Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 10/12/16

Dave Cameron: Well, it’s a Wednesday without baseball, so we’ll forgo the usual Happy Wednesday greeting.

Dave Cameron: Chicago, Toronto, and Cleveland are in the LCS, and we get an elimination game between LA/WAS tomorrow. This has been a fun postseason so far.

Dave Cameron: Let’s chat about it.

Chris: Was last night the strangest bullpen management we’ve seen since the time La Russa was surprised by which reliever came out during a world series game?

Dave Cameron: Setting aside Bochy’s lack of faith in Will Smith — which I wrote about last night — the rest of it was pretty normal. If you think Smith is just a LOOGY, and not even as good as Lopez in that role, then everything else kind of fits. But the weird part is not recognizing that Smith is good.

Eddy: Looks like Javy Baez is the front runner in annual “Damn, I didn’t know this guy was this good” contest thanks to national postseason exposure. No way this guy gets regular AB next season, right?

Dave Cameron: Well, I think the Cubs are in a bit of a pickle with Baez, albeit the nice kind of pickle you want to have. He’s this year’s Schwarber, basically. It’s not entirely clear where he fits in next year’s line-up, but the team may be reticent to trade him and watch him turn into a high level player elsewhere.

Dave Cameron: So, yeah, he probably sticks around as a 400 AB guy, playing all over the field and providing depth until Zobrist is ready to hand over the 2B job in a few years.

nickg: Realistically, how many members of the Giants bullpen can/should be replaced? As a fan, I vote for all of them (though I thank them for previous service).

Dave Cameron: The funny thing is that there’s the makings of a solid unit here. Law looked great in the second half, and Smith remains one of the best LH relievers in the game. That’s a strong pair, so assuming the Giants sign a guy like Melancon to take the ball in the 9th, their pen could actually be good next year.

Professor Ross Eforp: Is there any reason to believe that Tito Francona’s use of Miller/Allen/Shaw could lead them to be less effective over the next 4 to 14 games?

Dave Cameron: Not really; they got a nice long break between the DS and LCS. If the series had gone five, maybe.

The Lure of the Animal: How does a *bold* strategy like Tito’s usage of Miller originate? Does the manager himself typically figure it out, or would he be persuaded by someone in the FO or analytics department?

Dave Cameron: I would imagine that was a collaborative effort.

GDUBSS: Do you second guess Bochy not pinch hitting for Moore with the bases loaded and 1 out in a tie game in the 5th inning? Moore did get a hit but I was pretty shocked that he was hitting there.

Dave Cameron: They played 13 innings the night before; they didn’t really have the option to be super aggressive using relievers last night.

Hideo Nomo: Roberts has to make a tough call again. Hill on 3 days rest or Urias. You made the argument for starting Urias in game 4. Is Urias your pick again? Hill of course, has a blister problem. Will that affect Roberts decision?

Dave Cameron: Hill already said he’s starting. Would imagine they’ll both pitch.

Philip: What did you think of Kershaw’s performance last night?

Dave Cameron: He was good, and then Roberts left him in too long.

Scott: All of your slide talk on the podcast left me wondering, why do players slide at home? Shouldn’t it be like first where you just sprint through. I thought sliding slowed you down and people only do it because you can’t run through the bag. What am I missing?

Dave Cameron: Plays at first are force plays, plays at home are (almost always) tag plays. You dive to avoid being tagged.

Murdoc: So, the Giants will probably be looking for bullpen help this winter right?

Dave Cameron: Mark Melancon’s agent might as well draw up the contract now.

Sonny: Dombrowski claims in-game management is overrated in a coach, after Tito just pants Farrell my head exploded at that comment.

Dave Cameron: He’s not wrong.

Michael: If you’re the Yankees, do you include Clint Frazier in a deal for Sale or hang in to him?

Dave Cameron: Of course you trade Frazier for Sale.

Brett W: Fowler will get a qualifying offer?

Dave Cameron: Definitely.

Sonny: Can Cleveland continue to give Miller/Allen 20% of batters faced in a longer series? Wouldn’t the ‘win the game you’re in’ ethos still hold true as 7 games isn’t that much longer than 5 game series

Dave Cameron: Harder to do that over a longer series, especially once you start having the three games in a row without the off day. The DS really lends itself to the most aggressive relief usage.

Erik: True or False: the best three remaining teams are all in the National League. If so, do you predict the NLCS to be a better series than the World Series?

Dave Cameron: True, though Toronto isn’t that far off from the NL clubs.

Elton: This year’s World Series participants will consist of teams which haven’t been there for at least 19 years. Refreshing! My question is how much of an advantage do the Cubs have by the Dodgers and Nationals going 5 and having to use their aces twice? Perhaps not that much since Kershaw/Scherzer would still get to pitch two games in the NLCS?

