Position: Washington Nationals Research & Development Internship

Location: Washington DC
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Late last week, I published an article about Kevin Kiermaier, calling him further underrated because he’s faced an abnormally tough schedule of opposing pitchers. On the other side of things, Jorge Soler is coming off a year in which he faced one of the easiest opposing slates in recent history. This doesn’t lead to anything conclusively — worse pitchers can throw great pitches, and great pitchers can make mistakes. But what’s suggested is that Kiermaier’s true talent is higher than his numbers, while Soler probably had his 2016 stats inflated. This is an adjustment we so infrequently discuss.

If I’m going to point to hitters and their strengths of schedule, it only makes sense to look at pitchers, too. So I did that for a number of pitchers in 2016, guided by this Baseball Prospectus list. I didn’t calculate numbers for every pitcher, but I examined many pitchers at either end of the BP list. All I did was calculate the average 2016 wRC+ posted by the pitchers’ opponents. The higher the number, the tougher the average opponent. The league-average wRC+ last season, with pitchers included, was 97.

Pitchers with easier schedules

• Jacob deGrom, 89 wRC+ average opponent
• Max Scherzer, 90
• Anthony DeSclafani, 90
• Jon Lester, 90
• Tyler Chatwood, 90
• Tyler Anderson, 90

For the most part, I just wanted to look at pitchers who threw at least 100 innings. But for some smaller-sample fun, J.P. Howell’s average opponent managed just an 84 wRC+, while Matt Harvey wound up at 85. That makes Harvey’s season look only worse, although he had a pretty good reason for that.

Pitchers with tougher schedules

• Kendall Graveman, 104 wRC+ average opponent
• Chris Archer, 104
• Matt Andriese, 104
• Dylan Bundy, 103
• Kevin Gausman, 103
• Michael Pineda, 103

The gaps might not seem that big to you, I don’t really know. But for whatever it’s worth, Todd Frazier just had a 102 wRC+, and Adonis Garcia finished at 90. Steamer projects Mike Napoli for a 103 wRC+, with Kevin Pillar at 90. Imagine the difference between a full season facing lineups of Napolis and lineups of Pillars. Mathematically, it would work out to double-digit runs, so just remember this the next time you’re, say, recalling some pitching numbers from the 2016 American League East. Not every schedule is created the same, and you better believe certain pitchers can feel it.

Last week, on Twitter, Mike Petriello reminded me that, in January of 2016, I wrote a post entitled The Most Volatile Hitter in Baseball History. The headline was sexy and interesting, because I didn’t know any other way to convince you to read a post about Ryan Raburn. The gist: I looked at all four-year season stretches dating back to 1900, with at least 200 plate appearances in each season. Raburn, over his four-year span beginning in 2012, had seen his wRC+ bounce around the most. He went from being one of the worst hitters to being one of the best hitters to being one of the worst hitters to being one of the best hitters. I don’t know what it meant. It just instantly became the most interesting thing about Ryan Raburn.

Okay! So, since 1900, there have been more than 8,300 cases where a player was a “qualified” hitter in consecutive years. Who had the biggest year-to-year drop in wRC+? You might be able to guess this one — it’s Bryce Harper, who just saw his wRC+ drop by 85 points. Though he wasn’t bad by any means in the most recent year, he wasn’t the destroyer of worlds he’d been the summer before. Rumors continue to swirl that Harper was playing through significant pain.

Bryce Harper’s wRC+ just lost 85 points. A massive, historic drop. If you look at the last two years and reduce the playing-time minimum, the guy with the second-biggest drop, at 81 points, is Ryan Raburn.

The pattern, therefore, continues.

The first time around, I looked at four-year stretches, with a minimum of 200 plate appearances in each. Raburn has batted at least that many times every year since 2009, but since he’s often been close to 200, I opted to lower the minimum to 150 plate appearances. Now to look at five-year stretches. I had a pool of 12,044 five-year stretches to consider. Here are the stretches with the biggest wRC+ standard deviations:

It’s Ryan Raburn! In second place, overlapping Ryan Raburn. In third place, overlapping Ryan Raburn. And then a somewhat distant Dusty Rhodes. But one thing about standard deviations is that they don’t really consider sequencing. Going 100 – 100 – 50 would look the same as going 100 – 50 – 100. The second example looks more volatile, so to capture that, I’ve looked at the total wRC+ change. I took the absolute values of the changes between each year and then added them together. The leaders:

It’s not even close. Over the last five years, Raburn’s wRC+ has changed by an average of about 101 points a season. The nearest non-Raburn name is 2011 – 2015 Danny Valencia, at an average of about 69 points a season. Raburn established a historic pattern, and then continued it. I wasn’t expecting that, even though, you know.

