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.

We’ll get a full write-up on this deal up soon, but the Cardinals and Braves just made a fun trade, with the Braves shipping Jason Heyward and Jordan Walden to St. Louis for Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins. A quick look at the particulars:

Hewyard: $8.8M salary, final year of contract, Steamer projects for +4.8 WAR in 2015. Obvious qualifying offer/potential extension guy, though the Braves reportedly tried to sign him last winter and didn’t like the price tag. It has very likely gone up since.

Miller: Pre-arb, four years of team control, Steamer projects for +0.8 WAR in 2015, but Miller has dramatically outperformed his peripherals through this point in his MLB career. Everything went the wrong way in 2014, but he put together a strong second half and just turned 24.

Walden: Arb eligible through 2016, Steamer projects for +0.5 WAR in 2015. Very underrated reliever, but often hurt. When healthy, he’s one of the more effective bullpen arms around.

Jenkins: 2010 first rounder, hasn’t gotten out of A-ball, and didn’t strike anyone out at that level either. As a second piece in a deal like this, not a bad get for the upside.

Essentially, the Cardinals take a big step forward in 2015 — replacing Miller in the short-term shouldn’t be that hard — by filling their right field hole, and get first dibs to sign him to a long-term deal, but it comes at the cost of Miller’s future. If the Braves think they can fix Miller’s 2014 issues, or that his second half means he fixed them himself, then they’re buying low on four years of a quality starting pitcher.

Is this a fair price for one year of a star right fielder? What will Heyward cost the Cardinals to sign a long-term deal? This is your chance to weigh in, and we’ll have our full write-up on this later this afternoon.

Back in September, I ruminated on when an extension for Giancarlo Stanton might look like, and a run through the numbers gave me an estimate of $300 million over 12 years. The Marlins, reportedly, are negotiating a deal with Stanton that could be worth as much as $325 million over that same time period, so it seems like the estimates in that post weren’t too far off.

Except they kind of were, because I just eyeballed the projections and decided to be a little conservative, so the calculations were based on Stanton starting out from a +5 WAR level. Stanton’s actual Steamer projection is for 2015 is up on the site now, and it has him as a +6 WAR player for 2015, suggesting I maybe underestimated his expected value by a full win each year. Here’s the same table from that post, just starting from a +6 WAR base instead of a +5 WAR platform.

Year	Age	WAR	$/WAR	Value	10% Discount
2017	27	6.0	$7.00	$42.00	$37.80
2018	28	6.0	$7.40	$44.40	$39.96
2019	29	6.0	$7.70	$46.20	$41.58
2020	30	5.5	$8.10	$44.55	$40.10
2021	31	5.0	$8.50	$42.50	$38.25
2022	32	4.5	$8.90	$40.05	$36.05
2023	33	4.0	$9.40	$37.60	$33.84
2024	34	3.5	$9.80	$34.30	$30.87
2025	35	3.0	$10.30	$30.90	$27.81
2026	36	2.5	$10.90	$27.25	$24.53

That projection values his 10 free agent years at a total of $390 million, and doesn’t include the payments he’s basically already guaranteed through arbitration. Toss in another $35 million for the two seasons before the 10 year extension kicks in, and this would suggest a value of $425 million, $100 million more than the Marlins are reportedly offering.

Yeah, I know, it sounds insane. I don’t think Stanton’s worth $425 million either. For one, the aging curve is probably not aggressive enough, especially for a guy his size with a history of knee problems. If we start his decline phase a couple of years earlier, having him drop from +6 WAR to +5.5 WAR at age-28, then the trickle-down has him end up at $313 million for the 10 free agent years, which would put him around $350 million over the life of the deal. Still a bit more than the rumored price, but definitely closer, and probably a bit more reasonable.

The other key we haven’t talked about is a potential opt-out, and how that might affect the valuation. Opt-outs are a way of giving the player non-monetary value in exchange for a lower AAV, and if the Marlins include one in an extension for Stanton, it could help them drive salaries down. Given the Marlins history of selling off players not too long after signing them, I’m guessing Stanton will demand either (or both) a no-trade and an opt-out, giving him the leverage to decide where he goes if he wants to get out of the deal.

If the opt-out is early enough in the deal, making Stanton’s commitment to the Marlins far shorter, then it could give him enough additional value to take less than the $30 million AAV he’s pretty clearly worth. We’ll do a full rundown on the deal when it’s done and the details are known, but it sounds like Stanton’s going to get a monster contract, and he deserves it.

