FanGraphs Baseball

A few weeks back, I wrote about Jorge de la Rosa’s remarkable mastery of Coors Field, a fact made all the more interesting by the reality that he’s struggled badly pretty much everywhere else. One of the comments on that piece put forth a pretty fascinating idea:

The Rockies need to break the straitjacket of the five-man rotation on a fixed schedule. Rather, they need to platoon their starters to some degree. Split them into ‘pitch mainly at Coors’ and ‘pitch mainly on the road’.

Could that possibly work? Should it? I’ve been thinking about it ever since then, during which time two things have happened. First, Jeff Sullivan wrote a very similar piece about Jered Weaver and the Angels, causing me to mostly table this. But then second, the Rockies announced that the vastly inferior Kyle Kendrick would start on Opening Day, opening the door to “worst Opening Day starter ever” articles, and that they’d push de la Rosa all the way to the fourth game of the season… which just so happens to be the home opener.

Are they actually trying to put this into motion? It’s true that de la Rosa is battling a groin injury this spring and probably could use as many extra days as the team can give him, but it’s also clear that they want him on the mound at home whenever possible. It might be just as clear that Kendrick, who always seemed an odd fit for the Rockies, would be best served setting foot in the state of Colorado as few times as possible. Maybe this isn’t just about de la Rosa’s odd skill; maybe he’s just the starting point. Let’s put forward a plan to optimize the Rockies’ rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

It’s time now to continue the rankings of power being conducted by this site. Today, we turn our attention to shortstops. We begin by turning our attention, specifically, to this graph:

Some teams (Colorado) have very good shortstops; others (Miami) have less good shortstops. Every team has shortstops. In what follows, the author examines how much power the shortstops possess and then ranks them according to that power.

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Ben and Sam answer listener emails about players out of position, pace-of-play rules, Bonds vs. Clemens, gambling, and more.

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The primary concern that scouts have about Michael Matuella is durability. So when the Duke righthander was scratched from making his second start of the season due to a forearm strain, it was a setback that led the Blue Devils training staff to keep him on strict pitch counts over his next few appearances. On Friday night against Pittsburgh, however, the reins were loosened and he showed evaluators the form that made him a candidate to be a top-five draft pick before the season began.

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Last week, I suggested that the Dodgers don’t really need Hector Olivera because they already have something pretty similar in Justin Turner. Obviously, Andrew Friedman and his crew do not agree.

Source: Cuban INF Hector Olivera has agreed to a 6-year, $62.5 million deal with Dodgers. $28MM signing bonus. Check http://t.co/mkcBse7p5i

— Jesse Sanchez (@JesseSanchezMLB) March 24, 2015

Kiley McDaniel did a nice job breaking down Olivera a few weeks ago, and in that piece, he wrote this: “The Dodgers are the only team that’s in on Olivera that can afford to pay whatever they want.” And this signing is a reminder that they really can do just that; a team with the largest payroll in baseball and no obvious spot for Olivera this season just ponied up a $28 million signing bonus and $34 million in future salary commitments for a guy who probably doesn’t make a significant impact for them until 2016, when he’ll be 31 years of age.

Of course, it’s quite possible that my Justin Turner comparison was quite light, and perhaps Olivera is even better than Juan Uribe by the second half of this season, giving the team a bit of an upgrade at third base for the stretch run. It’s not impossible that Olivera will contribute this year, though he’d have to be pretty great to represent a substantial upgrade over Uribe, Turner, and whatever Alex Guerrero could potentially give them at third base.

Right now, we have the Dodgers third base contingent combining for about +3 WAR this season; Olivera might push that to +4 if he comes up quickly and is awesome, but this is unlikely to move the needle for LA that much this year. This is basically the Dodgers spending $63 million to solve a 2016 problem — when Uribe and Howie Kendrick are both set to hit free agency — a few months in advance. And they’re basically the only team in baseball that can still afford to do stuff like that.

It’s great to be smart and find all kinds of hidden bargains, constructing a good team out of undervalued pieces. It’s also great to just be able to outbid everyone for anyone you want. The Dodgers apparently are going to do both.

On the heels of contract extensions for Christian Yelich and Adam Eaton, Brian Dozier and the Minnesota Twins got in on the action, agreeing to a four-year deal worth $20 million. Brian Dozier is one year further along in his career and one year closer to arbitration than Yelich and Eaton. Looking strictly at the numbers and comparing them to the nearly $50 million guaranteed to Yelich and the $23.5 million guaranteed to Eaton, Dozier’s numbers initially look a little light given his service time. However, unlike the deals for Yelich and Eaton, Dozier is not giving away any free agent years. The deal is a safe one for both the Twins and Dozier, and it is a throwback to extensions that have not been common in recent years.

For players who have yet to reach arbitration, the typical extension buys out one or more free agent years. Last spring, three players who were on year away from arbitration, like Dozier, signed contract extensions.

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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.

Positional power rankings! Second base! Let’s do this. Here comes a graph of projected team WAR:

Well, would ya look at that. Robinson Cano is still good at baseball. For the third consecutive year, Robinson Cano’s team lands atop the second base rankings of power. There’s a pretty defined top three, a pretty defined top 10, and then the rest. You can see that. Let’s talk about it.

Wait — really quick before we begin, the disclaimer: decimal points of WAR really don’t matter. Team X with 3.0 WAR isn’t demonstrably better than Team Y at 2.7 WAR. It’s less about an exact order and more about visualizing, roughly, where each team falls within the landscape of the league. Okay, now with that in mind, let’s begin.
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In general, most baseball organizations are headed in the same general direction. The idea that you have to choose between stats or scouts is dead, and almost everyone is now just compiling as much good information as they can. While it was oddly notable for teams to have a “stat guy” 15 years ago, it’s now oddly notable when a team only has one. Teams might not weigh all the information the same way, and it certainly doesn’t all filter up from the nerds to the GM at the same rate, but mostly, everyone is generally doing things the same way now.

Except the Diamondbacks. They don’t just march to the beat of their own drum; they’re not even sure drums qualify as a musical instrument. This isn’t even about hiring a guy with a veterinary background to run their analytics department, or Dave Stewart’s months-old comments about the D’Backs being a “true baseball team”; their opinions just seem to run counter to the rest of the sport at just about every single turn.

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