It’s been a veritable desert for baseball transactions this offseason, and there may not be an oasis on the horizon, as teams dance on the line between spending efficiency and collusion. But we’re starting to get metaphorical trickles of water here and there. One came over the weekend, as catcher Welington Castillo agreed to sign with the White Sox.
After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Colorado Rockies. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Batters
The Rockies produced the third-highest run total in the majors this past season but also the fourth-lowest adjusted offensive runs mark. The most notable difference between those two metrics, of course, is that the latter accounts for park. Despite the club’s strong raw numbers, only three of Colorado’s regulars (Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, and Mark Reynolds) produced above-average batting lines. Only two (Arenado and Blackmon) recorded two or more wins.
At the moment, the prognosis for the 2018 season — among the team’s position players, at least — isn’t much better. Arenado (667 PA, 5.2 zWAR) and Blackmon (672, 3.8) continue to profile as durable, star-level talents. DJ LeMahieu (653, 2.1), meanwhile, offers average play. Beyond that triumvirate, however, no other hitter is forecast by Szymborski’s computer to exceed the two-win mark.
The club would appear to benefit from help most immediately in the corner outfield, at first base, and at catcher. With regard to the first two positions, what the club lacks in reliable quality, it possesses in possibly useful quantity, including David Dahl (473, 1.5), who was expected to be last year’s Opening Day left fielder before losing much of the season to injury.
Location: Detroit
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For the most part, as far as available players care, teams are separated from one another by money, and by available playing time. Available players tend to chase the most money, and/or the opportunities that will allow them to most often see the field. This is part of what’s made the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes so perplexing. Every team in baseball could give him playing time, and he’s given no indication that he cares about money. I mean, he can’t not care about money at all, but it doesn’t seem to be a motivating factor. He’s a baseball player. A great one! If he’s good enough, there’ll be plenty of money there in the end.
So it’s been unclear what, exactly, Ohtani wants. I don’t just mean for us, in public. Even within the industry — the very industry Ohtani’s attempting to join — some people have had to throw up their hands. The entire process has been so shrouded in mystery. Even when Ohtani’s representation recently sent out that questionnaire, teams didn’t know quite how to fill it out. Teams haven’t known how Ohtani is leaning. Teams haven’t known how best to make their cases.
At last, this is all gaining some clarity. As of Sunday, we all know more than we used to. Ohtani’s final decision will necessarily be made within just the next few weeks. And it would appear he’d like to play out west.
The Detroit Tigers are shedding veteran contracts and restocking what had become a depleted farm system. That’s good news for the team’s future. It’s bad news for their fans in terms of watching winning baseball. As with any rebuild, near-term pennant contention isn’t part of the plan.
Al Avila is approaching the situation with a stiff upper lip. As unpleasant of a task as it might be — no one likes to lose — Detroit’s GM accepts the fact that in order to get better, his team first has to get worse. That’s why he traded J.D. Martinez, Justin Verlander, Justin Upton, Justin Wilson, and even his own son. And he’s not done dealing.
During the General Managers’ Meetings in Orlando, Avila praised both the prospects he’s been acquiring and the young talent that has already begun contributing at the big league level. He then went on to suggest the latter group might not want to invest too heavily in Detroit-area real estate. Read the rest of this entry »
Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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The Giants are trying to trade for Giancarlo Stanton. To that end, Bobby Evans, Brian Sabean, and Bruce Bochy met with Stanton and his representatives in Los Angeles last night, the Marlins apparently willing to let some suitors make a pitch directly to Stanton, who possesses a no-trade clause. According to multiple reports, the Giants are willing to absorb either most or all of his remaining contract in order to compensate for the lack of high-end talent they have to offer, hoping to appeal to the Marlins’ desire to move as much money as possible rather than focus on talent brought back in return.
The reason the Giants are going all out for Stanton is pretty clear and is summed up in tweets like these:
Giancarlo Stanton in the 2nd half: 33 HR
Giants OFs (all of them) in 2nd half: 19 HR— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) December 1, 2017
Giancarlo Stanton fits anywhere, but he'd fix Giants' biggest problem. HR rate has jumped for everyone but Giants in recent years. pic.twitter.com/cceuCADOdd
— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) November 30, 2017
The 2017 Giants were one of recent history’s weakest teams, in terms of power, once you adjust for the home-run spike that helped everyone else in baseball party like it was 1999. They hit just 123 homers as a team, 27 fewer than the next lowest total (recorded by the Pirates) and 98 fewer than the Dodgers, who won NL West. Thus, every rumor about Stanton and the Giants points out how much they need him, because he would fix the thing at which they were worst last year.
Free agency, as we know it — as major-league players know it — is under duress.
The current post is related to one I published yesterday on stresses facing the middle-tier player in free agency. But the issue is really larger and more fundamental in scope than that. A comment from an anonymous major-league GM — which appeared in a piece by Yahoo’s Jeff Passan — struck me:
Added a GM: “Teams are smarter. They know how terrible free agency is.”
Those are fighting words: “They know how terrible free agency is.” The union was built on free agency. Even a decade ago, free agency was seen by players as a panacea. Well over a billion dollars will be spent on free agents this winter.
At FanGraphs, we often write about and examine moves from the club’s perspective. When analyzing free-agent signings, trades, etc., we often praise or criticize those decisions from a team-based perspective because we ultimately are concerned with wins and losses, with the process of roster construction. We praise efficiency. We don’t write as often from the players’ perspective. Efficient spending, however, is not a friend of the player.
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: Hello friends
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: Welcome to Friday baseball chat
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: We either have very much or very little to discuss. I don’t know
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: Are the Phillies in a position to make a couple small-medium adds and be a wildcard contender?
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: I don’t think so, not yet. I see how the core could be forming, but they’d need huge seasons from, say, Hoskins, Crawford, and Altherr or something. And they’d need more than just Nola in the rotation
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| 9:05 |
: I think that 80 wins would be a greatly successful season. Sights set on 2019
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Going into the 2017 season, the Washington Nationals would have been right to view their outfield as a strength. With Bryce Harper already present in right, the front office traded a pair of highly prized pitching prospects to add Adam Eaton, as well. The acquisition had the benefit of sending Trea Turner to his natural shortstop position, filling another of the Nationals’ holes. Jayson Werth could still be counted on as the weak side of a platoon, and there were bench bats who could otherwise fill in.
Not many people were talking about Michael Taylor at that point — and rightfully so. He’d dealt with a demotion to Triple-A the year prior in order to iron out his swing, and he was increasingly looking like a prospect who’d failed to live up to expectations. Mark Zuckerman of MASN Sports speculated that he was “at best looking at a spot on the bench” alongside Chris Heisey and Adam Lind.
Things changed quickly on April 30th. General manager Mike Rizzo announced that Adam Eaton would be out for the year after stepping awkwardly on first base while legging out an infield single. Suddenly, the Nationals would be leaning much more heavily on Michael Taylor. He responded very well, putting up three-plus wins over the course of the season, with above-average offense and defense in center field. His emergence not only helped push the Nationals to a playoff spot, but now gives them valuable flexibility heading into 2018.
