One might say that the Escobar signing has turned Raul Mondesi’s career… upside-down. (Photo: Minda Haas Kuhlmann)
The free agencies and likely departures of Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Moustakas led most to believe that Kansas City was in for some kind of rebuild. It seemed likely than any such attempt at a rebuild would lead to major-league opportunities for upper-level prospects like Hunter Dozier, Samir Duenez, and Ryan O’Hearn and/or post-prospects like Cheslor Cuthbert and Raul Adalberto Mondesi to pass or fail the big-league test and establish themselves as Royals of the future.
For most of those players, such an opportunity is still likely to emerge. With the announcement on Friday, however, that Alcides Escobar would be returning to the Royals, the future for one of them has become less certain. The presence of Escobar and 2017 breakout Whit Merrifield raises immediate questions about Raul Mondesi’s prospects in Kansas City, as it appears his path to regular big-league playing time is once again blocked.
In this slowest of markets, one of the players who might be most adversely affected is Mike Moustakas.
Some thought it was possible, as the offseason began, that Moustakas might receive a $100-million deal this winter. Not only was he a third baseman who’d just authored a 38-homer season, but he was also still on the right side of 30. Of course, that sort of deal hasn’t emerged. It seems increasingly unlikely to emerge with each day.
Dave predicted a five-year, $95-million pact for Moustakas. The crowd predicted a five-year deal, as well, for $10 million fewer overall. Neither option seems probable at the moment: no free agent to date has secured more than a three-year contract, and there hasn’t been much reported interested in Moustakas.
Typically, in the free-agency era, impact up-the-middle talents like Cain are not available on January 23rd. A year ago to the day, all of Dave Cameron’s top-19 free agents had signed. As of this January 23rd, just eight of his top 20 have found a home.
Cain is coming off a four-win season. Even with his injury issues, he ranks 21st in position-player WAR since 2015 (13.1). J.D. Martinez, by comparison, ranks 42nd in WAR during that same period. Martinez reportedly has a five-year offer on the table, though. We’re unaware of such interest in Cain. There is a case to be made that Cain is the best remaining positional free agent available and that he’s quickly becoming the best bargain.
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?
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 Kansas City Royals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Batters
One will notice, upon a cursory examination of the projections below, that five of the Royals’ position players are forecast to produce roughly two or more wins in 2018. A closer inspection of the names attached to those figures, however, reveals that three of them — Lorenzo Cain (579 PA, 3.1 zWAR), Eric Hosmer (654, 1.9), and Mike Moustakas (559, 2.5) — appear here not because they’re currently employed by the Royals, but rather because they were formerly employed by the Royals, have been granted free agency, and simply remain unsigned as of January 8th.
Indeed, of the players currently under contract with the club, only Whit Merrifield (648, 2.5) and Salvador Perez (525, 2.6) are projected to record more than two wins next season. Perhaps more remarkably, ZiPS calls for only a single other hitter, Alex Gordon (498, 1.4), to cross even the one-win threshold. Five of the club’s most likely starting nine, meanwhile, feature WAR projections that round to zero. As presently constructed, this team appears almost to be an experiment designed to test the validity of “replacement level” as a concept.
Of some interest here, in a way that isn’t wholly relevant to the Royals, is ZiPS’ assessment of Eric Hosmer. On Friday, Craig Edwards endeavored to give Scott Boras the benefit of the doubt in the latter’s appraisal of Hosmer’s value. With a number of caveats and conditions, he was nearly able to support Boras’s claims with logic, but even that optimistic calculus was based on the assumption that Hosmer is at least a three-win player right now. Dan Szymborski’s model suggests that isn’t the case.
Scott Alexander threw his power sinker 91.9% of the time last year — the highest percentage among pitchers to toss at least 40 innings — and for good reason. It was an elite offering. Working out of the Kansas City bullpen, Alexander logged an MLB-best 73.8% ground-ball rate and snazzy 2.48 ERA over 58 appearances covering 69 frames.
His worm-killing weapon will be on display in a new location this coming season. In a deal examined by Travis Sawchik last night, the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired Alexander in a three-team trade that also involved the Chicago White Sox.
The 28-year-old southpaw qualifies as a late-bloomer. A sixth-round pick by the Royals in 2010 out of Sonoma State University (he was originally at Pepperdine), Alexander went into last year with just 25 big-league innings under his belt. Thanks to a velocity jump and increased usage of his sinker, however, he emerged as one of the best under-the-radar relievers in the junior circuit.
Alexander discussed the evolution of his signature pitch when the Royals visited Fenway Park last summer. Also weighing in on the southpaw’s development was Kansas City bullpen coach Doug Henry.
