Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 3/16/16

Dave Cameron: Happy Wednesday. Let’s do this.

JCNY: Am I crazy to think Adam Wainwright could still be a Top 12 starter this year? His ’14 was fantastic and he had basically a whole year without wear on his arm. He’s not young, and he’s coming off a major lower body injury, but still…

Dave Cameron: Your body still ages even if you’re not pitching. With all the great young arms in the game now, it’s hard for me to see Wainwright cracking the top dozen pitchers.

Hooha: If Trout got hurt (god-forbid), would the Angels be the worst team in baseball?

Dave Cameron: Not even close. Have you seen the Phillies?

Outta my way, Gyorkass: Leaving out mediocre teams who are trying to contend but probably should not be (sorry, Marlins, Rockies, Orioles, etc.), which true NL contender holds the highest probability of utter collapse this season? How about the in AL?

Dave Cameron: I wouldn’t put the Marlins in that group; they have a chance to be a Wild Card contender. Highest collapse potential is probably the Mets, given how reliant they are on pitching. If they lose any two of their big four starters, they could be a .500 team, and having two pitchers go down isn’t unusual at all.

Dave Cameron: In the AL, it has to be the Royals, right? Heavily dependent on sequencing, a rotation with serious question marks, Salvador Perez’s workload…

RK: Have anything in mind you think the White Sox should do at DH? Would Morneau make sense?

Dave Cameron: They’ll probably just play Avisail Garcia there.

Stuafoo: Are high contact/OBP/speed guys like Altuve the type of player it makes the most sense to extend early on in their careers? (Covering the peaks of their speed at more reasonable rates).

Dave Cameron: I think those are the guys it makes the least sense to extend, given that their skillset doesn’t get paid as well in arbitration, so you don’t get hurt as badly by a big breakout.

the lion: AJ Reed is a serious AL rookie of the year ?

Dave Cameron: For sure. If he hits like people expect, he could put up some good numbers on a contender.

ken m: Are the A’s in any real danger of being contracted in the semi near future?

Dave Cameron: I see baseball expanding, not contracting. There’s a good argument for adding teams at this point.

Ben: in 3 years from now is Miggy Cabrera what Albert Pujols is now?

Dave Cameron: Pujols has aged worse than you’d expect.

Dave Cameron: I’d put Miggy on the Frank Thomas path. Probably a very good hitter until he retires, but health will limit his playing time.

Outta my way, Gyorkass: What’s the first MLB team your little youngin’ is going to attend a home game at?

Dave Cameron: We took him to Nationals Park last year.

Justin: What team are you *least* interested in for 2016?

Dave Cameron: I can’t see myself watching a lot of Braves games this year. The other bad teams have more interesting young talent to watch.

Catcher Homerunball: Would milwaukee be willing to move will smith to closer so he would have higher trade value or is his value already high enough as it is?

Dave Cameron: I don’t think his trade value would necessarily get a big bump from closing.

Josh: Even if the Brewers are hoping Lucroy reestablishes his value by performing well in the first half, wouldn’t the lost half season of production for a potential trade partner offset the gains made in his rebound? In other words, is there really a benefit to the Brewers waiting until mid season to make a trade?

Dave Cameron: It’s a tough call, mostly because there aren’t a lot of examples of teams trading for catchers mid-season. At most positions, you can argue that there’s some merit in waiting because prices go up at the deadline due to teams having a larger incentive to make acquisitions as they are closer to the postseason, but that might be offset by the fact that teams could get Lucroy and their pitching staffs some practice time together if they make a deal now.

Fan9: Meanest sports fans? Which MLB team

Dave Cameron: Columbian soccer.

Dave Cameron: No baseball fans have killed one of their own.

Eric Weinstein: First of all, Amen to your Bryce Harper article. Loved it and couldn’t agree more. But on to BaseRuns, do you think there might be a connection between the types of teams that are more likely to overperform BaseRuns and the types of teams that overperform in the postseason compared to projections? You have identified high contact rates as a common thread on BaseRuns overperformance, and it seems that the same is true for many of the postseason success stories (the Royals, recent Giants and Cardinals teams, the Angels a decade ago).

Dave Cameron: There have been a bunch of studies on contact and the postseason and there’s been no real link found.

Ben: If you were making the decision, would Trea Turner start Opening Day for the Nats ahead of Danny Espinosa? Is there anything more you need to see from either of them to make that decision? Or is it a hard-and-fast service time decision?

Dave Cameron: It’s a bit complicated by the fact that Turner got some service time last year, so they’d have to keep him down longer to get the extra year. I might lean towards just using him on Opening Day.

