Archive for InstaGraphs

A few days ago, Dave had to throw up an omnibus transaction post for the last day of the winter meetings. Moves were getting made fastly and furiously, and Dave couldn’t keep up writing about each one individually, so for simplicity he crammed some of them together. Well, what we have now is another little flurry of moves, albeit lesser moves than some that were made last week. But in keeping with what I’ll designate as a new InstaGraphs tradition, here is another omnibus transaction post, despite it not being titled as such. Following, moves that have happened in the last 24 hours, and three sentences about them. Maybe you don’t think that’s enough sentences, but before this post, the moves had been given zero sentences. Three is bigger than zero! That’s just analysis.

Rays trade Matt Joyce to Angels for Kevin Jepsen

The Rays just found out they’ll start the year without Jake McGee, so Jepsen’s a nice bullpen addition with two remaining years of team control, against Joyce’s one. Jepsen’s coming off a career-best strikeout season, having added a functional changeup he threw once per six pitches. Joyce can’t do anything against left-handed pitching, but he’s proven very much useful against right-handed pitching, so the Angels can pair him with C.J. Cron while using him also as Josh Hamilton injury insurance.

Yankees sign Chris Capuano for $5 million

CC Sabathia is coming off surgery, Ivan Nova is coming off surgery, Masahiro Tanaka is coming off an elbow problem, Michael Pineda isn’t too far removed from surgery, and the Yankees recently traded Shane Greene for a shortstop. There are reasons why the Yankees have been rumored to have interest in Max Scherzer, but even failing a Scherzer pursuit, it’s never the worst idea in the world to try to accumulate some starting-rotation depth. It can be difficult to find a functional veteran willing to move to the bullpen if that’s what needs demand, so what the Yankees have in Capuano is a relatively rare sort who’s willing and able to be fine in two roles.

Rockies sign Daniel Descalso for $3.6 million over two years

Over four years as a semi-regular with the Cardinals, Descalso was worth exactly 0.0 WAR. He plays all over the infield, so he’s basically just taking the place of the departed Josh Rutledge. Two years might seem like too long, but in the grand scheme of things, what are two years, really?

Marlins sign Michael Morse for $16 million over two years

Right-handed power, playoff experience, and he’s not Garrett Jones. When he’s healthy, Morse remains a potent hitter, and he might very well outhit the more expensive Kendrys Morales and Billy Butler. Yet because he’s seldom healthy, and because he’s not a good defender anywhere, this is going to read like a better deal than it is, and you have to remember that the market allowed for this contract to happen despite there being so few legitimate bats available.

Padres sign Brandon Morrow for $2.5 million, with incentives

Morrow has narrowly exceeded 200 innings over his last three years combined, with diminishing totals in each. He’s understood to be a massive injury risk, and in his peak WAR seasons, he had unremarkable RA9-WAR seasons. Yet the last time we saw Morrow, he was still throwing in the mid-90s, and he’s just 30 years old, so as an upside starter or an upside reliever, Morrow’s a perfectly sensible investment for a team that sure wants to do something in 2015.

Padres sign Trayvon Robinson to minor-league contract

It happened. I think. That’s what the internet says.

Braves sign Alberto Callaspo for $3 million

When it’s all said and done, Callaspo will finish with similar numbers of walks and strikeouts. He’s somewhat versatile and he’s decently disciplined, and the Braves had a gaping hole after dealing Tommy La Stella. The one thing Callaspo doesn’t do is hit the baseball hard enough for the baseball to notice, and it turns out that’s the kind of thing you want to be able to do if you want to sign a contract with greater terms than this contract.

Cubs sign Jason Motte for $4.5 million, with incentives

Motte was a good reliever in 2010, 2011, and 2012. Tommy John surgery cost him 2013, and upon his return in 2014, he was missing velocity and therefore effectiveness. Yet a similar thing happened to Joe Nathan in 2011 before he returned to being his old awesome self in 2012, so while the Cubs understand the obvious risk here, they have the money and Motte comes with bigger upside than most of the other affordable free-agent options.

Dodgers sign Brett Anderson for $10 million, with incentives

Tommy John surgery in 2011, rehab and an oblique strain in 2012, a foot stress fracture in 2013, and a finger fracture and a bulging disk in 2014. Anderson has thrown 206 big-league innings over the last four years, but in those 206 innings he’s been worth a combined 3.3 WAR, with good-enough peripherals, so the upside is obvious, especially if you figure things like fractures are freak accidents. Anderson isn’t 27 until February, and the Dodgers will plan for him to be their fifth starter for as long as he can remain on the mound, which is a perfectly good roll of the dice for a team that can afford to outspend almost all others.

