This afternoon, the Chicago Cubs found their free-agent pitcher in right-hander John Lackey. According to the marvelous Ken Rosenthal, the deal is of the two-year variety, and will pay Lackey $32-34 million. There are a few interesting things to dissect here, but right off the top it fills up the Cubs rotation, so let’s start there.

Lackey comfortably slots in behind Jake Arrieta and Jon Lester, and perhaps Kyle Hendricks, depending on how you feel about him. But given Lackey’s veteran presence, let’s assume that he will be the Cubs number-three starter, with Hendricks and Jason Hammel slotting in behind him. That’s a solid rotation. It has star power, and it has legitimate depth in Travis Wood and prospect Carl Edwards. All of the five starters project to be worth at least 2 WAR. Of the remaining free-agent pitchers, Lackey was tied with Wei-Yen Chen for fifth in projected 2016 WAR. Lackey was significantly cheaper than Zack Greinke or Johnny Cueto, and comes with a longer track record than Hisashi Iwakuma or Chen. In other words, it’s the sort of signing you would expect from Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer and Co.

This also marks the second time that Epstein has signed Lackey, as he was still in command of the Red Sox baseball operations when Boston brought Lackey aboard in December of 2009. It’s not hard to see why Epstein would have a fondness for the Texas-bred righty. Aside from 2012, which he missed due to injury, Lackey has tossed 160 innings or more in every year since 2003. And in most of those years, he’s been average or better. In his first full season in Anaheim, he only logged 1.9 WAR, as he hadn’t ratcheted up his strikeout percentage quite yet. In 2008, some trouble with the long ball limited him to 1.4 WAR. And then in 2011, when he pitched hurt, he logged a paltry 0.9 WAR, though in retrospect it was sort of amazing that he was pitching at all. In the other nine full seasons of his career, he’s been worth at least 2.4 WAR, and at least 3.1 in seven of the nine.

Over the last year-plus, he proved that he was completely adaptable to the National League. In fact, little seems to faze Lackey outside of boneheaded plays by his fielders or being pulled out of a game mid-inning. On Slack, Jeff Sullivan described him as “boringly consistent,” and if you don’t believe him, just look at Lackey’s average fastball velocity — 91.5-91.7 mph for each of the last four years. Over the last two years, Lackey has junked his slider for a two-seamer (at least, according to PITCHf/x), but other than that he’s not much different.

If you’re thinking that $32 million is a lot of coin for a pitcher entering his age-37 season, well, I suppose you’re not technically wrong. And if we were to look up the pitchers who netted contracts of $10+ million per year heading into their age-37 season, it’d probably be a short list. But if you think Lackey is between a two-and-three-win pitcher and that a win on the market costs between $7 and $8 million, well then this is a pretty fair deal given our current market conditions. And perhaps there is some extra synergy in Lackey being back with old friend Jon Lester. Epstein and Hoyer clearly aren’t afraid of another chicken and beer scandal.

The Cubs don’t necessarily need to be done working on their starting rotation. But if they are done, they should not only have a good starting rotation, but a stable one. Contrast that to the health question marks in that rotation to the southwest (Adam Wainwright, Carlos Martinez, Jaime Garcia) and the defections in that rotation to the east (A.J. Burnett and J.A. Happ) and the Cubs may just head to spring training as the favorites in the National League Central.

The Tigers just signed Mike Pelfrey to a two-year deal worth $16 million. The big right-hander has a good fastball, a penchant for licking his fingers, and a split-finger that’s decent for grounders, but he still shows up on the bottom of an important leaderboard. Despite that, he’s been an average major league player four times in his career, and he’s projected to be worth the deal.

Turns out, he has one ability that is elite. And if he continues to display that skill, the Tigers will have made out on this short deal.

Read the rest of this entry »

The scores of Dominican Winter League games likely don’t represent a great concern for the majority of this site’s readership. One demographic to whom they’re pretty important, however, is Dominican people. Among that demographic is giant Twins batter and also Estrellas de Oriente designated hitter Miguel Sano.

