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Ross Atkins was hired as Toronto’s Executive VP of Baseball Operations and General Manager in December 2015, shortly after Mark Shapiro was officially named the team’s President and CEO. Both came to the Blue Jays from Cleveland, where they’d worked together with the Indians for the past 15 years. A formidable pairing atop Toronto’s front office hierarchy, they are — as Atkins is quick to point out — nonetheless just two pieces of a much larger puzzle.

The Blue Jays have undergone organizational change in recent seasons, but the past six months stand out. John Gibbons was formally dismissed as manager in late September, and several members of his coaching staff followed him out the door. The roster has also undergone change. Troy Tulowitzki has departed, as have Russell Martin, Josh Donaldson, Curtis Granderson, Marco Estrada, and JA Happ. Notably, all of these player are 33 years old or older.

Fifty-three-year-old Charlie Montoyo is the biggest incoming name. The bench coach in Tampa Bay last year, Montoyo has replaced Gibbons in the manager’s chair. Four of his coaches are imports from other organizations, while two others were promoted from Toronto’s minor league system. Pete Walker and Luis Rivera are the only holdovers.

As is common within the industry, there have also been hirings, promotions, and the shifting of responsibilities throughout Toronto’s various departments. How do Atkins and Shapiro go about making such moves — not just in the front office, but across the board? Atkins addressed that question in a wide-ranging interview late last week. Read the rest of this entry »

Nolan Arenado has ranked among the game’s elite third basemen for the past four seasons, and he’s already made headlines this winter. Last week, he and the Rockies averted an arbitration hearing when he agreed to a $26 million salary for 2019, a record for an arbitration-eligible player. Now, there’s optimism in Denver that the team could reach a longer-term deal that would keep Arenado in purple. It’s a move that not only would be in character for a franchise that has made a concerted attempt to keep its iconic players, but could also impact this winter’s frigid free agent market.

Arenado, who will turn 28 on April 16, is coming off a .297/.374/.561 showing with 38 homers, a 132 wRC+, and 5.7 WAR in 2018. He led the NL in home runs for the third year out of the past four, and while that feat owes much to Coors Field (he has an 87-71 home/road home run split in that span), improved plate discipline has helped him increase both his wRC+ and WAR every year since his 2013 rookie season. Last year’s incremental steps forward owe much to Arenado’s career-best 10.8% walk rate, more than double his 2013-15 mark (5.0%); that increase has keyed a 52-point rise in on-base percentage from his first three years (.318) to his last three (.370).

And then there’s the leather. Arenado has won a Gold Glove in each of his six seasons, and has won the Platinum Glove as the NL’s top overall defender, in each of the past two years; he also took home the Fielding Bible Award as the majors’ top third baseman annually from 2015-17. While UZR doesn’t value his defense nearly as highly as DRS (career totals of 37.6 and 109, respectively), the two marks converged last year (5.8 and 5, respectively). Beyond the numbers, his highlight clips are appointment viewing. Here is the MLB Network compilation of his dives, spins, barehanded grabs, and seemingly impossible throws that accompanied Arenado’s 2018 award wins:

And here’s perhaps his most famous play, his April 14, 2015 over-the-shoulder-and-over-the-tarp-roll catch of a foul ball:

This is an excellent, entertaining player, a franchise cornerstone who has helped take the Rockies to back-to-back playoff appearances for the first time in club history.

After making $17.75 million last year as part of a two-year, $29.5 million extension signed in January 2017, Arenado sought $30 million in arbitration, with the Rockies countering at $24 million. Even if he’d lost a hearing, he would have surpassed Josh Donaldson’s $23 million salary from last year with the highest one-year salary for an arbitration-eligible player. According to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, Arenado and the Rockies settled at $26 million after a face-to-face meeting:

Since then, Monfort has publicly expressed hope for the possibility of a long-term deal. On Monday, he told the Denver Post’s Patrick Saunders, “I’m optimistic that we are close enough that something will come about. It’s in Nolan’s hands, but my last impression with him is that this is something he wants to do.” While stressing that there was no timetable to complete a longer deal, Monfort added, “[W]hat I took out of [the meeting] was a good, sincere [attitude] of, ‘Let’s get this behind us, then let’s go on to the next step and see if we can work something out there.'”

Per to Saunders, Arenado recently said, “I think the future is much brighter in Colorado than it’s been in the past. That excites me and makes me very aware of what’s going on here.” Indeed, an impressive nucleus of young, affordable starting pitching (Kyle Freeland, Jon Gray, German Marquez, Tyler Anderson, and Antonio Senzatela) and the development of shortstop Trevor Story have been key elements of the Rockies’ recent success; that core is under club control through 2021 and ’22. What’s more, the team’s TV revenue situation is better than has been previously reported; the Rockies are making $40 million per year now, not $20 million, which was tied for last among the 29 US teams in Craig Edwards’ 2016 roundup. The team’s current deal runs through 2020, and negotiations for a new one are expected to get underway this summer.

