What do you get the team that seemingly has everything? The Washington Nationals have the best pitcher in the National League with Clayton Kershaw on the disabled list. They have two of the best position players in the National League right now in Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon. They have depth in the lineup with the fantastic Daniel Murphy and the rejuvenated Ryan Zimmerman. Their bullpen was terrible about a week ago, and that’s been seemingly solved with the addition of Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle. They already have a playoff spot nearly locked down, with an 11.5 game lead on a division full of sellers. So what do you get the team that’s already set for the playoffs in July? How about Justin Verlander?

We probably wouldn’t be talking about the Nationals adding a pitcher if Stephen Strasburg hadn’t left his last start after two innings. With Max Scherzer followed by Strasburg, then Gio Gonzalez and Tanner Roark, the Nationals have one of the better top-fours in baseball. Take away fifth starters, and only the Boston Red Sox have a higher projected WAR the rest of the way than the Nationals. That’s a really formidable playoff rotation, and it doesn’t really matter that Joe Ross is out for the year or one of the best teams in baseball is using Edwin Jackson as a starter because they will make the playoffs and the fifth starter doesn’t matter. However, it does matter if Strasburg can’t be counted on, and depending on the potential acquisition, even if he is back, a great third starter could help a lot in the playoffs and next season.

There might be some temptation on Washington’s part to go for a rental. With the team already set for the regular season, a rental’s value is limited to the postseason. How much in prospects and money is a pitcher worth for one game? Assuming the Nationals don’t catch the Dodgers–who are way out in front right now–and the Cubs take control in the NL Central, the Nationals will play the Cubs in the Division Series. The team would certainly like its chances with Scherzer against Jon Lester and Strasburg against Jose Quintana, but Gio Gonzalez and Tanner Roark and Scherzer on three days rest against Quintana, Jake Arrieta, and Kyle Hendricks isn’t quite as appetizing. Read the rest of this entry »

Denver, we have a problem.

Actually, it’s Denver’s baseball team that has a problem — and maybe problems, plural. The club has weaknesses at right field, catcher — MLB.com’s Thomas Harding reports that the Rockies have expressed interest in Jonathan Lucroy despite his framing decline — and maybe even first base. If the team wishes to maintain and perhaps enhance their postseason chances, they ought to consider addressing their problem areas.

While we always think about the Rockies as having run-prevention issues, it’s important to understand their performance in the context of their mile-high home environment. The club’s starters actually rank seventh in the NL in WAR and ninth in ERA- (93). Colorado also ranks fourth in relief WAR. So even though the Rockies’ pitching has slumped over the last month, they’ve still enjoyed an influx of talent to the rotation and have had success (well, at least before recent weeks) with a new philosophy that includes throwing breaking balls lower in the zone than every other team in baseball.

Are the Rockies looking for pitching? Perhaps, but only because every team is looking for pitching. Their roster has greater need elsewhere, though.

For example, the club ranks 25th in first-base production (0.6 WAR), where Ian Desmond was signed as a curious fit — and has been replacement level at first and left field this season. Mark Reynolds and his game of extremes have earned the recent lion’s share of playing time. He’s projected for a precisely league-average line (100 wRC+) over the course of the season. That doesn’t require immediate attention, perhaps, but isn’t ideal for first base.

Catcher is another position where the Rockies rank poorly, and where Tony Wolters‘ framing value has declined this season, but that is likely a tougher position to fill. Wolters was expected to be an asset behind the plate and end the Rockies’ long history of poor receiving, though Lucroy wouldn’t seem to help in that area.

But the most glaring production void among all contenders, to date, comes care of the Rockies’ right-field situation, where Carlos Gonzalez and company have produced a disastrous collective line.

If you weren’t concerned about CarGo already, you should be.

Whether the issue is an injury or a mysterious Andrew McCutchen-like extended slump or perhaps a premature and dramatic decline, CarGo’s power has vanished and his increased out-of-zone swing rate suggests a player who is searching and isn’t close to an answer.

