FanGraphs Baseball

One year ago, Jon Singleton was a consensus Top-100 prospect. Eleven months ago, he was making around $8,000 per month in Triple-A. Ten months ago, he was was promoted to the majors where the Major League Baseball minimum salary would have paid him a little over $300,000 for the rest of the season. Just yesterday, he was sent back down to the minors where he again would have been making around $40,000 for the season. He is not making $40,000, however, because Singleton signed a controversial contract last year guaranteeing him $10 million before he reached the majors. He’ll make $2 million this season, and every month he spends in the minors he will make 50 times as much money as he would have without his contract.

Nothing is going to change the fact that the Astros likely got a bargain when they signed Singleton. They lowered his potential arbitration salaries and received an option for a free agent year while only guaranteeing $10 million. Even if Singleton does not become a successful major league player, guaranteeing him less than what the team is paying Scott Feldman this year was an easy choice. For Singleton, the choice was not likely so easy.

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What do we have here? For an explanation of this series, please read this introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data below is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems, with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Yes, we know WAR is imperfect and there is more to player value than is wrapped up in that single projection, but for the purposes of talking about a team’s strengths and weaknesses, it is a useful tool. Also, the author writing this post did not move your team down ten spots in order to make you angry. We don’t hate your team. I promise.

Look, I understand full well this is probably the least-anticipated part of the series. This is a look at only half of the teams, and it’s looking just at relievers, who pale in perceived importance relative to starters. Also contributing to this is the idea that relievers, and therefore bullpens, are almost hopelessly capricious and unpredictable. I’ll grant you that to a certain extent, but it’s also exaggerated — we have a decent idea of reliever and bullpen talent. Relievers don’t get injured a million times more often than starters. The biggest thing is that, because of the limited single-season reliever sample sizes, there’s just room for more variation around true talent. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have good forecasts. This is a worthwhile endeavor, and sometimes a strong or weak bullpen can make all the difference to a team’s postseason chances. Come with me on a journey! It is a journey with numbers and words, where we discuss the best of the projected bullpens.

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We’re halfway done, with the wests — both NL and the AL — and covered NL Central yesterday. Today, we tackle the AL’s version of the country’s heartland.

The Projected Standings

With no great teams and only one franchise not really trying to contend this year, this is one of the most up-for-grabs divisions in the sport. Our forecasts suggest that there are two tiers within those going for it, but I think things might be a bit more bunched up than the numbers above suggest. Let’s go team by team.

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Last season the Oakland Athletics had four players qualify for the batting title and seven players take more than 400 plate appearances for the team. With Coco Crisp out for 6-8 weeks for elbow surgery, none of those seven players will be with the A’s when the season starts. The A’s hectic winter, including the additions of Ben Zobrist, Billy Butler, Brett Lawrie, and Ike Davis, clouded somewhat exactly how far backward they went on the win curve. As Jeff Sullivan wrote in December, The A’s Are Just Doing What They Have To Do, but all the moves they made have the A’s taking a potentially significant drop from last season when they were the fourth-highest scoring team in the league. With Reddick out for the first few games and Crisp now out for an extended period, giving more plate appearances to Billy Burns and Eric Sogard further weakens an offense that was already due for a step back.

With Josh Reddick and Coco Crisp out to start the season, not one of the top nine in plate appearances for the A’s last season will begin the season with Oakland.. Of those top nine, six provided very good production with a wOBA above .330 and Reddick is the only returnee among them. In the FanGraphs Depth Charts projections, 93 Major League Baseball players have a wOBA projection above .330, but only Ben Zobrist plays for the A’s. Imports Billy Butler, Ike Davis, and Brett Lawrie should provide above average offense and a hopefully full season of Josh Reddick will help, but the offense could take a big step back this season.
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The Miami Marlins’ outfield is one of the best and most exciting in recent memory. Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich combine current tools and skills with ample future projection. At 25, Stanton is the oldest member of the group. You might have to go back to the early-’70s San Francisco Giants and their crew of Gary Matthews, Garry Maddox and Bobby Bonds to find a group of flycatchers who filled the stat sheet while turning heads with their tools at similar career stages. Today, let’s put the focus upon Yelich, and attempt to draw a bead on both his current true-talent level and his ultimate upside. Read the rest of this entry »

With yesterday’s news that the Mets signed Juan Lagares to a new four-year, $23 million contract, another puzzle piece for the Mets’ future plans was put into place. Calling the deal an extension is a bit of a stretch, as it’s mostly just a buyout of Lagares’ arbitration years with a club option for his first year of free agency, with the contract not officially starting until 2016. Still, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on a similar recent defensive-minded deal, see how Lagares excels on the field, and place the deal in a larger context for the Mets.

The extension is very similar to the five-year, $23.5 million deal the White Sox just agreed to with Adam Eaton. That’s not a surprise, given that Lagares and Eaton are, at face value, pretty similar players: 26-year-old speedy outfielders with some (but limited) offensive upside. There are differences – Eaton’s ceiling on offense may be higher, while the same could be said of Lagares’ defense – but the comparison is a pretty sound one.

We don’t fully know what the future picture looks like for the Mets, but in centerfield, they’re now set with a team-friendly contract on a mainly defensive player that can hopefully be league-average with the bat. That’s a pretty useful thing to have, especially when said player just got done with two of the best defensive seasons by an outfielder in the past five years. Those seasons looked something like this:

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves, Athletics, Angels, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Cardinals, Brewers, Indians, Mariners & Pirates

Top 200 Prospects Content Index

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Amateur Coverage: 2015 Draft Rankings, 2015 July 2 Top Prospects

With 31 players listed, the Pirates system is one of the deeper ones in the game, though a number of the guys listed below already have or will get big league looks next year. That’s obviously better than having the depth be at the low levels since the point of a system is to produce big league players, it just means the list may be less deep a year or two from now.

The Pirates do a nice job in Latin America, with the current regime led by Rene Gayo signing Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco, Dilson Herrera, Alen Hanson and Harold Ramirez, of the 45 FV or better types.  The Pirates spent big in the draft in the years leading up to the bonus pools, but have a lower bar to clear on draft expectations with the big league team’s recent success and the bonus pool system limiting the outlay for domestic prospects.

The last five 1st rounders Pittsburgh has signed (Cole Tucker, Austin Meadows, Reese McGuire, Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon) all have returned positively so far and the big league team’s success is proving to block some MLB-ready prospects, so the organization is in a healthy place after decades in the wilderness.

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What do we have here? For an explanation of this series, please read this introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data below is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems, with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Yes, we know WAR is imperfect and there is more to player value than is wrapped up in that single projection, but for the purposes of talking about a team’s strengths and weaknesses, it is a useful tool. Also, the author writing this post did not move your team down ten spots in order to make you angry. We don’t hate your team. I promise.

The rankings of power being conducted by this site have almost concluded. Today, we turn our attention to relief pitchers. We begin by turning our attention, specifically, to this graph:

Included here are the bullpens which feature the 16th to 30th most power in the major leagues. Jeff Sullivan will consider Nos. 1-15 later in the morning. Or, he probably will, at least. One oughtn’t get in the habit of assuming that everything will work out nicely. As Werner Herzog has almost certainly said at some point, disaster is inevitable.

Now, relief pitchers!

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Ben, Sam, and guests Doug Thorburn and Jeff Zimmerman draft the pitchers they think will make the most starts and avoid Tommy John surgery in the next calendar year.