—

Update!!!

Indians sign Gavin Floyd for $4 million, with incentives

Tommy John cost Floyd much of 2013, and some of 2014. Yet last season ended due to an unrelated elbow injury, one that’s supposed to be just fine in time for spring training, and when Floyd did pitch with the Braves, he flashed a career-best 14% K-BB% and an overall somewhat average profile with undiminished stuff. The Indians were in no particular need of rotation help, but everyone’s in need of rotation depth, and Floyd will actually be the most expensive starting arm on the team.

Coming away from 2014, we knew some things. The Royals were going to have a little extra money to spend, after getting as far as is possible to get without winning the World Series. The Royals were also going to be in the market for a designated hitter, and additionally perhaps in the market for a right fielder. They plugged the DH hole not long ago, giving two years and $17 million to a bounceback candidate in Kendrys Morales who was most recently absolutely godawful. And now the Royals have a new outfielder, who has had good seasons before:

alex rios agrees to one-year with royals. $11M.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) December 16, 2014

Over the last three years, Alex Rios has about the same WAR as Josh Hamilton, Coco Crisp, Shin-Soo Choo, and Jose Altuve. That’s the good part. This is the worse part:

2012: 4.2 WAR (31 years old)
2013: 3.1 (32)
2014: 0.2 (33)

Maybe you prefer something as simple as plate appearances per home run:

2012: 25.6 PA per dinger
2013: 36.8
2014: 130.3

Rios is getting up there in years, and just last season it seems like his power completely eroded. Now, prior to that, he was productive as a regular, so Rios — like Morales — seems like a decent bounceback candidate, but now the Royals have guaranteed $28 million to a couple guys who last year were worth a combined -1.5 WAR. Last year’s performance isn’t the best indicator of next year’s performance, but even if Rios and Morales bounce back some, it doesn’t look like the Royals will be getting bargains. They’ll be getting acceptable players, eating up what looks like a high salary on that team.

This is a .gif of fastball heat maps to Rios over the last two years:

Rios bats right-handed, so what you’re seeing is a shift a little more inside. Over the last two seasons, 122 different right-handed batters saw at least 500 fastballs each year. In 2013, about 33% of fastballs to Rios were over or beyond the inner third. In 2014, that rose to about 43%. The increase of 9.3 percentage points was the biggest such increase in baseball, by a couple percentage points, and it might indicate rising confidence pitching Rios in. To the pull side, he has a career .295 ISO, but last year it dropped to .145, with only two dingers. The point of all this being, pitchers changed their approaches to Rios, and Rios had a bad year, and he’s in his mid-30s now.

Because it’s a one-year contract, it can be only so bad. Rios isn’t a great defender, but he’s not a bad one. He can add some value on the bases, and he still hits for an above-average contact clip, so in those ways Rios isn’t a lousy fit for the roster model. Used properly, he can help what’s already an athletic and capable outfield, and it’s not like the market left Dayton Moore an infinite supply of options. Also, note that Rios signed for one year and $11 million the same day Brett Anderson signed somewhere for one year and $10 million, with incentives. Cheap fliers aren’t so cheap anymore. But as good as Rios was once, he presumably will be no longer so good. And if Rios and Morales don’t bounce back, the Royals will have spent some of their windfall on players who weren’t good the very season before they became Royals. That would be ripe for mockery in hindsight, which is the best and worst kind of mockery.

Kyle Blanks heading to #Rangers, as @ChrisCotillo reported. Will make $1M if he's on MLB roster. $600K in bonuses based on PA's.

— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) December 15, 2014

Right-handed power — for reasons both that do and don’t entirely appear to make sense — has been expensive thus far this offseason, as generous contracts for Billy Butler, Nelson Cruz, and Michael Cuddyer all illustrate.

Recently, the present author sorted through the Steamer projections with a view towards identifying targets for those clubs searching for economical alternatives to Butler and Cruz, et al.

The result of that brief study? That, issues of health aside, giant corner-type Kyle Blanks — recently non-tendered by Oakland — appeared to be the best option for a club looking for a right-handed power hitter. Today, the Texas Rangers have signed him to a split contract that’d pay the former Padre $1 million plus incentives should he reach the majors.

There would appear to be ample opportunity for Blanks to contribute. Currently, Mitch Moreland and “others” constitute the entirety of their DH depth chart. Moreover, there’s the distinct possibility Prince Fielder will benefit from rest as he attempts to recover from a herniated disk — and the attendant surgery to repair it — that reduced him to fewer than 200 plate appearances in 2014.

