Late Tuesday night, Ken Rosenthal reported that the Tampa Bay Rays had agreed to a six-year, $24 million contract extension with 24-year-old second baseman and outfielder Brandon Lowe. Lowe is our 46th overall prospect, the top one in the 50 FV tier, and the No. 5 prospect in a loaded Rays system.

According to the Tampa Bay Times’ Marc Topkin, the deal also includes two club option years, which, along with incentives, could bring the total value to $49 million; if those options are exercised, Lowe will be 32 when the deal ends. Lowe will now obviously be making much more during his pre-arb seasons than he would have with standard contract renewals, but the possibility of overarching changes to baseball’s compensation structure in the next CBA currently make it impossible to evaluate the latter parts of the deal on Lowe’s end.

If he becomes the type of player I expect him to be — Lowe has power, walks at an above-average clip, and plays several positions including a passable second base, all of which makes me think he’s a two to three win player — a $4 million average annual value would make Lowe a bargain for the Rays. Based on Craig Edwards’ work at our site (and Driveline Baseball’s recent attempt to refine that research), 50 FV position player prospects like Lowe should be valued at $28 million, quite close to the value of his deal, excluding of the team option years. The AAV of the two option years, which would encompass Lowe’s age-31 and 32 seasons, is $12.5 million, almost exactly what D.J. LeMahieu received this offseason (age 30, two years, $24 million), and LeMahieu has been what we’d call a 50 in prospect parlance, as he was on average about a two win player during his tenure with Colorado. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming on the heels of Mike Trout’s humongous contract extension, news broke that Alex Bregman and the Astros had agreed to an extension of their own worth $100 million, with Mark Berman first to report the deal. While the Trout contract is the biggest of all time, the Bregman deal is not without intrigue. Bregman, who was still a full year away from arbitration, is the first star-level player to sign a pre-arb contract extension in nearly five years. The last player at or above Bregman’s level of production to sign a contract like this was Trout, who signed his six-year, $144.5 million contract back in 2014.

Since 2014, the number of contract extensions buying out free agent years has decreased. When Luis Severino signed his deal earlier this offseason, Jeff Sullivan ran the numbers on the quantity of extensions by offseason, providing this graph.

In the five years leading up to the 2014 season, there were about 25 or so extensions per season, and in the five years since, the numbers have dropped in half. Since Severino signed, we have had Jose Leclerc, and now Alex Bregman, but those extension figures aren’t going up a ton this year. It isn’t just that the number of extensions have gone down; the quality of players signing those extensions has declined as well. We saw Trout’s big deal ahead of the 2014 season; the year before, Buster Posey, who was Super-2 arbitration eligible, signed an even bigger contract covering more seasons. It was Andrew McCutchen the year before Posey. Matt Carpenter and Jason Kipnis, who were several years older than Bregman but also coming off very good years, signed six-year deals with options guaranteeing themselves around $50 million each. Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t the biggest extension announced yesterday — it wasn’t even the biggest Astros extension announced yesterday — but Ryan Pressly’s two-year, $17.5 million deal with Houston, which was first reported by Chandler Rome, was a big deal for Pressly, a big deal for Houston, and a big deal for relievers. The deal will pay Pressly $2.9 million in 2019, his final arbitration year, then $8.75 million in each of 2020 and 2021. There’s a vesting club option for 2021, as well. It’s believed to be the biggest extension ever signed by a reliever not expected to close games for his team (that’s still Roberto Osuna’s job, at least for the time being) and is a tremendous accomplishment for a player who had a 4.70 ERA (with a 4.36 FIP) as recently as 2017.

But of course that 2017 performance isn’t what the Astros are paying for. They’re paying for what he did in Houston last August and September (which is strike out 32 men and walk just three in 23.1 innings pitched) and what they think he can do for them going forward (which is presumably more of the same). Héctor Rondón, Joe Smith, Collin McHugh, and Will Harris are all expected to become free agents at the conclusion of the 2019 season, and locking Pressly up now means the Astros will have one less thing to worry about next winter. For Pressly, this deal gives him the job security that has absolutely never been a guarantee in the years since he signed with the Red Sox as an 11th-round pick back in 2007.

