Previous editions: AL East / NL East.
Opening Day is just over the horizon, though we have to navigate the remainder of the World Baseball Classic and the entirety of March Madness first. In the meantime, let’s continue our look at the upcoming season, with the third of our six divisional previews.
I’m going to be up front with you: that headline is seriously misleading. Based on what we can tell, Miguel Sano is probably not a good defensive player. Last year, though, to try and get the club’s offense going, the Twins decided to try Miguel Sano in right field. Regret kicked in pretty quickly.
He played right field most days for the first couple of months of the season, until a strained hamstring put him on the disabled list for the entire month of June. During the month that the team didn’t have to watch Sano chase balls around the outfield, they decided that they didn’t really want to see that ever again. When he returned to the team at the beginning of July, he was promptly moved back to third base. He split his time between there and DH over the rest of the year.
As a pretty large human being, Sano certainly doesn’t look like an outfielder, and while we only saw him out there for a little over 300 innings, the early returns weren’t particularly positive.
Byron Buxton was drafted second overall in 2012. Between that point and the loss of his rookie eligibility last season, he was eligible for four rounds of preseason prospect lists. Almost universally, he appeared at or near the top of those lists. Consider, for example, his place among the rankings published annually by Baseball Prospectus during that time frame:
Barring injury, the 2017 season is going to be the 23-year-old Buxton’s first full one in the majors. Under traditional circumstances, there would be a round-the-clock coverage of this budding superstar’s march to the top of every relevant leaderboard. Yet we find ourselves in non-traditional circumstances for a couple of important reasons.
To refresh your memory: in the summer of 2013 — Buxton’s first full season as a professional — we were only a year-plus into the Mike Trout experience and we were decidedly not taking it in stride. J.J. Cooper, writing for Baseball America, stoked the fire of comparisons between Trout and Buxton. As baseball fans are wont to do, the crowd took Cooper’s consideration of the subject to another level, and the layman’s impression of Buxton went from “really good outfield prospect” to “might be another Trout.” Buxton built his own hype in 2013, racking up a .944 OPS across multiple levels. In his first full year out of high school, Buxton’s numbers were great and people were giving reports to prospect writers suggesting he was truly elite.
To preview MLB spring training, Tyler Kepner examined the competitive “window” status — that is, the realistic possibility for contention — of all 30 major-league clubs earlier this month for the New York Times. Kepner employed four logical window designations: closed, open, closing and opening.
I think reasonable people can mostly agree that the Cubs’ window of contention is open, and the White Sox’ window is closed. The Royals’ is perhaps closing, and the Braves’ is opening (if not in 2017, then soon). While we will not agree on every status, it’s an interesting exercise.
Windows of contention are an interesting concept, particularly in an era of two Wild Cards in each league. How do teams balance the future and present? How do clubs play a so-so hand knowing the unpredictability of the game? Few teams are able to sustain long windows of contention. The Braves of the 1990s and early 2000s and the Cardinals of the 21st century have done it as well as any team in the in the Wild Card era.
It’s also easier to operate if you suspect your window is either completely open or closed. If you’re the Cubs and Indians last deadline, you’re willing to trade significant young assets for impact relief help. If you suspect your window is closed, like the White Sox, you’re willing to deal assets like Chris Sale and Adam Eaton. There’s a clarity in decision-making, in creating a strategy and plan to implement.
Said Texas Rangers GM Jon Daniels to FanGraphs’ David Laurila on charting a course:
“Something our management team has talked about a lot is the mistake we made our first year here, in 2006. We were caught in the middle. We convinced ourselves that if A, B, and C went right, we had a chance to win, and I think you can make the case that, for any team, it’s not a sustainable strategy.”
Being caught in the middle is the most difficult position for a club. Consider, for instance, a team with some relatively young stars at the major-league level. The front office thought this core of players would form the foundation of a contending team, but it’s not surrounded with the requisite depth, prospects or resources to realistically contend and sustain. The White Sox entered the season in that position. In the meantime, they’ve chosen a course. The Angels, Diamondbacks, Marlins, and Twins could all face difficult decisions in choosing paths in the not-too-distant future.
When the offseason began, a Brian Dozier trade looked inevitable. The Twins’ second baseman was one of the majors’ most productive players last season, offering elite power, good baserunning, solid plate discipline and steady second-base defense. That all-around skill set would cost just $15 million over the next two years. So as spring training begins, why is Dozier still preparing to play for a rebuilding Twins club?
Both a steep asking price and an abundance of good second basemen hindered a deal. But these reasons may not fully explain why Dozier is still bound for Fort Myers this month. After all, negotiations often begin with high asking prices before parties find a middle ground. Plus, even though the keystone is now a good offensive position, many teams would net an upgrade by acquiring Dozier. Perhaps there was more at play — namely, doubt in the minds of club executives that the pull– and fly-ball-prone Dozier could repeat his first-rate power-hitting. Consider what Bill James said about Dozier on the second-base edition of MLB Network’s “Top 10 Right Now” series:
“You guys are too high on Dozier. A lot of those home runs are 360-footers that just skim over the wall. I don’t buy that.”