Dave Cameron: It’s a little bit of an edge. The Cubs will have a fully rested bullpen when the NLCS starts too.

Erik: If the Cubs make the WS, do they set things up to ensure that Arrieta pitches at home and Lester pitches in the NL park? Or are the differences between pitchers hitting too small to affect that decision?

Dave Cameron: Yeah, that’s overthinking it.

Dubslow: Where can I find pitcher stats like wOBA allowed or SLG allowed or OPS allowed etc… basically all the standard hitting stats except as allowed by the pitcher?

Dave Cameron: On their splits page or in the splits tool.

Zonk: If you are the Cubs, who are you pulling for on Thursday? and why?

Dave Cameron: Probably the Nationals. Strasburg sounds like he’s out for the playoffs now, and Ross looks kind of broken still. I’d rather try to beat Roark/Gio/? than what the Cubs can throw, even if you think Scherzer/Lester is a push at the top of the rotation.

Rene Tosoni: How do contracts for old rookies work? Does Ryan Schimpf still need 6 years of service time before hitting free agency?

Dave Cameron: Yep.

Joe Orsulak: What’s your view on Dusty Baker leaving Blake Treinen in to face Utley in the 8th inning? Especially with Seager coming up next, why not bring in Solis?

Dave Cameron: Solis threw 35 pitches the night before.

The Lure of the Animal: I know you believe that much of a manager’s value lies off the field, but can you name a manager who was/is just plain bad at his job?

Dave Cameron: Well Ryne Sandberg seemed to be both bad at strategy and his players hated him.

outraged reds fan: I was watching the post game of cubs giants and a talking head said the giants had the worst bullpen in baseball! How dare they forget us and misassign our crown!

Dave Cameron: The Giants bullpen wasn’t even really objectively bad; it was just incredibly unclutch. They were fine when the game wasn’t on the line and a disaster when it was.

HVC: It is only day 3 of 10 but contract crowdsourcing is really hammering home how weak this free agent class is. I believe that the highest I have gone thus far is 3/63 for Ian Desmond and even that felt like a stretch.

Dave Cameron: Yeah, this free agent crop is atrocious.

Prich: Tomorrow basically a coin-flip? Dodgers 1-25 advantage mitigated by the Nats’ home-field and having the ‘better’ starter?

Dave Cameron: Nats probably the favorite.

Corey: Which match-up would you have preferred if you were Bochy; Coghlan v Romo or Smith v Contreras?

Dave Cameron: Smith vs Contreras.

Drew: Thoughts on the health study recently published saying most MLB players are overweight/obese? Seems ridiculous to me.

Dave Cameron: It was the dumbest “study” I’ve ever seen.

Jeff: Dave, your projections give Toronto at 58% chance of advancing. Does 58-42 feel about right for you in that series?

Dave Cameron: I’d probably go more like 55-45, but somewhere in there. Toronto is the better team, I think.

Dan: Baez gets more playing time by moving Zobrist and Kris to OF more regularly and having Baez play even MORE of an INF rover

Dave Cameron: Except they keep saying they’re going to play Schwarber in LF next year, and they’ll still have Heyward/Soler around. Not going to be easy to just move Zobrist/Bryant to OF.

weezy: Had lots of texts from folks saying Bochy should have left Moore in for the 9th last night. That’s revisionist history, right? 120 pitches for a meh 4th starter is already pushing it.

Dave Cameron: Yeah, no reason to leave Moore in. If you want to trust a lefty to go after Bryant/Rizzo/Zobrist, Smith was the guy to trust. Better than Moore, not tired, and hadn’t been faced yet.

Jack C.: You mentioned Roberts left Kershaw in too long (agreed). But when he went out to the mound initially, Kershaw wouldn’t even look at him. He was going to stay in the game no matter what. Doesn’t that put Roberts in a very difficult position? If he pulled him, the baseball world would have lost its’ collective mind – especially if any runs crossed home plate. I’m not faulting Kershaw for wanting to be in the game, but did Roberts even have a choice?

Dave Cameron: The manager is paid to make that call. Part of his job is to keep players happy enough even as he makes unpopular decisions.

Dan: Dex accept QO? He’s like 4/60-ish on open market, but obviously loves Cubs and the team.

Dave Cameron: Don’t think he’ll take it, not coming off that year in this free agent class.

Slew: Does Cleveland extend the QO to Napoli? What’s he worth on the open market? (Are the HRs enough, or will buyers look past that?)

Dave Cameron: Can’t imagine he’d get $17M on open market, so no.

Drew Carey: wait a sec, you just stated that Roberts kept Kershaw in too long and that Showalter was incorrect for not using Britton, but in-game management is overrated? That doesn’t jibe.