Consider what we can find from new heat-map capabilities at FanGraphs.

Gonzalez’s slugging per swing this season:

Gonzalez’s slugging per swing last season:

One chart looks like one storm cell on a weather radar reading (this season), compared to a storm front in 2016.

We’re getting close to August, which means we are approaching Monday’s trade deadline. Gonzalez has a 50 wRC+. He’s had injury-plagued seasons before this — like in 2014 when he recorded a sub-100 wRC+ — but he’s never experiened a slump like this one.

It’s been the kind of season where CarGo’s best swing has resulted in a foul ball.

It’s probably not surprising, given their trouble in right field, that the Rockies were reportedly interested in J.D. Martinez.

That interest is perhaps indicative of the club’s level of concern with Gonzalez’s performance. And as Morosi notes, Martinez would have helped against the high volume of left-handed pitchers in the division. (And in hindsight, keeping Martinez away from the division- and Wild Card-rival Diamondbacks would have been helpful, particularly given the low cost.)

The Rockies could call upon Raimel Tapia again, who didn’t show much power but slashed .314/.369/.480 in limited plate appearances — and who, unlike Gonzalez, has produced above replacement-level value. Another internal option is David Dahl, who was activated off the 60-day DL last week and has just 60 minor league plate appearances this season.

There are still a number of possible trade short-term targets. Jose Bautista, Jay Bruce, Matt Joyce, Daniel Nava, and Steve Pearce are among the outfield options detailed at MLB Trade Rumors.

At 58-44, the Rockies have a firm grasp of the No. 2 Wild Card spot at the moment, and their +52 run differential suggests they are a quality group that isn’t outperforming their true talent level. But FanGraphs projections have the Rockies going 29-32 with a -17 run differential the rest of the way. FanGraphs playoff odds give the Rockies a 69.8% of reaching the postseason, and, interestingly, a 31.8% chance of reaching the division round of the playoffs. This is a Rockies team to bet upon.

To protect their position, hedge against continued dearth of production in right field, to strengthen a possible postseason roster, it could help to upgrade right and perhaps first base, with, say, fly-ball machine Yonder Alonso.

The Rockies are in a rare position. The market for position players seems to favor buyers by a lot. Their greatest needs are arguably position players. They can upgrade and hedge against continued disappointment. And given the fickle nature of pitching, particularly young pitchers on the steppe just east of the Rocky Mountains, the Rockies could do worse than try and upgrade the soft spots in the lineup. Martinez would have been an excellent fit at a low cost, but the good news for the club is there are other affordable options available.

Time is ticking toward non-waiver deadline, but there is still time for the Rockies to build upon their best team of the last decade.

Andrew Stevenson made his big league debut with the Washington Nationals on Sunday. His call-up came in a time of need — injuries and a bereavement leave had left the Nats short of outfielders — but the call-up wasn’t without merit. The 23-year-old former LSU Tiger had put himself back on the fast track after a slow start in Triple-A.

It was a dogged climb for the speedy 2015 second-round pick. Promoted to Syracuse on May 1 after hitting a heady .350 with Double-A Harrisburg, Stevenson found himself straddling the Mendoza Line six weeks later. Then he picked up the pace. From June 10 onward, he went 48 for 159 (.301), hitting safely in 30 of 40 games.

His modus operandi is slash and burn. Stevenson’s stroke is geared toward the gaps — he has just six home runs in 1,216 professional plate appearances — and he’s a running threat once he gets on. The native of Lafayette, Louisiana swiped 39 bags a year ago, and he was 9 for 10 in stolen base attempts after joining the Triple-A Chiefs.

His Double-A manager sees some raw power lurking in Stevenson’s lanky frame, but he largely concurs with the slash-and-burn label. Read the rest of this entry »

This is Matt Swartz’ sixth piece as part of his July residency at FanGraphs. A former contributor to FanGraphs and the Hardball Times — and current contributor to MLB Trade Rumors — Swartz also works as consultant to a Major League team. You can find him on Twitter here. Read the work of all our residents here.