With such a revenue stream, Monfort seems to feel that the Rockies can support a payroll that includes a major commitment to Arenado on a long-term deal. While Cot’s Contracts projects the team to set a franchise record with an Opening Day payroll just over $143 million — up from around $137 million in 2018 (14th in the majors) and $127.8 million in 2017 (15th) — the Rockies have only $40 million committed for 2021, and $23 million for ’22, though of course, the salary increases of their many arb-eligible players will increase those figures.

In marked contrast to the White Sox, whose history under Jerry Reinsdorf I examined on Monday, the Rockies haven’t shied away from sizable long-term commitments. Granted, Monfort and his brother Charlie were merely minority partners until December 2005, when they bought out Jerry McMorris, the team’s principal owner since 1993 (before that, oy, there’s a story). During the McMorris era, the Rockies signed free agents Larry Walker (six years, $75 million in April 1995), Mike Hampton (eight years, $121 million in December 2000), and Denny Neagle (five years, $51 million, also in December 2000) — of which only the first deal went well, the last two disastrously — and extended franchise icon Todd Helton (nine years, $141.5 million, covering 2003-11). The Monforts were the principal owners when the Rockies extended Troy Tulowitzki (10 years, $157.75 million deal in 2010), as well as Charlie Blackmon (six years, $108 million last April), and when they added free agents Ian Desmond (five years, $70 million in December 2016) and Wade Davis (three years, $52 million in December 2017). In terms of guaranteed money, all of those deals besides those of Neagle and Davis exceed the largest guaranteed contract ever signed by the White Sox, Jose Abreu’s six-year, $68 million pact from October 2013.

Whether on the watch of McMorris or the Monforts, not all of the Rockies’ big contracts have unfolded for the better. Some of that has to do with the particularities of playing at altitude — pitches don’t break as much, and athletes’ bodies don’t hold up as well — and some of it has to do with flawed evaluations of the players in question. At a time when so many teams are wringing their hands about spending money, it’s still noteworthy that the Rockies have stepped up to keep their top players. Extending Arenado, and assuming the risks that come with it, would be more in keeping with their style than (to return to my previous example) the White Sox signing Bryce Harper or Manny Machado.

Of course, Arenado has to agree to a deal for this all to come to fruition, and it’s a bit ominous to think of how the relatively grim landscapes of the past two winters might be helping to fulfill the vision that the owners colluded in the mid-1980s to make happen: star players staying with their teams instead of testing the market and creating bidding wars. Still, free agency isn’t an obligation that every star has to fulfill; the combination of comfort and a record-setting salary in a competitive situation isn’t something to be taken lightly.

On that note, if an Arenado extension is completed before Machado signs, it would likely set a new baseline for third basemen (by topping Alex Rodriguez‘s $27.5 million average annual value) and perhaps for all position players (by topping Miguel Cabrera’s $31 million AAV). That, as Rosenthal pointed out, will make it harder for any team in pursuit of Harper or Machado to argue that those younger, higher-profile players should be paid less money.

After the past two winters of slow (or even negative) growth, it’s difficult to put too much faith in long-term estimates, but using the FanGraphs Contract estimation tool with very conservative parameters — $8.0 million per WAR, and just 3% average annual inflation, as opposed to $9 million or more and 5% — suggests a valuation approach $300 million:

Dialing the inflation back even further, to 1%, yields a $279.7 million valuation, and cutting the dollars per WAR figure to a retrograde $7.0 million with that minimal inflation in place still yields $244.7 million. In other words, even using extremely modest assumptions, an eight-year deal for Arenado (presumably incorporating this year’s salary) should bypass Cabrera’s eight-year, $248 million extension.

Another byproduct of an Arenado extension might be a change in the Yankees’ current approach. Circa late November, Rosenthal suggested that their lukewarm pursuits of Harper and Machado — due to a logjam of outfielders in the former case and the infamous “Johnny Hustle” comments in the latter — was because they were more interested in pursuing Arenado (who’s about 18 months older than Harper and 15 months older than Machado) once he reached free agency. In January, SNY.tv’s Andy Martino wrote that Yankees might be working on an even more immediate timeline, “[P]eople briefed on the Yankees thinking say that GM Brian Cashman — who did not respond to a request for comment — has internally discussed the possibility of trying to trade for Arenado either now or during the season. One source said that the teams have likely talked already, but neither Cashman nor Rockies GM Jeff Bridich have confirmed this.”

