On the podcast’s third anniversary, Ben and Sam answer emails about how much baseball players work, whatever happened to offensive shortstops, breaking unwritten rules, projecting prospects, and more, then place an impromptu call.
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Whoa, that was a rough two days without baseball. But the wait is almost over. (And, in fact, the Royals and White Sox are in the first inning as of press time.) As we grind our nails into a fine paste waiting for the second half to start, here are 10 questions that I’ll be hoping the second half answers. Perhaps you have others. If so, let me know in the comments, but these are mine. Let’s get to it.
The first half saw the introduction of some really top-shelf talent, with some of those young players immediately vaulting to the top of Dave’s trade-value rankings, including Carlos Correa at #5 after just 32 major-league games. That probably won’t be topped, but the second half hasn’t even started yet, and we already know of one more prospect who is set for his big league debut in Frankie Montas. Montas was ranked 113th by Kiley before the season, and his 3.03 FIP ranks 10th across all of Double-A; his 2.47 ERA, 13th.
Nobody wants to have to rebuild. This is an important point. Rebuilding isn’t fun. Maybe it’s more fun from a fan perspective, especially when you’re frustrated by an underwhelming on-field product, but among front offices and ownerships, “rebuilding” is almost a bad word. They try not to use it. Teams are in the business of selling themselves, and when you rebuild, you lose. And it’s hard to sell a loser. Even when there’s a longer-term plan in place, losing is bad for those involved, and it’s bad for revenue. Teams want to be in the mix, and having two wild cards makes that more achievable.
The Reds don’t want to rebuild. In that way they’re like everyone else. They knew coming into this season they were in a difficult spot, with some pending free agents. And the team has lost more than it’s won, so it certainly looks like the Reds are about to sell. The important question, then: How far do they take it? Ought the Reds sell, or ought the Reds Sell?
The other day, I put together a trade proposal linking the Reds and the Blue Jays. The idea was partially built around the premise that the Reds don’t yet want to give up on 2016. Following that course of action, the Reds would look to move just rentals, like Johnny Cueto, obviously, and Mike Leake. There’s going to be value coming back. Cueto might be the best piece on the market. There aren’t even that many pieces on the market. It would be easy for the Reds to justify trying again. The safe decision would be to try to compete next time, because, who knows? It would be tempting. Even with Cueto gone, the Reds wouldn’t be dreadful.
But there’s the safe decision, and there’s the daring decision. It’s the decision no front office wants to make, but I think there’s a convincing argument for just blowing up the Reds. For selling Cueto, but not stopping there. For just taking over the upcoming trade deadline.
Over the last five days, we’ve gone through my take on the 50 most valuable trade chips in baseball, 10 players at a time. But I figure it’s helpful to see the whole list together as well, so with the help of Sean Dolinar — if you’ve enjoyed the upgraded visuals around here the last few months, let him know, because he’s the guy behind it all — we’ve created a unified graphic of the smaller images we put at the end of each post. This breaks down each player’s projected ZIPS WAR over the next five seasons (or for however many years of those five years they’re under team control for), while also displaying their contract status, with guaranteed salaries listed in gray, team options in blue, and arbitration (or pre-arb) years listed in green.
If you missed any of the posts, below I’ve included the links to the individual breakdowns, with some explanation for why each player rates where he does. If your favorite player isn’t on this list, I promise it’s not because I’m biased against your team, or hate you personally; in a lot of cases, it’s simply because I had to draw an arbitrarily line somewhere in the midst of a crowd of similar players. George Springer, for instance, has generated some comments based on his exclusion, but if you wanted to swap him in for some of the guys in the 41-50 range, I wouldn’t argue much; there are a lot of similarly valuable players who could have ended up towards the back half of the list.
Johnny Cueto has been invoked frequently of late as a likely trade target for contending teams. The combination of his pending free agency and the Reds’ own disappointments makes the probability quite high that he’ll change clubs before the end of the month. Whichever team trades for the Cincinnati Reds’ ace is going to get a pitcher on his way to having the best year of an already very good career. What factors, specifically, have led to his performance?
After above-average seasons from 2009 to 2011, Cueto broke out in 2012 with a 2.78 ERA, 3.27 FIP and 4.7 WAR in 217.0 innings. Injuries cut short his 2013 season, but Cueto came back last season and paced the National League with 243.1 innings pitched. He finished the season with a 2.33 ERA and 3.30 FIP, and he has continued to pitch well this season, producing a 2.73 ERA and 3.06 FIP which would be the lowest of his career.
Cueto has been aggressive in the strike zone, leading to a career-low 4.7% walk rate, but this approach has not cost him strikeouts: he’s produced a 24.3% strikeout rate, representing nearly the best figure of his career by that measure. Cueto is one of ten qualified pitchers this season with a strikeout rate exceeding 20% and a walk rate lower than 5%. Only Max Scherzer, Michael Pineda, and Jason Hammel better Cueto in both categories. Cueto’s percentage of pitches thrown in the strike zone is above 50% for the first time in his career. The charts below of the strike-zone maps for 2012-2014 and 2015 show Cueto’s evolution as a strike-thrower.