The conventional wisdom is that relievers are inherently volatile — with a few, Mariano Rivera-shaped exceptions — and so giving them multi-year contracts is the kind of thing you only do when you’re competing for their services on the open market. You certainly wouldn’t expect to see a forward-thinking team like the Astros locking up a reliever with such a short track record of success — during his time in Minnesota at the beginning of 2018, Pressly had a 3.40 ERA and a 2.95 FIP — for two additional years when they’re competing against nobody but themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

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This morning, we considered the catcher position. This afternoon, the positional power rankings take us out to left field.

Has batted ball data and modern defensive positioning altered the defensive spectrum? It likely won’t surprise readers to learn that the average wRC+ by position starts with first base and right field, but it may be revelatory to learn that the gap between right and left field has been pretty wide. The last four years, the average right fielder has produced an average wRC+ 4.75 ticks higher than his counterpart in left. The offensive bar at third base has also been higher on average than in left field during the last four years.

Why? Perhaps improved defensive positioning on the infield has enabled more bat-centric players to play third base when, in years past, they’d be at first. Most hitters are right-handed, and increased focus on pulling the ball in the air could have quickly made defensive range in left field more important than it has been in the past. The average sprint speed among left fielders is now on par with that at shortstop. Is it a long term, tectonic shift that should impact things like prospect evaluation? It’s hard to say definitively at this point because so much about the game is changing and still has the potential to change. But it’s worth discussing — eventually. For now, here are our current left fielders. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite sporting events of the year is just around the corner. And no, I’m not referring to Opening Day, though it indeed fits both conditions. I am, of course, talking about March Madness.

For a stat nut like me, March Madness is the perfect time of year. It combines sports with both probability and unpredictability. It’s also quite fun to see fans from all over the country supporting their local universities and alma maters in the biggest basketball tournament (and workplace distraction) in the United States.

The only thing missing from March Madness is a baseball spin. But for those like me who enjoy both the Madness and Opening Day, I have a solution: the perfect baseball-themed March Madness bracket. When I say “perfect,” I don’t mean literally perfect. Unfortunately, there is just a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance that this bracket (or any other bracket) will achieve perfection.

It is perfect, though, in another sense. The second qualifier, “baseball-themed,” is important. This bracket can indeed call itself the perfect baseball-themed bracket. Let me show you how.

The process behind this is rather simple. I compiled all 68 teams in the tournament, and using Baseball-Reference’s Draft Index, was able to easily search every major league player to come from one of these schools. I then ranked each school by total WAR produced by those players.

I should note that this is only in the MLB Draft era (1965-present), and that this list only includes players who were drafted from said school. For example, if Devan Fink played baseball at Michigan but then transferred to the University of Florida and was subsequently drafted out of Florida, the Gators would get all of the credit for having harbored Devan Fink.

Without further ado, the rankings: Read the rest of this entry »

Back in 2011, the Yankees had a lot of fun after signing two aging starters to minor league contracts, when they brought on Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. Colon was deemed to be done by many. He went so far as to get a stem cell injection in his shoulder to give it another go. Garcia had a so-so season in 2010 and was working with significantly diminished stuff from his prime, but the two combined for 4.8 WAR, helping the Yankees on the way to a division title. Eight years later, New York has signed Gio Gonzalez to a minor league deal. He will earn $3 million if he reaches the big leagues, with incentives based on games started. He has the ability to opt-out on April 20 should he not receive a major league assignment. The circumstances that led to signing Gonzalez now, and Colon and Garcia then, are different, but the best-case scenario might be the same: big bang for the buck from a veteran arm.

Normally, there are five starting pitchers in a set rotation; two of the Yankees’ are injured this spring. Luis Severino, the staff ace, has an inflamed rotator cuff and is expected to be out until May. CC Sabathia is recovering from angioplasty and right knee surgery, and is projected to return sometime in April. That leaves two spots open beyond the cast of James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka, and J.A. Happ.

The Yankees already have depth arms with major league starting experience in Domingo German, Jonathan Loaisiga, and Luis Cessa. German and Cessa in particular are having pretty good springs, but we all know that spring training can be a bit of a mirage. Those three combined for 1.8 WAR last year, which isn’t inspiring. But they are young and have shown flashes of promise, so it is possible that they could break out this year. For now, they are talented question marks. And even if the Yankees decide to carry two of the three, they would still face issues when it comes to rotation depth. As we’ve seen from the 2016 Dodgers, anything could happen to human beings who throw baseballs for living. Read the rest of this entry »

After Craig Edwards and Rian Watt surveyed the current state of second and third basemen yesterday, our positional power rankings continue today with catcher.