In theory, if Arenado does cement his desire to stay in Denver long-term, the Yankees could circle back to Machado, whose list of suitors for a long-term deal appear to consist of the White Sox, Padres, Phillies, and a conspicuous lack of other teams. Then again, if Cashman and company have shied away this long, one expects they’ll concoct some other rationale for bypassing Machado and Harper. And it is worth noting that the possibility of signing Harper and Machado was offered as a potential rationale for not signing free agents last winter. While his resume is certainly impressive, it will be interesting to see if Arenado can avoid a similar fate. There’s always another young buck coming, after all, and Mike Trout is only under club control through 2020.

On the other hand, if Arenado and the Rockies don’t get a deal done, it will be very interesting to see how the summer plays out. With the Giants and Diamondbacks both rebuilding, and the Padres possibly looking to spend their way to an earlier competitive window by signing one of the big two free agents, the NL West probably won’t be the three-team race of yesteryear. A Rockies team that’s out of the playoff hunt could conceivably trade Arenado at the July 31 deadline — or even in August, given his huge salary — if he suggests he plans to move on next winter anyway. A Rockies team that’s still in the race for a Wild Card spot or even the NL West flag (something the Rockies have yet to win) as Arenado eyes the horizon would face quite a quandary.

In all of this, we have yet to hear Arenado definitively say that he wants to stick around, but that’s not uncommon. There’s no reason for him to surrender leverage until he’s secured what he wants, and besides, his real talking on that score will be done with a pen and a contract. Until then, this is all just cloud talk, though amid so much cynicism, it’s quaintly refreshing to hear a star and a team at least thinking aloud about sticking together.

It’s funny to say now, given the season they went on to have, but last spring the A’s were dealt a blow that jeopardized their sleeper-contender status. Not only did they lose hotshot prospect A.J. Puk to Tommy John surgery; they also lost big-league starter Jharel Cotton to Tommy John surgery. Puk wasn’t and isn’t on their 40-man roster, but Cotton was. Cotton had surgery on March 21. He was placed on the 60-day disabled list on March 19. He was activated from the 60-day disabled list on October 29. He’ll likely be placed back on the 60-day disabled list in a week or two. He’s looking ahead to something like a midseason return, should everything continue to go well in his rehab and recovery.

There’s nothing unusual about Cotton’s case. At the end of every season, players on the 60-day DL get activated. As a consequence, they occupy spots on 40-man rosters. And then around the start of every spring training, players get placed on the 60-day DL, as it’s again made available. Grant Dayton was the first player to hit the 60-day DL in 2018 — he was placed on Valentine’s Day. There were 31 players placed on the 60-day DL in February and March. Jacob Lindgren was the first player to hit the 60-day DL in 2017 — he was also placed on Valentine’s Day. There were 16 players placed on the 60-day DL in February and March.

This is all very normal and also kind of boring. But, why is this the way that it is? Why doesn’t the 60-day disabled list just cover the whole year?

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I keep a physical calendar on the wall by my desk because I don’t want to forget how to use a pen. Glancing up at the boxes and numbers, it appears that today is…February 5. Happy Chinese New Year! Monday afternoon, I received three separate emails regarding the departure of the truck carrying the Mariners’ team gear to Arizona. People used to celebrate pitchers and catchers. Now I guess people celebrate truck day. The symbolism is the same — spring training is right around the corner, with major-league teams taking to major-league(-quality) fields.

And I’m bracing myself to write about a J.T. Realmuto trade. At any minute of any hour, a team might acquire baseball’s best catcher. I’m also bracing myself to write about a Bryce Harper or Manny Machado signing. At any minute of any hour, a team might acquire one of baseball’s best outfielders, or one of baseball’s best infielders. Dallas Keuchel is still out there, too. Ditto Craig Kimbrel and Marwin Gonzalez, among many, lesser others. We know that moves are going to happen, and all of these free agencies will have lucrative conclusions, but it’s hard to feel like the offseason is ending when the offseason stove is still hot to the touch.

For many people, this has gone on long enough. This offseason has gotten obnoxious and stupid, and, won’t teams just do things already? In recent chats, I’ve received several questions asking why baseball’s offseason isn’t more like, say, basketball’s. Now, there’s a variety of reasons why the offseasons move at different speeds. That’s not what I’m here to write and ask about. Rather, consider what we’ve been dealing with. Is this actually bad?

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Los Angeles Angels, allegedly of Anaheim.

Batters

You may have heard of Mike Trout; he’s pretty good. I’m amazed that Andrelton Simmons still seems to be underrated by the media and fans. When was the last time a shortstop with a crazily hyped glove was underrated? You’d almost think that he was Adam Everett or Mark Belanger or Omar Vizquel when in fact he’d have been worth just under eight WAR over the last two seasons if he were a league-average defensive shortstop. Simmons has already snuck into the Top 50 all-time by my colleague Jay Jaffe’s JAWS metric, just a season from catching Dave Concepcion, Rafael Furcal, Vizquel, and the fringe Hall of Famer Rabbit Maranville. ZiPS projects Simmons to finish his career as the No. 14 shortstop by JAWS, just behind Derek Jeter and Barry Larkin, and just ahead of Bobby Wallace and Lou Boudreau. Andrelton is a superstar.