Of course, health is an issue for Blanks himself. Worth roughly 2.0 WAR per every 600 plate appearances over the course of his six-year major-league career, Blanks has also only recorded 862 of those (i.e. plate appearances) during that same interval — largely the result of injuries, as opposed to ineffectiveness.

In this case, the Rangers’ gamble is a modest one. If healthy, Blanks can reasonably be expected to provide $1 million of production in roughly 50 plate appearances. A low bar for repayment, that.

Here’s some news.

Astros have agreed to terms on a three-year contract with free agent shortstop/infielder Jed Lowrie

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) December 15, 2014

And maybe we should have seen this coming. After all, this is what the Astros shortstop depth chart currently looks like.

#28 Astros

And here’s their third base depth chart.

#29 Astros

The big numbers in the upper left corners represent where the Astros ranked in our positional depth charts, with data from the Steamer forecasts for 2015. At both shortstop and third base, the Astros looked to be about as bad as any team in baseball. Jed Lowrie has primarily played shortstop to this point in his career, but his defense is declining to where a move off the position seems inevitable at some point, and perhaps he profiles better at second or third base.

Second base is taken in Houston, but third base clearly is not, so the Astros are free to let Lowrie try to prove he can still play shortstop in 2015, and if it doesn’t work, they have an alternative position open as well. And that seems to be the plan.

The Jed Lowrie deal is worth more than $20 million guaranteed, source says. He’s there to play shortstop, not third base.

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) December 15, 2014

Drelich clarifies that the deal is for $23 million over three years, with a fourth year option that could bring it to $28 million over four. That’s a bit less than both the crowd and myself expected, as I had Lowrie at 2/$22M and the crowd guessed 3/$30M. As a roughly average player, this seems like one of the nicer bargains of the winter so far, given what other average players have been signing for.

Of course, Lowrie isn’t any kind of star, and his health issues make this a bit of a risk for the Astros, but even if he declines or misses a bit of time, he’ll still be a significant improvement over the in-house alternatives, and that will be true whether he plays shortstop or third base going forward.

The news:

Sources: #Yankees close to signing free-agent 3B Chase Headley to four-year deal.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 15, 2014

headley signing with yanks. 4 yrs, a little north of $50M

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) December 15, 2014

The crowd had estimated 4/$56M for Headley, while I guessed 4/$60M, so this looks like a win for the crowd. And, from my perspective, a win for the Yankees, since I thought Headley would be a bargain at more than he apparently signed for. Last week, I compared Headley to Jacoby Ellsbury, noting that Headley is essentially Ellsbury minus the baserunning abilities, and it seems unlikely that the value Ellsbury can create through that one aspect of the game should be the difference between $50 million and $150 million.

Of course, Tony Blengino has offered some less optimistic opinions about Headley’s future, and I’d suggest you read his piece from last week as well. We’ll have a full post up on the deal once the terms are known, but safe to say I’m going to be a fan of this one for New York.

First, a brief bit of background for those who haven’t kept up with this minor contract dispute. Back when the Nationals were negotiating with Bryce Harper on deadline signing day in 2010, the haggling went down to the last minute before both sides agreed on a five year, $9.9 million dollar Major League contract. While such deals have since been outlawed by the CBA, they were pretty standard for the best draft picks at the time, and Harper was obviously a pretty great prospect with some significant leverage.

Because he signed a Major League deal, the contract specified guaranteed salaries for 2011 through 2015. However, because the Nationals called him up to the big leagues just a few weeks into the 2012 season, Harper would now qualify as a Super Two arbitration eligible candidate this winter if he wasn’t already under contract for $1.5 million from his original deal. Generally, players who signed these contracts were granted opt-out provisions in case they became arbitration eligible, so that the guaranteed salaries were essentially guaranteed minimums instead, with the player being able to choose the path of arbitration if it would get them higher salaries at that point in the deal.

For example, Rick Porcello used just such a clause to opt-out of the $1.3 million he would have been owed in 2012, choosing to go to arbitration as a Super Two eligible instead. The Tigers ended up paying him $3.1 million to avoid arbitration, which not only gave him more money in that season, but set him up for a higher base to get arbitration raises from, significantly increasing his total salary over the last four years.

