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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Episode 402
Nathaniel Stoltz is a very thoughtful prospect writer for FanGraphs et al. He’s also the guest on this terribly pleasant edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 48 min play time.)

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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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The relentlessly Canadian Marc Hulet published earlier today his first organizational prospect list of the 2013-14 offseason — in this case, for the Chicago White Sox.

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

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall 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.

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Quick: Who led minor league pitchers in FIP this year?* You might guess one of the top pitching prospects in baseball, such as Archie Bradley, Taijuan Walker, or Robert Stephenson. Or you might rack your brain thinking about 2013 breakout A-ball pitchers like C.J. Edwards, Tyler Glasnow, or Edwin Escobar. In either case, you’d be wrong, because the answer is little-known White Sox pitching prospect Tony Bucciferro.

*Minimum 80 IP. Giants relief prospect Derek Law had a lower FIP in 77 2/3, but I wanted to isolate starters.

Bucciferro’s 2013 numbers are certainly something to behold. Across three starts in the Rookie-Advanced Appalachian League and 13 outings (12 starts) in the Low-A South Atlantic League, he amassed 96 strikeouts, six walks, and a mere three homers allowed in 90 2/3 innings, good for a 1.74 FIP (2.48 ERA). Those numbers seem impossible to ignore, and yet Bucciferro registers barely a blip on the prospect radar. In this post, I will examine why he’s been successful, why he’s been ignored, and take a systematic look at how pitchers with this sort of statistical profile fare.

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There has been no shortage of opinions regarding the Chicago White Sox’ signing of Jose Dariel Abreu.  We have seen how his statistics match up to other recent Cuban defectors before the jump, as well as heard differing scouts’ opinions regarding how those stats will translate stateside. I will not try to add to either of these discussions.  I think the stat comparisons to Puig and Cespedes are interesting enough without my additional input, and I have not actually seen Abreu in person to judge his athleticism or bat speed.  I do not know anything about his makeup besides what has already been repeated by scouts and former teammates.

What I have not heard anything about is how people view his swing.  I made a comment in Dave’s article the other day disputing the importance of bat speed in favor of efficiency, and so I felt motivated to continue that conversation here.  Yasiel Puig and Yoenis Cespedes happen to be two of the most explosive athletes in the game, so their exploits may not be very predictive.  On top of his fellow Cuban natives, Abreu has been compared to Miguel Cabrera due to his size and “lack” of athleticism (side note: too many people mistake foot speed for athleticism; rotational athletes are a completely different breed from track stars).  Pretty tall order, since even 1/4 of Cabrera’s production would result in a pretty solid value for the ChiSox.  Even with a very good swing, I think it would be ridiculous to expect the same generational types of seasons from the Cuban slugger.  The first hitter I thought of when I saw Abreu’s swing was Buster Posey.

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I’m a big fan of games that summarize entire skillsets. To pick one example, on May 25, 2012, Adam Dunn DH’d and went 1-for-4 with a homer, a walk, and three strikeouts. To pick another example, on July 16, 2004, Wily Mo Pena went 1-for-4 with a homer, no walks, and three strikeouts. I like a game in which a player puts everything about himself on display, and Jose Iglesias had just such a game Monday night. Against the White Sox, Iglesias made two easy outs. In his third at-bat, he picked up an infield single. And though the White Sox emerged victorious by four, the game was of little consequence to either team; what most people are talking about is what Iglesias did to Josh Phegley in the bottom of the sixth.

It wasn’t anything mean, except that it kind of was. The Gameday play-by-play offers, understatedly:

Josh Phegley grounds out softly, shortstop Jose Iglesias to first baseman Prince Fielder. Jordan Danks to 2nd.

That doesn’t exactly do the play justice. Iglesias drew oohs and ahhs from the other team’s audience, and Phegley didn’t think to stage a protest. The out recorded, Iglesias got back on his feet and returned to his position. Ever the professional, at no point did Iglesias crack a smile. Most of the observers were simply too stunned. At the plate Monday night, Jose Iglesias was quiet. In the field Monday night, Jose Iglesias was an afterburner.

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Mariano Rivera is in the process of completing a farewell tour, getting recognition even within rival ballparks. Just on its own, this tells you a few things. One, Rivera is on the verge of retirement, preparing to officially hang up his spikes, figuratively if not literally. Two, Rivera has been great. Great and beloved and unanimously respected, but mostly, great. Players who weren’t great don’t get the Rivera treatment. Few players, really, get the Rivera treatment. Fans in other cities are saying goodbye to one of the greatest pitchers the game’s ever seen. Three, Rivera’s seen a whole lot. He’s had a long enough career to establish himself as a hall-of-famer — and to make an impression on every place he’s been to — so there aren’t many things Rivera hasn’t seen, that he hasn’t experienced. He’s given everything he’s had to baseball, and he’s squeezed baseball for everything it’s worth.

Some of the only things Rivera hasn’t experienced are different varieties of failure. He has, simply, been too good, too consistently and reliably good, to fail often. He has failed before, sometimes memorably, but there have been plenty of ways in which he hasn’t failed, and ways in which he never will. At the moment, though, Rivera’s experiencing something he’s never experienced before. For the first time in his big-league career, Rivera’s blown three consecutive saves. He hasn’t been through everything, but he’s been through one more thing than he had been.

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Earlier Tuesday, a lot of the talk was about whether or not the Red Sox ought to go for it and trade for Cliff Lee. Lee, of course, is an ace, a rare breed, but he’s also paid like one, and reports suggested the Phillies were holding out for a wheelbarrow of prospect talent, along with complete contract assumption. People occupied both sides of the conversation, but it didn’t look like a wise idea for the Sox, given how much they’d have to give up for one individual shorter-term interest. The Red Sox really wanted a starter, but they also really wanted to not give up their top-level young talent. It was up to them to find a way.

Later Tuesday, the Red Sox got their good starter. According to reports, the Red Sox and White Sox couldn’t work out a straight-up Jake Peavy trade, but then they got the Tigers involved and a deal was struck. Peavy is off to the other Sox, while the Tigers are up one Jose Iglesias and the White Sox are up one Avisail Garcia. And, of course, there are some other bits. The complete summary:

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Probably every day of every year, baseball fans wonder out loud whether it’s possible and allowed to trade players while they’re injured and on the disabled list. Every year, for a few years, we’ve been able to cite the Jake Peavy trade to Chicago as evidence that, yeah, you can trade players, even if they’re on the DL. There would be no reason to prevent such an exchange, provided the team getting the injured player was aware that the injured player was an injured player. Now we have a newer, fresher example, since the old one was getting beat to death. Jesse Crain, right now, is on the DL with a shoulder strain. And Jesse Crain just got traded from the White Sox to the Rays. It’s a trade deemed perfectly acceptable by the people whose permission is necessary for a deal to go through.

There was building talk that Crain would get moved to Tampa Bay. Actually, let’s go back, first. Crain was a goner. He was a good reliever on a bad team in a contract season. Dave wrote about him as a Jonathan Papelbon alternative. Crain was sure to get traded, until he injured his shoulder and had to sit out. The assumption was that his value was destroyed, and the White Sox even tried to rush him back to the bigs without a rehab assignment, just to get him to pitch before the deadline. It didn’t work, but still Crain had the Rays intrigued, and still this trade wound up being made. The return is conditional, as Crain and cash considerations have been traded for players to be named later or cash considerations.

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