Basic pattern recognition would suggest Raburn is now due for another offensive breakout. He happens to be a free agent, and the last time he was linked on MLB Trade Rumors was last March 29. Every team in baseball would tell you, no, that conclusion is stupid, that’s not how this works. But I think we can all agree that baseball probably doesn’t quite understand how Ryan Raburn works. How could it?

This very minute, the author has published an episode of FanGraphs Audio in which lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and that same dumb author play the first inaugural edition of the Over/Under Prospect Game. The rules of the game are discussed in greater detail within the pod episode. In short, though, this is how it’s played:

• Contestant A nominates a rookie-eligible player.
• Contestant A also sets an over/under figure for that player’s WAR in 2017.
• Contestant B chooses the over or under.

For sake of simplicity, we limited the game to 10 nominations total, five by Longenhagen and five by me. The only criterion for a nominee was that he retained his rookie eligibility entering the 2017 campaign.

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The Indians have had a successful offseason, as noted by Craig Edwards last week and they kept winning the offseason on Thursday, agreeing with left-handed reliever Boone Logan on a one-year deal with an option, as first reported by Ken Rosenthal.

Entering Thursday, Cleveland had only one lefty in its bullpen, albeit perhaps the game’s best left-handed reliever in Andrew Miller. Now they have two who can miss bats, and presumably Logan can fit a matchup role that will free Miller to be used in a more versatile manner by Cleveland manager Terry Francona.

Last season with the Rockies, Logan held left-handed hitters to a .139/.222/225 slash line and since 2014 he’s limited lefties to a .236/.330/.392 slash line.

Francona said earlier this winter he didn’t just want any lefty added to the bullpen, he wanted an effective one. And according to T.J. Zuppe, Logan was on the Indians’ radar last trade deadline.

Logan didn’t make the cut of FanGraphs’ top-50 free agents this offseason, but he did come in at No. 50 on at CBSSports and ranked 37th according to MLB Trade Rumors. So for Cleveland to sign Logan in February to a one-year deal with an option seems like a winning transaction for a club, which is projected to win the AL Central and return to the postseason.

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Sit ’round the fire, children, and let me tell you a tale. Once there was a man named Wily Mo Peña. He did things like this.

Wily Mo could hit the ball just about as far as anyone. He didn’t make contact very often, but when he did, the ball flew as if someone had set off a brick of C-4 behind it. Wily Mo Peña was a human launching pad, but a flawed one. In 1,845 big-league games between 2002 and 2011, he accumulated just 0.4 WAR. That’s because Peña generally can’t play defense, and he doesn’t walk very much either. He’s a one-trick pony of the highest order, a poor man’s Dave Kingman. It is not surprising that he took his talents to Japan. There he thrived. Now, he has returned.

After taking 2016 off, Peña has signed a minor-league deal with Cleveland, and there’s a clause in his contract that stipulates that he can make $700,000 if he makes the big-league team. He’ll serve as an insurance policy for Edwin Encarnacion and Carlos Santana, given that both sluggers are over 30, though he’ll need to contend with Chris Colabello. Peña should be adequate as a stopgap DH should the big club need him. Ken Rosenthal reports that he and Encarnacion are close and that Cleveland signed him after watching him work out with Encarnacion.

This is a move of little to no significance. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Wily Mo Peña plays a crucial role for Cleveland during the playoff push, to say nothing of imagining a Wily Mo Peña home run winning a World Series game. Peña is a dinosaur sort of player from a bygone era. He is a 90s’ kind of slugger in a younger more athletic game, a game in which the man who led the National League in homers in 2016 may have to retrace Peña’s steps to Japan.

Sports are entertainment, though, and we should celebrate that we may once again be entertained by Wily Mo Peña. Goodness knows the fans in Japan did.