Albert Pujols is no longer a major league-caliber baseball player. He’s collected his 3000th hit and his 600th home run, but pretending that Pujols, at his best one of the greatest hitters of our generation, deserves a spot on the roster, let alone significant playing time, is becoming increasingly untenable. At some point, the Angels have to approach him with a plan to make as graceful and quick an exit from his playing career as they can manage, because in a world where the team was serious about fielding the best possible roster, they would be contemplating Pujols’ unconditional release. Even the creators of AfterMASH only needed two seasons to figure out they could only taint M*A*S*H’s legacy. The Angels have let three hitters go overseas this winter who project as more useful than Pujols (Jefry Marte, Jabari Blash, and the much-maligned Jose Miguel Fernandez).

I wouldn’t be quick to think of Shohei Ohtani’s offensive performance as fluky; in some ways, it’s just a natural power improvement from his previous year in Japan. ZiPS translated Ohtani’s final two seasons in Japan at .289/.356/.485, which looks a lot like his .285/.361/.564 with the Angels, with the power growth you hope to see from a talented young player with relatively few professional at-bats (he’s only at 1536 total now). ZiPS thinks he’ll have a lower average than in 2018, but he’s a real major league hitter.

Pitchers

If the Angels could keep all five of their starting pitchers healthy, the rotation would at least be acceptable. Problem is, essentially the entire rotation has an injury history, and many of its members have an extensive one. What’s frustrating about the Angels is that they have such highs in certain areas, but also several holes they’ve barely made a meaningful effort to go about fixing. ZiPS doesn’t see very high ceilings for any of the pitchers actually on the roster. If any team needed to go after Jake Arrieta last year or Dallas Keuchel this year, it’s the Angels. It would only take a few injuries for the Angels to have to turn to Dillon Peters or JC Ramirez (after he returns), which no contending team should be excited about.

Bench and Prospects

And here is why the Angels will fall short of the ZiPS seasonal simulation of the win total on their depth chart: the team’s plan B’s are absolutely atrocious around the field. The exceptions in the short-term are Jose Suarez and Griffin Canning, though I expect the Angels to give both a consolidation year at Triple-A (Suarez is still very young and Canning still has relatively little professional experience). Let’s put it this way: NRI Jarrett Parker is projected as the team’s fourth-best outfielder.

Things will get better. Jo Adell’s long-term projections are bananas, and the upside projections for Jahmai Jones and Brandon Marsh are at least…an apple? With a Brennon, two Brandons, and a Brendon in the projections, the Angels might as well sign Brennan Boesch to complete the set. The farm system has been steadily improving, but if the Angels want to stop wasting the prime of the best player they have ever had, and possibly will ever have, they really need to do better than dip a toe into free agency while they wait for the prospects to save them.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

In the first installment of the seventh annual Effectively Wild season preview series, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Bryce Harper, Scott Boras, team meetings with free agents, the season preview series, the Super Bowl, and mortality, then preview the 2019 Reds (12:11) with The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans, and the 2019 Athletics (47:46) with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser.

Audio intro: The Sadies, "The Very Beginning"
Audio interstitial 1: Nick Drake, "One of These Things First"
Audio interstitial 2: The Coral, "Don’t Think You’re the First"
Audio outro: Beck, "Seventh Heaven"

Link to evaluation of last year’s preview guest predictions
Link to preorder Susan’s A’s book
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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There was already plenty to like about what Matt Chapman did as a rookie in 2017. But his introduction to the majors looked all the more encouraging upon further and deeper review. It’s long forgotten now, but Chapman got off to a miserable start. Through the middle of July, he had a wRC+ of 64, to go with nearly 40% strikeouts. The defense was there — the defense was always going to be there — but it was fair to wonder whether Chapman’s bat had what it would take to succeed. It was early, yes, but Chapman had been exposed. He seemed to be overmatched.

And then, in a flash, he turned the tables. The rest of the way, he carried a wRC+ of 120, and he trimmed his strikeouts all the way to 26%. The way Chapman finished set him up for a breakout and breakthrough 2018, with a 137 wRC+ and a superstar WAR. The strikeout issues were nowhere to be found. Not that Chapman exactly qualifies as a traditional contact hitter, but he makes enough contact to tap consistently into his power. Chapman put the rough intro behind him, and he hasn’t looked back.

With Chapman in mind, allow me to shift the conversation toward Franmil Reyes. Unlike Chapman, Reyes is never going to win a Platinum Glove. If he’s going to have a career, it’ll have to be a career in which he hits. But the good news is that he just made a strong impression. Like Chapman the season before, Reyes just used the final two months to set himself up for a dazzling campaign.

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