Now that all the possible arbitration cases have been settled and all the offseason’s major free agents signed (apologies to David Freese and Austin Jackson), teams can turn their respective attentions towards locking up young players to contract extensions that buy out potentially expensive free-agent seasons. Earlier this week, the Royals and Salvador Perez agreed to a deal, although that amounted more to the restructuring of a previous deal and less a typical extension. Rather, the first standard pre-arbitration extension of the spring comes from the St. Louis Cardinals, who could get a decent bargain in Kolten Wong despite the second baseman’s lack of huge upside.
Wong’s service-time situation made him an ideal candidate for a contract extension. Wong is one year away from arbitration, so he was looking at the Major League Baseball minimum salary (or something very close to it) this season, with three seasons of arbitration to follow before he could hit free agency. The contract with the Cardinals is for five years and $24.5 million, with a $12.5 million option with a $1 million dollar buyout for the sixth season, making the guarantee $25.5 million. The guarantee is fairly low and has the potential to buy out two seasons of free agency when Wong will be 29 and 30 years old, respectively. Wong has shown himself to be an average player in his two full seasons in the big leagues and continuing to be average will make this deal a worthwhile one for the Cardinals — although Wong has shown some potential for more.
Maybe you remember, but a couple of years ago, Bill James went on a rant about ground-ball pitchers. It started with a bang:
Make a list of the best pitchers in baseball. Make a list of the best pitchers in baseball, in any era, and what you will find is that 80% of them are not ground ball pitchers. They’re fly ball pitchers.
And it got louder. James felt that they got injured often, and flamed out. “They’re great for two years, and then they blow up,” he wrote. “Always.”
Earlier this week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Miami Marlins. In this companion piece, I look at that same Miami farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Marlins have the worst farm system in baseball according to KATOH. They’re even worse than the Angels. As you’ll see below, there isn’t much to get excited about in Miami’s system, especially from a statistical standpoint.
I decided not to write a post about it, but earlier I went into the spreadsheets to compare some of the fan projections for pitchers to some of the Steamer and ZiPS projections. The idea was basically to see if there are guys the fans are particularly high on or particularly low on, and as the former is concerned, the fans are higher on a bunch of relievers. Let me tell you, there are some real believers here in Mychal Givens. And that’s great! I love Givens, too. He’s really interesting, but he’s also a reliever, and I found myself scanning for starters. A name that quickly turned up is Tyler Duffey. Steamer and ZiPS see him good for a 4.37 ERA. The few fans who participated see him good for a 3.58 ERA. That was enough to grab my attention, and now we have an article.
Duffey, despite a strong 2015 debut, remains pretty anonymous. If it weren’t for the headline, I wonder how many of you would’ve known he pitches for the Twins. We’ve been conditioned to mostly ignore the various Twins starters, and for the most part that’s been a pretty sound policy, but Duffey has some unusual things about him. He was also all but guaranteed a rotation slot the other day by Paul Molitor. Consider this, then, a Tyler Duffey introduction, in case you’ve been in need of one. Twins fans know what’s up, but I’m guessing the others are almost all in the dark.
He’s a great hitter at Olympic Stadium. He’s a great hitter at Coors. He’s a great hitter at Busch. He’s a great hitter at any ballpark named after a beer.
Whereas the average hitter might create 120 runs per 162 games at Coors, Walker would create 190. That’s +60%.
Whereas the average hitter might create 85 runs per 162 games in every non-Coors park, Larry Walker would create 110. That’s +30%.
When you evaluate Larry Walker, you have two choices:
1. Neutralize Larry Walker by giving him 268 plate appearances in each of the home ballparks of the 30 MLB teams. His 2501 PA at Coors? Now we only count about 11% of that. His 32 PA in Oakland? We have to figure out how he’d have done if he got 268 PA. And so on.
2. Take a league average hitter, and put him in the same playing conditions as Larry Walker. Walker had 2501 PA at Coors? Great, let’s count it all. But let’s compare him to a league average hitter who also got to bat 2501 times at Coors. He came to bat 32 times in Oakland? Then the league average hitter also came to bat 32 times.
So, what are the strengths of these two options. In Option 1, we don’t allow Larry Walker to take “unfair” advantage of a park he might be ideally suited for. Whereas most hitter would increase their runs created by 40% at Coors relative to a non-Coors park, Larry Walker increased his by 70%. Given that he got 2501 PA at Coors, Walker ends up shining more than he would otherwise. It’s like letting Mariano Rivera come in 1- and 2-run games, while letting Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner only enter blowouts. They are all suited to close games, but if only Mo gets to leverage that, he’ll be the one getting all the saves. Is that fair? I dunno.