Now, that brings us back to Harper. According to the Nationals, Scott Boras forgot to ask for that clause to be included in the deal; Boras denies this, and refused to sign the paperwork when it was sent over in the wake of the agreement. The two sides kicked the can down the road at the time, agreeing that if it became an issue, they would resolve it through independent arbitration. Since Harper is Super Two eligible, it became an issue, and the two sides were scheduled to have their grievance heard tomorrow.

Instead, however, they have settled on a two year contract that seems like a pretty fair compromise: Harper will get the $2.5 million he was projected to make in arbitration this year, but he also agreed to a guaranteed $5 million salary in 2016, a modest raise that limits the exposure for Washington if he has a breakout season this year. Harper gets a little more money up front, and limits his risk in case of an injury or a disappointing performance, while the Nationals defend against having to give him a huge raise next winter if he goes off.

Harper did skip NatsFest this weekend due to his unhappiness with the situation, but I wouldn’t expect this dispute will do much to the team’s chances of signing him long-term. This is the kind of thing that is fairly easily forgotten, especially when the next time these two negotiate, the asking price will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Over the course of this week, we’ve somehow managed to cover nearly every transaction. But by my count, there are four that we failed to comment on, and that is simply unacceptable. So let’s tackle them, in no particular order:

Rockies trade Josh Rutledge to the Angels for Jairo Diaz

This is one of those rare trades that could end up being a win-win or a lose-lose, so of course I love it. When it went down, Howie Kendrick had not yet been traded, so it was a bit of a mystery as to why the Angels wanted Rutledge. Now that Kendrick has migrated up I-5 however, it makes a lot more sense. Sort of.

I’ve written about Rutledge before, and since I did back in May 2013, he hasn’t really shown much. To wit:

• July 13, 2012 (MLB debut) through Aug. 31, 2012: 150 plate appearances, .345/.360/.634, .419 wOBA, 150 wRC+, 2.0% BB%, 13.3% K%
• Sept. 1, 2012 to present: 797 PA, .242/.298/.357, .291 wOBA, 66 wRC+, 6.0% BB%, 22.5% K%

Rutledge still has a decent 90 wRC+ projection for next season, but it’s unduly influenced by those first 150 PA. Rutledge is still just 26 next year, so it’s not over yet, but we can probably chalk him up as a fluke at this point. The Rockies have somewhat committed to DJ Lemahieu at second, and in a world where Troy Tulowitzki is healthy, they have almost zero use for Rutledge.

The Rockies do need bullpen help though, and getting Diaz could be a nice under the radar move. Diaz jumped from High-A, to Double-A to the majors last season, and struck out more than one-third of the batters he faced at each of the three levels. He also stranded an absurd 86.4 percent of base runners in Double-A, and his FIP still ended up being lower than his ERA. It remained so in the majors, but just for a miniscule sample. He throws just two pitches, and one of them is not a curveball, and he has good velocity separation thanks to his 97 mph cheese. The downside is that it is just 5.2 innings of low-leverage relief work, and he wasn’t a top prospect last year in what was/is a pretty weak Angels farm system, so Rockies fans shouldn’t get too excited. At least, not yet.

Nationals trade Ross Detwiler to Rangers for Chris Bostick and Abel De Los Santos

Banished to the bullpen last season, Detwiler didn’t have the kind of pitch mix and/or stuff that plays up in the bullpen, and he was essentially buried on Matt Williams’ depth chart. He ranked ninth out of 12 Nats relievers in gmLI (leverage when entering the game). In other words, the Nationals didn’t need him. So they flipped him to Texas, who most certainly does need starting pitchers.

Aside from the walking injured, Martin Perez and Matt Harrison, Detwiler now becomes the Rangers’ third-best starter behind Yu Darvish and Derek Holland. If that sounds like an indictment of the Rangers’ current roster, well it is, but that’s why they’re trying to upgrade it. Detwiler gets a lot of ground balls, but his xFIP routinely paints him as someone who seems like he should be allowing more home runs than he does, and moving from Nationals Park (home run park factor of 97) to Globe Life Park (106) will certainly test that out.

De Los Santos is probably the prize in the deal for Washington, and he received a brief mention in Kiley’s Rangers’ prospect piece back in August. Here’s a video Nathaniel Stoltz shot of him early last season:

Phillies trade Antonio Bastardo to Pirates for Joely Rodriguez

Earlier in the week, the Pirates signed a lefty starter in Francisco Liriano, and then they went out and got a lefty reliever in Bastardo.

