Before Christmas, we learned that there were changes coming to the process by which the Major League Baseball Players Association certifies agents. Today, more details surfaced on that issue, which help clarify some of the confusion regarding motivation. Not necessarily in a way that the MLBPA would like.

For one, my sources in the original story disagreed on the subject of fee changes. Turns out, the fees are much larger this year than they were in the past. A $250 fee, due every two years, has now turned into a $1,500 fee due every year. The $500 application fee is now a $2,000 application fee.

The rest lines up with the reporting we had on the issue. There will be more background checks, and now the MLBPA is allowed to hire outside help to perform those background checks. In order to get certified, you not only need a player on a 40-man roster, but now you need to fill out an in-person test.

The fact that fees went up so much is interesting. While you could make a case that the background checks and testing process will make for better agents, the fees are now a roadblock to entry for any independent agent of any quality. These changes, seen in tandem, seem to suggest that the MLBPA is interested in making the way tougher for an independent agent.

It was already tough for them. The main rule — that you have to have a player on the 40-man roster — is easy enough for a corporate agent to hurdle. They can be placed on the agent list for a player that has signed with his agency. The independent agent must cultivate minor league players and hope they get on the 40-man in order for the agent to follow him to the big time.

And now these fee raises. By themselves, they aren’t too honerous, but they do make it harder for a startup agent to join the business. Which was already hard enough, considering the perks that the big corporate agencies can offer their clients.

What isn’t obvious is *why* the MLBPA would prefer to police corporate agencies, unless those agencies do much of the help policing their own ranks.

Perhaps the fee raises do point to another answer, as one source claimed. In their statements, the Tony Clark, head of the MBLPA, said that “This is the first phase in what will be an ongoing effort to improve and modernize our regulatory program and we are confident these changes will serve Players and agents well.” And according to the story, the union also said that “the increase in fees reflects the costs of the background checks and the administration of agents.”

Put those two statements together, and it may be possible that we see a new position at the MLBPA — Agent Czar. All of my sources agreed that enforcement of even the current list of rules was spotty at best, and so maybe a czar is needed. Apparently, it’ll be one that the agents pay for.

Yesterday, FanGraphs CEO and founder David Appelman announced that the ballots for the 2015 FAN Projections are now available for the tender ministrations of this site’s readership. With a view to ensuring that all notable players are addressed sufficiently — and also towards producing the number of posts he’s required to publish each week — the present author is highlighting certain players whose ballots are of some particular interest.

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Earlier today, FanGraphs CEO and founder David Appelman announced that the ballots for the 2015 FAN Projections are now available for the tender ministrations of this site’s readership. With a view to ensuring that all notable players are addressed sufficiently — and also towards producing the number of posts he’s required to publish each week — the present author is highlighting certain players whose ballots are of some particular interest.

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Full trade, as first reported by @susanslusser: Zobrist and Y. Escobar to #Athletics for Jaso, SS Daniel Robertson and OF Boog Powell.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 10, 2015

Because this deal was reported in its entirety only, like, six minutes ago, the purpose of this post is less to examine Saturday’s trade between Oakland and Tampa Bay with any great depth and more just to announce that it has, in fact, happened.

Below are the details with each player’s projected WAR total for 2015 (prorated to 600 plate appearances), plus both the number of years and dollars remaining on the relevant player’s respective contract.

Oakland receives:

Yunel Escobar — 1.9 WAR600 / 2 years / $13 million
Ben Zobrist — 3.8 WAR600 / 1 year / $7.5 million

Tampa Bay receives:

John Jaso — 1.4 WAR600 / 1 year / $3.3 million*
Boog Powell — -0.7 WAR600 / 6 years / Min x 3, Arb x 3
Daniel Robertson — 0.2 WAR600 / 6 years / Min x 3, Arb x 3

*Matt Swartz’s projected arbitration salary for 2015.

