The Rookies of the Year will be announced about the time this post goes up, or shortly thereafter. I do not know who will win, but there are a number of good candidates. Among those candidates should be a pair of 21 year-old first basemen: Kansas City’s Eric Hosmer and Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman. Controversial defensive metrics aside, their 2011 hitting performances (114 wRC+ for Hosmer, 118 wRC+ for Freeman) have rightly earned them recognition. Apart the passing glory of the Rookie of the Year award, what is most exciting for fans of both players is how such performances at such a young age bode for their respective futures in the game. While those numbers are unspectacular for first basemen, to have done so at an age when most of their peers were in college or the minors is most promising. This leads to columns like this, which compares Hosmer’s 2011 performance with that of other 21-year olds who hit as well or better. It is an impressive list, of course, and the general point is sound. But by only comparing Hosmer with players who hit as well or better at 21 it also skews the perception of Hosmer’s season. It makes Hosmer’s 2011 seem closer to Frank Robinson‘s age 21 performance (139 wRC+ in 1957) while leaving out that it is much closer to Jim Fregosi’s 1963 (111 wRC+). That should not be taken to demean Hosmer or Freeman. However, looking at more reasonable comparisons can leave optimistic impressions without being unrealistic.

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Earlier this week I posted about the best bunts of 2011. Taking some of the comments to that post into consideration, the obvious follow-up is the worst bunts of the 2011 season according to Win Probability Added (WPA).

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On Tuesday, we took a quick look at the competitive balance in the MLB, and I made the claim that baseball may have more parity than most leagues, but it also has want of greater balance. During the course of the piece, I made this statement:

The NFL has decided it wants payroll to have essentially no impact on winning, so teams basically trot out the same amount of money every Sunday and hope their money was better-spent. Is that what the MLB wants?

Aft’wards, Paul Swydan pointed out to me that indeed NFL salaries are not flat. Despite their hard cap, their hefty revenue sharing, and their tight spandex pants, the NFL still exhibits nearly a $77M gap between the biggest and lowest payroll — impressive, but still nothing compared to the MLB:

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Brian Sabean has fired his first salvo of the 2011 offseason, acquiring outfielder Melky Cabrera from the Kansas City Royals in exchange for starting pitcher Jonathan Sanchez and minor-league pitcher Ryan Verdugo.

Before we can even begin to analyze this trade, I believe we have to divorce the names of the players from their actual production. Melky Cabrera has been something of a punching bag among writers and analysts for a variety of reasons, ranging from his poor shape to his lousy attitude to awful production in 2008 and 2010.

Cabrera is, of course, coming off the best season of his life. He finished a remarkable fourth in hits in the American League. Part of this is the less robust production of singles hitting as opposed to high power or on-base percentage, but he still finished with a .349 wOBA, a 118 wRC+ and 4.2 WAR in his age 26 season.

There are certainly reasons to believe Cabrera will regress in 2012. His BABIP of .332 is a career high and there is little reason to believe he is like an Ichiro Suzuki or a Matt Kemp and can routinely sustain such good results on balls in play. His power level (44 doubles, 18 home runs, a .162 ISO) was also previously unseen, blasting his old career highs out of the water.

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From 2008 to 2011, Jonathan Sanchez has the fourth highest strikeout rate (24.1%) of any starting pitcher in baseball (500 IP minimum), ranking behind only Tim Lincecum, Clayton Kershaw, and Yovani Gallardo. Given this ability to consistently miss bats, Sanchez is often lauded as a pitcher with a lot of untapped potential. Pitchers who can post those kinds of strikeout rates are often quite successful, and if Sanchez could just refine the other parts of his game, he looks like he could turn into a dominant starting pitcher.

There’s just one problem – Sanchez isn’t even close to refining those other parts of his game, and we simply can’t ignore that he’s a massively flawed pitcher. Over the same time period (and again, 500 inning minimum), no starting pitcher has posted a worse walk rate than Sanchez’s 12.3% mark, and it’s not even all that close. The next worst mark is Gio Gonzalez, more than a full percentage point behind, and he is then followed closely by Barry Zito.

Sanchez’s high walk and high strikeout rates are the product of his propensity for pitching up in the strike zone, where contact is less frequent but so is the likelihood of getting a called strike. By pitching up in the zone, Sanchez is essentially choosing a strategy that increases the likelihood of deep counts, thus increasing both his walk and strikeout rates. Unlike some other high walk/high strikeout pitchers who simply need to improve their command of premium stuff, Sanchez is getting his whiffs through location, and if he began to throw more strikes, he’d likely see a significant drop in his strikeout rate as well.

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MLB’s Awards Week, with all of its attendant celebrations and arguments, is in full swing. It is also a good time to see just how bad the worst players in the league were. But, as always, the players in the middle get left out. Why not celebrate them, as well? Like my elementary school counselor used say: “everyone is special.” Who were 2011’s most average players?