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Alexander on learning his sinker: “I throw a one-seam sinker. The grip was taught to me in college by Scott Erickson. I think he might have been trying to make a comeback at the time, and he’d come over to our field, at Pepperdine, to work out. I was throwing a bullpen and he saw that my ball had natural movement to it, kind of a natural tail. He asked me what I was throwing, and I showed him my grip, which was a four-seam. He showed me his one-seam grip.
Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel have provided scouting reports for the prospects changing hands. Below are the KATOH projections for those same players. WAR figures account for each player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings.
Oaks caught KATOH’s eye last year when he put up a 2.74 ERA with decent peripherals across 24 starts in the Dodgers system. An oblique injury effectively ended his 2017 season in July, but not before he recorded a 3.49 FIP and 21% strikeout rate in 84 Triple-A innings. Oaks turns 25 in March but has succeeded as a starter at the highest level of the minors.
The Dodgers, Royals, and White Sox executed a three-team trade on Thursday night. Los Angeles acquired 28-year-old lefty Scott Alexander from Kansas City and INF Jake Peter from Chicago while sending RHP Trevor Oaks and INF Erick Mejia to Kansas City and Luis Avilan to Chicago. In addition to Avilan, the White Sox received reliever Joakim Soria from Kansas City and cash from both other teams.
Travis Sawchik examined the deal last night from the Dodgers’ perspective. Below are scouting reports on Alexander (who exhausted rookie eligibility in 2018 but still has a developing skill set) and the deal’s prospects. Notes and prose are a combination of my own and Kiley McDaniel’s.
Going to Los Angeles
Scott Alexander, LHP (from Royals)
The late-blooming lefty was an effective MLB reliever last year, posting a 2.48 ERA on the back of a 73% ground-ball rate. He relies on a sinker that he throws a whopping 94% of the time, working at 92-94 and touching 96 with plus-plus life. It’s average velocity jumped nearly three ticks last year, while the usage jumped accordingly from 72%. He barely used his slider, but it’s an above-average pitch now — also with three ticks more velo — that scouts think he should throw more often. Alexander’s slider may work against righties effectively, as well, due to its more vertical shape (versus a normal slider). He may not miss many bats but is an effective relief piece who might only just be discovering something unique.
While everyone waits for the thaw of the free-agent market, the Dodgers, Royals, and White Sox got together on a three-team trade Thursday evening.
The L.A. Times‘ Andy McCullough broke the news on the deal, as part of which the Royals send lefty reliever Scott Alexander to the Dodgers for prospects Erick Mejia and Trevor Oaks. The Dodgers ship lefty reliever Luis Avilan and $3 million to the White Sox. The Royals are also reportedly moving Joakim Soria and $1 million to the White Sox in something of a salary dump.
Sources: The Dodgers are close to finalizing a three-team trade that would bring LHP Scott Alexander to LA, send RHP Trevor Oaks to KC and send LHP Luis Avilan to White Sox.
The final accounting of this three-team trade: Royals sending Scott Alexander to the Dodgers and Joakim Soria to the White Sox; they're receiving right-hander Trevor Oaks and infielder Erick Mejia from Dodgers.
While there are quite a few moving parts, the focus within this post will be on Alexander, an interesting arm who could fill a need — and fill it cheaply — for one of the top clubs in baseball. Lefty reliever Tony Watson is a free agent, and the Dodgers are attempting to stay under the luxury tax. In giving up prospects and cash, the Dodgers must also feel Alexander is an upgrade over Avilan, who is projected to make $2.3 million in arbitration according to MLB Trade Rumors.
Alexander, a pre-arbitration arm with five years of control remaining, might not only fill a need cheaply for the next couple of seasons but also exceptionally well. While, on the one hand, the Dodgers are trading a lefty who misses bats, they’re also adding a lefty who might have more upside in today’s offensive environment.
In a year marked by fly balls, home runs, launch angles, and juiced balls, Alexander was, by some measures, the top ground-ball arm in the game in 2017. The approach led him to a 2.48 ERA, 3.23 FIP, and 56 ERA- last season over 69 innings. He emerged, quietly, as one of the better relievers in the game.
Eric Hosmer has waited some time for a market to come together for his services. Part of the reason for the delay is that large-market clubs like the Dodgers and Yankees are not in need of a first baseman and are trying to remain below the luxury-tax threshold. Part of it is that teams are learning to better wait out free agents. (By Jan. 3 of last winter, nine of FanGraphs’ top-10 free agents had signed. This year? Three.) Hosmer’s agent Scott Boras famously said that there should be no concern for a free agent if he’s “the steak,” making the analogy to the main course of a fine dinner. There is some debate, however, as to whether Hosmer is a steak or a lesser cut.
