Episode 627
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 explores the non-issue of tanking in baseball, the prolonged mediocrity of the Colorado Rockies, and also the prolonged mediocrity of everything else, probably.

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.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 43 min play time.)

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Two things were dumped on the DC area over the course of the weekend: an unfathomable volume of snow, and the news that Yoenis Cespedes was turning down the Nationals’ offer and returning to the Mets. In Washington, Cespedes would’ve replaced someone who’s already a decent center fielder. In New York, Cespedes will replace someone who’s already a decent center fielder. But now Juan Lagares is valuable depth, instead, and for either team, Cespedes represented some sort of improvement. So it was a damaging blow, effectively concluding what for the Nationals has been a frustrating offseason of almosts. The Mets, on the other hand, have reason to celebrate. They kept Cespedes, and on their own terms.

In a way it’s an extension of the Nationals’ narrative of disappointment. It’s also an extension of the Mets’ narrative of triumphant underdogging. There’s carryover from the last regular season, when the Nationals were one of the most disappointing winning teams in memory. That’s going to remain the most recent baseball until there’s even more recent baseball, but for the Nationals it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. Spoiler alert: this is going to be another poll post. I’m going to ask you to pick the top of the NL East. I’ll offer my own pick, but I’ll put it down in the comments, so as to avoid any bias.

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Ben and Sam banter about Mike Trout moonlighting as a weatherman, then discuss which teams have seen their World Series odds fall or rise the most since the beginning of the offseason.

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Evan Gattis was probably never fast. That is, he wasn’t fast in comparison to many baseball players he was around while coming up through the minors. He certainly isn’t fast now, and at this point, we can confidently say that he probably never will be. And that’s fine, because speed isn’t really his game: coming into the 2015 season, he had zero stolen bases and one triple in his career. We’re all familiar with how Gattis contributes in other ways, like hitting baseballs 450 feet. Yet despite his lackluster speed, by the end of the 2015 season, he updated his career statistics to read zero stolen bases – and 12 triples.

In the span of one season, Gattis increased his triples total by a factor of 12. Because of that fact, this was a big story for most of the season; a simple internet search yields many articles ranking and commenting on his ever-increasing number of triples during 2015. Today, instead of viewing and ranking each one, we’re going to go deep on how strange and rare it is for someone as slow as Gattis to do this.

To begin with, we’re going to use a statistic called Speed Score. Very simply put, it’s a way of measuring a player’s speed and baserunning ability. Speed Score is on a scale from zero (walks around the bases) to ten (fastest/best baserunning human who has ever lived), so it’s fairly easy to grasp, and it tends to make some intuitive sense. There are a few main factors that go into a player’s score: stolen base rate, number of stolen base attempts, triple rate, and double play rate being a few of the main ones. To give you some examples, the best qualified hitter by Speed Score since 1920 is Jarrod Dyson. If you’ve watched the playoffs during the past two seasons, you know how fast Dyson is. The worst players by Speed Score are usually catchers, with Chris Snyder (who mainly played for the Diamondbacks in the early-to-mid 2000’s) at the very bottom.

So let’s see where Gattis fits into this Speed Score spectrum. First let’s look at the first two seasons of his career combined – 2013 and 2014. Here are the worst position players by Speed Score in those two years (minimum 750 plate appearances), with the number of triples each player hit:

We have three designated hitters here, a catcher, and a first baseman. Then we have Evan Gattis. We said before that he wasn’t fast, but let’s put it another way: Gattis was one of the very slowest — and worst — baserunners by Speed Score during 2013 and 2014. He was around the first or second percentile in the majors. These ten players above hit a combined three triples during these two seasons — basically, these types of players very rarely hit triples (and that helps bring their score down as well). Gattis actually improved remarkably by Speed Score in 2015, getting all the way up to 3.9 (46th percentile!) — but we can be quite confident that most of that increase was due to the number of triples he hit, and not other factors, like his aptitude at stealing bases (which did not improve).

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Tanking. It’s a buzzword, and over the last few months, one that has gained some traction in regards to Major League Baseball. Back in December, Buster Olney wrote about the issue as one of his 10 things to watch in 2016.

The Houston Astros and the Chicago Cubs both had great seasons in 2015, reaching the playoffs with young and exciting and talented teams built through a tear down to build up approach. After cutting spending and losing a lot of games in successive years and finishing at the bottom of the standings, the Astros and Cubs had picked at or near the top of the draft and had access to players such as Carlos Correa and Kris Bryant.