As data from ESPN’s Home Run Tracker affirms, Dozier’s home runs are often unimpressive.
| Tracker Stat | Dozier’s Average | Percentile, Hitters 10+ HR | Percentile, Hitters 30+ HR |
|---|---|---|---|
| True distance (feet) | 396.7 | 33rd | 10th |
| Exit velocity (mph) | 103.5 | 43rd | 16th |
| Spray angle | 28° | 20th | 10th |
By true distance, exit velocity, and spray angle, Dozier’s dingers often traveled shorter and at a lower velocity than his peers’ blasts, all while keeping closer to the pull-side foul line. When compared only to his power-hitting brethren — those with 30-homer campaigns — Dozier slips under the 17th percentile mark in every stat. Do the pedestrian home-run metrics hint at a coming power outage?
Yesterday, we identified Jeremy Jeffress as a pitcher who benefited greatly from dropping his arm slot, adding more sink and fade to his two-seamer. The idea was that his four-seamer was straight and possessed below-average spin, so moving from that pitch to a sinker, while dropping the slot, gave him a better foundational fastball. There’s a roadmap there. Let’s follow it.
Location: Minneapolis
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On Wednesday, Travis Sawchik wrote about why there are still reasons for optimism surrounding Byung-ho Park, despite a rough first year in the major leagues. The piece was titled “Don’t Quit on Byung-ho Park”, but two days later, the Twins have done exactly that, designating him for assignment in order to clear a roster spot for Matt Belisle.
This is a bit of a surprising decision because, a year ago, the Twins paid a $13 million posting fee to acquire Park’s rights. But that was a different front office with different evaluators, and the new management team in Minnesota apparently decided that Park wasn’t worth keeping on the 40-man roster, so they’ll either trade him or expose him to waivers, where any team who wants to take a shot on the bounce back would be on the hook for the roughly $9 million in guaranteed money he has coming over the next three years.
Given they minimal salary commitment, I can’t imagine Park is actually going to clear waivers. $3 million per year is nothing in this day and age, and with a multi-year deal, there’s some upside with Park that doesn’t exist if you sign, say, Chris Carter, to a one year contract. And as Sawchik noted in his piece, anyone who was thinking about signing Carter to a cut-rate deal should probably be interested in Park too.
Borrowing a couple of tables from Sawchik’s piece.
| Rank | Player | Batted balls tracked | Barrels/Batted ball % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gary Sanchez | 128 | 18.8 |
| 2 | Byung-ho Park | 123 | 18.7 |
| 3 | Khris Davis | 357 | 18.2 |
| 4 | Nelson Cruz | 381 | 17.8 |
| 5 | Chris Carter | 315 | 17.8 |
| 6 | Mark Trumbo | 386 | 17.4 |
| 7 | Tommy Pham | 81 | 17.3 |
| 8 | Giancarlo Stanton | 248 | 17.3 |
| 9 | Chris Davis | 313 | 16.9 |
| 10 | Miguel Cabrera | 437 | 16.5 |
And this one.
| Rank | Player | Batted balls | Avg. FB/LD exit velo (mph) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nelson Cruz | 381 | 99.2 |
| 2 | Tommy Pham | 81 | 98.9 |
| 3 | Pedro Alvarez | 208 | 98.7 |
| 4 | Franklin Gutierrez | 148 | 98.2 |
| 5 | Khris Davis | 357 | 98.0 |
| 6 | Gary Sanchez | 128 | 97.8 |
| 7 | Josh Donaldson | 408 | 97.8 |
| 8 | Giancarlo Stanton | 248 | 97.4 |
| 9 | David Ortiz | 393 | 97.3 |
| 10 | Byung-ho Park | 123 | 97.2 |
Like Carter, Park hits the crap out of the baseball when he makes contact. And, like Carter, he doesn’t make enough contact. But if you’re okay with the swing-for-the-fences-and-whiff-a-lot approach, well, Park actually made more contact than Carter did last year.
| Name | PA | O-Swing% | Z-Swing% | Swing% | O-Contact% | Z-Contact% | Contact% | Zone% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chris Carter | 644 | 25% | 67% | 44% | 38% | 77% | 65% | 45% |
| Byung-ho Park | 244 | 27% | 67% | 46% | 44% | 77% | 67% | 47% |
Of course, having a lot of similarities to a free agent who can’t find a home isn’t really an argument in favor of Park having a lot of value. Perhaps the Twins decided to DFA Park in part because of the league’s reticence to signing Carter, thinking that perhaps with Carter still willing to sign a one year contract, that maybe Park will slip through waivers. Or, more interestingly, maybe they DFA’d Park because they want to sign Carter themselves; that would be a fun twist to this story.
