One of baseball’s most compelling storylines during the 2013 season was the monster breakthrough campaign of Chris Davis. One of baseball’s most quietly hilarious storylines during the 2013 season was the very similar campaign of Khris Davis down the stretch. Last year, the Brewers didn’t have a whole lot going for them, but Davis shined rather unexpectedly, and the team liked what it saw. As an organization closer to rebuilding than contending, the Brewers want to see what Davis can do going forward, and with Carlos Gomez and Ryan Braun also around, it wasn’t hard to see coming that Norichika Aoki could end up on the outside looking in.

Aoki’s too old for a team like the Brewers, and he’s under contract only one more season. It made sense for them to try to ship him to a contender, and that’s precisely what they’ve done, as Aoki has joined the Royals. In Kansas City, Aoki should play more than he would’ve in Milwaukee, and he has a chance at seeing the playoffs. In exchange, the Royals gave the Brewers Will Smith. It’s a low-profile transaction, considerably lower-profile even than the earlier Dexter Fowler trade, but what makes the trade worth taking about are the signs of Smith’s progress as a young lefty.

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In November of 1941, the British forces in North Africa launched Operation Crusader with the intention of engaging the Axis forces led by Erwin Rommel. The British were hoping for a tank battle in which the superior numbers of British tanks would have the advantage and crush the German armor while also relieving the besieged fortress at Tobruk.

It did not turn out that way. The short version begins with British constantly giving up the initiative, dispersing their tanks and then suffering huge losses as the concentrated German forces smashed through them one by one. Despite numerous initial setbacks, Operation Crusader ended with what is generally considered a victory for the British. Rommel overreached, and during his “dash to the wire” (the border between Libya and Egypt), the British, rather than retreating as Rommel had thought, held fast and Rommel was ultimately forced to withdraw west of Tobruk. It was not an overwhelming victory for the British by any means, and in many ways the fighting highlighted the British Army’s glaring tactical shortcomings. Yet it was a victory, generally considered to be the first by the British against German-led forces during the Second World War.

The Royals might be said to have had their own version of Operation Crusader in 2013. They made some questionable decisions along the way, they did end up winning 86 games, their first winning season since 2003 (with the previous one coming in 1993 — every 10 years!). So on Black Friday, the Royals rather unsurprisingly announced an extension for general manager Dayton Moore, whose contract was scheduled to end after the 2014 season. The new contract extends him through 2016.

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Back in March, I wrote about the alleged spring training positional battle story for the Royals’ backup catcher spot between George Kottaras. For all of Kottaras’ defensive liabilities, it was pretty clear he was going to be the choice to be Salvador Perez‘ caddy in 2013 since he had a clearly superior bat to Hayes that overcame his defensive issues. As a left-handed hitter, Kottaras also provided a useful platoon player so that Perez’ off days could be scheduled versus a right-handed starter. Kottaras was a useful bench bat in general. Finally, since the Royals went out of their way to claim Kottaras off of waivers from Oakland, they clearly wanted him around.

Kottaras was indeed the Royals’ primary backup catcher in 2013, but Hayes (or perhaps Francisco Pena) seems to have gotten the last laugh. Kottaras was designated for assignment a few days ago by the Royals, and yesterday was traded to the Cubs for cash. It is essentially a minor transaction, and in itself does not make a huge difference. It might, however, help us raise questions about the Royals’ off-season strategy.

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This is going to be more of a quick take than any kind of long rambling analysis, as I have done too many of those today already, but hey, more news. This one’s not a Fielder-for-Kinsler trade, but the Royals have filled their last rotation spot by signing Jason Vargas to a four year, $32 million contract. The deal was first reported by Yahoo’s Jeff Passan.

I’m assuming the initial reaction of many is going to be the same as my initial reaction when I heard they had given Jason Vargas a four year deal; that’s nutty. Jason Vargas is a perfectly serviceable big league starter, but you don’t usually give four year deals to role players. Vargas isn’t any kind of front-of-the-rotation ace, he has moderate upside at best, and this deal covers his age 31-34 seasons, so the four year term is kind of odd. It’s entirely justifiable to say that you wouldn’t want to guarantee money to a 34-year-old Jason Vargas, given that his stuff is already marginal and he hasn’t always been the picture of health.

But there’s two parts of every contract, and the years are only half the story. You would happily give Jason Vargas a 20 year contract so long as the price was only for $1 million per season; there are different prices which justify different contract lengths. And so while we generally think of four year deals as being for significant amounts of money, this one is going to cost them just $8 million per season, and thus it has to viewed as an exchange of an extra year in exchange for a lower annual salary. And it’s a trade off that’s maybe worth making for the Royals.

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The 2013 season was a banner season for players going on the disabled list. The DL was utilized 2,538 times, which was 17 more than the previous 2008 high. In all, players spent 29,504 days on the DL which is 363 days more than in 2007. Today, I take a quick look at the 2013 DL data and how it compares to previous seasons.

