Yoan Moncada has a home, as Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com has reported that the Cuban prospect will be signing with the Boston Red Sox for something in the $30 million range. Of course, that price automatically doubles, since the Red Sox were already over their spending limit, incurring a 100% tax on the overage. Because they had already blown past their pool allocation, they’d already taken the hit of surrendering the right to sign international talents for more than $250,000 for each of the next two years, so the marginal cost of adding Moncada is lower to them that it would have been to a team that was pushed over their bonus limit by adding him.

Kiley McDaniel has covered Moncada in depth all winter; here’s a selection of his most recent post on him.

Moncada, 19, likely spends 1-2 years in the minors before settling in the big leagues at either second base, third base or center field, with the offensive upside of Yasiel Puig. For those wondering where Moncada would land on a top 100 prospects list, he’d be somewhere from 5-12 for me, with comparable talent to guys like Carlos Correa and Corey Seager, but with far less proven as Moncada hasn’t played in a game for a long time. That said, Moncada was a standout performer in nearly all of his international tournaments before leaving Cuba, so his hitting tools are expected to lead to big numbers.

With Dustin Pedroia already pushing Mookie Betts off second base, it seems unlikely that Boston will push Moncada to that position, given the long-term commitment they’ve made there. However, third base remains quite viable even after signing Pablo Sandoval, as it’s perfectly reasonable to think that Sandoval could shift to first base after a couple of years, opening up the position for Moncada in 2017 or so. Or, as Boston has shown this winter, they never think you can have too many outfielders, and perhaps Moncada will end up as a right fielder flanking country-mate Rusney Castillo.

They’ll figure out the fit when Moncada’s ready. This is the kind of talent that isn’t readily available, and so the Red Sox decided to invest in a high-end prospect. We’ll have more on the price and whether it makes sense — or whether others should have bid more — a bit later today, but for now, the Red Sox get to celebrate adding one of the game’s best prospects to their farm system.

The highest average fastball velocity among major-league qualifiers in 2014 was the 97.0 mph mark produced by Kansas City right-hander Yordano Ventura. What follows is an animated GIF of Georgia sophomore Robert Tyler striking out Florida State outfielder DJ Stewart — ranked 20th overall, Stewart, among Kiley McDaniel’s way-too-early draft prospect rankings — on a pitch recorded at that same exact velocity. Tyler has produced five strikeouts against just 10 Florida State batters over 3.0 innings (in a game available by way of SEC Network Plus via Watch ESPN).

Here’s the fastball in question:

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Colorado’s previous center-field camera.

Twice now over the past four or so years, the author has attempted to rank all 30 clubs’ center-field broadcast cameras by some combination of shot angle (in which more central and lower is generally preferred) and shot size (in which closer up and not longer is generally preferred). It’s required some combination of art and science, this endeavor, but has produced, if nothing else, a reference for anyone with access to MLB.TV, MLB Extra Innings, or some other manner of game video, so that he or she might be better equipped to choose the ideal feed.

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Over the last week, we’ve published a bunch of prospect-related content, including Kiley McDaniel’s Top 200 list. So, as an end-of-week recap, I thought it would be useful to collect it all in one place. This is that place. We’ll start with Sean Dolinar’s pretty graphs, and then link to all the various prospect pieces that ran here on FanGraphs this week.

Top 200 Prospects — Kiley McDaniel

Top 200 Prospects: The Process and Introduction — Kiley McDaniel

Top 200 Chat — Kiley McDaniel

Top 200 Podcast — Kiley McDaniel and Carson Cistulli

KATOH projections for the Top 200 — Chris Mitchell

KATOH’s Top 200 Prospects — Chris Mitchell

Taking a Stab at Valuing the Farm Systems — Dave Cameron

Everyone is a Prospect — Dave Cameron

How Many Good Players Were Good Prospects? — Jeff Sullivan

It’s become a practice of the present author in recent years to purchase — before FanGraphs’ annual spring pilgrimage to the desert — to purchase a new ballcap in February, with a view towards cultivating within my colleagues a combination of jealously and respect that my actual “work” is incapable of producing.

Last year, an exhaustive search — painfully documented over a series of posts — resulted in the acquisition of a Winston-Salem Spirits cap from 1994 with a weird red sun and melancholy eagle on it.

This year’s edition of the search began last week and continues today.

To wit:

NOS 90s SEAGRAM’S GIN snapback hat rap hip hop (Link)
Style: Tasteful Snapback
Time Left: N/A
Cost: US $14.99 (Buy It Now)

There are many reasons for an octogenarian male to fall asleep whilst fishing for lake trout from the bow of a reasonably priced pontoon boat. To do so in the absence of this tastefully appointed cap, however, is poor form. Poor form all around.

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Since my specialization at FanGraphs is graphics creation, I aim to produce many non-traditional, yet thought-provoking data visualizations regarding different aspects of baseball throughout the year.

With free agency is winding down as pitchers and catcher report to Spring Training, I created two graphics showing different views of the free-agent signing period from November to February 18, 2015. I pulled data from FanGraph’s 2015 Free Agent Tracker, which includes the signing date, salary information and the contract length.

The first graph shows the total Average Annual Value (AAV) of all players signed each week. From this visual, teams spend the majority of their money within the first two months of the off-season with the bulk of the money spent right after the Winter Meetings. January and February show substantially less activity except for Max Scherzer’s $210 million, 7-year deal. Overall, most of free agency activity takes place before Christmas.