Sano’s eighth inning plate appearances tonight against Toros del Este began with his club trailing by a score of 3-1. As those who possess either (a) some expertise in the field of nonverbal communication or (b) normal human eyes — as either of those types of people can infer from the visual evidence here, 3-1 was not the score when Sano’s plate appearance ended.

By means both of his deliberate exit from the batter’s box and also a vigorously outstretched left arm, Sano announces that he is bad. How bad? By all appearances, roughly as bad as he wanna be.

Position: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Baseball Systems Developer

Location: Anaheim

Description:

The Los Angeles Angels are hiring an experienced software developer to build and maintain an aggregated player information and tracking system to help in the decision making process of the Baseball Operations Department.

Responsibilities:

• Drawing from multiple data sources, design and manage a single player information and tracking system.
• Manage receipt, storage, merging, and formatting of multiple data sources (flat files, APIs, database pulls, etc.) Identify, diagnose and resolve data quality issues.
• Develop web-based front-ends to display data at multiple levels of detail.
• Implement and optimize advanced algorithms for player projection from software prototypes.
• Continually work with baseball operations staff to identify features and areas of improvement within the player information system to facilitate a user-friendly research tool.
• Integrate new information sources and multimedia displays into player information and tracking system.
• Communicate results to appropriate staff members through presentations, written reports, and tools.
• Other duties as identified by the Director of Quantitative Analysis.

Qualifications:

• Experience with software development, including requirements definition, design, development, testing, implementation, and iterative improvement.
• Expert level knowledge of SQL and database optimization techniques.
• Proficiency with front-end web development technologies (including HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and JavaScript frameworks) Strong understanding of desktop, laptop and mobile UI/UX design concepts and demonstrated ability to apply responsive design techniques. Particularly focused on representing large data sets in easy to consume user interfaces.
• Experience designing ETL (extract, transform, load) processes to integrate multiple data sources, formats, and media into a single application.
• Management of multi-tiered deployment environment (development, staging, production).
• Working familiarity with advanced statistical concepts, particularly those relevant to sabermetric player projection techniques that include experience implementing statistical calculations, derivations, and graphical representations into software applications (experience with Python and Matlab a plus).
• Bachelor’s degree (B. A.) in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field from four-year college or university; and five years related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
Please apply here.

Position: Tampa Bay Rays Baseball Research & Development Intern

Location: St. Petersburg, Fla.

Description:

We are seeking interns with a passion for winning through mathematics, data analysis, and computation. The internship positions will be with the team’s Baseball Research and Development group in the Baseball Operations department. Start and end dates are flexible, and we will consider applicants who are available for only the summer of 2016. Please note that these positions have the potential to lead to a full-time employment offer, but such an offer is not guaranteed.

Responsibilities:

• Statistical modeling and quantitative analysis of a variety of data sources, for the purpose of player evaluation, strategic decision-making, decision analysis, etc.
• Collecting public and private data for additional analysis.
• Ad hoc queries and quantitative research in support of general Baseball Operations tasks.
• Various game-day duties, as necessary.

Qualifications:

• A strong foundation in mathematics, statistics, computer science and/or engineering.
• Some experience with computer programming.
• Familiarity with a statistical software package such as R.
• Familiarity with SQL.
• Familiarity with Python or MATLAB.
• Familiarity with the online baseball research community.

In addition to working closely with the broader Research and Development team, we desire candidates who will challenge the status quo and explore new research opportunities. Previous interns have developed ideas that have changed the way the organization approaches important challenges.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
To apply, please send an email to researchresume@raysbaseball.com with the subject “2016 R&D Internship” and include a resume, an unofficial transcript (if you were enrolled in a college degree program within the last three years) and answers to the following questions:

1. What dates are you available for the internship?
2. What computer programming experience do you have?
3. What is a project that you believe would add substantial value to a baseball team? Please describe the project and provide an overview of how you would complete it.

The image presented here is a screencap of Jimmy Paredes from roughly five minutes ago, shortly before he recorded the last out of regulation during this evening’s Dominican Winter League game between Gigantes del Cibao and Leones del Escogido.

Here are some players from Gigantes who’ve recorded plate appearances: Maikel Franco and Carlos Peguero and Wilson Betemit. Here’s a single one from Leones to do the same thing: Patrick Kivlehan, just identified as the player-to-be-named in the Leonys Martin trade.

