Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 1/25/17

TP: Do you think Alex Reyes is going to open the season in the rotation?

Dave Cameron: Whoops; guess we’ll answer that question before I say hi.

Dave Cameron: My guess would be no; he’s going to be on an innings limit, and has options, so the easiest way to handle their crowded rotation is to let him work in Triple-A for a month or two.

Dave Cameron: Anyway, hi everyone. Happy Wednesday.

Erik: Which division favorite requires the fewest things to go wrong in order to miss the playoffs completely?

Dave Cameron: Probably Houston. A couple of injuries to guys like Correa, Altuve, or Springer, and they might be sunk.

Monsignor Martinez: Suppose you could go back in time, take any failed prospect and give him an 80-grade tool. Which player, and what tool?

Dave Cameron: Mark Prior, 80 health.

CarrotJuice: Anderson is the Cubs 5th starter, right? No way they still have Montgomery as their 5th starter.

Dave Cameron: Well, when he’s healthy. I’m guessing they’ll get another depth guy to take spot starts when he’s not.

5 Run Homer: Minnesota really screwed thrmselves, didn’t they? They squandered the only logical trade partner for their star player at the peak of his trade value. What do they do with Dozier now?

Dave Cameron: Yeah, I think they messed up not getting De Leon, but as always, caveats about medicals and what we don’t know included. I don’t think there’s any real chance Dozier’s trade value goes up from here, though.

Johnny5Alive: Looks like Bruce is penciled in as the starting RF for the Mets, winning be damned!

Dave Cameron: I know people are really annoyed about this, but the reality is that these pre-season proclamations don’t matter, and who starts on Opening Day doesn’t even really matter. There are two outcomes here; Bruce plays well enough to justify the job, which is fine, or he plays badly and gets replaced by Conforto, which is fine.

Dave Cameron: There’s no real scenario where Bruce is a huge drain on the team and keeps playing.

The Tone: Do you see any possible three-way deal with the Mets, White Sox, and Blue Jays that would ship Jay Bruce to the Blue Jays, David Robertson to the Mets, and a few mid-level prospects (from Mets and Jays) to the Sox?

Dave Cameron: Nope. The Blue Jays are mostly out of money and seem like they’re going to go with Carrera/Upton in LF with Pompey hanging around as depth.

Weezy: What factors have Jose De Leon looking like an ace on projection systems? Is it his dominance of Rookie ball as a 22 yo?

Dave Cameron: He’s never posted a K% below 30% at any level. 6% BB%, 33% K% in Triple-A last year. There’s a reason the projections love him; guys who miss bats like this are almost always good.

Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: The Rays have Brad Miller, Tim Beckham, and Nick Franklin for 1B and 2B, and a little more money than last week. How do you see things shaking out on the right side of the infield? Miller at 1B with a Beckham/Franklin platoon at 2B? Shift Miller to 2B and sign a Chris Carter type?

Dave Cameron: Yeah, I’d move Miller back to 2B, especially with how cheap corner infielders are right now.

Roboto: Let’s say you are the GM for a new expansion team. You have a roster of 25 league average players making the league minimum. You have the option to add any one player to your team immediately on a 6 year $60 million contract. Restrictions being the player cannot be making more than that now and can’t have ever won an MVP, ROY, Cy Young, or have been a first round draft choice. Who would you choose?

Dave Cameron: The money restriction means that it has to be a young pre-arb guy.

Dave Cameron: The draft pick restriction means you’re probably looking at an international player.

Dave Cameron: Oh, wait, Mookie!

Dave Cameron: You take Mookie Betts.

Brett W: I was disappointed by the lack of an Adam Rosales rule in the new CBA. In your opinion, should excessive waiver claims have been addressed?

Dave Cameron: Yeah, that’s one of those things that should be an easy fix, since the never ending waiver claims benefit no one, but it got lost in the shuffle since the two sides took so long to negotiate the main stuff. Really, though, there’s zero reason to allow these guys to bounce around like this.

Outta my way, Gyorkass: Biggest loser in the LAD-TB De Leon – Forsythe deal has to be Minnesota, right? Is there any remaining erstwhile contender with a major 2B need? Do the Twins have to hope for Dozier to keep raking into the All Star break and for a contender to develop a need, in order to reap a reward they could have had if they had not gotten greedy?

Dave Cameron: Best case for Twins now might be to try and re-sign Dozier again, see if they can get more than the two years left they still have, and hope he ages like Kinsler.

Shane: If the Red Sox were willing to mortgage a large part of their future to win in the next three years with Sale, why are they now worried about staying under the luxury tax? Shouldn’t they have done whatever it takes to win now and signed Encarnacion or Bautista?

Dave Cameron: It is far easier for owners to not care about prospects than to not care about writing big checks for taxes.

Jeremy: What comps do you see for Haniger, if the Fangraphs writers are right and he’s a sneaky-good player?

Dave Cameron: Marcell Ozuna, maybe?

Dave Cameron: Or maybe Randal Grichuk. Someone like that.

Seymour: How does an expansion team field a team/acquire initial talent?

