Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat — 2/15/19

February 15, 2019

9:06	Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

9:06	Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Friday baseball chat

9:07	LudeBurger: Prospects, Jeff. Prospects.

9:07	Jeff Sullivan: Not your guy, LudeBurger

9:07	The Electrician: Do you think there will be a rush of free agent signings once teams move their guys to the 60 day DL and open up 40 man roster spots?

9:09	Jeff Sullivan: Already seeing it. Oakland used a 60-day stint to make room for Robbie Grossman. Also used one to make room for Brett Anderson. Arizona used one to make room for Caleb Joseph. Miami used one to make room for Sergio Romo. Kansas City used one to make room for Jake Diekman, etc

9:09	Cody: So, Yangervis Solarte signed before Bryce Harper or Manny Machado. Um, I don’t know what else to say.

9:10	Jeff Sullivan: Wouldn’t you expect that to be the case?

9:10	Jeff Sullivan: Signing Yangervis Solarte might take two phone calls

9:10	Jeff Sullivan: Signing Bryce Harper or Manny Machado probably takes about 150

9:10	Jeff Sullivan: Plus multiple in-person visits and everything else that goes along

9:11	Jeff Sullivan: It’s like saying I bought groceries before I had my wedding. That doesn’t mean I want groceries more than I want to be married

9:12	Bo: As top tier FAs remain unsigned, who is “winning” and “losing” by it dragging out? Why not issue a “best and final” demand to suitors if you’re Boras?

9:13	Jeff Sullivan: Because everything is flexible. If you get teams to meet you at a certain level, what’s to stop you from wanting to hold out until they get to the next level?

9:13	Jeff Sullivan: So much of this is about how neither Harper nor Machado wants to sign first. They know what position that would put the other guy in

9:14	Jeff Sullivan: The sport as a whole is losing, the longer this goes on. There’s blame on all sides, but it’s an ugly look for the league nevertheless

9:15	mike: Hey Jeff, Eno released his rankings and has Paxton higher than Carrasco. He is the only one I see that has him higher. Can you make a case for thinking Paxton has a better season?

9:16	Jeff Sullivan: They project to be very similar, and Paxton has joined one of the organizations that excels at player development. It wouldn’t be crazy to think the Yankees can unlock something extra that the Mariners didn’t tap into

9:16	Jeff Sullivan: Certainly nothing you can just take for granted, but it’s not insane

9:19	Mitch: So, how bad is the underpay on Luis Severino? 4/40 with a club option for year 5 is just nuts, given that those 4 years are his 4 arb years (thanks, Super-2), and it’s not impossible that he could have been making 10 mil in year 2 of arb, much less years 3 and 4.

9:20	Jeff Sullivan: Definitely an underpay, and there’s hardly any precedent for someone in Severino’s situation signing an extension like this. I guess in 2012, Gio Gonzalez was a Super Two, and he signed for five years and $42 million, with two options

9:22	Jeff Sullivan: The upside for Severino’s camp is that he signed away just one year of free agency. He didn’t sign away like three of them. But again, everyone knows that this is Severino’s prime. Free agency isn’t what it was. There are going to be more and more of these

9:22	psweeting: Sevy extension seems really team friendly. Another guy not betting on himself?

9:23	Jeff Sullivan: At least for a power pitcher, you can understand the desire to get a guarantee, since your career can be sidetracked on any given pitch

9:25	Jeff Sullivan: And again, in every single case, it makes perfect rational sense for a player to agree to an extension. What’s the marginal value of another dollar when you’re locked in for like $40m+? Severino will never have to worry about money again. He made it. It’s a great success

9:25	Jeff Sullivan: But teams understand the imbalance. Teams understand how appealing these extensions are. And they will continue to lean club-friendly, until or unless there are structural changes affecting arbitration and the league minimums

9:27

Jeff Sullivan: Teams aren’t doing anything wrong, but they’re also not incentivized to offer more money than they have to. If the union wants to see fewer club-friendly extensions, they need to collectively negotiate for changes. Or just cultivate a bunch more Trevors Bauer, players who insist on always going year to year

9:27	Bork: Hello, friend!

9:27	Jeff Sullivan: Hello friend

9:27	Fartrell Cluggins: I don’t think I have ever been more excited for baseball season to start. This offseason has been so long

9:27	Jeff Sullivan: And it’s not even over, Fartrell Cluggins

9:27	mmddyyyy: How do you know if a team has enough depth?

9:27	Jeff Sullivan: By measuring how much depth it has

9:28	Jeff Sullivan: You can typically sort of eyeball it, but there are also ways to run the math using projections. You want some sort of big-league-caliber replacement at every position, and you probably want up to eight big-league starters

9:29	stever20: so Severino signs a deal today after Nola the other day. Is this going to be a real trend, or just 2 guys getting it when they could?

9:29	Jeff Sullivan: Trend

9:29	Damian: Not enough people talk about Evan Gattis hitting 11 triples in 2015, and none in the 3 seasons since.

9:29	Jeff Sullivan: Damian is on it, everybody

9:29	CamdenWarehouse: With opt-outs being used to add additional value to free agent contracts. Has the that value decreased significantly after the last two offseasons to the point where we’re not likely to see them?

9:30	Jeff Sullivan: I think they’ll still exist, but they have been devalued, and so that will just be priced in. If an opt-out used to be valued around, say, $20 million, maybe now it’s more like…$10 – 15 million?

9:33	Jung Bong Jovi: Craig Kimbrel spotted in Orlando! He’s re-joining the Barves right?