What’s apparent, first of all, is that the A’s have likely improved the 2015 edition of their club. Escobar and Zobrist would seemingly replace Marcus Semien and Eric Sogard at shortstop and second base, respectively. Semien and (maybe also) Sogard, meanwhile, replace whomever was likely to occupy the utility position. Steamer’s projection for Semien is actually quite optimistic (2.3 WAR), although there are reasonable questions to be asked of Semien’s defensive competence at shortstop. Now the latter can occupy a super utility-type role, minimizing the effect of ineffectiveness or injury. Zobrist, meanwhile, is roughly a two-win improvement over Sogard, and will likely spend some time in the outfield as well, giving the team necessary depth in left field that was lacking. Overall, the difference is probably about two or three wins, give or take, for roughly $10 million of extra payroll commitment in 2015.

With regard to the Rays, they will also feature a new middle infield in 2015. At the end of December, Jeff Sullivan considered the point of Asdrubal Cabrera as a free-agent acquisition for Tampa Bay. Mostly the point was: now the Rays can trade Escobar and/or Zobrist. Some combination of Cabrera and Nick Franklin are likely to play some combination of second base and shortstop. Neither have a great reputation at the latter, but both have played it before and are likely not to embarrass themselves or their families. Overall they probably concede about 1.5 or 2.0 wins to the combination of Escobar and Zobrist — again, mostly just because Zobrist is so good.

With regard to the prospects, Robertson (who enters his age-21 season) has exhibited an advanced offensive approach with non-negligible power. He’s played almost exclusively at shortstop as a minor leaguer, but might ultimately lack the range and agility to do so at an average major-league level. Powell, meanwhile, lacks nearly all of the tools, but has exhibited fantastic plate discipline at the minor-league level and can play an adequate center field, most likely. Robertson and Powell are projected to produce 3.4 WAR and 2.5 WAR, respectively, through their age-28 seasons, according to Chris Mitchell’s KATOH methodology.

Infielder John McDonald announced his retirement on Wednesday, having recorded at least some manner of major-league playing time in each of the past 16 seasons.

McDonald’s defensive reputation was excellent almost till the end — and the numbers support that narrative. In more than 4000 innings at shortstop, McDonald saved about 19 runs, or about six runs per every 150 games. At second base, he was (unsurprisingly) better, saving roughly 16 runs per every 150 games at that position.

Offensively, his track record was decidedly less impressive. In 2651 plate appearances, McDonald slashed just .233/.273/.323, producing a 56 wRC+. Not poor enough, that, to prevent him from having a legitimate major-league career. That said, McDonald was sort of a human case study designed to test how little offense a team would tolerate from an elite defender.

What’s notable about McDonald’s offensive performance is that, of the two metrics which most directly inform batting average — that is, strikeout rate and BABIP — McDonald constantly posted above-average figures by one of them. Between 1999 and 2014, the league-average strikeout rate was 17.2%. Over that same interval, McDonald produced a 14.3% strikeout rate. Maybe not quite a standard deviation better than the mean, that, but still solidly above average. The trouble for McDonald was his batted-ball outcomes. Over those same 2651 plate appearances — more than an adequate sample for such a thing to become reliable — he produced just a .264 BABIP, rendering him something like a 30 on the 20-80 scale by this particular measure. The frequency with which he made contact, in other words, was never adequate enough to compensate for his lack of power on contact.

McDonald’s curious batting profile has some value for its capacity to provide a better understanding not only of current players — but, perhaps more intriguingly, for prospects. For, inspecting his batted-ball profile, one finds that McDonald consistently produced infield-fly-ball rates (IFFB%) above — which is to say, worse than — league average. Even more relevant to this line of inquiry, McDonald’s IFFB rates were also high relative to all his batted balls. Indeed, both inuition and Steve Saude (writing for Community blog in 2012) tell us that, if IFFB% offers some clues as to a hitter’s BABIP, then IFFB as a percentage of all batted balls offers even more in that way.

Regard, for example, this graph, which plots BABIP vs. IFFB% for all players who recorded more than 5000 plate appearances between 2002 and -14:

And now regard this second graph, which plots BABIP vs. IFFB per Batted Ball for that same population:

The correlation is considerably stronger in the latter instance — and continues to grow stronger in larger samples, too, as the table below illustrates (again, using the sample of hitters from 2002 to -14).

