We’ll have a more full write-up on this in the morning, but after a day of rumors, it appears that the Red Sox really are on the verge of landing free agent Hanley Ramirez. Per Ken Rosenthal:

Source: Hanley Ramirez headed to Boston tomorrow to finalize deal with #RedSox.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 24, 2014

Sources say Hanley’s deal with #RedSox will be in range of five years, $90M.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 24, 2014

This is a fascinating move in so many ways. For one, it’s far less than I expected Ramirez to sign for — I predicted 7/$140M for Hanley — but exactly the amount the crowd came up with in the crowdsourcing project. Of course, the crowd has been low on pretty much every other free agent contract signed to date, so even signing for the crowd’s expected figure makes it seem like a relative bargain.

But it isn’t just the terms that are surprising. For one, we don’t know where Ramirez might play in Boston, given their rather public pursuit of Pablo Sandoval. Does this mean they know they lost the bidding for Kung Fu Panda, and Ramirez took the deal that they had allocated for their primary third base choice? Or are they still trying to sign Sandoval as well, which would push Ramirez back to shortstop or the outfield, both positions at which the team does not have an obvious need.

This makes more sense if Ramirez was the backup plan at third base, but even then, they’ve openly talked about getting more left-handed, and third base was the obvious spot at which to add a left-handed bat. If it’s Ramirez instead of Sandoval, trades are still likely, given the team’s reliance on right-handed hitting. If it’s Ramirez and Sandoval, then trades are guaranteed, because they just won’t have room for everyone on their roster who deserves to play.

And finally, what does this mean for their pursuit of Jon Lester? The Red Sox could probably afford to add Ramirez, Sandoval, and Lester, but that seems like an offseason of extravagance that goes against what we’ve seen from them before. Perhaps Ramirez was the backup plan not for Sandoval, but for Lester. If they know they’ll be outbid for their preferred starting pitcher, then Ramirez could be added at something near Lester’s price to replace an outfielder like Yoenis Cespedes, who could then be flipped for a starting pitcher.

It’s the kind of move that launches more questions than answers. We’ll try to provide some more answers in the morning with a full write-up on the deal, but until then, speculate away on what you think this deal might mean for the rest of Boston’s offseason.

As he has previously in this life, the author has published below a statistical report for the Arizona Fall League — less because such reports are of great utility to prospect analysis, and more because, for those of us not residing in the Greater Phoenix area, one of the few ways to participate in that very compelling league is by dwelling for too long on very small statistical samples.

What follows is an example of the final such statistical report for the AFL, the season having ended last Saturday.

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Demographic data made available to the author reveals that no fewer than 90% or 95% of the present site’s readership is composed of busy executives. And while busy executives might definitely want to watch a collection of videos featuring that player revealed on Wednesday as the one projected, among all this offseason’s minor-league free agents, to record the highest WAR in 2015 — while those executives might want to do that, it’s also probably the case that the investment of time required to search all over the entire internet for those videos isn’t worth the return.

To that end, what I’ve done here is to aggregate the most illustrative of those videos featuring third baseman Deibinson Romero — i.e. the aforementioned player to have recieved the most promising Steamer projection among all minor-league free agents. What I’ve also done is supplied a brief passage with a view towards providing any relevant context to the video in question.

Begin.

1. Here’s the most recent available video of Romero care of Minor League Baseball — in this case, of Romero hitting a double for Triple-A Rochester in July.

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I tweeted a link earlier this week to an article in the Providence Journal with quotes for various big league executives about how the gap between Triple-A and the big leagues is widening.  The thrust of the article is that the step from dominating Triple-A as a top hitting prospect to performing well in a big league debut is even steeper now than in the past.  Gregory Polanco, Javier Baez, Jon Singleton, Michael Choice, Kolten Wong, Jackie Bradley, Jr, Will Middlebrooks, Xander Bogaerts and the late Oscar Taveras were all examples from just this past year that fit the description.  While these struggles can be blamed on plate discipline or mechanical breakdowns, they nearly all fall under the larger umbrella of mental toughness.