Dave Cameron: Expansion draft. I think the Rays drafted Bobby Abreu in their expansion draft, then traded him for someone totally useless. Whoops!

Thomas: Hey thanks for doing the chat! I have a question about lineup composition. Do you think there must be a balance of power and speed and defence guys? Or say if you had a team completly made up of guys that hit and played defence like 2015 and 16 Ender Inciarte (kinda light hitting but amazing defence)…would your team be just as good? I feel it’s obviously the latter but never know… always see teams talked about who need to “find some power” etc…

Dave Cameron: Yeah, you don’t really need speed or power or defense; you just need run creation or run prevention. The Royals won the World Series with a line-up of the same kinds of guys.

Dave Cameron: Obviously your SS and 1B won’t be exactly the same, but you can have relatively good glove/average bat players everywhere and be fine if the pitching and defense are good enough.

Andrew: Nice article on the everyday player tax. Any other guys in particular you think are/were undervalued in the same way?

Dave Cameron: The fact that no one wanted to take Seth Smith at $7M was weird.

Yuk Yuk Puk: If Bellinger is raking in ST/April, do the Dodgers look to move Puig and make room for Bellinger? Personally, I’d be shocked in Puig is on the Dodgers come Aug 1

Dave Cameron: Bellinger is apparently an elite defensive 1B; don’t think they want to move him to the OF.

Mike: How much WAR does a player need to be considered an above average regular?

Dave Cameron: +2.5ish.

Dave Cameron: +2 is average.

D: I know you just wrote an article on this, but what do you see as Forsythe’s reasonable ceiling and floor in LA?

Dave Cameron: Well, he could add even more power and turn into a monster, Justin Turner style. But that’s unlikely. I’d say it’s more likely that he’s a solid +2 to +3 WAR player, not a star.

Dave Cameron: Everyone’s floor is that they get the bubonic plague and take out the whole roster before they die themselves.

cheese: Does the upgrade from Howie Kendrick to Forsyth justify the loss of DeLeon?

Dave Cameron: Not to me.

Dave Cameron: And even without Kendrick, they could have just brought back Utley and platooned him with Hernandez or Taylor.

Dave Cameron: Plus I know Willie Calhoun is odd shaped and maybe can’t field, but he’s close-ish and can hit.

Andrew: More likely: Rays trade Odorizzi for a bat or they sign Napoli/Carter/Moss/Reynolds for cheap?

Dave Cameron: The latter.

Kevin: Completely unrelated to baseball, but from what you know, is quitting your job and getting an MBA full-time “worth it” if you are accepted into a tier 1 (~top 10) school?

Dave Cameron: The only thing the US needs less than another lawyer is another MBA.

Dave Cameron: If your job is shoveling manure for $10 an hour, yeah, quit that and get an MBA. If your job is reasonably okay, probably not.

powder: Dodgers still (for the umpteenth year in a row) may have too many outfielders. Is there any chance they unload some of that surplus before the season starts?

Dave Cameron: Do they really have too many outfielders? Ethier is probably a bench guy at this point, we don’t know what Toles is, and Puig is a huge question mark.

Johnny5Alive: “There’s no real scenario where Bruce is a huge drain on the team and keeps playing.” You forgot the actual scenario: Terry Collins is a moron.

Dave Cameron: If he’s bad enough that Alderson doesn’t want Collins playing him, he gets DFA’d.

Jimmer: You seem higher on De Leon than many, I’ve heard said it’s because you say you prefer softer-tossing RHP with good change ups (I’m guessing that means more control type pitchers) than guys with more velocity? Is this the case?

Dave Cameron: I think the history of prospect ratings shows that guys with plus change-ups and command perform better then their rankings suggest, and guys with big velo/breaking balls/bad command/bad performance do worse than their rankings show.

Dave Cameron: I don’t think De Leon is going to be Kershaw or something, but if he’s James Shields, well, then he’s going to have a better career than 99% of other pitching prospects, including the ones who throw harder or have nicer breaking balls.

Chaps: re: GM new expansion team – how close were you to honing in on Altuve before you remembered Betts?

Dave Cameron: I was thinking Urias, actually.

Dave Cameron: But then Mookie said “hey, over here!”

Outta my way, Gyorkass: Roboto’s hypothetical team of 25 league average players making the minimum + Mookie would be a really good team, and probably so even without Mookie, yeah?

Dave Cameron: It’d be a mid-80s win team.

Dave Cameron: A bunch of average guys gets you to 81, and then swap out a +2 WAR OF for Mookie, who is a ~+5 WAR guy, so that gets you to 84.

Brendon: Why don’t teams pay the best coaches more as a means to update their rosters? (I.e. why doesn’t someone offer Ray Searage 4 times his current salary and promote him to some sort of director of pitching development)

Dave Cameron: Because people are less confident in their ability to measure the impact of non-players.

Ballsandgutters: 1) are you letting Sawchik go to the bathroom between all the articles he’s been writing?

Dave Cameron: Sawchik is actually a bot, programmed to write nothing but fantastic articles.

Dave Cameron: So far so good.