While there are certainly calculators that exist and which offer more sophisticated means by which to estimate a player’s “true talent BABIP,” as it were, it’s striking the degree to which a player’s infield-fly profile reveals his likely BABIPs. This is advantageous, as well, as fly-ball and pop-up rates become reliable in about just 20% of the plate appearances as does BABIP.

As for McDonald himself, one finds that he produced infield flys on 5.8% of his batted balls — a figure which would equate roughly to a .270 BABIP. His career mark, again, was a .264 BABIP.

Finally, for the benefit of the reader, here’s a reference table featuring rough equivalencies between IFFB per batted ball and BABIP:

Over the last month or so, some diligent folks have tracked the publicly disclosed Hall of Fame ballots. Carson collected that information for us earlier today, and looking at it, one couldn’t help but feel dread at the possibility of some deserving candidates being axed from the ballot for failure to garner five percent of the vote. Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa and Gary Sheffield were among the players who had to be sweating the technique of the assembled electorate. Or, if they weren’t, certainly there were some concerned fans.

As it turns out, those fears went mostly unwarranted. The only player with a legitimate-ish case for inclusion in the Hall who fell under the threshold was Blue Jays great Carlos Delgado. While Delgado certainly has a case, Jay Jaffe didn’t have him making it in via JAWS, and he would have faced an uphill climb whether he had remained on the ballot or not. At 43.5 WAR, he was definitely at the bottom of the pack of players getting legitimate consideration.

This turn of events is, to be perfectly honest, a neat trick. While more than four members of this class were deserving, to see four players elected and only Delgado actually fall off the ballot is a pretty remarkable balancing act by the voters. In years past, that has not been the case (Kenny Lofton and Kevin Brown say hi). Hopefully next year, the logjam will continue to clear, and those deserving candidates who were at the bottom of the ballot this year will begin to gradually accumulate more votes.

Before I leave you, I have a special treat. Thanks to the hard and timely work of FanGraphs intern Morris Greenberg, here are four custom Hall of Fame leaderboards:

• Position players in the Hall of Fame (updated to include Biggio)
• Position players still eligible for the Hall of Fame
• Pitchers in the Hall of Fame (including Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz)
• Pitchers still eligible for the Hall of Fame

The Baseball Writers’ Association (BBWAA) voted to elect Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio to the Hall of Fame today. Full results are up on the BBWAA website currently.

For the pitchers, it was their first time on the ballot. For the first time in history, three first-ballot pitchers made it on the same ballot. That may say something about how voters are struggling with the steroid era — there are some great hitters still remaining on the ballot who have struggled to make the required 75% because of the taint of drugs in their numbers (some even without a tangible report attached to their names).

Our leaderboards love the new inductees. Randy Johnson shows up as fifth all-time in Wins Above Replacement, with Pedro Martinez coming in at 16th. The two also rank one-two in strikeout percentage among pitchers with at least 2000 innings. That Pedro did it at his stature makes it all the more remarkable, but listen to him talk about pitching and it all makes sense.

The John Smoltz argument is a tricky one, but once you give him credit for both starting and relieving — as Jay Jaffe did in a well-thought-out article — he does much better. As it was on our leaderboards, Smoltz is top 15 in strikeout percentage all time among pitchers with 2000 innings. And if you add wins to saves (strange, but the Hall voting often takes strange turns), Smoltz is a top-ten pitcher in that category among those with 2000 innings.

Craig Biggio is a unique entrant into the Hall of Fame himself. While there will be some debate about which hats certain entrants will wear, the debate for the former Astro might surround which glove he’d wear. With over 300 games played at catcher, second, and in the outfield, he’d have a healthy decision on his hands. All that positional versatility added up to a modest WAR total (84th overall), but with 3060 hits on his ledger and 285 hit by pitches (second overall), Biggio met some great benchmarks.

Congratulations to the new entrants to the Hall of Fame!

The results of this year’s Hall of Fame voting will be announced at 2pm ET. What this post isn’t is a manifesto on who ought and ought not enter the Hall of Fame. What it is is a survey of four useful tools for understanding which players on this year’s ballot are most likely to enter — or most deserving of entry — into the Hall.