While I hadn’t heard about a MLB to Triple-A gap widening before, the underlying issue behind it keeps coming up in my Evaluating the Prospects series, with my recent Reds list a prime example.  In the report for #1 prospect RHP Robert Stephenson I said, “This year was a struggle for Stephenson as he hadn’t really failed before…” in the comment for #3 prospect LF Jesse Winker I mentioned, “Winker has never really failed before,” and for #7 prospect CF Phillip Ervin I summed up his disappointing 2014 campaign, “Ervin got into some bad habits at the plate early in 2014, getting too pull-conscious and was forced to deal with the first failure of his career.”

It’s a theme that came up earlier in the series and with some top pitchers.  In the Diamondbacks list, their #1 prospect RHP Archie Bradley had what some called a lost 2014 season because he “had never been hurt and basically hadn’t failed in his baseball career,” and while I didn’t use this phrasing in the Astros list, an executive with the team said former #1 overall pick RHP Mark Appel was embarrassed at some level about his struggles in 2014, the first failure of his career.  It also comes up in backwards-looking reviews of established big leaguers.  When talking to a Reds’ executive for their list, he mentioned that Jay Bruce experienced his first failure in the big leagues, which is quite rare, and that it defined his career in some ways.

I’m sure you can imagine the ways in which mental toughness is important to player development; specifically for hitters, failure is a huge part of the game and many top prospects haven’t experienced it in any form when they enter pro ball.  Beyond that, the humility, openness to coaching and improved work ethic that comes from working out of a funk are things that players refer back to for their entire career, on and off the field.  The timing and duration of these struggles often dictate whether the problem can become a teachable moment.

Every exec I’ve asked so far has agreed that if they could push a button to make a power pitching prospect throw in the upper-80’s just long enough that he wouldn’t fall apart mentally, learn to pitch without his best stuff, and then regain his velocity, that they all would do it.  The art of development is learning how much a player can handle, sometimes walking him into a tough spot but helping to guide him out of the abyss while being careful to let him do it on his own.

Roughly once a week, at least one person in a FanGraphs chat asks about the site’s name. Why do we have “Graphs” in the name if we hardly ever use the graphs section of the site? Well, some of the graphs don’t get much attention but one of the most popular features of the site is a graph. A win expectancy graph, to be more precise. It looks like this!

Source: FanGraphs

These graphs communicate the odds that a team will win from any given point in the contest based on the inning, score, base-out state, and run environment. They tell the story of the game and the changes from one location on the graph to the next is the Win Probability Added of that plate appearance.

This is a long-winded way of saying that the Win Expectancy and Win Probability Added sections of the FanGraphs Library received a makeover this week and now include more detailed information about these two statistics.

As always, feel free to ask questions in the comments section, on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44, or during our weekly FanGraphs Q&A chats (Wednesdays at 3pm).

Systems Architect/Developer, Baseball Analytics – Kansas City Royals (Kansas City, MO)

JOB SUMMARY:

The Kansas City Royals Baseball Club is seeking a highly motivated, full-stack systems architect / developer to support baseball operations. The ideal applicant will be able to manage multiple, concurrent projects that facilitate enhanced communications, reporting, and other interactions between teams internal to the organization.

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I’ll give Eno Sarris points for trying, although I fully expect his attempt to find value in Billy Butler’s three year, $30 million deal with the A’s will fuel the fires of those who think Billy Beane gets a pass for every move he makes. Hopefully, this post will assuage some of that, because despite Eno’s best efforts, I still don’t see why the A’s decided that Butler was the guy to go after this winter.

Yep, they needed a right-handed hitter, and Butler is probably a decent bounce back candidate, given his youth and prior production. They’re buying low on a not-terribly-old free agent, and for an annual salary that is basically right in line with what the 2/$18M that the crowd expected Butler to sign for. But I guess I just don’t see why you need to give a guy like Billy Butler a three year deal.

