Should pitchers throw their “best pitch” a higher percentage of the time? I asked that question a number of times this past season, but with a qualifier. Fastballs — most everyone’s primary offering — weren’t the focal point. Secondary pitches were. Think Lance McCullers’ curveball (which he threw roughly 50% of the time this year). Andrew Miller’s slider (61%). Deolis Guerra’s changeup (45%). Zach Putnam’s splitter (68%). Would it behoove more hurlers to up their usage in a similar fashion?

White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper is one of the people with whom I broached the subject. Our conversation came in mid-summer, at Fenway Park, one day after Putnam threw 15 splitters in a 20-pitch relief outing.

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Cooper on Zach Putnam: “He’s coming in for one, maybe two innings. We want him to command his fastball. But his fastball is not the reason he’s in the big leagues. His split is. If we’re going to win or lose a game, it’s going to be on the split more often than not. He uses the fastball to locate, and get them off splits. He uses it to protect the split.

“He’s on the DL right now, because he’s had some difficulty recovering, but listen, we’re not bringing him in to throw fastballs. If that’s what we wanted, we’d leave the starter in, because I guarantee you that whatever starter we have in has a better fastball. We’re bringing him in because his best pitch is the split. He’s been striking out a guy an inning, and he hasn’t been doing it with fastballs.

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The pitcher with the highest fastball spin rate in baseball in 2016 was also the first free agent signed this offseason. Maybe that’s just coincidence — Andrew Bailey was re-signed by the Angels to a modest one-year, $1 million deal with incentives, so it’s not like it required a ton of courting — but there are plenty of front offices who’ve designated at least one analyst to comb through the free-agent wires to find a pitcher with good spin rates. Let’s play along.

Of course, we can only play along so much: the major-league front offices have minor-league spin rates easily accessible in their databases, so they don’t have to go looking far and wide for data. Also, spin rates alone don’t tell the whole story, especially when it comes to changeups and sliders. However, we know this: given equal velocities, the fastball with the higher spin rate is superior fastball — and that looks to be true for curveballs, too. (Check the curveball tab of that linked spreadsheet, courtesy Jeff Zimmerman).

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The results are in. Terry Francona is your American League Manager of the Year. Congratulations to him! He’s probably an excellent manager. I actually had a vote for the AL version of the award, and, well, I probably screwed it up. One part of the screw up was on me, and I’ll eat my crow. But here’s my excuse: I didn’t have the most important part of the year at my disposal when I made my vote.

I voted for John Farrell, Buck Showalter, and Terry Francona in that order. I think all three are excellent managers, and so I relied on the numbers I produced to try and help me make the decision.

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Episode 699
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio, he discusses new Blue Jays designated hitter Kendrys Morales and the impact, in actual runs and wins, of poor footspeed; examines the calculus performed by clubs when deciding whether to extend a qualifying offer (and of players when deciding to accept or reject one); and relives some of the least expected MVP-type seasons in recent years.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

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 39 min play time.)

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The season’s most lopsided game was a Clayton Kershaw start. That shouldn’t surprise you — the Dodgers were good, and Clayton Kershaw was great, and the Dodgers with Clayton Kershaw were fantastic. As a matter of fact, five of the season’s 10 most lopsided games were Clayton Kershaw starts. His opponents in those games: Bud Norris, Jered Weaver, Brandon Finnegan, Chad Bettis, and Tom Koehler. Four of those games, the Dodgers won. They lost the Kershaw/Koehler game. It was nearly the season’s biggest upset.

For every game all year long, we publish pregame win probabilities. At first, they’re based on general team projections, and the starting pitchers. Then they update to account for the actual starting lineups. Every calculation includes a home-field-advantage boost of four percentage points. This year, there were 58 games in which the favorite was given at least a 70% chance of winning. Our math predicted 42 wins. In reality, there were 43 wins. The odds work pretty well, provided you don’t take them too seriously. They’re wonderful estimates.

On April 26, Koehler and the Marlins went into Los Angeles and beat Kershaw and the Dodgers. Before the game, the Dodgers’ chances of winning were 74.3%. On July 22, Zach Eflin and the Phillies went into Pittsburgh and beat Gerrit Cole and the Pirates. Before the game, the Pirates’ chances of winning were 74.4%. There is no meaningful difference between these numbers. The calculation error is far greater than one-tenth of one percentage point. But, a difference is a difference. A leader is a leader. I have no choice but to designate that game on July 22 as the biggest upset of 2016.

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Every winter, hundreds of nondescript minor leaguers become minor-league free agents. Players are granted minor-league free agency when they’re omitted from a club’s 40-man roster and have also spent at least six years in the minor leagues. In other words, they’re players who weren’t good enough to merit a call-up after several years in the minors, and their organizations suspect they lack the potential to be worthy of a 40-man spot.

Some of these players latch on with new organizations; some of them don’t. But regardless, the overwhelming majority never have much big league success. A couple of years ago, Carson Cistulli found that only about 1% of minor-league free agents produce at least 0.5 WAR the following season. Minor-league free agents are the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to player transactions. But there’s an occasional gem at the bottom of that barrel. It’s not unheard of, at all, for a minor-league free agent to make a major-league impact. Here, in no particular order, are some notable examples from the past few years: Gregor Blanco, Jesus Guzman, Donovan Solano, Yangervis Solarte, Jake Smolinski, Jose Quintana and Al Alburquerque. Each left his original organization via minor-league free agency, but achieved some level of big-league success with his new team.

