2018 Trade Value: #1 to #10

Jose Ramirez has considerable value even without his bat.
(Photo: Keith Allison)

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week of the All-Star Game — while (some of) the industry pauses for a metaphorical breather — to take stock of the top-50 trade assets in the sport. For more context on exactly what we’re trying to do here, see the honorable-mentions post linked at the top of the page.

For this post and the others in this series, I’ve presented a graphic (by way of the wizard Sean Dolinar) breaking down each player’s objective skill level (represented, in this case, by a five-year WAR projection from ZiPS), contract/team-control details, rank in last year’s series, and then year-by-year details of age/WAR/contract through 2023, although a couple players have control beyond those five years. For those readers who are partial to spreadsheets rather than blocks of text, I’ve also included all the players we’ve ranked so far are in grid format at the bottom of the post.

The ZiPS WAR forecasts did influence the rankings a bit: for players who were bunched together, it acted as an impartial tiebreaker of sorts, but the industry opinions I solicited drove the rankings.

With that said, let’s get to the top 10 spots on the Trade Value list this year.

Five-Year WAR +26.3
Guaranteed Dollars
Team Control Through 2022
Previous Rank #35
Year Age Projected WAR Contract Status
2019 25 +5.3 Arb1
2020 26 +5.5 Arb2
2021 27 +5.5 Arb3
2022 28 +5.0 Arb4
Arb

Severino bests Kluber for the top spot amongst pitchers on this year’s list. He is eight years younger than Kluber with an additional year of control and has been at least as good as the Cleveland right-hander this season, depending on how you measure it. Predictably, though, execs are concerned — as they are with basically any pitcher — that Severino’s next pitch could lead to a year-long DL stint and uncertainty after that. As a 24-year-old who averages 97.7 mph on his fastball, Severino is still a bit of a risky bet compared to comparable hitters. There’s a tier here from Nos. 7 to 13 that you could shuffle in a few different orders depending on your personal preferences or evals of these players.

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Job Posting: Cincinnati Reds Baseball Operations

Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Data Scientist

Reports to: Manager of Baseball Analytics

Description: The Data Scientist will work with the Manager of Baseball Analytics to implement the department’s research and development efforts within new and existing applications. The Reds envision the person in this position to play a major role in the creation of new baseball analytics concepts with the ultimate goal of enhancing on-field performance.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Design, develop, test, implement and maintain predictive models and metrics utilizing appropriate tools and techniques.
  • Work with the Reds Baseball Analytics and Systems staff to integrate new statistical analyses, models and data visualizations into existing and new applications.
  • Keep up to date on new predictive modeling techniques and evaluate their potential for application to baseball data sets.
  • Collaborate with Major League Operations, Player Development and Sports Science departments to design and implement statistical analyses.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

  • 3+ years of experience in computational field, such as Statistics, Biostatistics, Data Science, Mathematics, Engineering, Quantitative Social Sciences or Analytics.
  • Strong knowledge of statistical analysis and predictive modeling.
  • Demonstrated experience with statistical software (e.g. R, Python) and database querying (SQL).
  • Ability to communicate effectively with all aspects of Baseball Operations, Scouting and Player Development staffs.
  • Experience with Bayesian statistics. (Preferable, but not required)
  • Understanding of typical baseball data structures.
  • Knowledge of current baseball research, traditional baseball statistics and strategy.

Work Environment:

  • Remote working accommodations are available.
  • Work is normally performed in a typical interior/office work environment.
  • Hours may periodically include nights, weekends and holidays.

Expectations:

  • Adhere to Cincinnati Reds Organization Policies and Procedures.
  • Act as a role model within and outside the Cincinnati Reds Organization.
  • Performs duties as workload necessitates.
  • Demonstrate flexible and efficient time management and ability to prioritize workload.
  • Meet Department productivity standards.

To Apply:
To apply, please visit this site.

Position: Baseball Analytics Developer

Reports to: Manager of Baseball Analytics

Job Purpose: The Analytics Developer will develop and maintain software to assist with the dissemination of analytics information throughout Baseball Operations.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Design, develop, test, implement and maintain software solutions.
  • Work with the Reds Baseball Analytics and Systems staff to integrate new statistical analyses, models and data visualizations into applications.
  • Keep up to date on new software tools and evaluate their potential for internal use.
  • Work closely with Major League staff to convert requirements into usable applications.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

  • BS degree or equivalent experience in a computational science or technical field with 3 years of development experience.
  • Proficient in web development languages/standards including HTML5, JavaScript and CSS.
  • Demonstrated experience with databases and query development/optimization.
  • Knowledge of UI/UX on web and mobile platforms.
  • Ability to communicate with coaching and baseball operation staffs to understand their software needs.
  • Understanding of typical baseball data structures, knowledge of current baseball research and traditional baseball statistics and strategy.
  • Experience with statistical software in R or Python is a plus.
  • Ability to be a self-starter and manage ones workload to meet deadlines.
  • Demonstrated ability to quickly adapt to a variety of programming environments (frontend, backend, Windows, Linux) and identify the best tools and libraries for new tasks.

