The 2018 Replacement-Level Killers: Corner Outfielders

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July 26, 2018
2018 Replacement-Level Killers

Left field, where Marwin Gonzalez leads the team in appearances, has been one of Houston’s few weak spots.
(Photo: Keith Allison)

The outfield corners are traditionally home to heavy hitters. Currently, the combined wRC+ of MLB’s right fielders (108) is just a point below those of first basemen and AL designated hitters, with left fielders (105) lagging by a few points. The last of those is a bit strange given the inherently lesser defensive responsibilities — less throwing, mainly — but many teams have taken to stashing their speedy, slappy non-center fielders there, a trend that seems to have begun back when the White Sox won it all in 2005 with Scott Podsednik.

Despite that generally robust production, several contenders — which for this series I’ve defined as teams with playoff odds of at least 15.0% (a definition that currently covers 15 teams) — are barely getting by at one corner or another, by which I mean receiving less than 1.0 WAR at the spot, which makes them eligible for inclusion among the Replacement Level Killers. If you’re a regular reader of my work, it won’t surprise you that one contender is somehow on both lists… as well as a forthcoming one.

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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 7/26/18

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July 26, 2018
12:00
Jay Jaffe: Hey hey, party people! As if there weren’t already a shortage of hours for me in this week — between the impending trade deadline, my Replacement-Level Killers series, Hall of Fame Induction Weekend (with travel to Cooperstown), a couple of TV appearances, the one-year anniversary of The Cooperstown Casebook’s publication, social obligations, podcasts, parental obligations and, wait, what was that other thing? Ah, SLEEP — I appear to have opened this chat queue early. The questions are piling up, so let’s get to it!
12:01
stever20: loving the replacement-level killers series….  for the Rockies with the way Desmond has bounced back- they have to just keep him at 1b and ignore the first 6-7 weeks of the season now right?  Far bigger areas to worry about?
12:04
Jay Jaffe: Glad you’ve enjoyed the series! Including the pending publication of the corner outfielders piece (today) and centerfielders (tomorrow, fingers willing), the Rockies have RLKs at every position besides 3B (Arenado) and SS (Story). Jeff Bridich is the boy who doesn’t have enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike… if he were also simultaneously shooting holes in said dike by playing Gerardo Parra et al. Realistically, the Rockies are going to play Desmond somewhere anyway, but they desperately need another couple of bats if they’re going to stay in this thing.
12:05
Lilith: I’m curious about your definition of an “inner circle hall of famer”. If you had to create statistical cut-off points for who is a hall of famer, and who is in the inner circle, where would you, personally, put that line? 90+ WAR? 60+ WAR7? Some other stat altogether?
12:08
Jay Jaffe: In the Cooperstown Casebook, I divided Hall of Famers at each position into three tiers, the Elite, the Rank and File and the Basement. The Elite are ones who exceed the career, peak and JAWS standards at their position. Circa the Hall of Fame’s 75th anniversary of its opening in 2014, there were 75 such members. Now, that doesn’t include some particularly noteworthy players, most notably Jackie Robinson, who obviously belongs on that top tier but had his career shortened by the color line. But to the extent that I care to distinguish the top shelf from the rest, that’s more or less my working definition.
12:08
Bo: Strasburg back on the shelf… Does this qualify for “something extreme” that Mike Rizzo referred to regarding becoming sellers?

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Tim Neverett on October 1, 2013, PNC’s Wildest Night

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July 26, 2018

The Pirates have won 13 of their last 15 games, which, as Craig Edwards explained on Wednesday, places them on the periphery of playoff contention. With two months to go in what has been a fast-moving season, the suddenly overachieving Sons of Honus Wagner are seven back in the NL Central, and just four-and-half out in the Wild Card race.

Pittsburgh fans are familiar with the Wild Card. The Buccos’ 2013, 2014, and 2015 seasons — which followed 20 consecutive years of October-less baseball — all included the one-game nail-biter that qualifies a team for Division Series play. And while the latter two qualify as forgettable, the first was a never-forget Pittsburgh sports classic. The game, a 6-2 conquest of the Cincinnati Reds at PNC Park, was played on October 1, 2013 against the backdrop of a black-clad cacophony.

Tim Neverett was there. A member of the Pirates’ broadcast team at the time — he’s now calling games in Boston — Neverett never tires of recounting that epic night. Nor should he. It was an experience like none other, as he explains here.

———

Tim Neverett: “Ron Darling had the best line on TBS that night. I went back and watched their broadcast later, and they panned around the stadium. It was a ‘blackout’ — everybody is wearing black — and PNC was going crazy. I think they gave the fire marshall the night off, because the place was overcapacity. Ron said, ‘This is what 20 years of frustration looks like.’ And he was exactly right.

“I got down to the ballpark in the afternoon, and I had never seen the North Shore buzzing with activity the way it was that day. It was incredible. People in costumes. People hanging out on the Clemente Bridge. People actually watched from the Clemente Bridge. That’s the first time I ever saw that. They were hanging on the bridge, just looking for a glimpse of the ballpark, to see the game.

