If you go to our leaderboards and click on “career,” you’ll get a sample of 3,879 qualified position players, and 2,988 pitchers. If you lower the playing time threshold down to zero on each, you end up with 16,824 and 9,127. Now, obviously there’s some overlap in those numbers, but the point is that at least 16,000 players have suited up for a major league game. In that context, when I note that only 472 players total (314 position, 158 pitcher) have crossed the 40 WAR threshold, you can see it’s a big deal. It’s more or less the top-500 players in the game’s history (you can fill in the gaps — and probably then some — with Negro League players for whom we don’t have WAR or any advanced metrics).

That’s not to say there’s a lot of fanfare with getting to 40 wins. No one throws you a party, and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything to the person. But since we know that 50 WAR is sort of the dividing line for whether a player can be a Hall of Famer (as I noted recently, there are plenty of players in the Hall of Fame who barely cracked the 50 WAR plateau, and I believe there are even some in who are below it), then 40 WAR is sort of the dividing line for whether we’ll argue about a player being deserving of the Hall of Fame. Well, for everyone except relief pitchers, anyway.

Read the rest of this entry »

The word “move” is used in the context of an offseason to denote any number of varying transaction types. A trade is a move. A free-agent signing is a move. A player being designated for assignment is a move, or claimed off waivers, or sold to Japan. Players coming and going from rosters are the moves of the winter, and they’re the means by which the public tends to evaluate a team’s offseason.

The calculus for the outlook of the upcoming season is constantly changing throughout the offseason as these myriad moves transpire. When a team signs a star free-agent pitcher, we know that that team is several wins better than they were the day before. When a rebuilding club trades away its slugger in the final year of his contract for prospects, we understand that they’ve dropped a couple wins for the upcoming season.

But there’s another sort of move that happens during the offseason that’s more subtle, and it, too, changes the calculus of the upcoming season, though it often seems to be overlooked. We spend so much time and effort analyzing who “won or lost” the offseason that it’s easy to forget how much change should be expected from a team’s returning players. The Rangers didn’t go out and sign Yu Darvish this offseason, but he is expected to be a valuable addition to this year’s roster, an extra four or so wins added without any kind of traditional offseason move. Without doing anything, the Rangers rotation looks significantly better than it did at the end of last year.

Six years ago, Dave Cameron wrote a short post on this site titled 2009 Is Not a Constant. I recommend you read it, and sub in “2015” for “2009” when applicable, but here’s a relevant passage anyway:

We all know about career years and how you have to expect regression after a player does something way outside the ordinary, but regression doesn’t just serve to bring players back to earth after a big year.

Regression “fixes” a lot of problem spots from the prior year, even if the team doesn’t make a serious effort to change out players. The Royals got a .253 wOBA out of their shortstops a year ago. I don’t care how bad you think Yuniesky Betancourt is, you have to expect that number to be higher this year. They didn’t do anything to improve their shortstop position this winter, but the level of production they got from the position in 2009 is not their expected level of production for 2010.

…

You cannot just look at a team’s prior year won loss record – or even their pythagorean record – make some adjustments for the off-season transactions, and presume that’s a good enough estimator of true talent for the 2010 team.

Read the rest of this entry »

On February 27th, 1997, the cover of the then newly-released March issue of Sports Illustrated featured two baby-faced baseball players — with the headline “Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez head up the finest group of shortstops since World War II.” The next season, Nomar Garciaparra had his breakout, and he joined the two in what was an embarrassment of riches at the position. Three years later, the trio was elected to the 2000 All-Star Game — a recognition of what was one of the finest multi-year periods by a group of three shortstops in the history of the game.

A historical convergence of that type of talent happens rarely in baseball, and it happens far more rarely at one position – and in just one league. During any particular season, there are usually only a certain number of players that are above a particular production level. Take, for example, the number of players that produced at least 6.0 Wins Above Replacement in 2015. We’ll focus on 6.0 WAR because above that level we consider production to be in the realm of a possible “MVP” performance.

In 2015, there were only ten players in all of baseball who had greater than 6.0 WAR. In 2014, there were only nine, and in 2013 there were also ten. Some years have more players and some years have fewer, but the point is that there are usually few players who are in this upper echelon of production. It’s also important to understand that shortstop is usually a less talented position than others on the field: the skill set to be successful both offensively and defensively at shortstop simply narrows the range of potential players down. Case in point: there hasn’t been a full-time shortstop with at least 6.0 WAR since Hanley Ramirez and Derek Jeter both topped that mark in 2009.

