Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about baseball’s trampoline problem and the future of Andrelton Simmons, then discuss and critique the crowdsourced organizational rankings produced by FanGraphs readers.
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Episode 712
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. On this edition of the program, he finds some wisdom in Greg Holland’s decision to sign with Colorado, further examines the Dodgers’ strategy of signing talented but injury-prone starters, and uncovers more evidence to the effect that failure is inevitable.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 38 min play time.)
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A humorous anecdote from the Pirates’ offseason CARE-a-van tour to share with you by way of Stephen Nesbitt from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Recently, the Pirates’ top pitching prospect, Tyler Glasnow, heard something pretty funny. He was at a bowling event for Pirates Charities, and one fan piped up with this wisecrack, something about how it would be cool if Glasnow could throw strikes on the baseball field, too.
“Touche,” Glasnow said, laughing, as he retold [last month]. “It’s all right.”
Whether or not Glasnow is able to consistently repeat his delivery and throw strikes, challenging given his 6-foot-8 frame, is of great interest and importance to the Pirates.
It could determine whether he ultimately resides in a major-league rotation or bullpen. It will determine whether he is a successful major-league pitcher. After having been rated as a consensus top-50 prospect for three straight years since he burst on the scene with a plus-plus fastball at Low-A West Virginia in 2013, Glasnow experienced a rocky start to his major-league career last season. He walked 12% of batters faced – in line with his minor-league rate – and allowed quite a bit of solid contact during his small-sample debut of 23 innings.
Glasnow is of interest at the moment for two reasons. For starters, the Pirates’ ZiPS forecasts were published earlier this week and were optimistic about two players who have quite a bit of uncertainty in their 2017 forecasts: Andrew McCutchen and Glasnow. ZiPS calls for Glasnow to produce the second-most wins among Pittsburgh starting pitchers in 2017, more than Jameson Taillon and Ivan Nova, who are locks for the rotation, and Chad Kuhl, who probably has the inside track on another spot entering spring.
As MLB.com’s Adam Berry reported in the fall, Glasnow is not guaranteed a rotation spot.
“The ceiling is so high, but there’s clearly some work that remains,” general manager Neal Huntington said at the General Managers Meetings. “If he pitches the way he’s capable of, that’s a very exciting addition to the rotation. He’s absolutely in the mix.”
Glasnow is one of the great wild cards to watch this spring.
He must tighten up his command and address his issues with the running game. Base-stealers were successful 81% of the time against Glasnow in the minors and stole nine bases in nine attempts at the MLB level last season. If he gets those issues under control, then his history of missing bats could vault him near the top of the rotation. Indeed, ZiPS forecasts an elite 27% strikeout rate and 3.60 ERA. Glasnow struck out 22% percent of batters he faced in 23.1 innings last season.
Glasnow is also interesting because of a mechanical issue, which might help his development.
Here’s your chance to vote for the 2017 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award winners.
The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, The Hardball Times, and Beyond the Box Score.
To read any of the finalists, click on the link below. Scroll down to cast your vote.
Contemporary Baseball Analysis
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Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Monday, February 13, 2017. Details and criteria for each category can be found here. Only one work per author was considered as a finalist.
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Results will be announced and presented at the sixth annual SABR Analytics Conference, March 9-11, 2017, at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.
Money still matters in major-league baseball. Sure, the small-market, low-payroll Cleveland Indians just made the World Series. And, sure, the small-market, low-budget Kansas City Royals won the World Series the year before, after making it the previous season. And while, sure, the relationship between money and wins did seem to be going down for a time, the capacity to spend has consistently helped a team’s chances — and, last season, the relationship between wins and money was quite strong. This is a generally troubling trend for a team like Cleveland. Nevertheless, the club has done very well to capitalize on the free-agent market and put themselves in good shape for next season.
While it might not be fair to say that Edwin Encarnacion fell into the team’s lap, it would be appropriate to note that, at the beginning of November, the prospect of Cleveland being able to afford Encarnacion didn’t seem realistic. Right after the World Series, I mapped Cleveland’s path back to the playoffs and presumed more modest intentions:
Cleveland doesn’t need to sign a load of free agents to contend again next season, and the expiring contracts of Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher serve as a reminder of what can happen when a club gives out multi-year contracts to middling players. Many of the pieces are already in place, and a few minor additions should bolster a roster ready to compete. With the Detroit Tigers sending signals they want to rebuild, the Kansas City Royals’ run potentially closing, the Chicago White Sox mired in perpetual mediocrity, and the Minnesota Twins licking their wounds from a very tough 2016 season, the Central division will be Cleveland’s to lose — and it might not take as many wins to get to the playoffs next year.
I mentioned names like Carlos Gomez, Matt Holliday, Austin Jackson, Jon Jay, Adam Lind, and Mike Napoli as players Cleveland could add to good effect. Instead, Cleveland went out and signed perhaps the best free-agent hitter available and had to commit only three years to do it. While the recent signing of Austin Jackson won’t make waves, he provides more flexibility in an outfield that could be usefully mixed and matched to provide average production despite a handful of seemingly below-average players. Against a right-handed pitcher, Cleveland can send out lefties Michael Brantley, Tyler Naquin, and Lonnie Chisenhall, while against lefties, they can sub two of those three for Austin Jackson and Brandon Guyer, maximizing the platoon advantage.
I can understand why you would dream on the Rockies if you live in Denver or if you just want to see some new blood in the NL playoff field. Nolan Arenado is a MVP-caliber player. Trevor Story could settle in as a two- or three-win shortstop. Brendan Rodgers will soon arrive to help in the middle infield.