To get the DL data, I used MLB’s Transaction data. After wasting too many hours going through the data by hand, I have the completed dataset available for public consumption.  Enjoy it, along with the DL data from previous seasons. Finally, please let me know of any discrepancies so I can make any corrections.

With the data, it is time to create some graphs. As stated previously, the 2013 season set all-time marks in days lost and stints. Graphically, here is how the data has trended since 2002:

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Players are sent to the Arizona Fall League for all sorts of reasons. The MLB-owned prospect-laden fall league serves as a domestic winter league, and so teams use it as they wish. But once you are selected as an all-star, an AFL Rising Star, you’ve got a unique stamp of approval, something akin to being an all-star in a league of all-stars. And now that the Rising Stars game has been around since 2006, we have some data to see exactly what that selection means for a prospect.

Some teams send players to Arizona because they were injured during the year and need to build up arm strength, innings pitched, or plate appearances. Some teams send players to try out a new position. Some teams send fast-track prospects from the low minors so that they preview what play in the high minors will look like. Some teams send polished picks straight from the college ranks so that they can skip a level on their way to the bigs. Some teams send prospects they might like to trade so that they might look better to future trade partners after some time in the offensive-friendly league. Most teams send players that face the Rule 5 draft if they aren’t moved to the forty-man roster.

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Apparently some people do not respect the sanctity of World Series Week:

Royals ready to talk about Billy Butler deal for teams that would take on DH owed $8 million in '14, $12m in 2015.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) October 22, 2013

Move over, Scott Boras and A-Rod.

Jokes aside, the Royals’ reported willingness to see what they can get from Billy Butler is, on the surface, not all that interesting. A team seeing what sort of value they can get from their assets simply makes sense. “Team X should trade Player Y if they can get more surplus value back” is a truism. If the Royals can get more value back for Butler than he is worth, then, yes, they should probably trade him. Of course, on the other side of things, teams should only trade for Butler (or any other player) if they do not have to give up too much. These sorts of unbalanced trades are not really worth discussing in the abstract. What might be more interesting is trying and figure out why the team would want to move Butler given their other needs.

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Sure, Game 163 is looming, and it counts as part of the regular season, but aside from some tweaks, the numbers are pretty much in for the 2013 season. We are close enough for at least some simple retrospectives on certain numerical accomplishments from the almost finished season. Some of the metrics involved are more meaningful or useful than others, but this post will not focus on analysis. As long as one does not confuse the listing of some metric below with an endorsement — or a criticism, for that matter — of its value, it is fine to simply take pleasure these accomplishments..

Some of these achievements have more historical resonance than others (and to a certain extent that is in the eye of the beholder). This is not presented as an exhaustive list, either. To begin, though, we do have two all-time marks set by relief pitchers this season.

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It was a dramatic one Sunday in Kansas City. The Royals played the Rangers in a late-season matchup of wild-card hopefuls, and the game was scoreless going into the bottom of the tenth when the Royals loaded the bases with none out. Then, after Mike Moustakas hit, there was one out. Then, after George Kottaras hit, there were two out. Up came Justin Maxwell, and the count ran full, and on what would be either a decisive pitch or a foul, Maxwell swung and lifted the ball out for a walk-off grand slam. A single would’ve done, or an error would’ve done, or a walk would’ve done, but a grand slam is emphatic, and the Royals celebrated like the Royals seldom have over the past however many years.

However, with a week left in the season, the Royals still don’t have much of a shot of advancing. They trail the Indians by three and a half games, the Rays by four. The Rangers are two games in front of them, and the Indians play a soft schedule. Our own playoff odds give the Royals a 1-in-71 shot, so while they’re happily playing meaningful baseball in late September, it’s unlikely there’ll be meaningful baseball in early October. Featuring the Royals, anyway. And that’s too bad for a team that might be one of baseball’s best.

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When writing about statistics, there’s always the matter of finding the right balance between brevity and significance. Oftentimes, you’ll want to use filters, for purposes of proper analysis, and these filters show up as written qualifiers. Too many qualifiers, though, will turn off an audience, because audiences want numbers to be pretty easily consumable. It can already be difficult to try to sell numbers to readers; there’s a responsibility on the writer’s part to keep readability in mind.

You run into this all the time in baseball analysis, because there are virtually infinite ways to whittle a sample smaller and smaller. Every split is a qualifier. But some are just necessary, and there’s no other way around it. Like, with pitchers, you just have to separate starters and relievers. Starters need to be compared only to starters, and relievers need to be compared only to relievers, because they’re entirely different jobs. You’ve got marathon runners and hurdlers. What they have in common is that they throw baseballs, but they throw baseballs in different ways, and they use their bodies in different ways, and they prepare in different ways, and so they should be treated as distinct player pools. You don’t compare Aroldis Chapman to Yu Darvish. You compare Chapman to Craig Kimbrel, and Darvish to Max Scherzer. Not separating pitchers is at best irresponsible.

Some of the focus in this post will be on starting pitchers. Much of the focus in this post will be on Yordano Ventura.

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