL. The Cardinals are clearly looking to upgrade their roster, and are probably close to landing Marcell Ozuna from Miami, if I’m any good at reading tea leaves. There is a bit of a gap between AZ and the fringe NL contenders, so the Diamondbacks could get worse and still think they’re as good as Colorado or San Francisco, but reducing their chances of making the playoffs would be a weird strategy in Pollock’s walk year.

Of course, if they don’t move Greinke, they have no shot of re-signing Pollock, so perhaps if they thought they could free up enough money to keep Pollock in Arizona past this year, moving a good chunk of Greinke’s contract could make sense. So, yeah, if someone wants to take most of the deal, and you think you can use it to keep the rest of the core together longer, maybe that’s worth thinking about.

But there’s this rumor kicking around that has the Rangers and Diamondbacks talking about a Greinke trade that just doesn’t make much sense to me.

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Just yesterday, the Rangers signed Chris Martin for two years and $4 million. Martin is a righty reliever who will turn 32 next June, and his major-league ERA is 6.19. If you try to Google him to examine his background, you have to be selective with your queries, because otherwise you just learn an awful lot about popular music. The Martin signing is a fairly easy one to ignore, all things considered.

I can’t make any promises. I don’t know what Martin might be capable of. But I feel almost obligated to try to talk him up. This seems like a forgettable deal, but Martin appears to have major upside. And the key to this is that, since Martin last pitched in the major leagues, he spent a couple of years in Japan.

Martin has been a teammate of Shohei Ohtani, with Hokkaido. Two years ago, he picked up 21 saves, reflecting the kind of trust he quickly earned. Because of an ankle injury, Martin has thrown just 88.1 innings over two seasons, but his performance was almost immaculate. I’ll tell you what I mean! Between 2016 – 2017, 190 different pitchers in the NPB threw at least 50 innings. Martin ranked first out of all of them in runs per nine, at 1.32. He ranked sixth in walk rate and seventh in strikeout rate, and he ranked second in K-BB%. The only pitcher ahead of him, in that final stat: Dennis Sarfate, who is outstanding. Martin hasn’t been quite on Sarfate’s level, but Sarfate seems like one of the best relievers in the world. Martin, meanwhile, seems just plain good.

If you’re curious about the stuff — when Martin last pitched in the majors, his fastball was 95, and he had a cutter at 90 and a slider at 83. This past season in Japan, Martin threw his fastball at 95, with a cutter at 91 and a slider at 84. He also started to show a splitter, at 87. This is all coming from a righty who stands 6’8. Martin just threw one of the better fastballs in Japan, and while the average fastball in the majors, of course, is harder, the stuff is good enough to play. Martin qualifies as a power reliever, with three or four pitches at his disposal. The numbers leave little reason for doubt.

The uncertainty is always the same. NPB isn’t the same as MLB, and so you can’t bring the same hitters over. Martin is going to face tougher competition, and the Rangers are hoping his overall command improvements are real. But, at the very least, Martin deserves this second shot. If a pitcher were this effective in Triple-A, you’d want to see him in a big-league bullpen, and Japanese baseball is better than that. The Rangers in 2016 got a good relief season out of Tony Barnette, who had also just pitched in Japan, and I’m sure that only encouraged them. In a market where everyone wants bullpen help, Martin is a potential bargain. Players from Japan have their prices driven down, perhaps unfairly. Finding inefficiencies is always the goal.

I don’t know if Martin will be good against the world’s best hitters. He was extremely good against the world’s second-best hitters. He’s going to cost a relative pittance. While this probably won’t win the Rangers a World Series, I could never look down on a move like this.

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 Texas Rangers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
In 2017, six of the Rangers’ position players surpassed the two-win threshold. Only one of that group (Carlos Gomez, specifically) appears likely to play elsewhere next season. In light of that lone departure, one might expect something on the order of five players to record two or more wins in 2018. Dan Szymborski’s computer, however, clearly operates by a different sort of calculus.

Indeed, a brief examination of the tables below reveals that only Adrian Beltre (430 PA, 2.7 zWAR) is forecast by ZiPS to record two-plus wins next year. As for the other four returnees, all are projected to endure some manner of regression: worse numbers on contact for Elvis Andrus (656, 1.9) and Robinson Chirinos (270, 1.3); more strikeouts and fewer extras bases for Joey Gallo (507, 1.7); and what appears to be fewer runs from defense and probably baserunning for Delino DeShields (471, 0.4).

This isn’t the end of the bad news, either: all told, four positions on the rough depth chart below — catcher, second base, center field, and designated hitter — are accompanied by a rounded WAR figure of 0 or 1. A very dreary sort of binary code, is how one might characterize that.

One, desperate for an optimistic note, can find it in Willie Calhoun’s projection (586, 1.9). Part of the return for Yu Darvish, Calhoun lacks a defensive home. What he doesn’t lack, however, is a promising offensive profile. ZiPS calls for markedly above-average contact and power numbers, represented by his 13.1% strikeout rate and .220 isolated-slugging figure, respectively.

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Coming into the offseason, the Rangers needed to add pitching. Just pitching, regular pitching, any kind of pitching. They looked thin in the rotation and they looked thin in the bullpen, and that makes things both complicated and entirely simple. Complicated, in that the Rangers needed plenty of help. Simple, in that there’s a lot of potential help out there. Already, the Rangers have added Doug Fister. Fister will help. The deal looks good.

The Rangers are one of the seven finalists for Shohei Ohtani. Obviously, landing him would be a dream. The team was also interested in Miles Mikolas, but he’s decided to sign with the Cardinals. Matt Bush is attempting a conversion from the bullpen to the rotation. And now, according to reports, the Rangers are signing Mike Minor to a multi-year deal. Minor entered the market as one of the most in-demand available relievers. The Rangers could use him as a reliever — but, apparently, Plan A is to convert him, too. Minor will get a chance to start, and the Rangers might end up with a six-man rotation.

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When Travis Sawchick asked you which question was most important on Shohei Ohtani’s questionnaire, you answered overwhelmingly that the team capable of keeping him healthy — or of convincing Ohtani that they’d keep him healthy — would win out. Travis went on to use a metric, Roster Resource’s “Roster Effect” rating, to get a sense of which team that might be. The Brewers, Cubs, Pirates, and Tigers performed best by that measure.

Of course, that’s just one way of answering the question. Health is a tough thing to nail down. To figure out which team is capable of keeping Ohtani the healthiest, it’s worth considering the possible implications of health in baseball. Roster Effect, for example, considers the quality of the player and seems to be asking: which rosters were affected the most by poor health? That’s one way of approaching it. Let’s try a few others and see who comes out on top.

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