FanGraphs Baseball

Scott Boras has done it again. After months of what appeared to be mild interest from the clubs one would assume would be in the bidding for the best free agent on the market, Boras found an unexpected bidder with $200 million burning a hole in their pockets. Or, more precisely, $210 million in this case, as the Nationals joined the club of teams paying $30 million per year for premium talent.

Or, at least, they did on paper. Scherzer signed a seven year contract, and in exchange for pitching for them for those seven years, the Nationals have agreed to pay him $210 million in salary. Divide $210 million by seven years and you get $30 million in AAV, which is how this deal will be reported. But because of how this deal was structured, it’s not really $30 million per year.

Instead, the Nationals will pay Scherzer $15 million per season, but do so for 14 years; essentially, they’ve deferred half of each season’s salary seven years into the future. Effectively, they signed Scherzer for $105 million over the seven years that he’ll pitch for them, and then they’ll pay him the next $105 million after the contract ends, making this the most deferred money contract in baseball history.

Teams have been deferring money in contracts forever — the most famous case is Bobby Bonilla’s deal with the Mets that has them paying him through the 2035 season — but never before have we seen this size of a deferral, and so this deal serves as a nice reminder that the payment terms of a deal can have an impact on the actual value of contract. And in this case, the significant deferral has a pretty big impact.

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For the last year or so, people have been asking what the Cubs are going to do with all these infielders. A trade, or several trades, has always seemed likely, so perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that the Cubs shipped Luis Valbuena to the Astros in exchange for Dexter Fowler and Dan Straily.

Valbuena and Fowler are somewhat similar players, as both draw a lot of walks and have average power, making them slightly above average hitters. Fowler’s a better baserunner, while Valbuena’s a better defender, but the overall packages are similar, and both project to be roughly league average players in 2015. The Astros are getting two years of Valbuena’s services in exchange for one of Fowler, though, which is why they added Straily as a sweetener making it a little strange that Chicago had to throw in Straily as well. This seems like a nice deal for Houston, given that they probably don’t get any worse and cut $4 million from their payroll, plus pick up a 2016 asset.

For the Cubs, they get to arrange their assets a bit more optimally, as Valbuena was blocking Kris Bryant’s path to the big leagues. Assuming Bryant will be on the team on May 1st, an OF is better for Chicago than infield depth, so making this swap now gives them a chance to avoid a roster crunch a month into the season. And they also get a chance to sign Fowler beyond 2015 if they so desire, so perhaps this isn’t a pure rental for them either.

This seems like a better deal for Houston, but it makes sense for Chicago as well, given their backlog of infield talents. If Bryant is what people expect him to be, no one will miss Valbuena for very long.

Mets fans aren’t happy. I live in New York City, so perhaps I’m just overexposed to this, or maybe it’s because I was surrounded in close proximity by disappointed Mets fans at last week’s Pitch Talks event, or that I keep reading about fans trying to crowdsource a “sell the team” billboard, but the anger is clear. After six straight losing seasons, with multiple young pitching prospects ready now, with Matt Harvey on his way back and the Braves and Phillies on the way down, the sum of the off-season’s shopping has been a confusing contract for 36-year-old qualifying offer recipient Michael Cuddyer and the addition of John Mayberry for the bench.

That means no trade of an excess starter (though Dillon Gee is expected to go soon), no help for the bullpen, and, seemingly most egregious of all, no shortstop. Right now, the team is insisting they’ll be fine with 23-year-old Wilmer Flores, who may or may not be able to handle the position defensively, backed up by 25-year-old Ruben Tejada, who is generally despised by fans.

On Friday, one local beat writer vocalized the prevailing opinion:

The Wilpons obviously are too broke to find and pay a real shortstop, too cash-poor to have built on the signing of Michael Cuddyer.

No one is defending the mistakes of owner Fred Wilpon — other than MLB itself, since Wilpon was recently inexplicably named as the chairman of baseball’s finance committee (!) — because a New York team with less than $100 million on the books, even after arbitration is factored in, is obscene. But how true is that in regards to shortstop? Was there really something the Mets could have or should have done there? And is the current shortstop situation as dire as it seems? Let’s dig into that. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York NL / Oakland / San Diego / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
Offensively, first baseman Paul Goldschmidt has evolved into a broadly skilled weapon, reproducing not only the above-average home-run and walk rates that he posted in the minors, but also recording above-average BABIP and base-running figures. His projection for 2015 suggests he’ll continue doing all these sorts of things.

Nor is Goldschmidt alone in his hitting abilities. David Peralta, A.J. Pollock, Yasmany Tomas, and Mark Trumbo are all starters forecast to produce above-average offensive lines. For all them, with the exception of Pollock, the question is less of offensive — and more of defensive — ability. There’s a real possibility, supported by ZiPS, that each is occupying a place on the defensive spectrum probably more demanding than the actual skills warrant.