In Option 2, we deal with what actually happened. We don’t have to play a game of what-if. We simply accept what the player did, and that he was able to leverage (or not leverage) his unique playing conditions. All we do is make the comparison level all those thousands of players who also played in those exact same conditions, at the same frequency as our player. Walker@Coors is compared to average player at Coors, and Mo in high leverage situations is compared to the average reliever in high leverage situations, and so on. Everyone gets to keep what they did.
Any opportunity to talk about Coors Field is a good opportunity, and, hey, wouldn’t you know it, but the Rockies’ home ballpark is undergoing some alterations that’ll have an effect on the gameplay. I’ve only just heard about them, but they’re relatively uncomplicated, and they should be in place in time for the start of the regular season. Baseball’s best argument against the idea that high-scoring baseball is exciting baseball is about to feature some higher fences.
I’m kind of a dork about park effects, and that’s why I find Coors so fascinating in the first place. They’re always trying to figure out if it’s possible to play some sort of normal baseball at altitude, and now we can get into the latest thought, as provided by Nick Groke. The Rockies are working to reduce the number of cheap dingers. It won’t not work. That much we can already say.
Andy Green embraces shifts. The first-year San Diego Padres manager showed that last season in Arizona when, as the team’s third-base coach, he was put in charge of defensive positioning. The Diamondbacks employed 587 shifts in 2015, more than twice as many as the year before. It was a contributing factor to the club’s league-best Defensive Runs Saved total. Meanwhile, the Padres were one of the worst defensive teams in either league.
I recently asked Green for his thoughts on shifting in the outfield — should it be done more? — and my question prompted a short discussion on the subject of shifting as a whole.
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Green on extreme shifts: “I think it’s possible (to shift more in the outfield). If you want to throw some crazy things off the wall, you can look at certain guys and wonder if it’s wise to put a fifth infielder on the field. Look at Dee Gordon’s spray chart when you pitch him a certain way. Do you want to do it? I’m probably not the first one who’s going to do it. Maybe we’ll put that ball in Joe Maddon’s court, because he seems to be the guy who likes to do those kinds of things first. But shoot, there is a lot of data that would support moving the outfield aggressively at certain times. I don’t think we’ll be out-of-this-world extraordinary, but we will be progressive.
There have been just three Air Force draftees since 2007, with the most recent coming last year when senior right-hander Ben Yokley was signed by the Cardinals as a 29th-round selection. Now the program is entering unchartered territory thanks to two pitchers in junior left-hander Jake DeVries and junior right-hander Griffin Jax, each of whom will command more scouting attention this spring than any Air Force player of the last decade.
I first wrote about DeVries in October after he flashed some intriguing pitching tools in the Cape Cod League last summer. As I mentioned then, Air Force players have obligations that supersede baseball and make it more complicated for teams to sign them out of the draft. This is particularly the case for players who aren’t seniors, as noted by Brent Briggeman in a piece recently for The Gazette of Colorado Springs. DeVries and Jax, explains Briggeman, basically have three options: they can (a) sign a pro contract and remain at Air Force to graduate while playing baseball on available leave time until the academy grants them a release from active duty, (b) resign from the academy and face two years of active duty as an enlisted airman, or (c) come back for their senior year like Yokley did, sign the contract, and then balance pro ball with combat training.
Briggeman notes that neither DeVries nor Jax has asked out of their commitments, though their performance this spring might change the situation. I’m told that academy leadership doesn’t have a thorough understanding of how the draft process works and may be uncomfortable setting a precedent in letting players out of those commitments. This is obviously a fluid situation, but the takeaway for now is that teams will have to clear administrative hurdles to sign either pitcher away from their senior seasons at the academy.
I got an up-close look at both DeVries and Jax this past weekend when Air Force and Navy squared off in a three-game series known as the Freedom Classic in Kinston, N.C. The video of DeVries is from the first inning of his start on Saturday, and the video of Jax (further down) is from the third inning of his start on Friday.
Jake DeVries
DeVries has most of the baseline attributes you want to see in starting pitcher prospect. He’s big, throws with little effort, has plus velocity and can spin a breaking ball. The biggest question mark surrounds his ability to throw strikes. Let’s talk about the pros first.