Here’s the count on Hanser Alberto just before the author published this inconsequential notice: 1-2.

Here, finally, is a link to watch the game in technicolor video.

When you read descriptions of Nori Aoki, you’ll often read about how he’s entertaining before you read about how he’s talented. Even his numbers are entertaining, if you’re into that sort of thing — in four years, he’s batted .285, .286, .287, and .288. He’s an unusual player to watch, which makes him an interesting player to watch, and though he’s not the greatest player to watch, you could say he puts smiles on faces. Ultimately that’s the real purpose of all of this.

Aoki was having a solid year with the Giants before he wound up with a leg fracture and, later, a concussion. Aoki’s agent says he’s fine now, which is a very agent-y thing to say, but the Giants still declined Aoki’s very much affordable 2016 option. So into free agency he went, and out of free agency he’s going, to Seattle, for a one-year contract with an option. I don’t yet know what it’s worth, but I assume the money is modest, by free-agency standards. Aoki didn’t sign for much a year ago, and it’s not like his 2015 did anything to change the profile.

Offensively, he’s clearly consistent. He’s not a power threat, but he’s a contact and on-base threat, with a career 107 wRC+. He’ll make some puzzling decisions on the bases, but he can move around just fine. His defensive reputation is for routes like this one:

…and those aren’t uncharacteristic. Aoki isn’t fluid out there, and he doesn’t score very well according to the Fan Scouting Report as a consequence, but as a corner guy, Aoki has rated just fine by DRS and UZR. He doesn’t seem to be a defensive liability, in other words. He’s not prime Ichiro or anything, but he can handle the outfield better than incumbent Nelson Cruz. As for any aging concerns, that’s the neat thing about one-year contracts.

For his career, Aoki’s averaged almost exactly 2 WAR per 600 plate appearances. It stands to reason he should be almost that good in the season ahead, if he’s really healthy. A little worse, probably, but fine enough as a stopgap. One of the things to know is that Aoki’s one of the very most difficult players in the majors to strike out. He’s also a lefty who, to this point, has owned a reverse platoon split at the plate. He’s a contact-oriented slap hitter, which allows him to be consistent, no matter who he’s facing. Righty, lefty, power, finesse, fly ball, groundball. Aoki doesn’t change.

Something I want to share: grounders. Aoki hits a bunch of them. And he sprays them around, more than almost any other player. Since 2002, 553 players have hit at least 500 groundballs. Here are the five lowest rates of pulled grounders over that span:

• Joey Gathright, 23% pulled grounders
• Jean Segura, 33%
• Nori Aoki, 35%
• Ben Revere, 36%
• Luis Castillo, 36%

Gathright wins by a giant margin, but Aoki’s third-lowest, slapping grounders up the middle and the other way, toward the shortstop. Sticking with that, Aoki gets a quick start out of the box, and he runs a very high soft-hit rate on his grounders. So what follows shouldn’t be too surprising — here are the big-league leaders in infield hits, according to our leaderboard, since Aoki debuted in 2012:

• Nori Aoki, 122 infield hits
• Jose Altuve, 114
• Ben Revere, 105
• Ichiro Suzuki, 100
• Mike Trout, 96
• Jean Segura, 96

Aoki’s also bunted a bunch. There is a power swing in there, a pull swing with lift, but so much of his game is soft contact, and it worked again last year before the injuries. It should work similarly going forward.

The one troubling thing is what the Giants did. Aoki seems like a modest bargain, here. Same thing looked to be the case last offseason. But the Giants had the chance to keep Aoki for next year for $5.5 million, and instead they paid a $0.7-million buyout, meaning they didn’t think Aoki was worth $4.8 million. This is the same team that liked him a year ago. Maybe it’s just a money thing; maybe they’d prefer to stay cheaper in the outfield, and put the most money possible toward rotation improvements. But alternatively, the Giants might not have a great opinion of what’s to come. And they’re the ones who’ve seen Aoki most recently, not the Mariners. It’s a consideration.

