FanGraphs Baseball

The middle class is embattled in America. Wages have stagnated. As a result, the percentage of people residing in the middle tier of income has declined over the past 40 years.

Baseball isn’t exempt from this problem. While even those players receiving just the minimum salary wouldn’t be classified as “middle earners,” context matters in this case. And in the context of baseball’s wages, the middle class is shrinking, too.

There are common obstacles facing baseball’s player pool and workers at large: a willingness among owners to pay a premium for top talent but an effort to replace other areas of the labor force with cheaper alternatives. Efficiency is king.

The ice-cold stove at the beginning of the present offseason, this period of little activity, is perhaps related and of interest.

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Position: Inside Edge Baseball Operations Intern

Location: Minneapolis
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When Travis Sawchick asked you which question was most important on Shohei Ohtani’s questionnaire, you answered overwhelmingly that the team capable of keeping him healthy — or of convincing Ohtani that they’d keep him healthy — would win out. Travis went on to use a metric, Roster Resource’s “Roster Effect” rating, to get a sense of which team that might be. The Brewers, Cubs, Pirates, and Tigers performed best by that measure.

Of course, that’s just one way of answering the question. Health is a tough thing to nail down. To figure out which team is capable of keeping Ohtani the healthiest, it’s worth considering the possible implications of health in baseball. Roster Effect, for example, considers the quality of the player and seems to be asking: which rosters were affected the most by poor health? That’s one way of approaching it. Let’s try a few others and see who comes out on top.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Chicago Cubs farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH (stats-only) statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

50 FV Prospects

Far too advanced for the AZL, Ademan made his U.S. debut in the Northwest League with Eugene. He hit .286/.365/.466 there, played great defense, and earned a promotion to the Midwest League for the final month of the season. He turned 19 a week and a half after South Bend finished their year.

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To be clear, there are two positions here.

Position: Sports Info Solutions Research & Development Internship

Location: Coplay, Pa.
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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter, as always, about Shohei Ohtani and Giancarlo Stanton, as well as the slow start to the offseason and baseball takeaways from news about basketball and football. Then they look for players who performed better in team losses, talk about two twins, and answer listener emails about the most valuable memo writer, robot bloggers, Stanton’s opt-out clause, two Ohtani hypotheticals, Mike Trout’s defensive position and spot in the batting order, Steve Matz’s future and starter-reliever conversions, Aaron Judge’s maximum contact rate, the best team superpower, and more, before wrapping up with a brief aside about Bitcoin.

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If there’s been one fairly easy prognostication this winter, it’s that the Red Sox are going to sign one of the expensive free agent hitters available in this class. Dave Dombrowski has historically not been shy about spending big to upgrade his roster, and has also shown a propensity for building rosters around power. The Red Sox ranked 27th in home runs last year. This is probably not something he wants to repeat.

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The other day, FanGraphs alum and MLB.com stalwart Mike Petriello looked at possible fits for Mike Moustakas. This author agrees with many of the potential landing spots.

Petriello boiled down the list to nine teams that could use Moustakas:

Giants
Pirates
Mets
Cardinals
Angels
Yankees
Royals
Phillies
Braves

Due either to payroll considerations (the Pirates) or their projected finish in 2018 (the Braves, Phillies, and Royals), a number of the clubs here might appear to be unlikely candidates to court Moustakas, although I argued on Monday that at least one of those teams ought to consider signing Moustakas.

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Peter Moylan is known for being from Australia as much as anything. That and the tattoos and the fun-loving personality. The fact that he’s a pretty decent relief pitcher tends to get lost in the shuffle. It shouldn’t. The 38-year-old side-winder has just four career saves, but he’s 24-9 with a 3.00 ERA since debuting with the Atlanta Braves in 2006. This past season, he made a league-leading 79 appearances with the Kansas City Royals.

Moylan originally came over in 1996 when the Minnesota Twins signed him at the age of 17. That didn’t pan out. After two tumultuous years of Rookie ball, Moylan found himself back in Australia working day jobs. Unable to cut the mustard as a pitching prospect, he became a laborer, a glass installer, a pharmaceutical salesman. Baseball became more or less a hobby.

He turned the hobby into a second chance. Moylan attracted the attention of Atlanta scouts while pitching in the 2006 World Baseball Classic and was inked to a make-good contract. He did just that. Despite a plethora of surgeries — back, elbow, shoulder — he’s still wearing a big-league uniform a decade later. Does that mean he’s a household name down under? Not so much.

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Moylan on making his mark in MLB: “Am I surprised I’m still playing? No, but I feel like I’m playing with house money. In everyone’s eyes, I was never going to be a guy who comes over here and goes very far. I was 27 when I was a rookie. I came out of the World Baseball Classic and it was more of ‘Let’s take a chance on this guy.’ The fact that I’ve turned that chance into an 11-year career… I’m really grateful.

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