There’s an awful lot you can learn from the way that a player gets pitched. Often, you could just look at the player’s statistics, I suppose, but let’s make believe we live in a world without publicly-accessible performance statistics. All right, so, now we’re imagining. Last year, no regular player saw a higher rate of fastballs than Ben Revere. Why would that be? No regular player saw a lower rate of fastballs than Josh Hamilton. Why would that be? First basemen saw far, far fewer fastballs than American League pitchers. If all we had was this information, we could still interpret it, figuring out clues as to how the hitters are perceived.

Of course, it’s not just about fastball rate. You can look at fastballs, or you can look at pitches in the zone, or you can look at types of pitches in particular parts of the zone — there’s a lot you can examine. Players get pitched according to the scouting reports that teams have on those players, and since we can’t look at those scouting reports, we can use the information we have to examine them indirectly.

One thing you can do is look at a guy’s pitch patterns. Yet another powerful indicator of something can be a change in a guy’s pitch patterns. What that would suggest is a change in a guy’s ability level or approach. Yasiel Puig, for example, was pitched differently in 2014 from how he was pitched as a rookie. That’s because Puig evidently corrected a weakness against inside fastballs. If we look at drop in rate of fastballs seen, no hitter saw a bigger drop between 2013 and 2014 than J.D. Martinez. There’s a pretty simple explanation: Martinez changed his swing mechanics and became an out-of-nowhere slugger. So pitchers found themselves having to be more careful.

At the other end, Mike Trout saw an increase in his fastball rate. Opponents tried to seize a perceived weakness against high heat. Allen Craig saw an increase in his fastball rate. Opponents identified that he was missing bat speed and couldn’t get around on hard pitches in. And yet, of all the players, no one saw a bigger year-to-year fastball-rate increase than Hanley Ramirez. Ramirez was productive, and Ramirez just signed a big contract with the Red Sox, but clearly, pitchers saw him differently in the season recently completed.

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

Two years ago, the Los Angeles Angels signed Josh Hamilton to a whopping, surprising five-year contract that paid the mercurial outfielder $125 million dollars. The deal came one year after the Halos signed Albert Pujols in perpetuity for a twice-weekly fistful of diamonds, so Hamilton’s mammoth contract came as a shock.

After his two seasons in Anaheim, the deal doesn’t exactly look like a winner. Hindsight being what it is, is it easy to say the signing was doomed from the start. A look back through the archives both here at Fangraphs and at MLB Trade Rumors shows a lot of first guessing and some otherwise hilarious comments from around baseball. There were plenty of red flags around Hamilton, from his health to his performance and just about everything in between.

At the time of the deal, Hamilton was headed into his age-32 season and coming off a 43 homer year. He was unquestionably talented but also eminently questionable. The approach, the off-field history, the spotty medical records; all of it made for a bizarre free agent pursuit. The team that knew him best wouldn’t guarantee a fifth year, according to reports. The Angels rushed in with five years and no strings, much to the chagrin of Rangers GM Jon Daniels.

With two years of history on our side, we can see flippantly say this contract was doomed from the start. The biggest question is this: did Jerry Dipoto and the Angels front office offer Hamilton this deal knowing it was bad the moment he signed it?

Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the Arizona Fall League attendees have been seen enough that the scouting community has a well developed opinion on each player before they arrive in the desert. Even that year’s draftees (such as Nick Howard and Trea Turner this year), while new on the pro scene, were heavily-scouted, top-of-their-class players who many have seen at least a time or two and have some sort of background with. This year saw three reasonably high-profile Cuban prospects get Fall League reps in Raisel Iglesias, Rusney Castillo and Daniel Carbonell who had scarcely been seen on domestic soil by scouts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, Tony has written some pieces touching on the Fenway park factors. Though he’s provided detail, you already had some understanding of how the park plays. The Green Monster is unlike pretty much anything else in the game today, and it changes what happens to balls in play. To right field, and to center field, Fenway is more or less fair, if not a wee bit pitcher-friendly in places. To left field, though, and especially to left-center, balls that would be outs elsewhere clang off the Monster for singles or doubles. Every so often, the Monster will claim a would-be dinger, but that’s little consolation to pitchers; if they give up a ball headed to left, it’s probably putting a guy on base, and maybe in scoring position.