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A couple of days ago, I examined how the players listed on Kiley McDaniel’s top 200 list graded out according to KATOH — my prospect projection system. Well, not exactly. I actually examined how his top 142 prospects — those that he ranked — graded out according to KATOH. I left off the 58 honorable mentions who just missed the cut for receiving a full writeup. Each of these guys received a 45+ FV rating from McDaniel, which means their most likely to peak as weak everyday players or back-end starters. Think Charlie Blackmon or Mike Leake. While none of the names listed below are likely to be stars, or even average regulars, all of them are pretty good bets to make at least some sort of big league impact. Read the rest of this entry »

The title of this post is also a question I asked myself while writing a different post that appeared at TechGraphs this morning — over the course of which I provide a nearly competent summary on how and where to watch college baseball online.

One reason to do that (i.e. watch college baseball) is merely because, at a time when the professional game is only just beginning to yawn and stretch its legs after hibernating for the winter, the gentlemen ballplayers of America’s universities have already begun their season in earnest. And a second reason for watching it is (and I’m quoting myself when I say this), is that it allows one to become acquainted with a number of players who’ll be selected during baseball’s amateur draft this June.

How many players, though? It’s a question that’s been answered previously but not recently — and not as substantively as one might like.

To answer the question, then, I sorted through the draft data at Baseball Reference. Using said data, I found two ways of answering the question — looking first at entire drafts from the past three years and then, second, at first-round selections* from the past 10 years.

*The difference in career WAR produced by first-round picks versus later-round picks is substantial. If a viewer’s interest is in watching perhaps a future, real major leaguer, the first-round threshold is a useful one.

Below are the results from the last three complete drafts, rendered into graph form by new and talented FanGraphs contributor Sean Dolinar. 4Yr denotes draftees from four-year colleges; JC, draftees from junior colleges; and HS; draftees from high schools.

First, year by year:

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Rob Arthur took a very interesting look at how fans are talking about their teams on Reddit, and if you measure things by quantity, there’s only one team more active than Mets fans right now. It’s not surprising that the Giants rate highest when it comes to total emotional words on reddit, though — their team is on quite a run.

Re-sort the list to reflect average positive words per negative word, though, and a different picture emerges:

Yup, down there at 26th you’ll find the Mets. So it looks like Mets fans ‘feel’ the most, at least if you define it by amount of words on Reddit. It’s a Shakespearean question: would you rather feel the most, good and bad, or be a Rays fan, feeling very little, but most of it upbeat?

One missing factor here is the size of the fanbase. For lack of a better easily found way to measure that, we’ll use total attendance. Let’s divide number of affect words by the yearly attendance last year to see of Mets fans are truly dedicated in their misery.

Yup. Mets fans feel. They feel a lot, at least on Reddit. More than any team in baseball, perhaps. For better or for worse.

The parties in the minor league wage litigation were in court last Friday to debate two motions filed by the MLB defendants, and by the end of the hearing Judge Joseph Spero suggested that he was currently leaning towards issuing a split decision.  As a refresher, the litigation involves claims by two groups of former minor league players contending that MLB and its teams’ pay practices violate the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), with many minor leaguers making less than the federally guaranteed minimum wage once all of their work-related duties have been accounted for.

MLB responded to these claims in several ways.  Of particular note for present purposes, all 30 MLB teams asked the court to transfer the case from California to a federal court in Florida, which they argued would be a more convenient venue for the trial.  In reality, MLB was hoping to take advantage of favorable legal precedents, as Florida courts have previously held that minor league baseball teams are seasonal operations immune from the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime requirements.

During Friday’s hearing, however, Judge Spero indicated that he was unlikely to transfer the case.  This is a significant victory for the minor league plaintiffs.  Had the case been transferred, the Florida court would be bound by the earlier precedent mentioned above, and as a result the new court would have likely dismissed the case against MLB in relatively short order.  Should that have happened, the minor league plaintiffs would then have had to hope that the U.S. Supreme Court would be willing to take the case in order to overturn the Florida precedent.  Barring Supreme Court intervention, the minor leaguers would have had to proceed against MLB only under state law, claims that would have been less effective at securing the nationwide reform the plaintiffs are hoping to achieve.

At the same time, though, Judge Spero also suggested that he was currently leaning in favor of granting a motion to dismiss the case filed by 11 MLB teams (the Orioles, Nationals, Yankees, Rays, Braves, White Sox, Indians, Pirates, Phillies, Tigers, and Red Sox).  These teams had argued that they were not subject to the California court’s jurisdiction because they do not maintain any business presence in the state.  In particular, unlike the other 19 MLB teams, these 11 are not currently affiliated with any California minor league teams.  The plaintiffs had argued that these teams do employ scouts in California, while also routinely traveling to the state to play MLB games.  Judge Spero, however, seems to believe that these contacts are too limited to justify forcing the 11 teams to defend themselves in California court.

Rather than dismiss the teams from the case, though, Judge Spero gave the plaintiffs the opportunity to present additional evidence establishing the teams’ link to California.  In particular, he suggested that the plaintiffs identify minor leaguers who played in California for the 11 teams and are willing to participate in the wage litigation.

If the plaintiffs can find such players, it appears that they will be able to proceed with the case against all 30 teams in California.  If not, then the minor leaguers may be forced to move forward against only a smaller subset of MLB clubs. Ultimately, this difference may prove less significant than it at first seems, as a victory in the case by the plaintiffs against 19 MLB teams would likely still result in major reform to the entire league’s minor league pay practices.  But securing a dismissal would still allow the 11 affected teams to avoid paying damages for past violations of the law (assuming the plaintiffs don’t file a second suit against those teams in another jurisdiction), a potentially significant cost savings.