Erik: Does the holding elite prospects back until May issue get addressed in the next CBA at all? It seems obviously to be hurting players, and everyone in baseball knows exactly what’s happening, despite any excuses teams make for each individual case.

Dave Cameron: Yeah, I think they’ll take a stab at fixing it. I could see the owners significantly reducing the number of days required to qualify as a service year as one of their major concessions.

Jesse: Am I crazy to think of Noah Syndergaard in the same class of pitcher/strikeout stuff as Kluber, Cole, deGrom, et al?

Dave Cameron: Not at all. His stuff is among the best in baseball.

Fan of Baseball: Dave, I’m heading to Phoenix this week. What’s the best local ST venue I should check out for a game. Team/matchup unimportant.

Dave Cameron: Salt River is the nicest facility, if you’re looking for something comfortable and modern with lots of shade.

Mike: What are the arguments for expansion, specifically? Just revenue to go around and ripe markets? No one really seems to be able to agree on where the 32nd team would go.

Dave Cameron: If you look at the historical ratio of roster spots to population, we’re currently at a big surplus in terms of available players. And given how much of the industry is driven by TV dollars now, the necessity of filling up a ballpark is less important than it used to be, so you could put a team in a smaller metropolitan area and have it succeed based on gathering TV eyeballs from a larger geographical range.

Josh: If baseball truly were to expand, which cities do you think are most likely to land a team?

Dave Cameron: I still say NY should have a third time, probably in Brooklyn. You could put a team in NC (Raleigh or Charlotte), in Portland, San Antonio, Nashville.

forever it: The Padres are offended you didn’t pick them for least interesting

Dave Cameron: They could be quite interesting as a summer trade partner.

Dave Cameron: The Braves don’t even have a lot of stuff to sell anymore.

Eric: Do you think Pujols has aged worse than expected because he lied about his age? There used to be a lot of speculation about that.

Dave Cameron: I’ve never bought into those rumors because he didn’t gain anything from doing so. The players who faked their ages did so to trick teams into giving them huge signing bonuses; Pujols theoretically lied about his age so he could go to a Junior College and get drafted in the 13th round? Really?

Trainman: Lance McCullers to DL to begin the season. Red flag, or just being treated with kid gloves since his MRI came back clean?

Dave Cameron: They were going to limit his workload anyway, so might as well be careful.

doc ellis: which SS do you prefer long-term: arcia, crawford, or turner?

Dave Cameron: I’ve had a few friends in the game tell me that J.P. Crawford could be the best non-Correa SS in baseball by next year. So him.

Forsyth: When I try to search for a team’s production at a certain position (team batting stats – split by “as a XX” such as Red Sox as a 1B), it gives me entirely too much data. For example, the Giants, as a 1B, have 1,216 PA and a 9.7 WAR. Is there any way that can get corrected so that it only shows the production for a player when he is actually playing that position?

Dave Cameron: Instead of using the positional tabs, click the splits drop-down, and then scroll down the positional splits. Those will give you only the data for players at those positions.

Sean: Can Billy Hamilton learn to hit the ball more on the ground, or is that way more difficult than us civilians realize?

Dave Cameron: He basically would have to reinvent his swing.

Dan: Is it unreasonable to be anti expansion because the odds of my favorite team winning this year go down as a result?

Dave Cameron: Well, if you expand the number of teams, you probably think about expanding the postseason too.

Kylo Ren: Why do I feel like people are down on the Pirates this year?

Dave Cameron: Because they don’t look as good as they did a year ago and the Cubs got a lot better.

BBK: Who’s an exciting young player that the average person might not have heard of?

Dave Cameron: Kevin Kiermeier, maybe.

mtsw: What’s a red flag you look for that indicates a guy who’s hitting well in AA or AAA may have trouble adjusting to major league pitching moreso than most guys?

Dave Cameron: High BB/K rates, moderate power.

Joel: Was your little league team any good?

Dave Cameron: No, we were awful. So was my high school team.

Kole: You once said that arm strength really doesn’t matter much at all. Did you mean that there isn’t much of a marginal benefit when upgrading from a slightly below average arm to an very good one at any given position? Because it seems to me that a horrible arm can become very detrimental on defense, while an elite one can be hugely beneficial e.g. Alex Gordon.

Dave Cameron: The spread in value from the very worst to the very best throwing arm is something like two wins, and the spread between normal good and bad arms is more like one win. Every other notable “tool” has a much larger impact.

tom selleck: high bb/k rates? isn’t that a good thing?