It would be surprising if Peña got more than 150-200 plate appearances with the big club, if any at all. We can only hope that we’re blessed with even just one more massive home run. He may be capable of peppering the massive scoreboard at Progressive Field. All that remains to be seen if he’s given the chance to do so.

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2017 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award winners.

The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, The Hardball Times, and Beyond the Box Score.

To read any of the finalists, click on the link below. Scroll down to cast your vote.

Contemporary Baseball Analysis

• August Fagerstrom, “The Game Plan: How the Indians Almost Won It All,” FanGraphs, November 4, 2016.
• Ben Lindbergh and Rob Arthur, “Are Juiced Balls the New Steroids?” FiveThirtyEight, July 20, 2016.
• Kate Morrison and Russell A. Carleton, “The Perils of MLB’s Sorting System,” Baseball Prospectus, June 20-23, 2016. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
• Eno Sarris with Bill Petti, “Are Veterans Better at Slump Busting?” FanGraphs, May 25, 2016.
• Jeff Sullivan, “Pitch Framing Was Doomed From the Start,” The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2017.

Contemporary Baseball Commentary

• R.J. Anderson, “MLB Analytics Guru Who Could Be The Next Nate Silver Has A Revolutionary New Stat,” CBS Sports, December 1, 2016.
• Henry Druschel, “There’s no such thing as a small-market team,” Beyond the Box Score, December 13, 2016.
• Rany Jazayerli, “The Curious Have Won,” The Ringer, November 3, 2016.
• Sam Miller, “Cubs win! Cubs won. Now what do we stay alive for?” ESPN.com, November 5, 2016.
• Meg Rowley, “Let Ballparks Get Old,” Baseball Prospectus, May 26, 2016.

Historical Analysis/Commentary

• Patrick Dubuque, “Byron McLaughlin Avoids the Tag,” The Hardball Times, June 22, 2016.
• Tim Healey, “The Doug Mirabelli Trade: An Oral History,” The Hardball Times, April 29, 2016.
• Wade Kapszukiewicz, “Golden Pitches: The Ultimate Last-at-Bat, Game Seven Scenario,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Spring 2016.
• Mina Kimes, “The Art of Letting Go,” ESPN The Magazine, October 4, 2016.
• Gerald Schifman, “How Much Hope and Faith Is in Major League Baseball?” The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2017.

Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Monday, February 13, 2017. Details and criteria for each category can be found here. Only one work per author was considered as a finalist.

Create your own user feedback survey

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Results will be announced and presented at the sixth annual SABR Analytics Conference, March 9-11, 2017, at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.

Look, it would be strange if the Rockies didn’t have a weird offseason, right? It’s the Rockies. Weird has been the modus operandi with this franchise for all of recent memory. Even their run to the World Series was unexpected and strange and involved Matt Holliday perhaps not really touching home plate at one crucial point. If the Rockies went out and made a bunch of coherent moves, it might be cause for concern.

Anyways, after signing Ian Desmond to play first base and throwing a lot of money at perfectly pedestrian lefty reliever Mike Dunn, Colorado is bringing in right-hander Greg Holland, because why not? As you likely know, Holland is good at baseball. He was the closer for the Royals during their run of success, and when he was healthy, he was excellent. Holland is the owner of a career 2.35 DRA and has struck out just over a quarter of all the batters he’s faced. When he was healthy, he was one of the best in the business.

“When he was healthy” is the important phrase here. Holland missed all of last year and part of 2015 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. This makes him going to Colorado interesting, because Coors Field is not exactly the first place that comes to mind when one thinks “rebound.” Yet here Holland goes, to ply his craft for the Rockies. He’s heading there on a one-year deal, per Jeff Passan, with a vesting option for a second year. Holland will make  $7 million this year, and could potentially earn as much as $14 million through incentives. The vesting option will presumably depend either on raw innings pitched or the number of games Holland finishes.

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At long last, the Dodgers found a solution to their hole at second base, acquiring second baseman Logan Forsythe from the Rays on Monday night in exchange for top pitching prospect Jose De Leon. This came after months of rumors around a trade involving De Leon and Brian Dozier. The Dodgers had a surplus of starting pitchers and an opening at second, so it was only a matter of time before they dealt the unproven De Leon.