Last year, Kendrys Morales got shunned by the market and eventually took a prorated version of 1/$12M. Nelson Cruz got shunned by the market, and took 1/$8M right before the season began. Michael Morse and Corey Hart both got 1/$6M. Right-handed good-not-great hitters with minimal defensive value went for one year and somewhere in the range of $10 million.

At the end of the season, the Royals had to choose between paying Billy Butler $12.5 million for 2015, or paying him $1 million to go away. They chose the latter, suggesting that they didn’t believe he was worth $11.5 million (the net cost after factoring in the buyout) on a one year deal. Apparently no one else thought he was either, or else they would have asked the Royals to pick up the option and trade him for something of marginal value, as the Blue Jays did with Adam Lind.

So how did we get from there to 3/$30M? I don’t know. This deal just doesn’t seem to fit with what we saw the market say to similar players last year, or what the Royals just said to Butler last month. This just feels like one year too much.

If the A’s wanted a right-handed DH, why not call the Padres about Carlos Quentin? Do we really think he would have cost a significant piece of talent in return? Is Butler that much more likely to produce value in 2015 that he’s worth using up a significant amount of the A’s budget, especially given their middle infield hole?

I’m sure the A’s have their reasons for making this deal, and maybe they’re even similar to the ones Eno listed. Maybe all the other okay hitting/bat-only guys are going to sign for far more than we’ve expected, and the market for below average talent is about to take off. Or maybe the A’s just spent too aggressively for a player who just isn’t that good. Until I see good reason to assume otherwise, I’m going with the latter.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2015 is now ready and waiting to be devoured. It is the 11th edition of the book. This year marks the end of an era, as Dave Studeman worked on the Annual for the final time this year.

As such, we really blew out the book this year — it checks in at 400 pages, which if you’re not familiar with the Annual, is 100 more pages than usual! The price, however, remains the same — $15.99. Or perhaps less depending on what point in time you purchase it from Amazon.

It is available now for purchase at Amazon, or direct from our independent publishing platform, Createspace. You can read a full breakdown of the table of contents in my post that went up a few minutes ago at THT Live.

This book is a labor of love for us every year, and for 11 years it has been Studes’ baby. We tried to make his last time around a special one, and we hope you’ll agree that it is. The book is full of posts from our great team here, including Dave Cameron, Jeff Sullivan, Eno Sarris, Carson Cistulli and Tony Blengino; old friends like Matthew Carruth and Steve Treder; and guests like Chris St. John, Alan Nathan and of course, sabermetric titans Craig Wright and Bill James.

We hope you enjoy it!!!

If you’re anything like me, you kind of forgot that Zach Duke was still a major-league baseball player. And in fairness, less than a year ago, Duke no longer looked like a major-league baseball player. So the news that Duke got picked up by the White Sox for three years and $15 million came as a mild surprise to me, for two reasons. Immediately, I thought, that seems like a lot for a regular lefty middle reliever.

But Duke is no regular lefty middle reliever. In an effort to stick, Duke changed his throwing motion, which you can visualize here with the help of Texas Leaguers:

This past season, for a full season, Duke committed to a couple of arm slots, one lower and one higher. In 2013, Duke experimented with the lower slot against lefties, but in 2014 he used it against lefties and righties alike. For an idea of how this looks, behold 2011 Duke and 2014 Duke:

Duke, in addition to changing his delivery, has also tweaked his pitches and pitch mixes. The end result: Zach Duke, in 2014, in no way resembled previous editions of himself.

Let’s go back to 1950. Let’s look at all the pitchers who threw at least 30 innings in back-to-back seasons. All right, so, in 2013, Duke struck out just under 13% of hitters. In 2014, he struck out just over 31% of hitters. That gain of more than 18 percentage points is the third-largest gain in the spreadsheet. The second belongs to Wade Davis, and that can be explained by a shift from the rotation to the bullpen. The biggest gain, kind of hilariously: +21%, for 1974-75 Skip Lockwood. It’s hilarious because the biggest drop in the spreadsheet is: -20%, for 1979-80 Skip Lockwood. Anyway, enough about Skip Lockwood.