There’s nothing subtle about the Green Monster. You can’t miss it. It’s right there, casting a shadow over everything, and what it does makes absolute sense. Of course it leads to more singles. Of course it leads to more doubles. Of course it makes that part of Fenway hitter-friendly. Pitchers know all about it when they go to work, so I got to wondering, does that in any way change the way the pitchers pitch? I’m going to go ahead and spoil the rest of this article: yes. You already know how. The remainder is just going to confirm your suspicions.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox came into the winter with a clear need for starting pitching, and a lot of money to spend. Yesterday, they spent a big chunk of that money, adding $41 million in AAV to their payrolls for the next four or five years. And yet, today, they still have the same glaring need for starting pitching. Evaluating the wisdom of the Red Sox spending spree is an interesting challenge, because unlike most free agent signings, these feel like half of the transaction.

We can still evaluate the signings of Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez based on the production the Red Sox should expect going forward and the money that was surrendered to acquire that future production, but we don’t really know the whole picture here. The signings of two of the winter’s premier free agent hitters very likely mean that Yoenis Cespedes is getting traded, and I think Mike Napoli might be on his way out of town too. What the team gets back in trade, and how they choose to reallocate money that could be saved through those trades, will affect what else the Red Sox can choose to do this winter. They know they need pitching, and it seems essentially impossible that they won’t make further moves to address that need; moves that were made possible by these signings.

So without those pieces of information in place, I’m hesitant to draw any strong conclusions about the new contracts given to Sandoval or Ramirez. If the team trades Cespedes and Napoli for young arms, then spends the $25 million in savings on Max Scherzer, then these moves start to more clearly address the team’s need for a frontline starter. But we don’t know if they’re going to do that. We don’t know what they’re going to do, so we can’t be too strongly convicted about whether these signings were a wise use of resources.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Boston Red Sox, as you might have heard, currently have an outfield glut. There is ten pounds of outfield meat in their five pound bag. Something has to give, and that something is likely Yoenis Cespedes.

When the Sox acquired Cespedes from Oakland in the Jon Lester trade, it felt more like a rental than a long-term investment in the player. Cespedes’ unique contract allows him to become a free agent at the end of the 2015 season, so Boston put themselves in an enviable position. They received an established big leaguer in exchange for their walk-year ace and got an up-close and personal look at a potential big free agent bat.

Whether or not a look under Cespedes’ hood informed their decision to sign both Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, that’s the route they went down. Now Cespedes is trade bait, the precious “right-handed power” commodity in a marketplace clambering for those skills. He’s headed into his age-29 season, he’s owed $10.5 million this year, and there’s going to be a line around the block to bid for his services. Where might he land?

Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, I found myself messing around on one of the projections pages, and I happened upon something I didn’t expect: the Mariners were projected for the highest team WAR in the American League. I wrote all about it for Fox, and while people made their jokes about the Mariners only looking like a contender after the end of the season, I thought it was neat to be able to establish a sort of pre-offseason baseline. What the numbers say right now isn’t meaningless. At the start of the offseason, the Mariners looked solid. How they look at the end depends on their own moves, and on the moves of the others.

So, about those others. Consider the Mariners knocked out of first place, if only until the next domino falls. The Red Sox have reached an agreement with Hanley Ramirez, and he will play some position. The Red Sox have also reached an agreement with Pablo Sandoval, and he will play third base. Go into the numbers now and you see a new best team in the American League. It’s only based on projections, and it’s not even December, but last year the Red Sox finished in last, and that doesn’t look real likely to repeat.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you focus on his age and overall production so far, the reported near-$100 million that the Red Sox are handing Pablo Sandoval for his next five years are reasonable. He’s a young man with an established bat at a scarce position. But if you focus instead on some of the aspects of his production, things look a little different. They look a little scarier.

First, read Dave Cameron on why even a sixth year wouldn’t have been crazy, given the right salary numbers. Basically, as the number of years go up, average annual value goes down. The sixth year might be the premium that gets the signature, but it’s not a sixth year at the same price as year one. Given that the salary pretty much exactly follows the breakdown that Cameron showed, this isn’t a terrible contract if you call Pablo Sandoval a 3.5-win 28-year-old third baseman. Even if it’s a little more than the median five-year $80 million contract the crowd wanted to give him.

But what if you call him other things?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox are reportedly on the verge of signing Hanley Ramirez for something “in the range” of $90 million over five years, according to Ken Rosenthal. The vagueness associated with the “range” wording means that we don’t know exactly how many years or how many dollars Ramirez is getting, but it seems like anything in the range of $90 million for Ramirez is going to be a pretty good deal for the Red Sox. That said, we’ll hold off on a full analysis of the contract until we actually know what the contract is going to look like.

So for now, let’s talk about what this move does to the Red Sox roster and the rest of their offseason plans.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »