FanGraphs Baseball

At the beginning of this week, FanGraphs CEO and founder David Appelman announced that the ballots for the 2015 FAN Projections are now available for the tender ministrations of this site’s readership. With a view to ensuring that all notable players are addressed sufficiently — and also towards producing the number of posts he’s required to publish each week — the present author is highlighting certain players whose ballots are of some particular interest.

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There’s glory, always, in winning the World Series, but it doesn’t take long to start wondering about the season ahead. Pablo Sandoval went away, and many wondered how the Giants might replace his ability and power. Michael Morse also went away, and many wondered how the Giants might replace his ability and power. As far as the former is concerned, Brian Sabean brought in Casey McGehee, who last year hit as many home runs as Madison Bumgarner. And as far as the latter is concerned, Sabean has now brought in Nori Aoki, who last year hit as many home runs as Gio Gonzalez. In case you’re very new to baseball, Bumgarner and Gonzalez are both pitchers, and pitchers don’t bat very often, and they certainly don’t hit many home runs. (Home runs are good.)

Yet there’s so much more to baseball than home runs. Sabean, at least, is betting on that being true. Dave already wrote some time back that Aoki compares very well to Nick Markakis, who signed with the Braves for $44 million. Aoki has signed for a minimum of $4.7 million and one year, and he’s signed for a maximum of $12.5 million and two years. Aoki apparently turned down a bigger offer or three because of San Francisco’s comfort and track record, but I think he’s been pretty clearly undervalued, which makes this a good get for a team whose success somehow always seems sneaky.

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Back when Nick Markakis signed for $44 million over four years, a lot of us were left scratching our heads. After all, Nori Aoki is basically the same player, and it seemed like he was probably going to have to settle for a two or three year contract at a significantly lower valuation. I predicted he’d get 3/$24M, while the FG crowd had him at 2/$14M.

Turns out, we were way too high, as Aoki has signed today with the Giants for just $4.7 million in guaranteed money.

aoki gets $4.7M guarantee. $4M salary for 2015, plus 700K buyout on 2016 option. can make 12.5M max

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) January 16, 2015

With a $4 million base salary in 2015, it seems likely the second year option is probably around $7 million, and then some incentives could push it to the $12.5 million figure if he played really well. But even if he absolutely maxes out, that’s still less than what the crowd estimated, half of what I guessed, and only a fraction of it is guaranteed.

At this price, this is probably going to go down as one of the better free agent signings of the winter. Aoki isn’t any kind of star, but he’s a perfectly acceptable corner outfielder. He doesn’t have a platoon split issue, so he can play everyday. He’s a good enough defender to not need to be subbed out for a late game replacement. And yet the Giants are basically paying him like a bench player.

Heyman notes that Aoki took less money to play for the Giants, so perhaps there’s some World Series discount in here, but this is still a huge bargain. In a market where worse players are signing for $20 million and costing their teams a first round pick, Aoki for $5 million is kind of amazing.

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Defensive statistics have been open to debate since they were first created. This back and forth probably will continue on for years to come, even with some new technologies offering the promise of better data.  One limitation with giving individual players values for their defensive metrics is positioning. The player’s coaches may have them completely out of position for a seemingly routine play and zone based metrics are going to downgrade the player because they didn’t make the play. While it may be impossible to know the correct player position before each play, the chances of a defender making a play knowing their initial position can be estimated with Inside Edge’s fielding data. By using their Plays Made information, I will add another stat to the defensive mix: Plays Made Ratio.

The concept is fairly simple. Inside Edge provides FanGraphs with the number of plays a defender should make given a range of possible chances. Inside Edge watches each play multiple times and grades the difficulty of the play. Here is their explanation for how they collect the data.

Inside Edge’s baseball experts include many former professional and college players. Every play is carefully reviewed, often more than once. It is not uncommon for IE scouts to review certain plays together in order to reach a consensus on the defensive play rating. IE also performs a thorough post game scrubbing process before the data is made official.

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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 Minnesota Twins. 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 / New York NL / Oakland / San Diego / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
It isn’t sound practice merely to find the sum of all the WAR projections in the depth-chart image below, add those to the 48 or so wins which constitute a replacement-level team, and then regard the result as the club’s ZiPS win projection. That said, examining the forecasts for those players expected to begin the season on Minnesota’s opening-day roster, it’s difficult to conclude that this club is destined to win much more than 70 games.

Moderately heartbreaking is Joe Mauer’s very regular two-win projection. If it seems low, that’s not necessarily a novel sentiment. Multiple readers suggested last year, when ZiPS produced a 2.8 WAR figure for Mauer, that they’d take the over. It would have been a losing bet, that: even with a .342 BABIP, he recorded only a 106 wRC+. In the context of the first-base positional adjustment, that’s too little offense.