But Aoki says he’s okay, and I guess we believe him until we have reason not to. For the Mariners, maybe this is the end of any Marcell Ozuna pursuit, but they could still futz around with left field if they wanted. The more important thing to them was accumulating enough options to keep Cruz out of the outfield as much as possible. In that regard, this is a step forward, and it presumably came at a quite affordable price. Sometimes a bargain can just be a bargain.

When the Twins won the rights to negotiate with Byung-ho Park, his signing wasn’t quite a foregone conclusion — we’ve seen these things go wrong before. But it seemed very likely the Twins and Park would eventually reach an agreement, and now we’re officially there, with Park having been introduced at a press conference.

To quickly review, the Pirates bid $5 million for Jung-ho Kang. Then they signed him to a four-year contract worth $11 million, with a maximum possible value of five years and $20 million.

The Twins bid $12.85 million for Byung-ho Park. Now they’ve signed him to a four-year contract worth $12 million, with a maximum possible value of five years and $23 million.

So, it’s clearly a very similar contract structure. For all intents and purposes, Park and Kang wound up with the same deal. Kang would’ve deserved a bit of a bonus for having middle-infield potential, but Kang was also the first of his player type to try to come over, so Park benefits some from Kang’s success. Yet, the contract isn’t where the real effect is observed.

Because of Kang, other Korean players will draw more attention. They’ll be more highly valued. And that shows up in the posting fee: the Twins had to bid a lot more than the Pirates did the first time around, because there was increased competition and they really wanted to bring Park into the fold. In bidding for Park initially, the Twins faced competition from the rest of the league. But because of the system, once the Twins were declared the winners and once Park’s Korean team accepted the bid, the Twins wound up with almost all the leverage. They were the only team that could negotiate, and all Park could do was threaten to go back and wait two years for free agency. Such a threat would’ve been almost empty.

Some have said the Twins took advantage of Park’s eagerness to try to play in the majors. Park himself says he’s content. Of course, Park wasn’t going to say anything else, and millions of dollars are millions of dollars. He’s getting a chance he might not have thought would be possible a few years ago. Like Kang, Park can make a difference for future Korean players, down the road. Park deserves more money, though. This isn’t what his market value would be. The Twins did take advantage, but not because they’re monsters — this is just how the system is, and no team would be willing to shower Park with money just because. This system doesn’t benefit the players. The Twins did what they had to, and no more. It’s something of a shame, and players should get more of the share in an ideal world, but now Park gets to be an everyday DH or first baseman at the highest level of baseball in the world, and he’ll have a whole country behind him. The point is, Park isn’t getting screwed.

The profile is what it was: Park can hit the crap out of the ball. His power is real, even if he won’t hit 50 homers a season in the majors, and he manages to pair some walks with his strikeouts. He’s said to be a decent first baseman. For the sake of quick comparison, the Orioles just picked up Mark Trumbo from the Mariners for basically nothing, and he figures to get about $9 million next year. The Astros might non-tender Chris Carter, who’s in line for a salary just under $6 million, but he should make around that much, wherever he goes. Trumbo, the last two years, has been a replacement-level player, by our WAR. Carter has a career mark of just over 2 WAR in just over 2,000 plate appearances. Given Park’s ability and upside, you can see he should get more. The posting fee, of course, is a big part of the Twins’ investment — it’s more than half of the investment — but Park sees none of that. Now I’m just repeating myself.

Byung-ho Park: interesting player, who might be a good player. The Twins will pay him very little, relatively speaking, through the rest of his career prime. Kang posted a 109 wRC+ in last year’s first half, and in the second half he jumped to 154. If Park adjusts anything like that, this is going to look fantastic. For, you know, the Twins.

In perhaps the easiest move to predict of the entire winter, Dave Dombrowski went and bought his new team an ace. And it’s the same ace he went and bought 18 months ago, for his old team, so I think we can say with a good amount of clarity that Dombrowski likes David Price. A lot.