The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a couple years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.
Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above both (a) absent from the most current iteration of Kiley McDaniel’s top-200 prospect list and (b) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on any of McDaniel’s updated prospect lists or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.
| 8:24 |
: Hey everybody, welcome to unusually early Friday chat
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| 8:25 |
: I know the timing isn’t perfect, but I’m moving apartments today — for real — so I’m trying to get this finished in time to do all that nonsense
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| 8:25 |
: And then in a few weeks, I get to move again! Fun consequences for the chats. Baseball now
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| 8:26 |
Should Jacob deGrom be known as Jacob deStroyer of Worlds? |
| 8:26 |
: isn’t Jacob deBomb a lot more obvious
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| 8:26 |
What’s the feeling among prospect hounds about Byron Buxton. Still a future star? |
Introduction
Players #50 to #41
Players #40 to #31
Players #30 to #21
Players #20 to #11
Man, this group is something else. I think I could make a solid case for any of the #1-#9 guys belonging in the top three, and I’ve re-ordered this thing so many times I have lost almost all of my conviction about there being much difference between guys at this level. If you prefer the guy at #8 to the guy at #4, I’m not going to put up much of a fight. These guys are all special, and we’re lucky that the sport we love is being overrun with players this talented.
As a reminder, in addition to the player’s biographical information, I’ve added a summary of his contract situation, and as a new feature this year, Dan Szymborski has provided me with five year ZIPS forecasts for all of the players on the list, which I’ve listed along with their 2016 projection. Of course, not every player listed is under control for the next five years — some are locked up well beyond that time frame — but this should offer you a pretty decent view of what a player is expected to do both in the short-term and the longer-term, according to Dan’s forecasting system.
For the contract details, I’m only displaying future obligations beginning with their 2016 salary. I’ve tried to ensure that these are as accurate as can be, but they were also collected manually, so there probably will be some mistakes; there are plenty of weird clauses and options that make aggregating all this information particularly annoying. Also, we’re not including things like All-Star bonuses or incentive escalators, as this is intended to give more of a big picture view than be a precise accounting of the exact cost of a future player. A few hundred thousand here and there won’t change the rankings.
Also, keep in mind that some players have contracts that give them a guaranteed minimum, but they are also able to opt-into arbitration when they are eligible. This is pretty common now with prominent international signings, and so some of these guys will probably earn more than their contracts currently call for, but I’ve still just included the guaranteed minimum in the future salary commitment because we don’t know for sure that they’re going to opt into arbitration yet.
Finally, we’ve also included a nifty little graphic at the bottom that visualizes a lot of the information contained below, so if you want to see the projections and contract status for everyone together, you can get a summary of that at the bottom. The chart goes out five years, so some players have additional value beyond what’s displayed, but it should give you a good overview of what each player offers going forward.
Alright, on to the list.
A couple weeks ago, I examined, on the team level, who has and hasn’t been drawing a benefit from the called strike zone. That post is here, and it talks about the zone while pitching, and about the zone while hitting. Earlier this very week, I looked at some individual hitter strike zones through the season’s first half, and that post is here. It makes sense to look at individual pitchers. If we have the team data, and if we have some individual hitter data, why not close the loop? I don’t want to leave you wanting more. I want to leave you never wanting to hear about this stuff again, or at least not for a while.
When a hitter’s had a particularly big or small strike zone, that seems to be luck, for the most part. Some of it’s the competition, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a signal. With pitchers, there’s more of a signal, because they’re the ones in control. And they’re also linked to their catchers, who might be good or bad pitch-framers. If a hitter’s been, say, lucky with strikes, that hardly means anything going forward. But if a pitcher’s racked up extra strikes, that bodes well for what’s to come. That’s something to keep in mind when you read all the rest.
We’ll be looking at pitchers with more or fewer strikes than expected. As you peruse the tables, you’ll be seeing evidence of skill, but skill that leaves many frustrated. Pitchers with good command tend to get more favorable zones than pitchers with bad command. And pitchers with good receivers will get more favorable zones than pitchers with bad receivers. Command is a developed skill, and receiving is a developed skill, but to a lot of people, the strike zone is the strike zone, and it shouldn’t shift around. To a lot of people, it should be called the same for everybody. It’s not! Maybe one day. For now, we’re still in our day.
Are you going to be in town for the Saber Seminar? Of course you are, you wouldn’t miss the best baseball conference of the year, would you? Of course not. And, are you of legal drinking age and would like to meet up with other people who will be at the conference? Well, why wouldn’t you be? We can’t think of one good reason. So, for the third straight year, we’re organizing a Meetup at The Mead Hall in Cambridge on Friday, August 21, aka Saber Seminar Eve.