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The Divide Between the Best and Worst Is Growing

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July 26, 2018

There’s room for debate over whether the present mix of super teams and tanking teams is good for baseball.

On the one hand, the Astros-Dodgers World Series last fall — as well as many of the matchups that preceded it — made for compelling theatre. The Astros featured one of the best offenses in MLB history. The Indians’ rotation was the definitely the best by some measures. There’s something to be said for appreciating rare performances in real time. And the field of elite clubs likely to participate in this coming October’s postseason — especially in the American League — promises more of the same.

Meanwhile, teams at the other end of the spectrum are operating rationally. Clubs are best positioned to win by acquiring premium long-term, cost-controlled assets. The best way to do that is by loading up on early draft picks and bonus-pool dollars. Even with the addition of the second Wild Card, few clubs seem interested in sustaining mediocrity.

Still, there can be consequences if too many teams are simply not competitive and the best teams are dominant.

Fans might be responding at the gate already. Earlier this year, two million fans were missing. Now, through July 23rd, 2.55 million fans are missing.

While a frigid April had something to do with attendance woes, gate receipts are still down nearly two million fans, or roughly 5%, from last April 15 through July 23 compared to the same period last season.

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The Rays Played a Pitcher at Third Base

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July 26, 2018

Wednesday was a busy day for the Rays front office. First, they traded starter Nathan Eovaldi to the rival Red Sox. Then, they traded versatile righty Matt Andriese to the Diamondbacks. As I write this, Wednesday still has another few hours to go, so it’s possible they have even more in store, something you’ll have heard about by the time this post is published. Though the Rays are still incredibly north of .500, they’re not really in the hunt, so they’re shifting their priorities to the future. The nearer-term future, but the future nevertheless.

In the middle of the Rays’ busy Wednesday, there was a baseball game. It was a baseball game Eovaldi was scheduled to start. Based on that fact alone, the game was out of the ordinary, but it got stranger still. The Rays, of course, are the team that brought you the opener. They’re the team that used a catcher to protect a late lead. They’re the team that played a pitcher at first base. And now they’re also the team that played a pitcher at third base. These weren’t emergency circumstances the Rays were playing under. It was the same strategy as it was before, with Jose Alvarado. This time, it was Sergio Romo’s turn to head to a corner.

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Effectively Wild Episode 1248: Hustle and Slow

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July 26, 2018

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Zach Britton and Nathan Eovaldi trades, the Yankees’ unbelievable bullpen, the Rays’ most recent Sergio Romo experiment, and the Gary Sanchez hustle/groin-strain saga, follow up on athletes dominating lesser competition and Noah Syndergaard’s latest affliction, then answer emails about Odubel Herrera, Rhys Hoskins, how a bad fielder affects a better fielder’s positioning, and the future of specialty coaches. Lastly, they bring on comedian Jim Jefferies (57:06) to discuss the down-and-up Dodgers, being a celebrity fan, the sport’s pace of play, how he learned to love baseball after moving to the U.S., baseball vs. cricket, the use of stats in baseball and cricket, steroids, Mike Trout vs. Bryce Harper, and more.

Audio intro: Gord Downie, "The East Wind"
Audio interstitial: The White Stripes, "Jimmy the Exploder"
Audio outro: Lou Reed, "Oh, Jim"

Link to Ben’s article about Cano’s hustle
Link to community manager ratings

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The Rockies Take on Final Boss

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July 25, 2018

The first of what will likely be several Blue Jays players to depart Toronto before the deadline has been traded this evening: right-handed reliever Seung Hwan Oh is headed off to Planet Coors. While the majority of the Blue Jays’ most likely trade candidates — Josh Donaldson, for example, and basically all the starting pitchers — have generally been disappointing this year, Oh was one of the legitimate success stories for Toronto in 2018. Coming off a 4.10 ERA/4.44 FIP campaign in St. Louis, a significant decline from the 1.92 ERA he put during his first season in the United States, Oh signed with the Blue Jays for just one year and $2 million this offseason — with a $2.5 million club option for 2019 after his contract agreement with the Rangers fell through. Oh needs his slider working to have sustained success and, by and large, it’s worked this year.

Burned by bullpens that ranked among the bottom-third of baseball each year from 2014 to -16, the Rockies have spent on relievers recently, an effort which led to the seventh-best reliever WAR among clubs in 2017. The team doubled down last winter, spending $106 million to bring back Jake McGee while adding Wade Davis and Bryan Shaw to replace Greg Holland. These moves worked out less well, to be generous: McGee and Shaw have combined for an ERA well past six, while Wade Davis is in the midst of an unremarkable, though less disastrous, season as the closer. With Nolan Arenado creeping towards free agency, the team’s window to contend is now, so bringing in Oh, who can also help in 2019, is a good add, and one that didn’t require an obscene amount of money. Colorado has more problems, but they did address one of their pressing needs.

