Episode 629
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio, during which edition he examines a pair of befuddling trades, each involving a club from the National League West.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 45 min play time.)

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There’s a lot to talk about with any five-player trade. And with the trade that sent Jean Segura from the Brewers to the Diamondbacks, there are plenty of noteworthy angles. There’s the matter of Segura’s offensive upside vs. Segura’s offensive reality. There’s the matter of the Diamondbacks clutching onto their highest remaining draft pick, and there’s the matter of the successful if partial Aaron Hill salary dump, and there’s the matter of Isan Diaz being an awful interesting prospect. There’s something else the Brewers received, though, and while Chase Anderson doesn’t have Diaz’s breakout potential, you can think of him as the quieter upside play. Anderson is going into the rotation, and he could remain there for years.

Anderson’s whole presence to this point has been quiet. He’s been an unremarkable pitcher on an unremarkable team, and though he’s made just 48 big-league starts, he’s already 28 years old. He doesn’t have a top-prospect background, nor does he have a top prospect’s velocity — Anderson’s specialty has been an outstanding changeup. The numbers last year backslid, and Anderson wound up on the outside of the picture, looking in. Yet the Brewers still saw something they liked.

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I’ll tell you what this was supposed to be about. Over the weekend, Howie Kendrick was in the news, since he re-signed with the Dodgers. I was going to take the opportunity to write about how Kendrick just about never hits a pop-up. It’s one of those things that helps explain why he’s been able to run high batting averages, and even though I know I wrote about this very thing like a year ago for Fox Sports, Kendrick didn’t hit a single pop-up in the most recent season. Nor did he hit a single pop-up in the previous season. So, by our numbers, Kendrick has gone more than two regular seasons without a pop-up, which is insane and well worth re-visiting. Who doesn’t like to read about the weirdos?

But, you know, ideas evolve, especially when you give them a few days to simmer. Kendrick, pretty clearly, is exceptional in this regard. However, he’s not unique. You might be thinking right now about Joey Votto, and Votto is also pop-up averse, but this past year there were just two regular players who successfully avoided pop-ups: Kendrick and Christian Yelich. This is fitting, because over the past five years, if you set a 1,000 plate-appearance minimum, Yelich and Kendrick own the lowest pop-up rates in baseball. They both feature phenomenal bat-to-ball skills, reflected by these numbers, and they’re valuable because of the extra singles they can scratch out.

So, Kendrick doesn’t hit pop-ups. Yelich doesn’t hit pop-ups. By at least one source, neither hit a pop-up in 2015. Might it be possible to crown either the 2015 pop-up champion?

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Ben and Sam banter about Billions, the amazing Willie Davis, and a strange Fox Sports article, then conduct a quiz show.

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On Wednesday, we took a look at the anomalous offensive outcomes of 2015: we had oppo homers from batters who have never hit them before, some of the slowest men in baseball hitting triples, and a guy with below average ISO marks hitting an almost 500-foot home run. It was a great reminder that baseball is really, really weird, and every season there’s at least few events that you will rarely — if ever — see again.

Today, we’re going to revisit that same idea except with defense. We can always watch highlight reels of the best defensive plays of the year, because watching Mike Trout perch on top of the wall in center field to rob a home run is a singular pleasure. It’s simple human nature to enjoy that. What highlight reels lack, however, is the context of the players making the plays: we expect Andrelton Simmons to go in the hole at shortstop to pick a ground ball, leap in the air, and fire a bullet across the diamond to get the runner at first. We do not expect Jhonny Peralta to do the same. That’s why if Peralta made that exact same play (he didn’t, but just suspend your belief for a moment), it wouldn’t necessarily be more impressive on an overall level, but it certainly would be on a personal one. For Simmons, that’s business as usual. For Peralta, it’s a once or twice in a career event. That deserves recognition — and celebration.

The usual caveats apply, given that we’re looking at only one-year samples of defensive data. There’s a lot of noise here — we know that. The aim of this post is to find the joy in that great mixture of noise and talent. There are a spectrum of posts on this illustrious website: toward one end we find incredible batted-ball breakdowns of pitchers and hitters that stretch our understanding of baseball; toward the other, we find the carnivalesque atmosphere of a GIF-addled home run post. This piece will stumble gleefully, Mardi Gras crown askew, in the direction of only one end of that spectrum.