Dave Cameron: You can believe that in-game decisions can be incorrect without thinking the magnitude of those decisions is as large as people think.

Bus: Do the Jays offer Bautista the QO regardless of how he does the rest of the playoffs?

Dave Cameron: Yes, it’s an obvious call.

EC: Could Nats keep Melancon? Been looking for a closer for god knows how long and it’s nice to see some stability at the back end of the pen.

Dave Cameron: Doubt they’ll want to pay market price for him.

Nate: I hear a lot about players from different teams working out together in the off season and even helping each other with new pitches, etc. Do any organizations frown on this or limit whom players can work out with?

Dave Cameron: Nope. That probably wouldn’t even be legal.

Well-Beered Englishman: Do you agree with the growing consensus that the Rangers’ window is closing or closed?

Dave Cameron: Depends on what they do this winter, but they’re in a tough spot. If they can get Darvish to re-sign at a below-market extension before FA and find a few undervalued pieces, they could keep contending, but if they go the wrong direction next year and then lose Darvish as an FA, they’re in trouble.

Joel: Dave, if you were in North Carolina, would you have stayed up until 2:45am to watch that Giants/Cubs game the other night?

Dave Cameron: Yup.

The Lure of the Animal: How much of a pitcher’s reduced effectiveness on his second and third times through the order can be ascribed to fatigue vs. batters acclimating to his stuff?

Dave Cameron: We don’t know.

Minty: What do you expect from Benintendi next year?

Dave Cameron: I’m a fan. I think he’s probably a 110 wRC+ guy with plus defense and baserunning.

Shawn: Obviously, Matt Kemp overall body of work batting and fielding makes him have very low value in terms of metrics. But after trading for him, the Braves overall offense, record, and Freddie Freeman improved. How much does the latter play a part in “valuing” a low metric player such as kemp?

Dave Cameron: Correlation is not causation. Kemp didn’t cause Freeman to catch fire.

Minty: What regular 1B is Hosmer better than?

Dave Cameron: Yonder Alonso.

Reggie: Do you see Red Sox targeting Edwin Encarnacion; softening the loss of Ortiz and weakening a rival?

Dave Cameron: No. With Pablo coming back, their 3B/1B/DH situation is already kind of crowded, especially if Moncada is going to be the 3B in the not too distant future.

Zonk: How much extra revenue does each round mean to a team? How much of a hit to KC is not making the playoffs this year? (Moore alluded to this in his payroll plans)

Dave Cameron: The latter rounds mean more revenues, since they are longer and fans respond more to deep postseason runs. I think the most recent estimates are that a World Series run is worth something like $100 million in future revenues to a team, so making it to an LCS is probably something like $50 million. It’s not an immediate cash influx, of course.

Dave Cameron: But teams that go deep in the playoffs can expect higher future revenues, so they can spend more in anticipation of that growth.

Nate: T/F the Yankees will drop under the lux. tax threshold this offseason.

Dave Cameron: False

Bork: You might be the first person who has said that Red Sox won’t be going after EE. Other than the Jays, who else has a glaring 1B/DH hole to be filled?

Dave Cameron: White Sox, Mariners, Astros if they don’t trust A.J. Reed, Rangers.

Dominik: does the awareness of launch angle and swing plane have something to do with the HR surge? I know it happened too quickly but the fact that there are more 20-30 guys but no 50 guys might point in that direction. after all top sluggers like Chris Davis always Used an uppercut and had not much room to grow because power is limited while 10 HR guys with a downward or level chop swing could gain power with optimizing their swing (optimize for power) plane to a slight uppercut.

Dave Cameron: Just because we finally got public access to this data doesn’t mean teams just did. Teams have had HITF/x for years, so there’s no reason to think that players only started adjusting to this kind of data after it became publicly available.

Erik: Would a team like the Phillies who hope to compete in 18-19 make sense to sign Encarnacion? Or would only teams that have a good chance at competing next year be in for him?

Dave Cameron: No reason for them to sign a mid-30s player to a market rate deal.

NatsFan: This isn’t meant as a critique: just a legitimate question. Why are the dodgers more likely to move on tomorrow than the Nats according to the playoff odds?D Do the projections think LA is the better team, even given that Kershaw can’t pitch tomorrow?

Dave Cameron: The playoff odds are based on the depth charts, not the individual game match-ups. If you go to our game odds on the scoreboard page, you’ll see the Nats are 54/46 favorites. http://www.fangraphs.com/livescoreboard.aspx?date=2016-10-13

Matt: I’m asking all FG writers that I can – my bold prediction for Cashman’s offseason is acquisition of Sonny Gray. How likely/unlikely is that?

Dave Cameron: No real reason for Oakland to sell low on him.