Carlos Gonzalez can still hit. Charlie Blackmon can, too, and there are other intriguing young outfield options ready to complement them. While signing Ian Desmond to play first base remains a curious decision, he could be a30-homer threat while offering positional versatility.
Tony Wolters has gone from middling shortstop prospect with the Indians to an above-average, pitch-framing catcher with the Rockies. As Jeff Sullivan noted Thursday, the Rockies could have their best framing team in history.
There are certainly questions about the fielding capabilities of the position-player group: the Rockies ranked 28th in baseball in defensive efficiency last season according to Baseball Prospectus, and have a spacious outfield to defend. But the Rockies could score enough runs — and save enough runs through framing — to be interesting.
Then, of course, there’s that whole element of pitching.
The Rockies own an MLB-worst ERA since coming into existence in 1993, a nice round 5.00 mark. The Rockies have often allowed the most runs of any team each season. It shouldn’t be a surprise, either, given how their first-ever home game ended.
Of course, Coors Field is an extreme offensive environment that inflates run production. But when adjusting for Coors Field and the league-average run environment, the Rockies’ pitching has still generally been below average. Since 2012, the Rockies’ league- and park-adjusted ERA- (103) is the second worst in the NL. Since the turn of the century, the Rockies’ ERA- (103) is tied for the fifth-worst mark in the NL. The Rockies have been league average or better according to ERA- just eight times in franchise history, including last season.
Rockies’ decision makers have tried all sorts of strategies over the years, from high-priced, proven starting pitching, to ground-ball specialists, to arms developed right in the system. Nothing has worked.
So, in an offseason in which the Rockies have done some unorthodox things, perhaps now is the time for the Rockies to be bold and unconventional with their pitching staff.
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We’ve been waiting for Jose Quintana to get traded for a while now. Chris Sale’s move to Boston signaled the start of a fire sale for the White Sox, and Adam Eaton soon followed him out the door. There were many rumors about a possible trade with the Astros, or perhaps a move to the Bronx. Yet Quintana still currently projects to be the man taking the ball on Opening Day for Chicago. There’s still a few weeks left before camp starts up, and it’s even possible he could move during spring training, as unlikely as it is.
At this rate, however, it looks more and more like Quintana will be moving sometime around the trade deadline. He’s going to be one of the best (if not the best) pitchers available, and he most certainly won’t come cheap. He’s been the seventh-best pitcher in baseball since the start of the 2013 season, and the White Sox are hungry for even more young talent. Anybody looking to acquire him, especially with a trade-deadline surcharge, should be prepared to pony up. The Astros certainly fit this description, but so does another team — a team that hasn’t been bandied about as a possible destination, but certainly has the need and means to trade for him. I’m talking about the St. Louis Cardinals.
The Cardinals are in great position to make a run this year. While the Cubs likely have the division sewn up, St. Louis subtracted Dexter Fowler from Chicago and added him to their squad. They’ve also added Brett Cecil to beef up their bullpen, and they’ll be rolling out most of that same strong lineup. The one suspect area is their rotation. Adam Wainwright isn’t getting any younger, and Michael Wacha’s streak of bumps and bruises isn’t inspiring. Lance Lynn will be coming back from elbow surgery. They’ve added some depth in John Gant, and still have Luke Weaver waiting in the wings as well, but it’s depth that could be chewed through relatively quickly. The Cards are going to want to do everything they can to secure a Wild Card spot, and beefing up their rotation is one of the best ways to do it. We project them for 84 wins, and a little luck could have them on a better trajectory than that come deadline time.
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 Texas Rangers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / Miami / Oakland / Pittsburgh / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.
Batters
The Texas Rangers added catcher Jonathan Lucroy (510 PA, 3.7 zWAR) at the trade deadline last year. A brief examination of the projections below reveals that Lucroy is forecast to produce more wins than any other Rangers field player in 2017. This would seem to be a harbinger of good things for Texas: a club that won its division by nine games just a year ago, and which has retained basically all its principal characters from the previous season, will now benefit from an even better principal character.
None of that is actually false. What that line of reasoning fails to acknowledge, however, is that the 2016 edition of the Texas Rangers was very likely the most fortunate club in the majors. On the one hand, they won 95 games. On the other, the salient indicators — in this case, represented by BaseRuns — suggest they played more like an 82-win club.
Unsurprisingly, the ZiPS projections here seem to call for something more like an average team than an elite one. Only three starting field players besides Lucroy receive a forecast for more than two wins. Three positions — first base, left field, and right field — are expected to contribute just a single win each.
In two months or so, we’ll roll out our 2017 positional power rankings. Between now and then, not a whole lot should change, so perhaps I shouldn’t go out of my way to issue spoilers. But, what the hell, here’s our current ranking of the catchers. The Giants are in first. Buster Posey is amazing! The Rockies are in last. Their catchers are also amazing, but less amazing relative to all the other amazing catchers in the majors.
Maybe this is a good way to sum it up: Tony Wolters is expected to get the bulk of the playing time behind the plate, and 11 months ago the Rockies grabbed him off waivers from the Indians. Wolters isn’t projected to hit much, because he’s never hit much, because he’s not much of a hitter.
What he is, though, is a defender. He emerged last year as one of the better pitch-framers in the league. And now the Rockies overall project to get quite good pitch-framing in the season ahead. This is the silver lining — perhaps the Rockies catchers won’t hit so much, but it looks like they could combine to provide the best receiving skills the Rockies have ever had.
