Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Minnesota Twins.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Twins or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Arizona / Chicago AL / Miami / San Francisco / Seattle / Toronto.

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Sometimes, baseball analysis can reveal new truths, things that nobody had ever noticed before. Other times, it can simply confirm what’s already obvious. Meander through Phil Hughes‘ FanGraphs player page and you’ll realize that playing in Yankee Stadium did him zero favors. But you don’t need to know anything about FIP or HR/FB% to understand that Hughes could benefit from pitching in a friendlier environment. He’s going to do that in Minnesota, and while I don’t know exactly what the Twins’ thought process is, I presume it’s in the vicinity of, Hughes is talented, and fewer balls should leave the park going forward. Target Field is bigger than Yankee Stadium, so Hughes stands a chance of bouncing back.

Hughes debuted in the majors in 2007. Since then, 151 pitchers have recorded at least 250 innings both at home and on the road. Hughes’ home ERA is 0.86 points higher than his road ERA, the sixth-highest difference in the pool. His home wOBA allowed is .046 points higher than his road wOBA allowed, the first-highest difference in the pool. Driving this, primarily? Hughes’ home HR/FB% is six percentage points higher than his road HR/FB%, also the first-highest difference in the pool. Hughes allowed more than twice as many dingers in New York as in not-New York, and there’s nothing more damaging than a dinger. The Twins clearly believe that Hughes was at least partially sunk by the home-field bandbox.

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I imagine that, for a front office exec, there’s nothing quite like the buzz you get from picking up another team’s non-tender and getting value from that player. Maybe it’s just ‘one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor,’ but in a business where one sector of the market has to continually work to find value in surprising places, it’s an important moment.

But is there much success to be found in the bargain bin? These are players that their own team has given up on — and we have some evidence that teams know more about their own players than the rest of the league, and that players that are re-signed are more successful. What can we learn from the successes and failures that we’ve seen in the past?

To answer that question, I loaded all the non-tendered players since 2007 into a database and looked at their pre- and post-non-tender numbers.

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While most teams took the opportunity to enjoy a quiet Thanksgiving holiday, the Minnesota Twins instead figured the time was right to hand out the two biggest free agent contracts in team history. On Wednesday, they signed Ricky Nolasco for four years and $49 million; on Saturday night, it was Phil Hughes for three years and $24 million. In the span of four days, Terry Ryan added two pitchers who lost 25 games last year to his 96-loss team, and guaranteed them $73 million in the process.

If you think that’s crazy, know that you’re far from alone. Between the dual questions of “is either pitcher really worth that money?” and “why is a 96-loss team spending this much to maybe get to only 90 losses next year?” it’s easy to question the Minnesota plan here. That being said: these are moves that are still pretty defensible. Read the rest of this entry »

While many of you probably spent the long holiday weekend with the family you already had, the Twins spent theirs building a new one, signing Ricky Nolasco for four years before signing Phil Hughes for three. While this post is being published much later than the reports, many haven’t been looking at their computers, and these transactions are too interesting to outright ignore. Without stepping on Mike Petriello’s toes, these moves are notable for a variety of reasons.

(1) The Twins aren’t good. Obviously, the Twins aren’t good, and while the Twins might become good in the near or less-near future, they’re not good now, and their division already has talented teams, and free-agent acquisitions are usually short-term improvements. You don’t usually expect lousy ballclubs to make multi-year commitments on the market. Not like this.

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The Phillies re-signed Carlos Ruiz to a 3-year, $26 million deal. Also: Brayan Pena and Geovany Soto have locked down their 2014 teams (the Royals Reds and Rangers respectively). And now it appears Jose Molina is in the final stages of returning to St. Pete for another two years of expertly framed and eh, who cares about blocking? pitches.

So where does that leave the catching market? As far as I have seen, the Yankees, Red Sox, Rockies, Angels, Rangers (still), Blue Jays and Twins have all been connected with free agent catchers on MLBTR. Using their handy free agents leaderboards (with a few additions), we can examine the remaining free agent catchers and try our hand at predicting the right fits for each.
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The author has published a weekly statistical report for the Arizona Fall League each week since its brief season commenced back in October — not necessarily because such a thing is of great utility to prospect analysis, but more because, for those of us not currently present in the Greater Phoenix area, it’s one of the few ways to participate in that very compelling league.

What follows is the entirely last statistical report for the AFL, following that league’ championship game this past Saturday.

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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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One of the most remarkable things about the Internet is the speed with which news finds its way to updated Wikipedia pages. Even during the MLB playoffs, you can usually find notes about player achievements or umpire errors within a matter of minutes. MLB.com does not operate like Wikipedia, in that not just anyone can go in and change things around. But there is one similarity, in that here’s a screenshot of part of the Twins’ official roster from earlier Monday:

Somebody’s conspicuously absent. Let’s scroll down just a bit:

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