In 1998, Jeter, A-Rod, and Garciaparra all had over 6.0 WAR. They were all shortstops. They were all in the American League. The confluence of circumstances that came together for that to happen should be celebrated by its own holiday. In fairness, 1998 was a ridiculous year for great position players – there were 24 players with at least 6.0 WAR – the result of both great timing and, well, steroids. Still, there has rarely been a time when talent among American League shortstops – and shortstops in general – was more top-heavy than in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.

Read the rest on Fox Sports.

On Monday, we released our first projected standings of 2016, with the Cubs unsurprisingly looking like the best team in baseball heading into Spring Training. More controversially, though, the Steamer projections — which is what our Forecasted Standings are based on currently, and will be until we add in the full ZIPS projections — see the Boston Red Sox as the second best team in baseball at this point, forecasting them for a 92-70 record.

That would be a 14 win improvement over last year’s 78-84 mark, which also notably came after the projections expected big things from the club. Understandably, there’s a decent amount of skepticism surrounding the idea that the Red Sox are really the AL’s best club on paper, so let’s look a bit deeper into the nuts and bolts of the forecast to see what’s really driving Steamer’s belief that Boston’s roster is ready to contend.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Hall of Fame voting was revealed last week. Maybe you heard the shouting. There’s nothing that brings out some good internet shouting like the Baseball Hall of Fame. Pretty strange when you think about it. People don’t typically freak out over museums or old baseball players, but put them together and things get all crazy like a conversation about sandwiches on the internet up in here. Watch the heck out!

But with regard to the voting. As it turns out, two players were voted in, both deserving, and one other specific player, Nomar Garciaparra, was not elected. Because he was not deserving. But oh, he could have been because, oh, what could have been! Garciaparra — a name I just had to force my computer to learn due to it inexplicably and repeatedly trying to change it into “Garcia parrot” — received just 1.8% of the vote. By rule, players receiving less than 5% of the vote are dropped from the ballot.

So. This is it. Nomar is officially not a Hall of Famer, meaning he’s officially not as good as Derek Jeter. The day much of South Boston literally believed would never come has come. But that doesn’t mean Nomar wasn’t Hall of Fame-good. He was. Just not for long enough.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Boston Red Sox. In this companion piece, I look at that same Boston farm system through the lens of my KATOH projection system. There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their age-28 seasons, those who receive a projection of at between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their age-28 seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

1. Rafael Devers, 3B (Profile)

KATOH Projection Through Age 28 (2015 stats): 9.6 WAR
KATOH Projection Through Age 28 (2014 stats): 2.3 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 55 FV

Devers destroyed two levels of Rookie Ball in 2014, which prompted the Red Sox to send him to the Sally league as an 18-year-old. He didn’t disappoint. While his numbers weren’t flashy, his power and strikeout rate were both better than the league’s average. That’s remarkable for a guy facing pitchers three or four years his senior. He could stand to walk a bit more, but that’s a minor concern considering how little walk rate tells us about players at Devers’ level. All in all, there’s a lot to be excited about with Devers. Read the rest of this entry »

Other clubs: Braves, Diamondbacks, Orioles.

The 2015 season was a disappointment from a standings perspective for Red Sox fans, no doubt. The near future should be a consolation, however, with their young talent proving capable of making an impact going into this spring. The new graduates were backed up by positive developments on the farm, as a number of guys took steps forward to fill in behind them. New general manager Dave Dombrowski has a lot with which he can work as the club looks to be back in the hunt for a division title.

The organization has four prospects who are pretty widely accepted as its top talents, though opinions differ greatly on the ranking order. Separate Red Sox officials all had one of Yoan Moncada, Rafael Devers and Andrew Benintendi as top dog, each player having separate questions that potentially limit their ceilings (though they’re all pretty high regardless). Moncada has legitimate defensive concerns while Devers’ power is more projection than reliable skill for now. Anderson Espinoza has a case for being on top of the list as well with his exceptional talent standing out at such a young age. In the end, I decided on Benintendi, though I could get behind any of the other three being the preferred choice.