9:34	Jeff Sullivan: My first thought was “IMG Academy” but at least according to this map I’m looking at, it’s much closer to Tampa

9:35	Jeff Sullivan: The Braves do make a ton of logical sense, but there’s also at least a 40-50% chance the trip and Kimbrel’s free agency are not connected

9:35

Erik: The “We can’t let pitchers hit because they might get injured” argument has always struck me as disingenuous. If we were truly worried about pitchers getting injured, wouldn’t we stop them from, you know, pitching? I believe it’s an argument you agree with, though, so could you explain why you think it’s compelling?

9:36

Jeff Sullivan: I don’t think it’s *the* reason for a universal DH, but it’s just one of them. Turn it around: if pitchers are already subjecting themselves to something so potentially damaging, what’s the sense in increasing the injury risk even more? And all for the sake of making them do something they’re bad at

9:37	tom: is a bowl of cereal a soup? why or why not?

9:37	Jeff Sullivan: No, tom. Get out of here

9:37	Xolo: What’s your take on the extensions Nola and Severino signed? Seem kinda light

9:37	Jeff Sullivan: Yep

9:38	Jeff Sullivan: It’s also worth remembering that so much of this is based on contract precedent, and when you base on contract precedent, it’s hard to push for inflation

9:38	Jeff Sullivan: Precedent is all well and good, but an extension signed four or five years ago was signed in a different revenue environment

9:39	Guest: Now you have to rewrite all of the words you wrote about Nola into a Severino article!

9:39	Jeff Sullivan: Probably time to start charting how many extensions buying out FA years we’ve seen over the past decade or so

9:39	Mike: Would small-market NL clubs be the biggest opponents to adopting the DH? Another player that they have to pay.

9:40	Jeff Sullivan: Adding a DH doesn’t change the roster size. It just changes the roster makeup. Small-market clubs aren’t the clubs ending up with Albert Pujols on the payroll

9:42	scooter262: Jeff, can you provide any insight into why BP has Yankees 7 games better than the Red Sox, while most other projections I’ve seen — including FG — have them within a game of each other.

9:43	Jeff Sullivan: So, both Steamer and PECOTA put the Yankees at 96 wins. But where Steamer has the Red Sox at 97, PECOTA has them at 89

9:44	Jeff Sullivan: It looks like PECOTA is simply lower on certain players, like Xander Bogaerts, JBJ, and David Price

9:45	Jeff Sullivan: BP uses its own numbers, like, for example, DRC+. It makes sense that their numbers and ours wouldn’t always see eye-to-eye

9:46	Kristen: Can’t help thinking Nola and Severino really sold themselves short with their extensions.

9:46	Jeff Sullivan: Kepler is the one that really gets me. I can at least understand why pitchers would want to get what they can when they can

9:47	Jeff Sullivan: I haven’t done all the research yet, but I’m working on a theory that pitchers should either have a higher minimum salary, or they should reach arbitration eligibility sooner. My gut feeling is that pitchers get taken advantage of more than position players do

9:48	2-D: As a fan, is it harder to go through a rebuilding period of a NHL or MLB team?

9:48	Jeff Sullivan: I want to say MLB. Not only is hockey more unpredictable — draft picks can be ready sometimes for NHL play almost immediately, which provides for a fair amount of optimism

9:50

Ron: The universal DH dilemma seems to have a maddeningly perfect solution. Each team chooses the position that they want to use the DH. Good hitting pitchers retain their value, while it can potentially be a job creator by giving an all-glove SS or catcher a
job. Ohtani & McKay types would have huge value. What is the downside to this? The upsides seem enormous.

9:51	Jeff Sullivan: Since 2008, 192 pitchers have batted at least 100 times. Here are the top five in wRC+:

9:51	Jeff Sullivan: 1. Micah Owings, 85 wRC+ 2. Carlos Zambrano, 83 3. Zack Greinke, 52 4. Wade LeBlanc, 49 5. Daniel Hudson, 49

9:51	Jeff Sullivan: They all suck. Every team would just about always use the DH for the pitcher, and we’d end up where we already think we’re going

9:53

Jeff Sullivan: I saw a suggestion I liked the other day. I haven’t yet thought it all the way through, but it tied the DH specifically to the starting pitcher. So, when the starter comes out, the DH comes out. It has its downsides, but it would be a convenient way to preserve some sense of strategy while also ensuring that starters aren’t completely killed off

9:54	Chapultepec: How much is positional versatility actually worth to the typical team? In other words how much better off would a team be with Marwin Gonzalez instead of a similar caliber hitter/fielder who can only play 2nd or 3rd?

9:55

Jeff Sullivan: It’s good. I don’t have a number for it. But especially now, with bullpen sizes inflating, you want more versatility than ever. It allows you to play matchups and it makes it easier to give more guys rest. Marwin being shortstop-capable increases his price tag a few million dollars per season

9:55

Crazy Sammi Meatballs: What are your thoughts on strength of division? I mean, there are teams that do benefit from playing the weakest teams in the league so many times. At the very least, their chances for a wild card goes up exponentially. Just take the Ruth division in NGNL as a case in point, right?

9:57	Jeff Sullivan: The schedules are unbalanced. Some divisions are tougher than others. Last year’s Indians got to benefit from playing a whole bunch of pushovers all the time. It can make a difference of a few wins a season. It’s usually not a huge factor, but it absolutely does come into play

9:59	mmddyyyy: When does a player join the mlbpa?

9:59	Jeff Sullivan: I believe the answer is when a player is placed on the 40-man roster (or the injured list)