The impolite phrase for this is much more common in the National Basketball Association: tanking.

Now it appears that the Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta Braves and Milwaukee Brewers are in the midst of a similar approach, with the possibility that the Reds and other teams could follow. MLB might have a situation in years to come that 10 percent to perhaps a quarter of the teams are designing failure.

A few weeks ago, Jayson Stark went into greater detail.

But on the other side of that divide, we have the Phillies, Reds, Brewers and Braves. And we can find some execs out there who would throw the Rockies and Padres into that mix, too.

Those teams have various ways of describing what it is they’re up to. But assembling a team that’s built to win a World Series in 2016? Let’s just say that wouldn’t make the top 25 ways other clubs would describe it.

“I’ve never seen the game so messed up,” grumbled one exec from an NL team on the “win-now” side of the Not So Great Divide.

“I think it’s a problem for the sport,” said an executive of an American League contender, looking at the state of the NL from afar. “I think the whole system is screwed up, because I think it actually incentivizes not winning. And that’s a big issue going forward.”

It’s interesting that this issue is being raised at a time when baseball is experiencing a golden age of parity. The Kansas City Royals just won the World Series, the New York Yankees are the only team not to sign a free agent to a Major League contract this winter, and, in my view, we have more teams than ever before trying to win in any given season. While there is absolutely a huge divide between the good and bad teams in the National League, that is a byproduct of the fact that the American League is so condensed that all 15 teams see themselves as contenders this year.

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Yoenis Cespedes didn’t sign a bad contract, but he certainly signed a surprising one. With Chris Davis and Jason Heyward receiving more than $150 million, and Justin Upton in the picture with a $130 million, it would figure that Yoenis Cespedes might line up somewhere in that range. Perhaps not above Upton, but certainly above $100 million. Consider: the Cuban outfielder just produced a career year at age 29 which saw him record 35 home runs and nearly seven wins above replacement. Furthermore, wasn’t eligible for a qualifying offer, meaning a signing club wouldn’t have the burden of sacrificing a draft pick. The contract he did sign with the Mets pays him $75 million over three years, which seems like a small total guarantee relative to the rest of the free-agent class, but the opt-out and the opportunity to return to free agency next year does provide Cespedes with another opportunity to cash in.

If Cespedes decides to stick with his current contract, he’ll be a free agent entering his age-33 season after making $75 million dollars. While that is not the ideal scenario for him, if he is still playing well at that time, he might end up making close to the amount Justin Upton is to be paid over the next six years. If Cespedes plays poorly over the next three years, he will at least have his $75 million — not what he would have hoped, but also preferable to just a one-year pillow contract.

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It’s been true for each of the last five years, that Francisco Liriano has finished each season with a higher strikeout rate than the one before it. It’s been true for each of the last four years, that Liriano has finished each season with a slower average fastball velocity than the one before it. The magnitude of these differences isn’t substantial — he’s gained a little more than 2% on his strikeout rate since 2012 and lost a little more than 2 mph — but the trends exist, and they’re headed in opposite directions.

We live in a world where older pitchers are holding their velocity better than ever before, and some are even gaining, despite what decades of convention have led us to believe. Velocity is up. Velocity is correlated with strikeouts, and strikeouts are up. Name a trait or outcome that’s positive for a pitcher — it’s probably up.

Yet clearly, something else besides velocity is working in Liriano’s favor.

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The Padres last week designated outfield prospect Rymer Liriano for assignment to clear a roster spot for the newly signed Alexei Ramirez. The move became yet another curious move in a string of questionable decisions by A.J. Preller and his front-office staff. Not only does Liriano have a prospect pedigree, but San Diego had multiple outfielders on its 40-man roster who could be described as “fringy,” namely Jabari Blash, Alex Dickerson and Travis Jankowski. Yes, Liriano is out of options, but I have a hard time thinking he’s a worse prospect than Blash, who — as a Rule 5 pick — also is out of options.

In some ways, Liriano looks the part of an exciting prospect. The 24-year-old’s power, speed and throwing arm grade out as better than average. Relatively few prospects have such a strong and diverse collection of skills. Furthermore, he’s parlayed those tools into some nice numbers in the high minors. He hit .291/.375/.466 with nearly 40 steals between Double-A and Triple-A in the past last two seasons.

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