The catching position hit an 11-year low in wRC+ (84) and also dipped below 50 WAR for the first time in that same span (49.9). Just two guys topped 4.0 WAR, and neither Yasmani Grandal (4.9) nor J.T. Realmuto (4.8) reached a full 5.0 wins. Compare that to just five years ago, when five guys had at least 5.0 WAR and two of them rounded to eight wins: Yan Gomes (5.3), Rene Rivera (5.3), Russell Martin (6.5), Buster Posey (7.8), and Jonathan Lucroy (8.1). Part of the issue is that teams are much more open to splitting the duties among multiple players, which makes it tougher for even the top end to generate big numbers. In 2014, there were 23 catchers with at least 400 plate appearances, but that figure dipped to just 15 a year ago.

The 2019 pool has already lost a stalwart with Salvador Perez needing Tommy John surgery, although he hasn’t topped 1.0 WAR since 2014 and has surpassed an 89 wRC+ just once in that same time frame (103 in 2017). The position is aging and hasn’t backfilled with prospects quickly enough to replace the old guard. Looking at those top performers from 2014, we see that they are all still playing but managed just a combined 6.9 (nice) WAR despite four of the five logging at least 350 plate appearances.

Do not fret, though, the backfill is on the way! Danny Jansen debuted last year but will play out his rookie season in 2019. Francisco Mejia has essentially had sips of coffee each of the last two years and still holds rookie eligibility. Meanwhile, 10 other catchers made it into our Top 100 Prospects list, including three in the Top 50: Keibert Ruiz for the Dodgers (15), Sean Murphy for the Athletics (35), and Joey Bart for the Giants (41). Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter at length about Mike Trout’s extension, why he may have wanted to stay with the Angels, what makes him different from other players, and why he’s underpaid despite his record contract, then preview the 2019 Houston Astros (44:38) with The Athletic’s Astros beat writer Jake Kaplan, and the 2019 Detroit Tigers (1:15:05) with Detroit Free Press Tigers beat writer Anthony Fenech.

Audio intro: Heatmiser, "Why Did I Decide to Stay?"
Audio interstitial 1: Neil Finn, "Astro"
Audio interstitial 2: John Doe and The Sadies, "Country Club"
Audio outro: Flamin’ Groovies, "The First One’s Free"

Link to Ben’s Trout extension article
Link to Sam’s Trout extension article
Link to Sam’s article about Trout on every team
Link to story about MLB considering raising minor-league salaries
Link to Banished To The Pen’s team preview posts
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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In 2008, when Dan Turkenkopf was the first to quantify the value of pitch framing, he noted that it appeared to be alarmingly important. Bill Letson was similarly astounded when he calculated the size of the effect in 2010. Max Marchi and Mike Fast each took a turn in 2011, finding large and highly correlated catcher values despite using different methods. Other sabermetric luminaries have contributed sophisticated methods and sanity checks, some of which I’ll touch on below. And yet, this terrifically important, seemingly well-established, and impressively repeatable defensive skill has been left out when calculating FanGraphs player WAR and ignored when Steamer forecasts pitchers and catchers. . . until now.

In what follows, I’ll briefly lay out a series of steps for calculating how many framing runs each catcher contributed as well as and how many extra strikes each pitcher was granted (or, in some cases, earned). This much has all been done and clearly described before thanks to Dan Brooks and Harry Pavlidis; that research was updated and expanded upon by Pavlidis and Jonathan Judge. I’ll then compare the values I’ve obtained to the ones created by Baseball Prospectus, StatCorner, and Sports Info Solutions and demonstrate (I hope) that those extra strikes really do result in extra strikeouts and fewer walks. Lastly, I’ll discuss what this means for Steamer forecasts.

Modeling the Strike Zone

It all starts with the strike zone and I started by using generalized additive models to estimate the probability of a strike in any count, to either left-handed or right-handed batters at each location in and around the plate. On the first pass (shown below), I created strike zones averaged across seasons and, on the second pass, looked for changes in the strike zone by season. The blue contour lines in the images below show where strike calls are a coin flip and the red dashed lines show where we’d expect a 25% or 75% chance of a strike. If you’re read Matt Carruth or Jon Roegele, you’ll be unsurprised to see a small 0-2 strike zones (shown in the upper right facets) and large 3-0 strike zones (in the lower left).

Read the rest of this entry »