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The push for .500 continues. With seemingly every team in baseball — except for the Nationals, anyway — deciding to push for the middle of the pack, the Brewers and Rangers have reportedly agreed on a deal that might help both teams push a little closer to that goal. According to Joel Sherman (and others), Texas will acquire Yovani Gallardo from Milwaukee once the physicals are completed.

The Rangers clearly needed another starter, and weren’t willing to get in on the bidding for any of the free agents that want a long-term deal. They were linked to Cole Hamels last week, but apparently don’t want to part with the talent Philadelphia is looking for while also taking on $96 million in salary, so they were instead left to shop on the secondary market. Gallardo fits as a short-term upgrade without a long-term salary commitment, improving the Rangers 2015 outlook while presumably not costing them a huge piece of their future.

The Brewers, however, might be willing to spend money to acquire a longer term option for their rotation, and given that they’ve just traded him away, apparently weren’t willing to make that commitment to Gallardo. By trading Gallardo, they’ve opened up a spot in their rotation for a pursuit of a pitcher like James Shields, or potentially given themselves an option to make a trade for Jordan Zimmermann, who is from Wisconsin and is a potential trade piece now that the Nationals have signed Max Scherzer. Perhaps the Brewers are optimistic they can either sign Shields or make a run at a trade-and-sign deal for a pitcher like Zimmermann, and shipped Gallardo out to clear up a roster spot for that future pursuit.

Gallardo isn’t so good that the Brewers can’t replace him by throwing some money around, but he’s good enough that he’s definitely an upgrade for a Rangers rotation that had too many replacement level arms penciled in for key roles. This isn’t the kind of trade that will make Texas a favorite in the AL West — there probably aren’t enough deals out there to be made for that to happen — but it gives them a more realistic shot at a decent season in 2015, and perhaps they’re more sanguine about signing Gallardo long term.

We’ll have more on the deal once we know all the pieces involved, and the Brewers side might take a while to come into focus, but it’s possible that this is a trade that leads to both teams having better rotations than they did yesterday.

Here’s maybe the simplest way to put this: a season ago, by his peripherals, Tanner Roark was about a three-win pitcher. By his actual runs allowed, he was about a five-win pitcher. He actually finished with a higher RA9-WAR than Jordan Zimmermann and Doug Fister and a lot of other guys too. At present, the Nationals will have to pitch Roark out of the bullpen, because the rotation doesn’t have space.

We knew the Max Scherzer negotiations were going to go on for a while. We knew that, eventually, Scherzer would sign somewhere, for a whole lot of years and something vaguely in the neighborhood of $200 million. He wasn’t going to wait until after the start of spring training, so it stood to reason Scherzer was nearing a decision even several days ago. The only question, really, was where he’d end up. People talked about the Tigers. People talked about the Cardinals. The actual team is the Nationals. And from the looks of things, that Nationals team might be a super-team.

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Professional baseball has been a strange road for 27-year-old Mark Hamburger. In 2011, four years after the Minnesota Twins signed him as a non-drafted free agent, Hamburger pitched in five games for the Texas Rangers. Since that time he’s meandered through the minors with multiple organizations and played a season of indie ball with his hometown team – the St. Paul Saints. Twice he’s run afoul of organized baseball’s recreational-drug policy.

Hamburger is older and wiser than he once was, and every bit as unique as he’s always been. Currently in his second stint with his original organization – he went 4-4, 3.79 with Triple-A Rochester last year – the righty is anything but ordinary.

When I talked to him a few days ago, the 6′ 4” Hamburger had just returned home from a yoga class. A former girlfriend introduced him to the ascetic discipline seven years ago, and he’s been stretching his body – and mind – ever since.

“Yoga has made me more flexible, and more enduring to the weird throwing form that is pitching,” Hamburger told me. “It’s also helped me spiritually and mentally. Yoga doesn’t focus on the next move or the previous move, but on that moment. That’s what you have to do in baseball, especially as a pitcher.”

Breath control is an important facet of yoga, and one of Hamburger’s “Three B’s of pitching.” Balance and break point are the others, but breathing is what helps him calm down and stay loose.

“I let out my air before every pitch,” said Hamburger. “That’s because I want to have the exact same delivery every time. When you have a little bit of air in your lungs, or a lot of air in your lungs, it becomes a different pitch. If you have no air in your lungs – you’re going off that last pocket – it’s the same every time.”

As for staying loose, the engaging hurler stresses that it helps a pitcher not get hurt. In his words, “You can’t break Gumby” and “When you’re whippy and snappy there is less tension in your arm.” Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 521
Kiley McDaniel is both (a) the lead prospect writer for FanGraphs and also (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses Byron Buxton and particularly athletic catchers and the scouting grades of current major leaguers.

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 48 min play time.)

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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