Work Environment:

  • Work is normally performed in a typical interior/office work environment.
  • Remote working accommodations are available for strong candidates.
  • Hours may include nights, weekends and holidays.

Expectations:

  • Adhere to Cincinnati Reds Organization Policies and Procedures.
  • Act as a role model within and outside the Cincinnati Reds Organization.
  • Performs duties as workload necessitates.
  • Demonstrate flexible and efficient time management and ability to prioritize workload.
  • Meet Department productivity standards.

To Apply:
To apply, please visit this site.

The Cincinnati Reds are an Equal Opportunity Employer. It is the policy of the Cincinnati Reds to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion or creed, sex, age, disability, citizenship status, marital status, genetic predisposition or carrier status, sexual orientation or any other characteristic protected by law.


How Well Do Good Relievers Hold Up?

Many of us went to bed thinking about the Dodgers’ trade for Manny Machado. Many of us then woke up and turned our attention to the Indians’ sudden trade for Brad Hand and Adam Cimber. Travis Sawchik just wrote about the trade at length. Read that, if you’re looking for specifics. Read that, if you’re looking for an explanation of why the Indians gave up a consensus highly-rated prospect. I don’t know what’s actually going to be left for the trade deadline itself, but this has all made for a delightful All-Star week.

From the Indians’ side, this isn’t just about 2018. It’s about 2018 and beyond, because, this coming fall, Andrew Miller and Cody Allen will become free agents. Hand is under contract through 2020, and there’s a club option for 2021. Cimber only just made his debut on March 29. The Indians are thinking both short- and longer-term, and they believe they now have a couple bullpen stalwarts. This is a huge boost for this coming October, but this also reduces the team’s urgency to build out the pen over the winter. The most important pieces might already be in place.

Thinking about the Indians’ side has made me wonder something. Is there actually such a thing as a long-term good reliever? My instinct for a while has been that teams out of the race should try to cash in their good relievers, because the position is just so volatile. I’ve been thinking about nearly every reliever as a short-term value. I wanted to see what the numbers actually say. So here are the results of a quick little study. It didn’t go exactly how I thought.

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Good Scouting Was Behind the Hand/Mejia Trade

The Indians traded blocked top prospect Francisco Mejia to the Padres for relievers Brad Hand and Adam Cimber today. It’s worth noting that the Dodgers, Indians, and Padres have all swung important deals within the past 24 hours and all have one thing in common: each has created depth by turning low-risk investments into real trade assets, via multiple avenues.

The Dodgers filled out the Machado deal with four prospects who weren’t touted until the last year or so. The Padres got Brad Hand on a waiver claim, while Cimber was completely off the radar until this year. The Indians, for their part, could afford to trade Mejia with Yan Gomes and Roberto Perez representing superior options behind the plate. These aren’t the only instances of these clubs turning nothing into something, but a couple instances ended up driving these big deals.

The Orioles have announced they will create better infrastructure to do this sort of thing more often going forward. There’s also been buzz in scouting circles today that at least one of the clubs that attempted to land Machado believes their package ultimately fell short because of substandard scouting and/or development.

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The Indians Did What They Had to Do

On the Tuesday prior to the All-Star break, at a game which this author observed from the Progressive Field press box, Trevor Bauer left his start after eight innings with the Indians holding a 4-0 lead. Then a call to the bullpen, complete with a miscommunication error, followed. Dan Otero faced Joey Votto. The Indians lost. It was not necessarily a great surprise: so often something has gone amiss for Cleveland this year after such calls to the bullpen.

As readers of this Web site are likely aware, the Indians’ bullpen has struggled mightily this season, sitting in the bottom quartile by many notable bullpen skill metrics.

The group ranks 28th in WAR (-0.9), 23rd in WPA (-1.07), 29th in ERA (5.28), and 29th in FIP (4.85). There has not been any positive regression, either. Over the past 30 days, the Cleveland relief corps has posted a 4.87 ERA, a 5.10 FIP, and a -0.15 WPA.

