FanGraphs Baseball

Two weeks ago, the San Francisco Giants were in the midst of a push to try and steal Zack Greinke away from the Los Angeles Dodgers. With a strong offensive core in place, upgrading the pitching staff was the obvious move for the team this winter, and pairing Greinke with Madison Bumgarner at the top of the rotation would have given the team one of the best pitching duos in baseball. However, their dreams of landing Greinke were dashed when the Arizona Diamondbacks came in and blew away the competition, offering a six year and guaranteeing $206 million in salary; neither the Dodgers nor the Giants were reportedly anywhere close to that number.

Over the last couple of weeks, their backup plan has come into focus; sign two good pitchers instead of one great one. First, it was Jeff Samardzija, and then yesterday, it was Johnny Cueto, with the team agreeing to guarantee $220 million to the pair over the next six years; significantly more than they were willing to spend on Greinke by himself, in fact. And this brings up an interesting question: since the Giants apparently had $220 million to spend on starting pitching this winter, would they have been better off just outbidding the Diamondbacks to land the ace they wanted, or is spreading the wealth around a better plan?

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Recently here, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Baltimore Orioles. In this companion piece, I look at that same Baltimore farm system through the lens of my KATOH projection system. There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their age-28 seasons, those who receive a projection of at between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their age-28 seasons; and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

1. Chance Sisco, C (Profile)
KATOH Projection Through Age 28 (2015 stats): 9.7 WAR
KATOH Projection Through Age 28 (2014 stats): 7.1 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 45 FV

Cisco demolished High-A pitching last year to the tune of .308/.387/.422. He ran nearly-equal strikeout and walk rates, and complimented them with modest power and a high BABIP. That performance earned him a late-season cameo at Double-A, where he also excelled in many of the same categories. A season like that would be impressive from any 20-year-old, but Cisco’s is especially encouraging since he’s a catcher. Few catchers hit as well as Cisco has, making him one of the most compelling prospects in the game.

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When Yoenis Cespedes suits up in April, he will very likely be playing for his fifth team in just over a 20-month period. His last 211 games have been split between four clubs. Some might try to use this as a reason to undervalue Cespedes in free agency and argue that three, perhaps four, teams have given up on him of late. Those arguments tend to miss the point, as the Oakland Athletics are prone to trade anyone, the Boston Red Sox desperately needed pitching last season while also possessing a surplus of outfielders, the Detroit Tigers fell out of the playoff race, and the New York Mets are merely prone to some unusual spending limits. The market for outfielders has been slow to develop, but with Jason Heyward off the board, we should begin to see Cespedes’ market gain some clarity.

Cespedes has certainly had an unusual couple of years, although his career as a whole has hardly been typical. Most recently with the Mets, Cespedes came to the United States from Cuba and signed a four year, $36 million contract with Oakland that would make him a free agent at the end of those four seasons. Cespedes hit well almost immediately, putting up a .292/.356/.505 line along with a 136 wRC+ in his first 540 plate appearances.

In the following two seasons, Cespedes could not reproduce the 8% walk rate of his initial season, his BABIP dropped a bit, and he settled in for two seasons of slightly above-average offense with above-average defense in left field, totaling 5.7 WAR over two seasons — with the A’s for a year and a half and then half a season with the Red Sox. Last season was Cespedes’ best season since 2012: he hit .291/.328/.542 for a 135 wRC+ that included 17 home runs in just 51 games following his trade from the Tigers to the Mets. That production led, in no small way, to the Mets’ appearance in the postseason.

In trying to determine what Cespedes will look like over the next five to seven years of a new contract, finding comps using career numbers is unlikely to yield great results. Based on how Cespedes performed at age 26 with the A’s, he was clearly ready for major league baseball. Due to the constraints of Cuba’s emigration laws, however, he was denied the opportunity to play against the game’s best players. As a result, his career numbers are unique. Focusing specifically on the most recent three years, however, we can find some interesting comparable players.

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Episode 616
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 all of the hot action from the Winter Meetings and also a little bit after the Winter Meetings.