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Some of the following twirlers can really play the game of ball called base!

In 2011, a total of 272 different pitchers started a game in the MLB — that’s an average of 9 starters per team. In other words, five starters is not enough. Successful MLB organizations need pitching depth — and lots of it. Some teams may need a 7th or 8th starter for only 1 game, but ask the Boston Red Sox how important 1 game is.

For teams in the need, the 2012 starting pitcher free agent list has some value and some worthy risks out there, but as with every year, no team should expect the free agent market to have all the answers. The following list, though not exhaustive, runs down the most important names of the 2012 free agents:

Top Tier — Starters who promise big contracts and big seasons.
C.J. Wilson (LHP, Age 31 next season, free agent)
CC Sabathia (LHP, 31, may opt out)
Hiroki Kuroda (RHP, 37, FA)
Edwin Jackson (RHP, 28, FA)
Mark Buehrle (LHP, 33, FA)
Javier Vazquez (RHP, 35, FA)

The Obvious One, Mr. C.J. Wilson, finally promises to pull in that contract big enough to purchase his long-awaited solid-gold rocket car. Wilson, the heat-hurling lord of the lefties figures to have at least two very impressive suitors — the New York Yankees and his present team, the Texas Rangers. Since becoming a starter two years ago, he has posted a combined 10.5 WAR, sporting an ace-worth 3.24 FIP this year.

Not only does Wilson have a shot to break the bank, but there appears to be a chance that twirling titan CC Sabathia may opt out of the final four years of his contract with the Yankees. Sabathia has been yawningly awesome through his 10-year career, never posting a FIP- higher than 96 and assembling a career-best 2.88 FIP in 2011.

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This kicks off a position-by-position series that will look at the upcoming free agents. Because there are fans of 26 teams out there already thinking about next year and how their team can get better, that’s why.

Top Shelf
Ramon Hernandez
Not a single free agent catcher qualified for the batting title. Among those that managed 200 PAs, though, Hernandez led the crew in both batting average and wOBA. He actually managed offense that was 11% better than the league average, which is like wow for a catcher. The position managed a .245/.313/.389 line, and Hernandez had a .282/.341/.446 line. That would make him the offensive class of the free agent class. And by Matt Klaasen’s most recent catcher defense rankings, he graded out as top-tier as well. So why might the Reds let him go? Well they have Ryan Hanigan in hand and Devin Mesoraco on the way, so they don’t need to spend that money. Also, Hernandez is 36 years old, has averaged 337 PAs over the past three years, and is as likely to be below-average with the bat as he is to be above-average (or more likely below, given he’s another year older). Even though his defense is at least decent and the Dodgers are a possibility, the best fit for him might be an American league team that can shuttle him between catcher and DH to keep him fresh. Could he return to Baltimore? Replace free-agent-to-be Josh Bard in Seattle? The Mariners are looking for offense at any position they can get it.
Verdict: Mariners.

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…or, “Alex Gordon, Superstar? Part the Second.”

Part One of my long-awaited-by-no-one post on Alex Gordon’s 2011 and future was originally intended to see just how Gordon’s 2011 performance compared to his contemporaries — and recent Royals seasons — as well as to begin assessing his true talent. Well, after more than 1,000 words I only got to the comparison portion, which inadvertently may have given some people the wrong impression of my intent. Hopefully, today’s post will clear some matters up. The key is the in question mark — Alex Gordon seems to have performed (and orated) like a superstar in 2011, but how good is he, really? What is his true talent, and what (if anything) should the Royals be willing to give him in a potential long-term extension?

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[Part Two is now posted here]

Near the end of his miserable 2010 season, Alex Gordon issued a proclamation: “I’m going to dominate next year.” Later in the off-season, Gordon was more circumspect: “What did you want me to say, I was going to do okay?” Understandably, this bit of bravado generated much mockery. After decent-but-uninspiring performances during his first two major-league seasons in 2007 and 2008, during 2009 and 2010 the one-time “next George Brett” endured injuries, demotion, miserable major-league performance when healthy, and a position shift to left field in order to accommodate the next next George Brett Mike Moustakas. (To be more precise, Moustakas is the next next next George Brett, if you count former Royals third baseman and current hitting coach Kevin Seitzer. Mark Teahen does not count. He is the next Jason Giambi, remember?)

Gordon’s 2011 performance received relatively little attention in 2011, but it is safe to say that no one is laughing at him. Although Gordon may not have received the attention that other players in the American League with similar performances, or even of his other teammates having better-than-expected seasons, in 2011 Gordon was a monster. This two-part post will try to put his season in a bit of perspective to get a sense of how good it was, and, more importantly, try to get a sense for how good Gordon “really” is going forward.

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