The trade for Craig Kimbrel took four prospects off the list, which you can read about when the Padres list comes out (Margot would have been #3, Allen likely just off the top 10, Guerra towards the back end of the 45+ group). The rest of the system still has a good mix of upside and safety with enviable pitching and middle infield prospect quality. As a fair warning, I have a higher opinion of Mauricio Dubon and Trey Ball than may be commonly accepted, while Sam Travis gets more love after a strong regular season and fall performance than I’m willing to give just yet.

Read the rest of this entry »

You have a choice. I’ll give you $100 right now, or you can let me flip a coin. If it lands on heads, I’ll give you $250. But if it lands on tails, I’ll give you $20. I’m using a fair coin, so the expected value of flipping the coin is $135 based on the 50/50 odds it lands on heads or tails. If you like risk or are a risk-neutral person, it’s an easy decision to take your chances with the coin because the odds are strongly in your favor. If you’re a risk-averse person, however, you’re more likely to take the sure thing because $135 isn’t a whole lot more than $100, and $100 is a whole lot more than $20.

Let’s add another wrinkle. It’s the same choice, but if you choose the coin flip, you have to wait a month. The dollar amounts are the same, but now there’s a time component. To get the value of the coin flip, you need to apply a discount factor to the $135. For some people, that discount factor is pretty close to one, but it might be much lower if you’re strapped for cash and the $100 would dramatically improve your life in the present.

Major league players face a much higher stakes version of this decision when their club comes to them with a contract extension. Do they take a sure thing now, or do they wait and gamble on themselves? While we’re focusing a lot on the 2015-2016 free-agent class this month, there are eight players who could have been free agents for the first time this year but instead chose to cash out early by signing extensions. Did they make the right decision?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Boston Red Sox didn’t trade Henry Owens during the Winter Meetings. They still might trade him, depending on what kind of offers they receive for the 23-year-old lefty. While there’s no such thing as too much pitching, Boston does have depth in that department, and Dave Dombrowski likes power arms. Owens isn’t necessarily velocity deficient, but he’s more finesse than flamethrower.

Once viewed as untouchable, Owens is no longer looked at as sure-thing stud. He failed to dominate in Triple-A, and his 11 big league starts were a mixed bag. The club’s former top pitching prospect split eight decisions and finished with a 4.57 ERA and a 4.28 FIP.

As expected, Owens showed off an excellent changeup, which he threw 24.7% of the time after being called up in early August. How well he commanded his fastball largely dictated whether he was rock-and-rolling or getting rocked by opposing batters. The fastball averaged 89.1 mph, a tick or two less than in past years.

Owens talked about his first two months of MLB action in the closing days of September.

———

Owens on pitch sequencing: “It’s definitely an evolving process for me. When I came up and pitched against the Yankees and Detroit – the teams I faced early on – I was predominantly fastball. I was trying to establish my stuff and see how it played up here. After a few outings, I started mixing it up more. Not my repertoire, per se, but the sequencing changed. Of course, it can change in any game, and depend somewhat on the lineup.” Read the rest of this entry »

It’s an interesting thing in life when we can look at someone’s behavior and immediately identify its causes based on what we know of their past. Like when an actor tries to do a serious movie because they’ve only been seen as a comedian, or when a guy hits 40 and rushes out to by that ’86 Firebird he’d wanted since he was 11. These things are easy to diagnose, no degree required.

So, too, with Dave Dombrowski’s first offseason in Boston. He’s spent the balance of the last decade, it seems, losing in the playoffs because his bullpen failed him when he needed it most of all. So how do you counteract that? Easy! Get all the best relievers, or a good number of them, anyway. That was easy!

First, there was the Craig Kimbrel deal which did two things. It (a) caused the internet to freak out because Dombrowski dealt a seemingly silly amount of prospects to San Diego, and (b) added Kimbrel to the Red Sox bullpen. Then yesterday he traded Wade Miley for reliever Carson Smith (covered here by Jeff Sullivan). It’s easy to picture Dombrowski sitting down for the first time in his Fenway Park office, visions of David Ortiz’s grand slam flying just beyond the outstretched glove of Torii Hunter flickering in his brain like an old newsreel. He grabs a napkin out of his pocket and jots down the word “bullpen” over and over until he builds up then pops a blister on his finger. “The most dominant, unimpeachable, and impregnable bullpen yet seen on earth will be mine,” he thinks, “just as soon as I find a band-aid. OW! That smarts.”

Read the rest of this entry »