Bastardo should help in Pittsburgh, whose relief corps had just the 20th-best FIP in the game last year against left-handed batters. The great thing about Bastardo though is that he is not just a LOOGY. For his career, he has near-identical 3.34 and 3.33 FIPS against lefties and righties, respectively, and he has thrown 55 more innings against right-handed batters. His K-BB% is four percent better against lefties, but it is certainly not necessary to remove him when a right-handed batter steps into the box. In fact, last season, he was better against righties than he was lefties.

In return, the Phillies get Rodriguez, who has been a notable player in the past. He didn’t do much in his Double-A debut that was worth hanging your hat on, as he struck out just 5.2 percent more hitters than he walked, but he did improve in his brief time in the Arizona Fall League. He is essentially the exact kind of player the Phillies should be targeting in these sorts of deals — possibly high impact wild cards that are within striking distance of the majors.

Cardinals sign Mark Reynolds

Did you know that Mark Reynolds hit 22 home runs last year? Yeah, he totally did, for the Brewers. Myself, I had forgotten all about Reynolds, but he actually had himself a nice little season, putting up a 1.6 WAR figure that was his best mark since 2010. Oddly, much of it was on the strength of his defense at both first and third base. Unless Reynolds found the fountain of flexibility and/or youth at age 30, I wouldn’t put too much stock in those numbers repeating themselves, but there are certainly worse bench players to have. Reynolds was one of just two players to have a BABIP at .218 or under and still post a 80 or better wRC+. That .218 BABIP easily represented a career low, and may be due to a lack of line drives hit last year, but if his BABIP regresses back up to his career norms, he could end up being a very useful bench bat indeed.

It’s probably fair to say that, among the panoply of transactions which occurred this past week, that those produced by Thursday’s Rule 5 draft — which event marked the end of this year’s Winter Meetings — weren’t the most notable.

That said, even since 2006 (when an extra year of protection was added under the new CBA), the Rule 5 draft has produced both an MVP (Josh Hamilton) and Cy Young (R.A. Dickey). Probably flawed research by the author suggests that, on average, at least one selection within the draft will average a win or better per season following same.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 pitchers a useful tool for those just learning about these numbers. What does it mean to say a pitcher is a ground ball pitcher? How are ground balls different from fly balls for a pitcher? 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.

Screw it, I can’t even keep up anymore. While I was writing my opus on the Matt Kemp trade, about 55 more things have happened, and we’re all sleep deprived and running on fumes, so I’m throwing in the white flag on trying to write these all up separately. Consider this the December 11th transaction hub. I’ll update this as things come in, and you can use this as a place to tell me about the 15 deals I missed while I tried to breathe.

The Tigers made their trade with the Reds to get a starting pitcher, but it was Alfredo Simon going to Detroit to replace Rick Porcello. Simon has outperformed his peripherals for 500 big league innings, but he doesn’t look like a great bet to be more than a serviceable back-end starter. To acquire one year of his rights, the Tigers gave up infielder Eugenio Suarez and pitching prospect Jonathan Crawford. Nice little move by the Reds.

Cincinnati wasn’t done, though, trading Mat Latos to the Marlins in exchange for Anthony DeSclafani and Chad Wallach. Kiley McDaniel, on those two.

Just saw RHP Anthony DeSclafani (near MLB ready back end piece, 90-93) and C Chad Wallach (big guy, light bat, may be MLB backup) in AFL.

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) December 11, 2014

Latos’ velocity and strikeout rate both took big wrong turns in 2014 after he began the year on the disabled list, so there’s all kinds of red flags here. If he’s healthy and gets his velocity back, he could be a good pitcher again, but it’s one year of a health gamble for the Marlins. I can’t say I’m a fan of what they’ve done the last 24 hours.

And finally, according to Buster Olney, the Red Sox have rounded out their rotation by signing Justin Masterson to a one year contract. Like Latos, Masterson is a pitcher with a good track record who had a lousy 2014 season, so this is an upside play, only Masterson didn’t cost the Red Sox any talent to acquire. He’ll join Rick Porcello and Wade Miley in providing depth that the Red Sox didn’t have previously, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they still pursued a front-end guy to upgrade over Clay Buchholz or Joe Kelly.

Oh, and the Royals apparently got close to signing Kendrys Morales while I wrote the last paragraph. $17 million for two years, so basically, the everyone-gets-an-extra-year inflation continues. You apparently have to be near death to settle for a one year deal anymore.

And now there’s this.

Source: Ervin Santana finalizing a four-year deal for around $54 million with Minnesota.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 11, 2014

Hey, I got one, kinda. I had Santana landing a 4/$52M contract from an AL Central team, though it was KC, not Minneosta. In this market, for what Santana is, this feels about right. Average is expensive now.