To lure the best free agent pitcher on the market to Boston, the team gave him the largest contract for any pitcher in baseball history: seven years, $217 million. In addition to the $31 million annual average value, Price also gets an opt-out after the third year, so the deal could be viewed as a three year, $90 million contract, with a four year, $127 million player option that Price can choose to exercise if he gets injured or sees his performance diminish. So not only does Price’s deal beat Max Scherzer’s contract from a year ago in terms of total value and not include the deferred money that Scherzer took to get that total, but he also gets the right to hit the market again and get an even larger payday in a few years if he continues to pitch at a high level over the next 600 innings.

In terms of expectations, this deal beats the crowd’s estimate by $21 million, though my 7/$215M guess ended up being pretty close, though I didn’t think he’d also get an opt-out. Steamer projects him for +5.3 WAR in 2017, so based on our normal assumptions about the free agent market, the $/WAR framework would have had him at just a hair over $240 million. If you think the opt-out is worth about $25 million, then this is almost exactly in line with an $8 million per win estimate for free agents in this market.

David Price’s Contract Estimate — 7 yr / $241.2 M

Year	Age	WAR	$/WAR	Est. Value
2016	30	5.3	$8.0 M	$42.4 M
2017	31	4.8	$8.4 M	$40.3 M
2018	32	4.3	$8.8 M	$37.9 M
2019	33	3.8	$9.3 M	$35.2 M
2020	34	3.3	$9.7 M	$32.1 M
2021	35	2.8	$10.2 M	$28.6 M
2022	36	2.3	$10.7 M	$24.7 M
Totals		26.6		$241.2 M

Assumptions
Value: $8M/WAR with 5.0% inflation
Aging Curve: +0.25 WAR/yr (18-27), 0 WAR/yr (28-30),-0.5 WAR/yr (31-37),-0.75 WAR/yr (> 37)

It’s certainly a huge commitment, but it’s a huge commitment for a great player, and Price should help get the Red Sox back to being a playoff contender. Their work certainly isn’t done after adding just one arm, but this is a big first step for the Red Sox.

On Thanksgiving Eve, the Athletics acquired infielder Jed Lowrie from the Astros in exchange for minor league reliever Brendan McCurry. If you haven’t already, you should check out Jeff Sullivan’s piece on Lowrie. This abbreviated missive focuses not on Lowrie, but on the minor league reliever who’s headed to Houston.

An undersized reliever, McCurry fell all the way to the 22nd round in 2014’s amateur draft, but his minor league performance has since lifted him to fringe prospect status. McCurry worked in relief at High-A and Double-A last season, where he pitched exceptionally well. He struck out 32% of his batters faced last season, and finished up with a 2.44 ERA.

McCurry’s numbers are excellent, but plenty of minor league relievers put up excellent numbers, especially in the lower levels. Throw in that he’s nearly 24, and he’s about as fringy as they come. KATOH forecasts McCurry for a mere 0.7 WAR through his age-28 season, making him the 771st highest-ranked prospect. Going by the stats, at least, most organizations have multiple relief prospects just as interesting as McCurry, if not more interesting. His Mahalanobis distance comps help illustrate how rarely guys like this become anything more than Triple-A depth.

Brendan McCurry’s Mahalanobis Comps

	Name	Year	Mah Dist	IP	WAR
1	Austin House	2014	0.23	0	0
2	Seth Frankoff	2013	0.28	0	0
3	Adam Kolarek	2012	0.37	0	0
4	Randy Fontanez	2013	0.42	0	0
5	Zack Thornton	2012	0.47	0	0
6	Cody Ege	2014	0.59	0	0
7	Grant Dayton	2012	0.71	0	0
8	Seth Rosin	2012	0.73	6	0
9	Robert Bell	2009	0.76	0	0
10	Rob Musgrave	2010	0.77	0	0
11	Zach Quate	2010	0.82	0	0
12	Ricky Brooks	2008	0.91	0	0
13	Cody Winiarski	2013	1.08	0	0
14	Mason Mcvay	2014	1.1	0	0
15	Kyle Bellamy	2010	1.12	0	0
16	C.C. Lee	2009	1.12	34	0
17	Jose Valdez	2012	1.22	0	0
18	Christopher Nunn	2014	1.24	0	0
19	Hector Neris	2012	1.25	41	0
20	Justin Kaye	2000	1.31	3	0