We’ve never conducted an official poll, but for my money, the most difficult statistics on FanGraphs for a newcomer to figure out are Pitch Type Linear Weights, also called Pitch Values. If you’re scanning through a player page and come across something that says “wFB/C” you’d be forgiven for throwing up your hands and going outside to mow the lawn.

But fear not, we’ve updated our Library entry regarding Pitch Type Linear Weights with hopes of making that alphabet soup of a statistic easier to understand. These statistics measure how each pitch thrown changes the run expectancy of the individual plate appearance through their impact on the count. Pitch values aren’t something you’re likely to chart while you watch a game, but if used appropriately, they can provide a richer understanding of which pitches have been most effective during a given season.

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.

Last December, the Seattle Mariners signed Robinson Cano to a contract worth slightly more than the GDP of all Palau. Insofar as Cano had been good previously and seemed likely to continue that trend for the time being, the move wasn’t an illogical one.

But acquisitions don’t occur in a vacuum, either. While it’s generally the case that a club will draft the best talent available, it’s also true that free agency is utilized primarily as a means by which to address a club’s weaknesses or positional holes. And among the Mariners’ weaknesses entering the 2014 season, the second-base position wasn’t the most urgent. In fact, one could reasonably argue that second base was a strength. For example, the ZiPS projections for Seattle, published here at the end of last December, rated Nick Franklin as the third-best position player on the club, with a 3.2 WAR, behind only Kyle Seager (3.7 WAR) and Brad Miller (3.2 WAR). Corey Hart and Logan Morrison and Justin Smoak, meanwhile — all expected to play major roles in a corner-outfield/first-base role with the club entering the season — were projected to produce just one win a piece.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dean Anna just landed a contract and a 40-man spot with the Cardinals.

— Lohud Yankees Blog (@LoHudYankees) November 11, 2014

The St. Louis Cardinals have found success in recent years in a number of ways — among them, by consistently identifying players who, despite a lack of power or other overwhelming physical tools, nonetheless are capable of providing offensive value while occupying a place on the more difficult end of the defensive spectrum.

Matt Carpenter and Jon Jay are perhaps the best examples of this type. Together, they’ve recorded eight major-league seasons of 300 or more plate appearances — and, in all eight of those seasons, Carpenter and Jay have produced a 100 wRC+ or better despite never having once hit more than 11 home runs. At the same time, they’ve played the majority of their defensive innings at second and third base (in Carpenter’s case) and center field (in Jay’s). A strong foundation, that, towards creating runs and wins.

Carpenter and Jay were paid a little more than $4 million in 2014 in exchange for a combined six-plus wins — or, roughly $35 million of production. That’s almost a 1000% return on the Cardinals’ investment. This afternoon, St. Louis signed a player who — were he given a full complement of at-bats — would appear to be a candidate to provide an even higher ROI.

Infielder Dean Anna is projected by Steamer to produce a 1.9 WAR over 600 plate appearances — on the strength, mostly, of his ability to control the strike zone and play a combination of passable shortstop defense and slightly above-average second or third base. Assuming his deal with St. Louis is for the league minimum of $500K and also assuming a dollar-per-win value of about $5.5 million, Anna is (theoretically) a candidate to provide a return of ca. 2000%. That’s unlikely to happen, of course: between Carpenter and Jhonny Peralta and Kolten Wong, the Cards have a strong infield contingent. What they also have now, though, is a strong utility infielder — one who, not unlike some of his new teammates, is a candidate to provide decent offensive value relative to his position, even despite a lack of loud tools.

Credit to Kiley McDaniel for urgently bring this information to the author’s attention.

FanGraphs now has a free agent tracker, complete with filtering, crowd sourced contracts, WAR projections, and current contract information!

The CS Years / CS Salary fields are the FanGraphs crowd sourced contract projections for the top 55 free agents.

The 2015 WAR listed in the free agent tracker is the 2015 Steamer600 projections.

If you think of anything else you’d like to see in a a free agent tracker, just let us know in the comments and we’ll try to oblige.

While certain parts of sporting media have welcomed a wide variety of sabermetrics, it looks as if almost every corner of the baseball word is integrating a few choice metrics into their broadcasts. One of those, which is the focus of this week’s Library update, is batted ball data.

It’s growing increasingly common to see line drive rate, ground ball rate, or fly ball rate dropped into casual baseball conversations outside of the analytics community, which makes this new entry on batted ball statistics for hitters a useful tool for those just learning about these numbers. Follow the link to learn about the classifications, uses for the data, limitations, and handy reference points.

As always, please comment below if you have questions, find me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44, or stop by our weekly FanGraphs Q&A chats, Wednesdays at 3pm.