De Leon’s first crack at the big leagues — a four-start cameo in September — didn’t go quite as well as many had hoped. But he breezed through the minors over the last two years. He broke out in a big way in 2015, striking out an absurd 35% of opposing hitters between High-A and Double-A while walking just 8%. That performance made him a consensus top-30 prospect the following winter.

De Leon battled injuries in the first half of 2016, but began dominating again once he returned to the field. In 16 starts at the Triple-A level, he once again posted a strikeout rate well over 30%, along with solid walk and home-run numbers. De Leon proved himself at the highest level of the minors at the tender age of 23. Pitchers who meet that standard often go on to have success in the majors, especially when they miss bats as prolifically as De Leon did.

De leon grades out exceptionally well by my KATOH system. It projects him for 8.1 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method (KATOH) and also 10.1 WAR by the method that integrates Baseball America’s rankings (KATOH+). He’s the 13th-highest-ranking prospect by KATOH+ and the third-highest-ranking pitcher.

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Spring training has gotten surprisingly close, and — in terms of significant activity — the offseason is mostly complete. Just about every team around has a pretty good idea what the opening-day roster is going to look like, which means we’re coming up on projection season. Now, you could argue it’s always projection season, at least here on FanGraphs, but the team projections should, in theory, be better than they’ve been all winter. So let’s work with that.

Right now, all we have available is Steamer. We’re still a little while away from ZiPS getting folded in. But Steamer isn’t stupid, so, looking at that, we see the following teams projected to bring up the MLB rear: the Padres (66 wins), the Brewers (67 wins), and the Reds (69 wins). No one else is projected right now for a win total in the 60s, and while the White Sox would end up down there if they sold Jose Quintana, that hasn’t yet happened, so we shouldn’t assume anything.

You could argue the three worst teams are on the right tracks. All of them are openly rebuilding, and none of them think they’re going to win in 2017. Keith Law just ranked the Padres’ farm system No. 3 in the game. He ranked the Brewers at No. 6, and he ranked the Reds at No. 8. I don’t think many people thought the Reds would come in so high! There they are, though. Lots to hope for in the future.

But what about the near-term future? How good could these teams be in the year just ahead? None of them plan to win, but, miracles happen. To get to the point: I consulted my spreadsheet of team projections going back to 2005. That’s 12 years, and over that span, I found 26 teams projected to win no more than 70 games. Here’s a big (sortable) table of how all those teams did:

On average, the teams were projected to win 68 games. On average, they actually won 68 games, with an average BaseRuns win total of 68. Pretty good, all in all, by which I mean, pretty bad. The medians are also in agreement.

Of note: The worst projected team was even worse than expected. Of greater note, though, is that three of these 26 teams finished over .500. That’s about a 12% success rate, if that means anything to you. The 2012 Orioles are the greatest success story included, because they outdid their projected win total by an unbelievable 23. They made the playoffs! Their win totals leading up to the season in question: 69, 66, 64, 68, 69, 70. Between 2007 – 2011, no team in the American League won fewer games than the Orioles. Between 2012 – 2016, no team in the American League has won more games than the Orioles. That year in 2012 was when the whole story of the organization was flipped on its head.

The 2010 Blue Jays were only a little outdone. They beat their projection by 20 wins, and just looking at BaseRuns, they finished better than the 2012 Orioles. Those Jays were thought to be somewhat rebuilding, after ridding themselves of J.P. Ricciardi, and no team would expect to win after trading away Roy Halladay. The Jays played just one month that year with a sub-.500 record.

And then you’ve got the 2008 Marlins, before they decided to identify just with Miami. What the 2008 projections knew was that, in December 2007, the Marlins traded Miguel Cabrera to the Tigers. But the projections didn’t think the run prevention would improve by 124. It wasn’t a playoff season, but it was a hell of a lot better than it could’ve been.

In all, 26 projected bad teams. Of those, 23 were at least mostly bad. Odds are, the Padres, Brewers, and Reds will be bad, too. But let’s just say, for simplicity, there’s a 3-in-26 chance for each given team to do better than .500. It would follow there’s about a 30% shot for at least one of these teams to do better than .500. Wouldn’t that be something? I’ll pick the Brewers, and live with it.