Dave Cameron: No, high K rates are never good. They can be offset with power, but if a guy is succeeding in the minors without power while also failing to make contact because he just draws a lot of walks, there’s a decent chance that his approach won’t work against pitchers who can throw strikes.

Greg: What can the Mets reasonably expect in return for de Aza?

Dave Cameron: Salary relief.

Colin: How long would Turner have to stay in the minors to get an extra year?

Dave Cameron: Turner has 45 days of service already, and needs to get to 172 for a full year, so they would need to limit him to 126 days of service or fewer to get the extra year. There’s 182 service days in the regular season calendar, I believe (might be 183, something like that), so they’d basically have to keep him down for two months.

Albus: What do you think Avisail’s line would be now that he is going to DH for the Sox?

Dave Cameron: Most guys hit worse as DH than as position players, so probably not great. But my guess is they’ll give him one last shot to see if he can not be Delmon Young 2.0, and then they’ll go trade for someone in June if he is.

Trainman: Dave, is Yordano Ventura ready to break out this year where he steps up to the elite?

Dave Cameron: He’s going to have to figure out how to start striking guys out if he wants to be elite.

Josh: Would expansion necessitate division realignment to, say, 8 4-team divisions a la the NFL?

Dave Cameron: Yeah, that seems like it’d certainly be on the table. But if you did that, you’d either have to expand the postseason or get rid of the Wild Card, and I don’t think MLB wants to get rid of the Wild Card.

BBK: Can you force cistulli to talk baseball with his other guests?

Dave Cameron: Well, he only marginally pays attention to MLB, so if he was forced to talk more baseball, the limits of his knowledge would be exposed.

Dave Cameron: So unless you want college baseball/fringe prospect podcasts…

Nomar : Is AJ Pollock the most underrated player in the history of the last year? He had an amazing year last season yet no one seems to believe he can repeat it.

Dave Cameron: Well, that’s kind of the thing about amazing seasons; they are amazing because they are hard to repeat.

mtsw: For a guy like Turner could the approach him and say like “agree to a one year $15M (or whatever) team option tacked onto your standard contract and we’ll bring you up now?” Or is approaching the problem directly just material for a grievance down the line?

Dave Cameron: Yeah, you can’t make it clear that the contract offer is tied to the decision to put him on the roster.

brandon: Are the Red Sox, Yankees, or Jays clearly better than the Rays?

Dave Cameron: I think the AL East is a big pileup with a whole bunch of teams within a few games of each other.

Dave Cameron: But I think the Rays are the worst of those four.

Ronnie: Are replacement level & AAAA pretty much talking about the same thing? If so I think that WAAAAA is way cooler sounding than WAR.

Dave Cameron: Yes, you could probably say that the 4A player label is often applied to guys who are close to replacement level.

tom selleck: Biggest wildcard (highest ceiling or lowest floor) move of the offseason?

Dave Cameron: Probably the Kenta Maeda signing. Could be a huge steal or a total waste of cash.

Eric: If Harper is due to get as much as $500M in free agency, what will be Boras’s opening offer? 700M / 20 years?

Dave Cameron: I have a feeling the negotiation will center less on total dollars, and more on how many opt-outs he gets. I could see Boras asking for a 15 year deal with opt-outs after every season.

Dave Cameron: But the total dollars are going to be nutty too.

j6takish: I am of the belief that players can’t be “clutch” but that players CAN be not clutch

Dave Cameron: I think this is probably true. And it’s probably more noticeable among pitchers, where “toughness” or whatever personality trait it is would show up in high leverage situations.

Dave: If I wanted straight baseball analysis on a podcast, I wouldn’t be downloading Carson’s. No offense Dave, but my favorite fangraphs podcasts are when Dayn and Carson read Emil Cioran.

Dave Cameron: None taken; while I give Carson a hard time, it’s clear that he’s good at facilitating very different types of discussions, so there’s probably a FG podcast for everyone, even if not every podcast is for everyone.

Ol Sea Capn: Can’t someone just give Bryce Harper 5% owenership of the team after he retires and a modest $5 million per year until retirement?

Dave Cameron: Not allowed, no.

Jack Glasscock’s Cup: Any pitcher have a chance to put it all together this year (> 5 WAR) more than Danny Salazar?

Dave Cameron: I’d probably go with Michael Wacha, if he stays healthy.

John: Luis Severino and Carlos Rodon. Lot’s of love for these young arms. “potential aces” has been used alongside their name. I won’t ask you to predict their total potential, but can you tell me how much improvement (or regression) you see from them THIS season?

Dave Cameron: I’d see them as more decent starters in 2016.

Dave Cameron: Alright, off to get some work done. Thanks for hanging out everyone.