Guest: I’ve liked the idea of the Astros landing EE for a while. They can DH him and let Reed play first if he breaks out, or let him play first and someone else DH if he doesn’t. Gurriel can play LF

Dave Cameron: Have to think Houston is going to be one of the most aggressive spenders this winter. I bet they get him or Cespedes.

Matt: Regarding Yanks and lux tax. Preliminary calculations have them at ~$185 next season. Assuming the CBA increases tax, an increase to $200 would be 5.8% (which might be a little light). No good FAs this offseason either.

Dave Cameron: Even with no good FAs, still have a lot of holes to fill, and even bench players cost $5M per year now.

Dave Cameron: Going to be hard for them to avoid signing MLB free agents for second year in a row.

Ted: Is a 5/100 deal this offseason realistic for Chapman?

Dave Cameron: Yep

Vicente: Glasnow and Bell is enough to get Archer for the Pirates?

Dave Cameron: No

Stevil: Pearce would seemingly be a good fit for Seattle as well, wouldn’t he?

Dave Cameron: Well he just had surgery, so health is an issue there.

HugoZ: Freeman has stated he thought Kemp had an effect. How comfortable are you in totally discounting player opinion?

Dave Cameron: It costs Freeman absolutely nothing to give his teammate credit publicly, and might earn him some goodwill from Kemp. That he said it publicly doesn’t mean he actually believes it.

Nate: Is there a way to compare the past year’s crowdsourcing contract predictions to actual contracts signed?

Dave Cameron: Yeah, we’ve done this in the past, and the crowd is usually about 20% too low.

senpaisanto: should the cubs have given up more to get miller, or was that somehow no go?

Dave Cameron: I would have traded Schwarber to get Miller, but the Cubs like Schwarber more than I do.

Tess of the D’Arnouds: Could a NL team sign EE to play 1B?

Dave Cameron: Possible, but unlikely.

Daniel C: As teams get smarter, are we looking at the end of good small market franchises? Or is there more evolution to come that will keep teams like the rays ahead of the curve and competitive?

Dave Cameron: Well, the easy narrative is that the widespread flow of information has made it harder for lower revenue teams to compete, but KC is still the reigning champs and Cleveland just swept Boston, so…

Dave Cameron: Overall, I think the dramatic increase in TV revenues have been better for the bottom half of teams than the top half, so the league has been flattened out monetarily.

Bevan: Couldn’t you see the Red Sox going all in and getting Chapman? It seems like a Dombrowski kind of move.

Dave Cameron: No, they’re not going to displace Kimbrel.

Jack : Would it make sense for the Phillies to trade prospects for a player like Adam Eaton (if available) who’s still on the better side of 30 and locked up for the foreseeable future?

Dave Cameron: Better for the Phillies to keep their prospects and try to develop their own stars.

jon: How much of the 20% discount crowd-source vs market value is winner’s curse?

Dave Cameron: A lot of it. The crowdsourcing project is an average of the bids, while the contract the player signs is just the max bid.

Praise the Sun!: Every month seems to be setting records for high temperatures. Has there been much research looking the relationship between weather and home runs? I know balls go further in warmer weather so it makes sense that as the climate changes home runs should go up too.

Dave Cameron: It’s been excluded as a factor. The increase in HR rate is due to an increase in exit velocity, which isn’t controlled by the weather. The question is why exit velocity is up.

Guest: Why is it so hard for non-cable subscribers to watch postseason baseball legally? I’m very happy to pay for the product, as I did all year with my mlb.tv team package, but now (a) the games are not included despite my team still being in the playoffs and (b) I can’t just buy a postseason package without a cable subscription (at which point…why buy an mlb.tv package).

Dave Cameron: Because Fox, ESPN, and TBS paid a lot of money to MLB for the rights, and they want to recoup that investment by having you pay them for their services.

weezy: Who was your favorite LDS broadcast team? I found it hard to stomach some of the commentary at times.

Dave Cameron: The Fox crew is the best. The TBS crews (outside of Smoltz) were painful.

Dave Cameron: And I’d be happy if Bob Costas never called another MLB game again.

JT: Isn’t that a huge economic fallacy? people ARENT going to pay for their services because there isn’t an easy short term way to do so

Dave Cameron: They don’t want you to pay short-term; they want you to keep a year-round subscription to cable because of the hassle of figuring out how to watch the playoffs every October.

botchatheny : any ideas where holliday may land? not sure his usefulness now…

Dave Cameron: Could see him Boston as an LF/DH/veteran leader.

Dave Cameron: Alright, have to end things a few minutes early today due to a meeting. I’ll be live blogging game five of the LA/WAS series tomorrow night, so come back then for ~4 hours of fun.