Of the players included in the return, first basemen Sean Bouchard and Chad Spanberger, the latter is interesting enough — and probably sufficiently low in the organization’s pecking-order — that I tried to acquire him for the Orioles in exchange for Adam Jones this morning. This is the preferable haul for the Rockies, though. Not likely being able to play outfield professionally — and certainly not in a large outfield like the one Coors possesses — Spanberger is probably limited to first or designated hitter. Simply put, with other first basemen in the system and no DH in most games, he didn’t have a great deal of utility for the Rockies. In Toronto, he’ll have more of an opportunity. The Sally League is a long way from the majors and McCormick Field in Asheville is the second-best home-run park in the league (behind Greensboro), but Spanberger’s shown enough raw power that he merits some attention. For a relief pitcher in whom you’ve only invested a couple of million dollars, that’s good enough.


Scouting the Rays’ Return for Matt Andriese

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July 25, 2018

The Rays traded RHP Matt Andriese to the Diamondbacks this afternoon for minor leaguers Michael Perez and Brian Shaffer.

Tampa Bay has targeted basically two kinds of player in trades over the past few years — specifically, big-league-ready types who either (a) could function as a starting pitcher or (b) feature contact skills and the capacity to play an up-the-middle defensive position. Perez, a catcher, fits the latter category and has made strides this year defensively, moving from a 50 to a 55 behind the plate, driven by his improvement metrically in the framing department. There isn’t much in the way of publicly available minor-league framing numbers, and there’s some variance even with the big leagues ones, but multiple front-office sources described Perez’s figures this year as “elite.” He’s a definite hit-over-power type offensively and is seen as a future backup with just mistake power, but sometimes these types can turn into low-end regulars for a few years. He will likely be a 40+ FV in the coming update to THE BOARD, adding to Tampa Bay’s embarrassment of minor-league depth that was already supplemented earlier today.

Perez was the headliner here. Shaffer, meanwhile, is more of a generic depth arm. He was a sixth-rounder in 2017 out of Maryland and would occasionally show fringey stuff (87-91 mph) and sometimes more than that (90-93 mph with above-average life). His 6-foot-5, 220-pound frame is durable and he throws strikes, so any kind of improvement in the stuff department would make him a solid bet to turn into a back-end starter. He’s been mostly 89-92, touching 94 mph, this year with a slider that’s fringey to average and a changeup that’s a little better but mostly average. In today’s game, this is somewhere in the range of a sixth starter, swing man, innings-eating middle reliever or up/down fill arm, as indicated by the fact that Shaffer is still pitching in Low-A at nearly 22 years old. Shaffer will likely be a 35 or 35+ FV.


The Pirates Are in This Thing

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July 25, 2018

Not to be too harsh to the Pirates, but the club hasn’t been all that relevant for much of the year. They started off the season pretty well and, at the end of April, their 17-12 record put them just half a game out of first place. With three other teams — teams considered more talented — all hovering around the same spot, it was safe to assume the Pirates would eventually get lost in the shuffle. On May 17, after winning eight of nine games, the Pirates were in first place with a 26-17 record and a 30% chance at making the playoffs. Then the expected fade occurred, and the team went 16-32 over the next 48 games. Their playoff hopes looked shot, as the graph below shows.

Now here is what the playoff odds look like after an 11-game winning streak, but before today’s loss.

Simply approaching a 20% chance of qualifying for the postseason might not seem particularly notable, but the National League is a jumbled mess right now. After the Dodgers and Cubs, there are nine teams with a reasonable shot at one of the three remaining playoff berths and none of the teams has odds greater than 60%, as the table below indicates.

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Rob Manfred, Mike Trout, and Knowing When You’re Winning

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July 25, 2018

Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. He has 25 homers (third in the league), a 20.7% walk rate (best), and has contributed nearly five runs on the bases (12th). He’s also made 100% of routine plays, 100% of likely plays, and 100% of even plays in center, good for a 3.4 UZR/150. He’s tied with Jose Ramirez for the league lead in WAR. Mike Trout is good at everything! You know this. I know this. All hail Mike Trout.

Commissioner Rob Manfred recently identified what he regards as a flaw, though:

Player marketing requires one thing for sure — the player. You cannot market a player passively. You can’t market anything passively. You need people to engage with those to whom you are trying to market in order to have effective marketing. We are very interested in having our players more engaged and having higher-profile players and helping our players develop their individual brand. But that involves the player being actively engaged.

Mike’s a great, great player and a really nice person, but he’s made certain decisions about what he wants to do and what he doesn’t want to do, and how he wants to spend his free time and how he doesn’t want to spend his free time. That’s up to him. If he wants to engage and be more active in that area, I think we could help him make his brand really, really big. But he has to make a decision that he’s prepared to engage in that area. It takes time and effort.

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