Yesterday, the author of the current post published a lightly annotated version of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for the San Diego Padres. To no one’s surprise, likely, the forecast for the 2017 edition of the club isn’t wildly a promising one. After investing heavily in some expensive veterans during the first year of his tenure as the club’s general manager, A.J. Preller has taken a very different approach over the last calendar year, acquiring whatever young talent he could in exchange for the aforementioned veterans.

On the offensive side, some of that young talent is already materializing at the major-league level. Outfielders Travis Jankowski, Manuel Margot, and Hunter Renfroe, for example — who’ve recorded fewer than 600 plate appearances as a group — are projected to produce about two wins each next year. That’s encouraging both for the club’s present and future. On the pitching side, however, Szymborski’s computer was decidedly less optimistic: of the club’s likely starters, only one (Tyson Ross) was projected to produce more than a win.

Of course, the caveat attached to any team-based projections released at this time of year is that the complexion of said team’s roster can change dramatically. “This is bad,” one could reasonably say of the forecast for the Padres’ rotation, “but the team could still make some moves.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on 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.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ben, Sam, and BP’s Russell Carleton banter about Nolan Ryan as a reliever, the possibility of a strike in 2021, and how teams should use the money the new CBA prevents them from spending.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

While everyone else basks in the glow of continued labor peace and begins to explore the minutia of the latest pact between the league and its players, the Yankees remain committed to a PR campaign against the collective bargaining agreement and its (negative) influence on the team’s ability to compete. The latest critique comes courtesy New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman in a piece from George King III of the New York Post.

We’ll get to that in a moment. Before we do, though, we should acknowledge that, yes, the Yankees pay a substantial amount both in revenue sharing and luxury tax. Yankees president Randy Levine indicated that the former obligation was $90 million in 2015 — from a combination both of the standard 34% revenue sharing and also a performance factor, explained in greater depth here by Wendy Thurm. As a result of these obligations, the Yankees are giving more money back to small-market teams than any other club in baseball. Add in more than $300 million in luxury-tax/competitive-balance penalties over the last decade, and it’s pretty easy to see the Yankees’ grounds for dissent.

That’s not the real cause of the Yankees’ failure to dominate in recent seasons, however. Rather, poor spending and failed player development have been the team’s main issues.

But back to Cashman, for a moment. In his recent comments, he was unambiguous about the effect that the last few CBAs have had on his club.

“The CBA is going to affect us in the long term,” general manager Brian Cashman said Tuesday at Yankees scout Cesar Presbott’s Thanksgiving turkey giveaway in The Bronx. “It’s already crippled us in the short term. Exhibit A is our free agency last year and a lot of the international markets I’ve been taken out of.

“The previous CBAs have really hindered us, so I think the next one is something we’re clearly going to be interested in on how it will impact us over the entire course of the term of the contract. The previous ones have impacted us in a bad way.”

As noted above, the Yankees have been compelled to contribute quite a bit in revenue sharing, etc. — ultimately paying out probably more than a billion dollars directly to their competitors over the last decade. It’s not that simple, though.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier recaps: Episode 1 / Episode 2 / Episode 3 / Episode 4 / Episode 5 / Episode 6 / Episode 7 / Episode 8.

Welcome to our recap of the ninth episode of Pitch, entitled “Scratched”. As always, there are spoilers, so proceed with caution.

It’s the end of August, and these very well may be Mike Lawson’s (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) last days in San Diego. Mike has announced his desire to be traded to the Cubs, and the Padres are attempting to comply. (In earlier episode, someone mentions to Mike that he’s been placed on waivers. Presumably, he’s been claimed by Chicago or passed through waivers entirely.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you heard? The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2017 is now available for sale. You can check out the table of contents and read some excerpts from the book here. When you finish that you can purchase it Amazon in either print or Kindle form.
Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The collective bargaining agreement on which the players and owners have just tentatively come to terms didn’t move the needle too much in the grand scheme of things. The changes that occurred were more akin to trimming the branches on a bonsai tree than they were clear-cutting a forest. But one interesting alteration was the replacement of the 15-day disabled list with a 10-day variety. This be interesting in a few ways.

I have to say, my first thought was very much:

Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Diego Padres. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Chicago NL / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Were one to have followed major-league baseball with some vigor through the 2014 season but then entered a coma at the end of that season but then just exited that coma this morning, that would constitute an unsual series of events. It would also uniquely qualify the nearly awakened to comment on the relative inexperience of the Padres’ starting lineup, because basically none of that lineup’s constituent members had appeared in major-league baseball by the end of 2014.

Catcher Derek Norris (450 PA, 1.7 zWAR), who’s recorded fewer than 600 career games (or less than four full seasons’ worth), is the veteran of this club. Wil Myers (621, 3.4) and Yangervis Solarte (519, 2.5) are the only other two projected starters who’ve recorded more than 1,000 career plate appearances. The starting outfielders, meanwhile, have compiled 552 PAs as a group.

Which, a note about San Diego and its outfields. The reader might remember, in 2015, when the Padres fielded an Opening Day alignment (from left to right field) of Justin Upton, Wil Myers, and Matt Kemp, marking one of the worst defensive units in recent memory. The results were not positive. In any case, the current iteration of the Padres outfield represents a great departure from that. Travis Jankowski (404, 1.6) and Manuel Margot (581, 2.6) are projected for +7 and +9 fielding runs in center; Hunter Renfroe (586, 1.5), meanwhile, is forecast to save +6 runs in right.

Read the rest of this entry »