Bullpens are fickle beasts. The Indians’ 27th-ranked left-on-base percentage (68.7%) suggests some poor first-half fortune was bound for second-half positive regression. Oliver Perez and Neil Ramirez have been useful finds, with Ramirez perhaps building on his physical talents by learning more how to harness his high-spin fastball and breaking ball in concert. But the Indians had a clear manpower shortage in their bullpen, particularly with Andrew Miller still sidelined and out for much of the first half.

As the All-Star break approached, it felt like the Indians had to do something. Baseball knew the Indians had to do something, so if the Indians were to do something, it was not going to be done cheaply. And on Thursday, the Indians did something.

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2018 Trade Value: #11 to #20

Corey Kluber lurks menacingly… in the hearts of major-league batters!
(Photo: Erik Drost)

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week of the All-Star Game — while (some of) the industry pauses to take a metaphorical breather — to take stock of the top-50 trade assets in the sport. For more context on exactly what we’re trying to do here, see the honorable-mentions post linked at the top of the page.

For this post and the others in this series, I’ve presented a graphic (by way of the wizard Sean Dolinar) breaking down each player’s objective skill level (represented, in this case, by a five-year WAR projection from ZiPS), contract/team-control details, rank in last year’s series, and then year-by-year details of age/WAR/contract through 2023, although a couple players have control beyond those five years. For those readers who are partial to spreadsheets rather than blocks of text, I’ve also included all the players we’ve ranked so far are in grid format at the bottom of the post.

The ZiPS WAR forecasts did influence the rankings a bit: for players who were bunched together, it acted as an impartial tiebreaker of sorts, but the industry opinions I solicited drove the rankings.

With that said, let’s get to the next 10 spots on the Trade Value list this year.

Five-Year WAR +17.2
Guaranteed Dollars
Team Control Through 2024
Previous Rank
Year Age Projected WAR Contract Status
2019 22 +2.3 Pre-Arb
2020 23 +3.0 Pre-Arb
2021 24 +3.8 Arb1
2022 25 +4.0 Arb2
2023 26 +4.1 Arb3
Pre-Arb
Arb

Torres was our 12th-ranked prospect entering the year and, while that top tier has mostly stayed where they are (except for party-crashed Juan Soto), there’s been a shuffle of the name up top. Torres is one of the players to whom I refer in the introduction who wouldn’t have appeared on this list before the season began (although he would’ve been in the mix for an honorable mention) but whom it would be insane to exclude now. The difference? Just 63 big-league games. If Torres had no pedigree and was pulling some Shane Spencer or Bo Hart business, this wouldn’t be the case, as his age, pedigree, and track record have all suggested this sort of thing was on the table.

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Cleveland Acquires Brad Hand, Adam Cimber for Francisco Mejia

The Manny Machado trade will not be the only big deal to go down during the All-Star break. Cleveland, in desperate need of relief pitching with Cody Allen struggling and Andrew Miller hurt, have made quite the move to shore up their bullpen in one fell swoop. Jon Heyman was the first to report that Brad Hand would be heading from San Diego to Cleveland in the deal. Ken Rosenthal added that reliever Adam Cimber would also be on the move. As for the return, The Padres are set to receive catching prospect Francisco Mejia. The deal looks like this:

Cleveland receives:

San Diego receives:

The 28-year-old Hand is in the middle of another very good season. After totaling 3.2 WAR across nearly 170 innings the last two years, the lefty has put up an ERA and FIP right around three this season. He’s struck out 35% of batters and walked just 8% as the Padres closer. Hand signed a contract extension before the season started that will pay him a bit over $1 million the rest of this season and $13.5 million over the following two years, with a team option of $10 million for 2020 that can be bought out for one million dollars.

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After Acquiring Machado, Dodgers Need Relief

The Dodgers have shaken off their early-season blues and climbed from 10 games below .500 to 10 above in the space of two months. They just made a huge splash with their Manny Machado acquisition — you can read about their lineup upgrade, their improved odds and the prospects they surrendered — but that doesn’t mean that president of baseball operations Andrew Freidman and general manager Farhan Zaidi can lie back in their hammocks sipping daiquiris through the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline, as the team still has at least one other area of glaring need: the bullpen.

Before digging into their need to relieve their relievers, it’s worth considering the state of their rotation. The Dodgers have dealt with a variety of injuries thus far such that they have just one pitcher who’s made at least 18 starts — one who has spent the whole season in the rotation without interruption, basically — namely Alex Wood. Whether by accident or design, only four other teams can make that same claim: the upstart A’s (Sean Manaea), resourceful Rays (Blake Snell), and two also-rans, the Blue Jays (J.A. Happ) and Marlins (Jose Urena). The fading Angels, who have been working with a six-man rotation (more or less), have no starter who’s taken more than 17 turns.