Zach Duke turned himself into something else. And though he lowered his arm slot, he was highly effective against lefties and righties, and he generated a ton of groundballs. Zach Duke became an awesome reliever, and with that in mind, consider this passage from MLB Trade Rumors:

Earlier today, reports indicated that David Robertson is seeking a four-year deal in the mold of Jonathan Papelbon‘s $50MM contract, and the asking price on top lefty reliever Andrew Miller might not be much lower. Jason Mastrodonato of MassLive.com hears from a source that Miller is seeking “at least” a four-year deal and isn’t listening to any offers that have anything less than an “astounding” average annual value.

Now is when I get to take some liberties. We know that, for the overwhelming majority of players, it’s important to look at more than just the most recent season. But with a guy like Duke, who’s changed his own profile, the past is of little predictive meaning, because what Duke did in 2012 doesn’t tell us anything of value about how he’ll do in 2015. He doesn’t throw like that anymore. So now, this table. Understand that this table is biased. It’s comparing one guy’s single season to two other guys’ past three seasons. But I still think this is of interest, even though I concede I’m pushing an agenda:

Pitcher	Year(s)	K% – BB%	FIP-	xFIP-
Zach Duke	2014	24%	56	56
Andrew Miller	2012 – 2014	27%	57	59
David Robertson	2012 – 2014	25%	64	62

Consider what you might expect Miller or Robertson to do in 2015. Duke kind of just did that. It was the first time he’d ever done that, but it was also the first time he’d ever pitched like he pitched, so. Miller and Robertson might be slightly more reliable, but the White Sox didn’t sign Duke for a Miller/Robertson price — they got Duke for a relative bargain, even though his odds might be almost as good.

So it’s an interesting move. The White Sox aren’t yet a contending team, so maybe it’s a little odd to see them putting a veteran in the bullpen on a multi-year contract. But for one thing, the Sox might not be too far away, and for another, if Duke does well, he becomes easily tradeable. If he has another season or two like the last one, he could bring back one or two good prospects, because he’d look a lot like how Andrew Miller looked. And if Duke busts, or gets hurt, or just under-performs, it’s not a crippling investment and the White Sox’s window isn’t yet open anyway. They can afford a wasted $15 million, if it comes to that. And the upside is significant.

Relievers are volatile, and Duke has had just one good season. Andrew Miller and David Robertson are also relievers. Maybe, the White Sox signed Andrew Miller lite. Or, maybe, the White Sox signed Andrew Miller.

About an hour after I named Russell Martin one of the bargains of this free agent crop, the Blue Jays removed him from the pile, signing him to a five year, $82.5 million contract, according to Ken Rosenthal. This was slightly higher than the 5/$75M I’d guessed in my predictions, and quite a bit higher than the 4/$64M that the crowdsourced project produced.

As with the Heyward/Miller swap, this InstaGraphs post is not our full write-up of the deal; this is just a place for the facts and your reactions. So, some facts.

The five year deal buys out Martin’s 32-36 seasons at $16.5 million per season. Martin projects at +3.6 WAR per 450 plate appearances, according to Steamer, and that doesn’t include any additional value you’d add for framing skills or the unquantified parts of catcher defense at which Martin might excel. It wouldn’t be aggressive at all to consider him roughly a +4 WAR player for the upcoming season.

However, Martin will displace Dioner Narvarro, who proved fairly useful himself; we had Navarro as a +2 WAR player in 2014, projecting for +1.6 in 349 PA for next year. Navarro, however, rated as one of the game’s two worst pitch-framers last year, so this could be a signal that the Blue Jays view this as a massive defensive upgrade; Navarro could spend some time at DH, or perhaps he’s now trade bait.

It’s a big expenditure for a team that isn’t known to make them, but the Blue Jays were able to land a premium free agent who stays within their self-imposed five year contract limit. Do you like giving five years to an aging catcher? Do you think this signifies that Navarro taught the Blue Jays to emphasize catcher defense more heavily than they were? Or is this a Canadian team paying too much for a Canadian player?

We’ll have our thoughts up in a bit. For now, let us know what you think.