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.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 41 min play time.)

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The idea of giving a six-year contract to a pitcher scares the dickens out of an awful lot of people. As for the idea of giving a six-year contract to Johnny Cueto? It seems all the more terrifying, given Cueto’s somewhat checkered history. But here we are, with the Giants following up on the Jeff Samardzija acquisition by signing Cueto for six years and $130 million. Before the Diamondbacks signed Zack Greinke, they were said to have offered Cueto six years and $120 million; he looks smart now for turning that down.

Absolutely, this is a six-year guarantee. For Cueto, he’s now looking at a floor of $130 million over six seasons, so it makes sense that’s how this is being reported. Yet as has become the trend, this is a deal with a player opt-out clause, two years in. The industry is seeing more and more of these, and the rest of us are still trying to figure out how to wrap our heads around them. The best I’ve seen it put: this kind of contract is a two-year deal with a four-year player option. And while, in the event of something going horribly wrong, the Giants will be stuck with a monster mistake, it looks to me like Cueto’s in line to leave after 2017. It seems like both parties want it that way.

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The Giants have signed Johnny Cueto to a six-year deal, with an opt-out clause after two years. The opt-out makes valuing these deals tougher than usual, but six years and $130 million seems like a lot for a guy that has a league-average career strikeout rate and a checkered injury history. And the opt-out favors the player, so those don’t make it look any better for the team.

That’s the negativity. You can still be excited about this deal, but it’s going to take a more nuanced look at the pitcher. You’ll have to look past some basic metrics.

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Last year, one of the worst second-half pitchers in baseball was Jeff Samardzija. There wasn’t really a drop-off in his stuff, though, so the Giants saw enough to sign him to a big free-agent contract. Another pitcher who struggled in the second half, a bit more famously, was Johnny Cueto, but again, the Giants saw enough to now sign him to a big free-agent contract, too:

Johnny Cueto’s deal with #SFGiants is for six years and $130M with an opt out after 2 years.

— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) December 14, 2015

In Nashville, I was talking to someone in a front office, and we discussed whether Cueto would end up with more than the Diamondbacks were said to have offered him. The word is that Cueto turned down six years and something around $120 million from Arizona. The Giants are giving him a little more, and an opt-out, so Cueto’s clearly doing fine. It’s a bigger deal, in a more pitcher-friendly environment. As risky as Cueto might seem, Jordan Zimmermann might have no fewer red flags, and he got five years and $110 million. Cueto deserves the extra season.

Cueto is obviously a tough nut to crack. People don’t love his durability, but he’s cleared 450 innings the last two seasons. He comes off as a higher-maintenance sort, but his results have mostly been outstanding, and he recently worked that World Series complete game. You don’t want to believe too much in the playoff-redemption narrative — Cueto had 10 walks, 19 strikeouts, and a 5.40 ERA. But the Giants aren’t signing Cueto because of his time in Kansas City. They’re signing him because of what he did with Cincinnati, and San Francisco should provide a favorable environment. What teams care about is run prevention, and Cueto has prevented runs better than the majority of starting pitchers for the last several years.

We’ll see if he continues to beat his peripherals. Over the last six years, between the ages of 24 – 29, Cueto’s ERA- has been better than his FIP- by 15 points. Here are the biggest such differences over the last 50 years, within that age window:

• Jim Palmer, 18 points
• Johnny Cueto, 15
• Dave Stieb, 15
• Catfish Hunter, 14
• Mike Torrez, 14
• Barry Zito, 14

From age-30 on, Palmer had a difference of 15 points. Stieb, 8 points. Hunter, 4 points. Torrez, -3 points. Zito, -3 points. So that’s not super encouraging, nor is the simple presence of Zito, who has some Cueto parallels. It’s a name that sends shivers.