From the Dodgers’ original starting five, Kenta Maeda (16 starts), Clayton Kershaw (13), Rich Hill (11), and Hyun-Jin Ryu (six) have all spent time on the disabled list, with Ryu still present there due to a groin strain so severe that you’d be excused for crossing your legs reflexively. Fill-ins Ross Stripling (14 starts) and Walker Buehler (10) began the year in the bullpen and the minors, respectively. Including call-ups Caleb Ferguson (three starts) and Brock Stewart as well as openers Daniel Hudson and Scott Alexander (one apiece), the team has used 11 starters, as many as the Marlins and more than all but the A’s, Angels, Mets (12 apiece), and Rays (14).

Despite the patchwork arrangement, the Dodgers have gotten very good work up front. Their starters’ 10.2 WAR is second in the NL and fourth in the majors, and by both ERA- (86) and FIP- (83), they’re first in the NL. The group has pounded the strike zone (19.8% K-BB, first in the league and second in the majors) while also keeping the ball on the ground (45.7% GB rate, tied for third in the NL and the majors) and in the ballpark (1.03 HR/9, third in the NL and fifth in the majors).

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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 7/19/18

12:02
Jay Jaffe: Howdy folks, and welcome to today’s chat. It’s been said in connection with Ted Williams’ final game that “Gods do not answer letters” — that’s John Updike, in his famous New Yorker piece — but somebody on high has brought us color footage of his final home run and highlights from his final game. Don’t miss this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/sports/ted-williams-film-last-game….

12:03
Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe: Brad Hand and Adam Cimber for Francisco Mejia. Discuss.

12:04
Jay Jaffe: I joked on Twitter that the entirety of my analysis beyond recalling that Mejia had a 50-game hitting streak two years ago was Jeff Spicoli saying, “Hola, Mr. Hand”

12:05
Jay Jaffe: That’s from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a staple of my teenage and early adult viewing, and a movie that you damn millennials (stands up from lawn chair and shakes cane) probably know nothing about. Well, rent it on your electric sousamaphones!

12:06
Jay Jaffe: Seriously, Mejia is a very nice get, and as a non-prospect guy I’ve never heard of Cimber. You’re probably better off asking Eric or Kiley about that and about how much catching Mejia will do going forward, though I’d bet the Padres will give him every chance to stick there.

12:06
Jkim: Shouldn’t the Dodgers look to trade someone like Toles & obviously Forsythe for bullpen help?

THey’d need to add a prospect to sweeten the deal obviously.

Idk how the trade will work out but I think Oh could be a good addition to their bullpen

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A Conversation with New Oriole Zach Pop

Zach Pop isn’t the biggest name going from the Dodgers to the Orioles in the Manny Machado trade. But he does have the most electric arm, as well as an impressive track record against A-ball competition. In 35 professional games, the 21-year-old Brampton, Ontario native has allowed just 27 hits — only one of them a home run — in 48.1 innings. His ERA is a minuscule 0.93.

A seventh-round pick last year out of the University of Kentucky, Pop profiles, at least stylistically, as a right-handed version of Zach Britton. His signature pitch is a sinker that not only dips and dives but also sits in the mid-90s and ticks even higher. The worm-killer certainly proved to be an anathema to Midwest and California League hitters this season. Pitching for the Great Lakes Loons and Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, Pop boasted a 64% ground-ball rate and a .168 batting-average-against before being promoted to Double-A earlier this week (and subsequently swapped to the Dodgers, who are reportedly assigning him to the Bowie BaySox).

Pop talked about his aggressive approach on the mound and his decision to not sign with his then-favorite team out of high school, prior to the trade from Los Angeles to Baltimore.

———

Pop on how he gets outs: “For me, it’s being able to throw that two-seam sinker — whatever you want to call it — to both sides of the plate, and mixing in the slider. I’ll go in with the four-seam, as well, to give a little bit of a different look, but everything starts off with the two-seamer sinker. That’s my strength. I like to stay down in the zone.

“I’m hunting outs any way I can get them. My goal is to induce weak contact, and if they want to swing at the first or second pitch and make an out before I can get a strikeout opportunity, than so be it. I haven’t really struck out that many guys this year with the Quakes, only around one per inning, maybe a little less. For the most part, I’m just trying to be efficient. I’m trying to break a barrel or just keep the ball on the ground.”

On his sinker and his delivery: “I do [have good velocity]. Yesterday, I hit 99 with my two-seamer. It used to be the case that I’d throw harder with my four-seam, but now it’s kind of equaled out. The only thing that’s really different is the movement. I get some pretty crazy numbers on my sinker. I think I have something like 20 inches of horizontal, and five inches of vertical, movement.

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