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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Everyone understands that not all bunts are a bad idea, right? The auto-sacrifice has (I think) mostly fallen out of favor with fans and teams, but as a nice illustration of sabermetrics’ infinite task, the analysis of bunts continues to evolve. The bunt as a piece of traditional baseball strategy was (and in some circles, continues to be) a target for early sabermetric analyses. But as the field grew more sophisticated, the analysis grew more subtle: a bunt may or may not be a good idea depending on the base/out/game situation, the skill of the bunter, and the position of the fielders.

A more sophisticated analyzing which bunts represent the best process (as opposed to results) would take, well, days of searching through game logs. Analyzing which bunts were the best executed would be an even more onerous burden. For this particular annual tradition, I have chosen the much simpler task of which bunts of the 2013 regular had the best result as measured by Win Probability Added.

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The posting system — the agreement that governs player movement between the teams of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan and Major League Baseball in America — looks like it’ll be changing this winter. We tackled the reasons why this might happen during the first round of rumors, but it’s worth revisiting now that more particulars are coming to light.

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Robinson Cano just turned 31, and the FanGraphs crowd expects him to sign an eight year contract this winter that will take him through 2021, his age-38 season. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he lands a nine or ten year deal, as Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols did a couple of years ago, and ends up getting signed through age-40. And it’s not a controversial statement to say that Robinson Cano is unlikely to still be a highly productive player at that point in his career.

Any team that signs Cano this winter is going to be be guaranteeing him in the range of $25 million per year for years in which Cano should reasonably be projected as a below average player, and maybe even a guy who shouldn’t be starting for a big league team. The negotiations for his services are essentially going to center around how many years a team is willing to guarantee Cano a significant paycheck while expecting almost nothing in return. The team that eventually gets to sign him will be the team that gives him the most “dead money” years.

This is what free agency for elite players has evolved into. Instead of negotiating on annual salary, the market has evolved to negotiate on years. Let’s look at some data, so you don’t have to take my word for it.

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Worth noting: Joel Sherman of the New York Post suggests that pretty much everything written below is wrong.

It is certainly possible that I’ve interpreted the luxury tax calculations incorrect. The post will be updated once I have clarification.

Derek Jeter is going to stay with the Yankees, surprising absolutely no one. This was never really in doubt, especially because Jeter had the right to ensure he played 2014 in New York, thanks to a player option that was added to the end of his three-year, $51 million option on the deal he signed in 2010. He could have exercised his right to become a free agent, but heading into his age-40 season and coming off the worst year of his career, interest probably wouldn’t have been overwhelming. And it’s unlikely he wanted to end his career in any other uniform, so this was always the expected outcome.

However, the actual announcement sheds some fun light on the details of how the CBA works and how the luxury tax is calculated. The Yankees could have just let Jeter exercise his player option — listed as $8 million, but reported by Jon Heyman to actually be worth $9.5 million — but instead, they signed him to a new contract that will pay him $12 million next year instead. Why the $2.5 million to $4 million raise over what his own player option called for?

Three words: the luxury tax. The Yankees have been desperately trying to get under the $189 million threshold, and by paying Jeter more, their tax calculation is actually going to go down.

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Andy Pettitte is going to announce his (second) retirement this afternoon. Much will be written (again) about Pettitte’s career and, of course, his Hall of Fame prospects. Others are better at the history and biography stuff, and, well, at pretty much all of the other stuff, too. Personally, I am not interested in predicting whether a player will get into the Hall of Fame. Analyzing players is one thing. Sociological and psychological evaluations of the Hall of Fame’s voters is another (that is not a commentary on the voters, just on my interests). When it comes to stuff like this, I prefer to focus on a player’s worthiness, that is, whether he should get into the Hall of Fame.

Much will be written regarding Pettitte’s Hall of Fame contributions now and in the off-season, just as much was written about his post-2010 retirement. I am not going to cover every angle or offer a final verdict. Rather, I want to to discuss two or three tough angles for the sabermetric evaluation of Pettitte’s case that make it an intriguing topic.

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Platoon splits are real, and they matter. The trouble comes in when people put too much emphasis on individual platoon performance over a short period of time. It is understandable, of course, and as fans, we have a right to overreact to things. But when it comes to getting to the truth of things, it gets a bit more complicated. One can read about the general principles of thinking about observed platoon performance versus true talent elsewhere. What can be instructive is looking at some concrete cases of unusual or standout performances of certain players. For today, let’s take a look at the platoon histories of a couple of left-handed hitters: Alex Gordon and Robinson Cano.

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For the fourth time this season, Derek Jeter has been sidelined. There is no timetable for his return, and unless the Yankees reach the postseason — and there is still hope on that front — there is a decent chance that he will make no meaningful contribution to the team at all this season. Even with the expectation that he would miss time this season, it seemed likely that he would contribute at some point, so this comes as a bit of a surprise, even at this late date. The question is then, just how much should the Yankees expect him to contribute next season?

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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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When it comes to thinking about the best pitchers in the American League this year, the names that jump out to most might be along these lines: Felix Hernandez (always awesome and having one of his better seasons), Max Scherzer and Anibal Sanchez (two non-Verlander Tigers having big years), Yu Darvish (strikeout machine), Chris Sale (great pitcher on a bad team), and Derek Holland (finally living up to his stuff in a hitter’s park). One pitcher that would probably come up less frequently is Hiroki Kuroda. He probably would not be totally ignored (especially by Yankees fans), but he has flown somewhat under the radar (has never made an All-Star game) for whatever reasons, some having to do the nature of his performance, some not.

External factors aside, an examination of Kuroda’s 2013 performance shows why he might not get as much attention for the year-end awards, but a deeper look also reveals his worthiness.

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