But Johnny Cueto isn’t Barry Zito. Johnny Cueto isn’t anyone but Johnny Cueto, and last year his stuff didn’t fall apart, and he was awesome in the National League. Now he returns to the National League, with a good team and a good coaching staff in a friendly environment. The Giants recognize and accept the risk in the pitchers they’ve signed. Higher risk doesn’t mean a higher chance of this being a mistake, necessarily. It’s just about big upside and big downside. Presented the option of going big or going home, the Giants have leaped at the chance for the former.

I saw a reference not long ago to the White Sox and Padres, regarding how they tell us it doesn’t matter who wins the offseason. The reference was made in an article about the Cubs. Now, the Cubs’ offseason isn’t over. Nor are the rest of the offseasons, so, who knows how the landscape will look by the end? But there are some crucial differences here. For one, there was more criticism of what the White Sox and Padres did. For two, the Cubs have worked on a team that was already legitimately good. As I write this, I believe the Cubs are the best team in baseball. It’s not irrefutable, but there’s a hell of an argument for the opinion.

More moves will be made, and we’ll see improvements to other contenders. The Cubs’ projection is unlikely to budge very much. Still, there are active rumors, surrounding players like Jorge Soler and Javier Baez. Reports suggest the Cubs are most interested in strengthening their starting rotation. Reports aren’t the same as actual moves, and actions speak louder than words and all that, but it’s worth wondering: how badly do the Cubs need a starting pitcher? Consider this part 1 of our series: how badly do the Cubs need anything?

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The Pirates’ ZiPS projections came out today, and it’s generally a rosy picture. If you give Pitching Genius Ray Searage some hope with Jon Niese, Jeff Locke, and Allen Webster in the back end of the pitching rotation, and have a little hope in the Jordy Mercer’s bat, you could see league-average or better production all around the diamond. Even if you don’t believe those arms can do it, the team has Tyler Glasnow and Jameson Taillon this year in the minors, perhaps ready to contribute further.

In any case, it looks like more of the same from the Bucs, except for one glaring situation: first base. Michael Morse is fun, Michael Morse has power, but Michael Morse is projected to be a replacement-level first baseman.

It appears, from recent comments made by general manager Neal Huntington to Rob Biertempfel, that the Pirates don’t have much money. Using arbitration projections for their current roster, they might have as little as $5 or $6 million to spend on first base, if they retain their $10 million closer Mark Melancon. How do they find a platoon partner for the right-handed Morse for that kind of scratch?

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The Chicago Cubs won 97 games last season, went to the National League Championship Series, and had one of the top prospects in baseball debut with outstanding success. Many teams might look at such a season, nod their heads with approval, and try to simply maintain a semblance of that high level of achievement when planning and making moves for the following season. The current version of the Cubs, however, are in win-everything mode, and they seem desperate to improve upon a 97-win season. With an aggressive Theo Epstein, deep-pocketed owners, and a clear window to make a run at a long-absent title, the Cubs have already made some of the biggest acquisitions of the 2015 offseason.

The biggest, of course, is Jason Heyward, a top 15 player by Wins Above Replacement during the 2015 season. With his eight-year, $184 million contract, he joins Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant as the young core of a team that could challenge for World Series titles for the foreseeable future. It’s easy to proclaim the Cubs as favorites to win one of the strongest divisions in baseball after this move – they did, in essence, turn one of their rivals’ best players into one of their own – but that idea is cemented by the fact that they now have three of the best 20 position players from last season by WAR. Take a look at the top 20 position players by WAR, with each player’s 2016 team:

The Cubs head into next season with three out of 20 of this past season’s best players, and that’s the kind of statement that forces everyone to sit up and take serious notice. Having two position players of this caliber is rare enough for a team in a given year; having three is a foundation on which dynasties are sometimes built.

If we assume that all three players will stay healthy and produce at around the same level next year, each will be in the top 20 or better for position players (per Steamer projections on FanGraphs, Rizzo, Bryant, and Heyward are all projected to be top 10 players, in fact). This got me thinking: what is the track record of teams that have this level of talent in their lineup? Have they accounted for a disproportionate number of World Series victories, even if we don’t take into account the strength of their respective pitching staffs?

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