On the technical side, we’re employing a few types of data for this pursuit: UZR/150, DRS, and Inside Edge fielding data, the latter of which ranks each defensive play made on a six-step scale of how often an average fielder at the position would make the play in question — from the categories of “Impossible” to “Almost Certain.” I’ve also used Baseball Reference’s always useful play index, as well as some Baseball Savant. Now onto the findings!
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Over the weekend, the Dodgers and Diamondbacks made a pair of related transactions. On Friday night, after failing to find a suitor due to the specter of a potential lost draft choice, Howie Kendrick re-signed with the Dodgers for a relative pittance; $20 million over the next two years. Given that Kendrick turned down the qualifying offer, which would have guaranteed him $15.8 million for just the 2016 season alone, Kendrick had to settle for far less than he thought he would get this off-season, and at that price, the Dodgers decided the value was too good to pass up, even though they didn’t really need another infielder.

Kendrick is better than Chase Utley and he should make the team better in both 2016 and 2017; however, they did surrender the possibility of obtaining a compensation pick if another team had eventually decided he was too good to pass up at that price as well.

For a good chunk of the winter, the assumption was that a team would make that choice, and for the last few months, the Dimaondbacks looked liked the obvious fit. General manager Dave Stewart publicly talked about his desire to add some offense at the top of the order to replace Ender Inciarte, and some combination of Chris Owings and Aaron Hill didn’t inspire a lot of confidence that second base was going to be well-handled in 2016. The D-Backs had talks with Kendrick, and had tried to trade for Brandon Phillips, so it was clear that they wanted to make a move for a more established second baseman, pushing Owings into the utility role that he’s probably better suited for.

But, after having surrendered the 13th pick to sign Zack Greinke, the Diamondbacks became fiercely protective of the 39th overall pick, a competitive-balance selection they were awarded that they would have to surrender if they signed Kendrick (or Ian Desmond, another free agent would could have helped them). Stewart even stated outright that they weren’t going to give up that pick:

“We’re not going to give up the pick,” Stewart said of the D-backs, who have the 39th selection (Competitive Balance Round A). “It’s just tough after we’ve already given up our first pick. To give up our top two picks, that would be difficult for us to do.”

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Miguel Sano didn’t exactly sneak up on the league. The massive 22-year-old Dominican slugger had been considered a top-100 overall prospect in baseball for each of the last six seasons, a top-20 overall prospect each of the last four. He’d have been a perennial No. 1 prospect for most any organization in baseball, if not for the presence of super-prospect Byron Buxton. In the prospect world, Sano played Pippen to Buxton’s Jordan.

Last season, they both arrived. And for Sano, the debut couldn’t have gone much better. Sano batted 335 times in his rookie season. Set the playing time minimum low enough, to include Sano on our leaderboards, and he was a top-10 hitter in baseball. Immediately, Sano thrust himself into the company of Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Chris Davis, not only as one of the game’s premier power hitters, but as one of the most dangerous all-around at-bats in the league.

Pitchers who had faced Sano in the minor leagues already knew what to expect. Pitchers who hadn’t faced Sano before quickly learned what to expect. The most simple scouting report goes like this: true 80-grade power, the kind of power that necessitates lofty comparisons with Stanton. Proceed with caution.

And that’s exactly what pitchers did. A reputation as a feared hitter is the kind of thing most guys have to earn. Bautista, Davis, Encarnacion: they had to earn their reputations as truly premier power hitters, as the most dangerous at-bats in the game. It wasn’t simply assumed. Sano? Sano arrived with that reputation.

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In something of a curious trade, the Rockies flipped Corey Dickerson to the Rays for Jake McGee. Those two players were the headliners of the deal, but they weren’t the only two players involved. Also changing hands were third baseman Kevin Padlo and hard-throwing righty German Marquez, who head to the Rays and Rockies, respectively. Here’s what my fancy computer math says about the minor leaguers involved.

Kevin Padlo (Profile)

The Rockies drafted Padlo in the fifth round out of high school less than two years ago, but he wasted no time putting up gaudy numbers in the low minors. Padlo graded out extremely well by an embryonic version of KATOH and, nearly a year and a half later, his enticing combination of power, speed and youth still tips the scales. He placed 37th on KATOH’s newly-minted prospect list, with a projected 5.9 WAR through his first six years in the show.

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