Troy: Do you think the Royals will commit Hosmer long-term?

Dave Cameron: Nope. He’s going to get way overpaid in FA.

PR: would red sox have been better trading moncada straight up for quintana

Dave Cameron: Interesting; is the difference between Sale and Quintana worth keeping Kopech? I think Boston would probably say no. I might say yes, but that might be because of how high a few people I’ve talked to are on Kopech.

Erik: Bellinger is the only example I can think of where a player has been deliberately kept lower on the defensive spectrum, not due to being blocked, but because he plays such good defense down there. Are there any other recent examples?

Dave Cameron: Adrian Beltre, maybe? He was so good at 3B that no one ever considered moving him to SS, but he almost certainly was athletic enough that he could have handled it.

Chris: Assuming Carson Smith is at full strength in July, where do you rate him compared to the Red Sox other set-up options (Joe Kelly, Matt Barnes, Tyler Thornburg)

Dave Cameron: That bullpen could be insanely good if he comes back at close to pre-TJ levels. Would guess Kelly and Thornburg establish themselves as two primary setup guys, so Smith/Barnes would be middle guys.

Larry Jones: Do you like corey ray or lewis brinson as the long term CF option for the brew crew?

Dave Cameron: Brinson.

Dave Cameron: Though if Jeff is right about Broxton, they might both be corner guys.

Slew: Tell the MBA guy that if he’s great at networking, an MBA at a top school could really pay off. If he’s not, he’d be lighting money on fire.

pirates hurdles: Wow, I had forgot that Abreu factoid, it was Kevin Stocker, Abreu broke out immediately.

Dave Cameron: One of the classic awful trades in MLB history.

00: Where do you stand on Robbie Ray?

Dave Cameron: I think he’ll eventually move to a different style of pitching, with fewer Ks and fewer hard-hit balls, but still be a back-end starter.

CarrotJuice: Odds that Kopech has a better career than Giolito?

Dave Cameron: 60%, based on my totally made up guess.

Otter: If the Astros don’t think they need him, the Yankees aren’t in any rush to get him, it’s hard to find a deal that works with the Pirates for him, and everyone else either doesn’t really need him/have the pieces to get him… what happens to Jose Quintana? We’re three weeks from Spring Training, he shouldn’t be reporting to camp with the Sox, but it looks like he will be.

Dave Cameron: They could flip him in July.

Prich: Heyman says Rockies close on Holland… Good ‘strategy’ for them, provided the #s aren’t insane?

Dave Cameron: If they’re actually guaranteeing him something like $10M by giving him an opt out after one year on a multi-year deal, than no, I think the risk outweighs the reward.

Worst Trade?: Colon for Sizemore, C Lee and B Philips? Or Casey Blake for C Santana? Based on info at the time.

Dave Cameron: Well Jonah will tell you the Colon deal was fine because the front office knew the team wasn’t going to exist so why build for the future?

_David_: Do velo/breaking/bad command/bad performance guys have a better shot at being good relievers, and does this raise their floor?

Dave Cameron: That’s the assumption, and Dellin Betances certainly fits the mold, but then you see guys like Liam Hendriks suddenly hitting 97 out of the bullpen. I don’t think it’s so easy to say that stuff guys are definitely better relief conversion projects, since some no-stuff starters end up as good-stuff relievers.

Fernando: How confident are you in Giolito being able to fulfill the potential many scouts projected for him?

Dave Cameron: Not at all.

Matt: Chipotle or Q’Doba?

Dave Cameron: Local taco joint. Every city has them.

A cat: Rumor has Kelly going back down to PAW to stretch out as a starter and develop his new slider that he broke out in the playoffs. This seems like the old joke of putting the sour milk back in the refrigerator for another week to see if it gets better.

Dave Cameron: Kelly was so good in relief that I can’t imagine they really move him back.

CarrotJuice: BREAKING: Rockies about to sign Greg Holland! Why would Greg Holland try to rebuild value in Coors Field?

Dave Cameron: They probably bid more.

Erik: It’s generally said that you need at least 3 average pitches and average command to start. But if one of those things is excellent, can you survive without the other? Could someone with a 70-grade third pitch start with 30-grade command? Or 70-grade command but a 30-grade third pitch?

Dave Cameron: Bartolo Colon has one zero average pitches, and only throws one pitch.

Dave Cameron: If you have insanely good command, the stuff requirements aren’t really true.

Dave Cameron: You can also be good with insane stuff and lousy command, but that’s less common. Being able to throw the ball where you want it is really, really important.

TengoPreguntas: Guaranteeing Holland 2 years with an opt out and thus assuming all the risk is a very Rockies move, isn’t it?

Dave Cameron: Yup.

CarrotJuice: Do you think the De Leon trade was worse (for the Dodgers) than the Heaney/Hendricks trade?

Dave Cameron: Yes, because De Leon > Heaney.

Dave Cameron: Okay, going to wrap things up five minutes early today. Taking the wife skiing this afternoon, so let’s please have no more meaningful transactions today.

Dave Cameron: We’ll hang out again next week.