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Let’s begin with what I hope will be uncontroversial statements. The Phillies, at present, are a bad baseball team. Arguably the worst baseball team, as long as we’re only talking about 2015. The farm system’s improving, but the big-league roster’s declining, and while every year there are teams that surprise, I’d be surprised if the Phillies won 75 games. It’s not going to be pretty, and even the most optimistic fans are wondering if contention might be feasible three years from now. Rebuilds suck. Just how they are.

And the Phillies have Cole Hamels, who is good. He’s actually been very good, for a very long time, and he’s not old. His remaining contract terms are reasonable, in that, if Hamels were available for just his contract, every team that could afford him would place a call. A trade market for Cole Hamels does exist. Just because nothing has happened doesn’t mean there aren’t teams who would like for something to happen.

Yet, increasingly, it looks like the Phillies won’t be moving Hamels this winter. One point of evidence: the Phillies haven’t yet moved Hamels this winter. Another point of evidence: the Phillies, reportedly, are sticking to their high demands, leading to this quote in a post by Rob Bradford:

According to a source familiar with the Phillies’ thinking on the matter, Philadelphia GM Ruben Amaro and his club have been “unrealistic in their expectations” in regard to a return on Hamels.

As they say, situations are fluid. Hamels could, in theory, get dealt any minute. Some team might become unusually desperate. Maybe a team that feels like it’s on the outside with Max Scherzer and James Shields. Amaro, certainly, is selling Hamels as a rare ace you could get today. But, there would be a lot of ground to make up if Hamels were to get traded before spring training. Negotiations with different teams have been described as a staredown. It’s becoming increasingly likely that the Phillies will hang on to Hamels, putting him back on the market in July. After all, there’s no deadline by which the Phillies have to bid Hamels farewell. They could even potentially keep him through the end of his career, given his status, talent, and popularity. The Phillies never have to trade Cole Hamels, which is allowing them to be patient.

That patience has upsides and downsides. For the sake of this article, I would like to set aside matters of marketing and fan morale. I simply want to talk about Cole Hamels’ trade value. The Phillies have determined, so far, no one has offered enough for their ace. So they disagree with where Hamels’ trade value has been in the offseason. But what would happen to Hamels’ value if he were to be available in July? Might the Phillies then be better able to recover the haul they’ve been seeking?

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

The FanGraphs Library is all about getting readers up to speed on the statistics and principles we use on the site. For some readers, it’s a place to verify the exact formula we use to determine a player’s replacement level runs in our WAR formula, but for others, it’s a place to learn the basics.

One of my goals with the Library over the last few months has been to make it easier for new readers to get up to speed if they aren’t familiar with sabermetrics. Part of that process has been making the specific statistical explanations a little more explicit, but I’ve also tried to put together a series of blog posts that walks the newcomer through some of the important building blocks of the discipline.

Today, we’re rolling out a “Getting Started” section in the Library that tries to solidify that second part of that approach. One of the most challenging parts of trying to learn something new is knowing where to start. The amount of information can be overwhelming and without any guidance, people often give up or get lost. This new page (visible as a tab at the top of every Library page), will help guide you.

Right now it features sections on why we care about sabermetrics, the first few stats you should learn, what we offer at FanGraphs, and some various concepts and terms we use often. Over time, we’ll add more sections. The page’s introduction also features direct links to those various sections if you want to skip around to the parts you think will be useful.

As always, drop any questions in the comments thread or find me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44 if you’re looking for help.

Ben and Sam banter about Gabe Kapler and Chris Tillman, then discuss the Orioles’ dilemma about whether to let GM Dan Duquette leave (with help from The Good Wife).

The four Caribbean winter leagues have entered their respective playoff rounds. Below is a (probably incomplete) collection of video feeds for Wednesday’s games. The author will update it haphazardly over the course of the evening. Readers are invited to provide useful links, as well. Games listed in chronological order, with most recent start time on top.

Game: Tiburones at Caribes (Venezuela)
Start Time: 7:10pm ET
Players of Note: Alcides Escobar
Video / Box

Game: Navegantes at Tigres (Venezuela)
Start Time: 7:10pm ET
Players of Note: Ramon Flores, Avisail Garcia, Jason Lane (Pitching!), Josmil Pinto
Video / Box

Game: Gigantes at Estrellas (Dominican)
Start Time: 6:30pm ET
Players of Note: Robinson Cano, Maikel Franco, Jean Segura
Video / Box

Game: Toros at Aguilas (Dominican)
Start Time: 6:30pm ET
Players of Note: Alen Hanson, Carlos Martinez, Cesar Puello
Video / Box