Of course, that’s pretty unlikely. The reality is that, while Park remains interesting on his own merits, there might not have been much playing time for him in Minnesota. With Joe Mauer and Kennys Vargas ahead of him on the 1B/DH depth chart, Park was probably ticketed for a platoon role, and maybe even a limited platoon role given that Vargas is a switch-hitter who hits lefties better than righties, so Park was only likely to play when Mauer wasn’t in the line-up. Neither Mauer nor Vargas are great players, but Mauer has some franchise icon appeal, and Vargas is both probably better and definitely younger, so giving him the bulk of the DH time is likely a better long-term investment.
Park probably fits better on a team that doesn’t already have a Kennys Vargas to DH, or a local hero making $23 million a year at first base. The power makes him worth another shot, and given the state of several teams 1B/DH positions, I’m pretty sure the Twins will find someone to take the rest of Park’s contract off their hands.
For instance, the Rangers seem to want to give Joey Gallo more time in Triple-A this year, but if they send him back to the minors, they would be penciled in to start Ryan Rua and Jurickson Profar as their 1B and DH options. Sure, everyone still expects them to sign Mike Napoli to play one of those two spots, but Park would still be an upgrade over Rua/Profar at the other position, and give them a cheap source of power while they figure out what Gallo might be.
Alternately, the A’s might also be interested, given that they were hunting for right-handed DHs earlier this winter, and currently have some combination of Yonder Alonso and Ryon Healy at their 1B/DH spots. In a year that is unlikely to result in a playoff berth, taking a shot on Park’s power is probably worth some playing time. Or, if we’re looking for a rebuilding team who needs a DH, the White Sox currently project to have Matt Davidson as their starting DH, and Steamer is forecasting him for a 73 wRC+ and -1 WAR. I would imagine the Twins would rather not trade Park to the White Sox, but if it comes down to waivers, there’s no way Chicago should let him get past them.
Park’s upside is probably something like an average player, so he’s worth the $9 million gamble to see if he can make enough contact to hold down a roster spot. For $9 million with a potential three year payout, there’s just not much risk here, and enough upside for another team to take a low-risk flyer on a guy with serious power. One could reasonably argue that the Twins should have kept him around and hoped to find enough playing time to be the team that got some value out of a potential improvement, but since they just had to have Matt Belisle pitching the seventh inning in a non-contention year, some other franchise will now get to make a bet on Park’s cheap upside.
Many of the relatively well known — and relatively expensive — imported bats from foreign pro leagues have adapted quickly and proficiently to major-league pitching in recent years.
We’re familiar with what Yoenis Cespedes and Jose Abreu have accomplished. Jung Ho Kang, when he’s on the field, has silenced questions about his ability to hit velocity. Dae-Ho Lee arrived with more modest expectations but was still a league-average bat (102 wRC+) last year in his first year in the majors, and Hyun Soo Kim posted a .382 on-base mark and 119 wRC+ in his first season in transitioning from the KBO to the majors.
Which brings us to Byung-ho Park. Park came advertised with 80-grade power, according to some evalutors, and he demonstrated last year that the power was very, very real.
Of course, Park didn’t display that power very often, because he didn’t make contact often enough.
Park struck out a lot.
It’s true that, if you look at the free agents who remain unsigned this offseason, you’ll find a lot of power still available. Franklin Gutierrez, Mike Napoli, Mark Trumbo: all three produced an isolated-slugging figure greater than .200 last season. All three are projected by Steamer to produce better than a .195 ISO in 2017. All three have yet to find a team for the 2017 season.
Given the general demand for power, you might wonder why so many of these sluggers don’t have jobs yet. A look both at the supply and the demand in the league reveals a possible cause, however: handedness. There might be an obstacle, in other words, to matching those free agents with the right teams.
To illustrate my point, let me utilize the depth charts at RosterResource. What’s nice about RosterResource, for the purposes of this experiment, is that the site presents both a “go-to” starting lineup and also a projected bench. Here’s a link to the Cubs page to give you a sense of what I mean.
In most cases, a team will roster four non-catcher bench players. Looking over the current depth charts, however, I find 15 teams with only three non-catcher bench players on the depth chart (not to mention five additional bench players who are projected to record less than 0 WAR). For the purpose of this piece, let’s refer to these as “open positions.”
Fifteen! That’s a lot. It means we’re likely to see quite a few signings before the season begins. Of course, not all these openings are appropriate for the power bats remaining on the market. Most of those guys are corner types, if they can play the field at all, while some of those 15 clubs have needs at positions that require greater defensive skill.
For example, Anaheim might need an infielder or a third baseman for their open bench spot. The White Sox need a right-handed center fielder to platoon with lefty Charlie Tilson. Detroit needs a center fielder, maybe a right-handed one — and in the process of writing this piece, they got one in the form of the newly acquired Mike Mahtook maybe. If Mel Rojas Jr. can’t play center in Atlanta, they need a (right-handed?) center fielder, too. The Yankees may need a third baseman — and, if not that, definitely someone with some defensive ability on the infield.
So that reduces the number of open positions to 10. That’s 10 slots that could be filled by an offensive piece with little defensive value. Here are the teams that, by my estimation, have an opening for a slugger: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago (NL), Cleveland, Kansas City, Minnesota, Oakland, Seattle, Tampa, Texas, and Toronto.