Unlike findings about statistical persistency or the physics of batted balls, any discovery about Major League teams’ propensities to spend is based on something less than an inviolable law. As I showed in my previous article about the decline in OPP Premium, teams wising up to an inefficient spending pattern can adjust their behavior in a way that collectively eliminates it.

A related finding from my earlier work on cost per WAR is that players get paid very different amounts per WAR by position. I remained agnostic about whether this was evidence of irrational spending patterns, so much as a feature of competitiveness.

Because teams have become smarter about their free-agent contracts, I decided to review this pattern to see if any changes had occurred. To do so, I looked at positional cost per WAR figures from 2006 to -11 (which was pre-discovery) and then also 2012-16 (the post-discovery era), roughly lining up with my first public work on this topic.

Although there’s some evidence of teams spending on free agents based on outdated valuation methods, there’s also some notable evidence that competitiveness for different positions in free agency plays a role in spending on those positions. When evaluating the numbers, I isolated “defense-first” positions, which included catcher, second base, third base, and shortstop, from “offense-first” positions of first base, outfield, and designated hitter. The key feature of the “offense-first” positions is that many players can easily move between those positions and often do, so teams with a player under contract at the same position as a potential free agent could still safely bid on that player, knowing that one of the two could be shifted to another position. The high cost per WAR of center fielders contradicts the idea that teams were undervaluing players at important defensive positions, because center field certainly is a crucial spot on the diamond. But the inferior center fielder can easily move to left or right field if a team wants two of them under contract. The common thread in high cost per WAR positions is positional flexibility rather than defensive importance.

Pitchers can also be moved around as needed. A great ace can easily be moved to the No. 2 slot in a rotation if another great ace is available as a free agent. A solid closer can become a setup man. The price per WAR for pitchers is definitely higher than defense-first positions, for whom the market is often more likely to be limited.

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday’s non-waiver trade deadline is a mere five days away. As it nears, we’ll be treated to all the rumors and hypothetical proposals the internet is capable of providing. Many of them will be nonsensical. Some won’t. In every case, though, we’re likely to evaluate the likelihood of a prospective deal based on the same sort of variables considered by Dave Cameron in his annual Trade Value series — variables like projected WAR, salary, team control, etc.

But those aren’t the only factors at play when real people from real front offices attempt to work out a trade. There are other questions to ask. Which teams link up often and which teams avoid each other? What’s the role of familiarity in trade deals? Does it matter if the teams belong to the same division?

With the help of crack data and visualizations man Sean Dolinar, I went to work trying to answer some of these questions. Below are five statements supported by the historical data.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.

Most Highly Rated Game
Cincinnati at New York AL | 13:05 ET
Bailey (27.1 IP, 113 xFIP-) vs. Severino (120.2 IP, 72 xFIP-)
The author’s haphazardly constructed algorithm seems — as was the case yesterday, as well — to have selected a Reds-Yankees contest as the day’s most appealing. As was also the case yesterday, the involvement of the Yankees themselves is largely responsible for that. Few, if any clubs, are playing games of greater consequence right now. According to the coin-flip methodology — which seems to best reflect how the dumb human mind operates — the Yankees currently possess a 57% chance of qualifying for the postseason. So, nearly even.

The presence of scheduled starter Luis Severino is also of some consequence. Among qualified pitchers, he’s recorded the highest average fastball velocity, at 97.6 mph. He also appears among the league’s run-prevention leaders by basically every measure.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cincinnati Radio or New York AL TV.

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Episode 758
Managing editor Dave Cameron utilizes this edition of the program both to review and also preview the deals of 2017’s non-waiver trade deadline.

A reminder: FanGraphs’ Ad Free Membership exists. Click here to learn more about it and share some of your disposable income with FanGraphs.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 41 min play time.)

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