Ballot-tracking estimates are current as of this morning.

Name
JAWS (Link)

Explanation
Designed by former Baseball Prospectus and current SI.com writer Jay Jaffe to “improve the Hall of Fame’s standards, or at least to maintain them rather than erode them,” a Jaffe Wins Above Replacement Score (or, JAWS) is calculated by taking the average of a player’s career WAR and his seven-year peak WAR (not necessarily in consecutive years).

The players listed below are merely those who’ve produced a higher JAWS score than the average such total at the relevant position (denoted by Avg at Pos). By definition, a number of extant Hall of Famers possess JAWS scores below that particular threshold. Even using this higher standard, however, one finds that 12 players are technically “qualified,” according to JAWS — or, two more than a voter can include on his ballot.

Who’s In (JAWS, Avg at Pos)
Jeff Bagwell (63.9, 54.2)
Barry Bonds (117.6, 53.3)
Roger Clemens (103.3, 61.8)
Randy Johnson (82.0, 61.8)
Edgar Martinez (56.0, 55.0)
Pedro Martinez (71.1, 61.8)
Mike Mussina (63.8, 61.8)
Mike Piazza (51.2, 43.1)
Tim Raines (55.6, 53.3)
Curt Schilling (64.5, 61.8)
Alan Trammell (57.5, 54.7)
Larry Walker (58.6, 58.1)

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Because managing editor Dave Cameron has chosen recently to reproduce himself, the responsibility of running and editing this site has fallen temporarily to idiots not only like the present author, but actually to that present author himself. A poor choice, that — and one that surely jeopardizes the health of FanGraphs.

A pleasure of editing is that it affords one the opportunity of working more closely with this site’s learned contributors. What else it means, though, is that certain less exhilarating transactions that require coverage typically require coverage by the editor, regardless of his qualifications for analyzing same. Which, that’s how it’s come to pass that I’m now writing this brief post about Emilio Bonifacio and Emilio Bonifacio’s one-year, $4 million deal with the Chicago White Sox.

Emilio Bonifacio is a known and mostly unremarkable quantity. So cajoled, one could probably manufacture a hot take of some sort regading him. What his resume indicates mostly, however, is that he offers a floor of about -1 win, a ceiling of about +3 wins, and is a strong candidate to produce something precisely in the middle of that given 600 plate appearances.

Here’s a haphazardly composed histogram, based only on the author’s whim, featuring a slightly more nuanced version of that same estimate:

On the one hand, paying $4 million for what Bonifacio is likely to produce over 500-600 plate appearances — that’s probably about right, given the market. That said, there have been a number of players with the ability to play second base — Dean Anna, Buck Britton, Ty Kelly, Tommy La Stella, Cord Phelps — who are projected to approximate Bonifacio’s production and who’ve required a less substantial investment.

Moreover, if the White Sox harbor notions of qualifying for the postseason — and given their acquisitions this offseason of Melky Cabrera and Adam LaRoche and David Robertson and Jeff Samardzija, it would appear as though the front office does harbor such notions — Bonifacio doesn’t so much actively help the club achieve that goal as he does protect them from catastrophe.

Protecting a club from catastrophe is important. Notably, however, the White Sox already appear to have a number of players qualified for that role. Here, for sake of reference, are the Steamer projections (per 600 plate appearances) not just for Bonifacio, but also the other second base-types also on Chicago’s 40-man roster:

Garcia’s projection is something less than inspiring — and Saladino’s might be half-a-win optimistic insofar as he receives the entire shortstop positional adjustment despite possessing slightly below-average shortstop defense. Those caveats having been made, there do appear to be alternatives to Bonifacio.

So why sign him? Taking for granted that the White Sox front office is populated by intelligent people compensated decently to consider such questions, there’s probably a reasonable answer to this. What one must acknowledge first is that the commitment isn’t that large in the context of the current market. And that Bonifacio is also capable of playing the outfield. Also, the presence of Bonifacio allows the club to enter spring training without the obligation of handing the starting job to a rookie or near-rookie. That, augmented by Bonifacio’s actual value in wins, is the service for which the White Sox have paid $4 million.