Using my KATOH projection system, I identified the pitchers from this year’s minor-league free-agent class who showed glimmers of promise in the minors. Based on their minor-league numbers, there’s reason to believe they might be able to help at the big-league level sometime soon. This analysis only considers pitchers who faced at least 200 minor-league batters in 2016. For reference, here’s a similar article I wrote last year, and a post from yesterday looking at minor-league free-agent hitters.

*****

1) Jacob Turner, RHP, 2.8 WAR

Turner was the ninth-overall pick back in 2009, and broke in with the Tigers as a 20-year-old in 2011. Six years and three new organizations later, his career is at a crossroads. Turner hasn’t had much success getting big-league hitters out, as evidenced by his 323 big-league innings of 5.00 ERA ball. It’s been a struggle for Turner, but he’s still just 25 and is coming off of a solid showing in Triple-A last year. Despite an unsightly ERA, the 6-foot-4 righty posted a 3.69 FIP at the highest level of the minors with the White Sox. The book isn’t closed on his career yet.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll start by telling you that I was raised as a fan of the most Evil of Empires. Yes, I confess to the assembled jury of my readers and the court of the comments, that the Yankees earned my allegiance from an early age, and that I can still be found every now and then in the stands at The House that George Built. I am everything you perceive to be wrong with baseball from an emotional level, and I hold my head up high as I ride my AT-AT walker towards Echo Base to destroy your shield generator.

Here’s the thing. Michael Fulmer was really good in his first run at the league. Like, really good. Rookie of the Year good, as we found out last night. He came up as a 23-year-old and worked a 3.06 ERA in the American League over the course of 159 innings, and his underlying metrics are decently fond of him. Here’s to you, Mr. Fulmer. You shoved. You earned it. But damn if Gary Sanchez wasn’t really good too.

If you read this site, you’re almost certainly familiar with what Sanchez did in his two-month-long methodical demolition of baseball. In case you aren’t, here’s the CliffsNotes version. Sanchez had 229 plate appearances in 2016. Four of them came in May, in a game for which he was called up for the sole purpose of DH’ing against Chris Sale. It didn’t go well. Back to the minors he went, until he re-emerged in August. That’s where the fun started. When all was said and done, Sanchez had hit .299/.376/.657 (!) and tied Wally Berger for the distinction of fastest ever to 20 home runs. Oh, and he played good defense behind the plate. And showed off a howitzer of an arm while throwing out over 40% of would-be stealers.

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Yesterday, we looked at the five players I think have the best chance to outperform their expected contracts among this class of free agents. Today, we’re going the other direction, looking at the five players I think represent the biggest chances to be regrettable contracts.

Last year, this was an easier task. With a pretty deep free agent class, it wasn’t that hard to find five guys who looked like overpay candidates, and so I tagged Dexter Fowler, Yovani Gallardo, Justin Upton, Jordan Zimmermann, and Chris Davis as the five guys to avoid. Fowler, of course, was also treated as something of a landmine by the league, and ended up being one of the best bargains of the off-season after re-signing with the Cubs for one year. The other four, though, lived up to landmine status, combining for a grand total of about +6 WAR despite making about $75 million between them.

This year, finding five guys to fit here was tougher. The diminished free agent class means there are just fewer guys who are going to command big deals, and fewer guys getting big contracts means there are fewer guys who will sign albatross deals. So, while we’re still naming five guys to avoid, the magnitude of the problem if a team signs one of these players will likely be a lot smaller; we’re mostly talking overpays of $10 or $20 million or something, not $50 million like some of the guys last year. These guys are probably inefficient signings, but not franchise-killing disasters.

With that said, let’s get to the guys I’d suggest avoiding this winter.

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While Yoenis Cespedes appears headed for the biggest free-agent contract this winter, he doesn’t enter the offseason with the distinction of having recorded the best 2016 campaign of all the market’s remaining free agents. That would be Justin Turner, actually, with a 5.6 WAR. In terms of probable outcomes for next season, Turner has Cespedes beat there, too, with a 3.6 projected WAR for next year (to Cespedes’ 3.0).

So Turner, despite having produced the better 2016 season and despite possessing the better 2017 projection, is likely to receive less money than Cespedes. Turner’s a year older, which might account for some of the difference, but age is also baked into the aforementioned projections. Ultimately, Turner could be a bargain. Even with bargains, though, there remains some risk.

Dave Cameron, in his annual Free Agent Bargains piece, makes the case for Turner:

Turner looks like this year’s Ben Zobrist; a good player who will get underpriced because he doesn’t feel as good as he actually is. At $70 or $80 million, Turner still isn’t getting priced like a star; that’s Mike Leake money these days. And Turner is pretty clearly better than a pitch-to-contact starting pitcher. So for a team that wants an impact player at a price that doesn’t reflect the kind of value they’re likely to get, Turner is probably the best bet on the market.

The evidence backs Cameron’s assertion. The crowd pegged Turner for a $70 million contract over four years, while Cameron went a bit higher at $80 million. Using Turner’s 3.6 projection for next season, a value of $8.5 million per WAR and the standard aging curve, we arrive the following projected values.

With those figures, Turner is likely to be a major bargain. But beginning with Turner’s 2017 projection is only one means to estimate his future production. We can also use some comps.

Turner has had an unusual run to his current role as “prime free agent,” going from replacement-level player through age 28 to one of the better players in baseball over the past three years. He’s not the first player to make this type of transition, but his unusual trajectory makes it difficult to find historical precedent.

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