FanGraphs Baseball

This morning, Ben Badler of Baseball America reported that the Diamondbacks have agreed to sign Cuban right-handed pitcher Yoan Lopez to a deal that includes an $8.25 million signing bonus. In comparison to the types of dollars we’ve seen for previous Cuban defectors, that number might seem somewhat small, but because of Lopez’s age and the rules surrounding international free agents younger than 22, Arizona has actually agreed to pay an extremely high price for the rights to sign the 21 year old hurler.

First, a quick refresher on the rules. Because MLB wanted international signings to somewhat mimic the way the amateur draft works, foreign players under the age of 22 are subject to bonus pool allocation limits. Like with the draft, these bonus pools are sliding scales based on prior season record, so teams that finished with the worst records get the most money to spend. Because the Diamondbacks finished with the worst record in baseball last year, they are going to receive the largest international bonus pool of any team for the signing period that begins on July 2nd.

However, by signing Lopez, they just punted the opportunity that comes with having the most money to spend, because the $8.25 million bonus that they gave Lopez pushed them way over their limit for the current signing period. The penalty for exceeding their pool allocation is a 100% tax on their overage and an inability to sign any player for more than $300,000 during either of the next two international signing periods, so while the Diamondbacks will be given a bonus pool in the range of $5 million for the upcoming July 2nd crop of talent, they won’t be able to spend it; there just aren’t enough legitimate prospects who will want to sign with Arizona for $300,000 apiece for them to use up their ~$5 million allocation.

And realistically, the 2016-2017 signing period will probably be similar. The Diamondbacks project as one of the worst teams in baseball for next season as well, so they’ll likely also have one of the larger bonus pools for the signing period that begins in 18 months, and again not be able to utilize it due to the restriction imposed by signing Yoan Lopez. Because of their poor Major League performances, the Diamondbacks were in a position to be able to make some significant international signings over the next two years, but they’ve decided that signing Lopez now will provide a better return than the chance to sign impact talents over the next two signing periods.

Now, there is some potential logic to this move, even beyond just the fact that Lopez might be really good. The signing restriction isn’t the same thing as the pool allocation being stripped away, as it is when a team forfeits a draft pick to sign a free agent; the Diamondbacks will still get the largest pool allocation for next year even after this signing. And because you can trade international bonus slots, Arizona will now have some pretty interesting trade chips to play with the next two summers. Any team who wants to sign a prospect for more than their own allocation, but without having to take the signing restriction policy, can now call up Dave Stewart and attempt to acquire some extra bonus money, and the Diamondbacks should be able to extract some prospects in return for the bonus money they can’t use.

And, there is some chance that MLB will just tear this whole system up in the next CBA, since it’s very clear the roadblocks the league tried to put in place to stop this kind of spending aren’t working. The current CBA expires on December 1, 2016, so if a new international system is put in place, it’s possible that the second year signing restriction could be eliminated, or at least converted into some other kind of penalty under whatever new system is adopted. Perhaps Tony LaRussa has some inside information on the likelihood of this system getting abolished before the second year restriction gets put in place, and so Arizona will take less of a hit for signing Lopez than currently appears.

And, of course, there’s always the possibility that Lopez just turns out to be a dominant #1 starter, which would make all of this a footnote; if he’s an elite talent, then these are easy prices to pay to acquire six years of team control. So, it’s not like this is a guaranteed disaster. Lopez could easily justify his acquisition cost if he turns into a good big league starter.

But don’t let the $8.25 million figure fool you; the Diamondbacks are paying far more than that to sign this kid. They had already previously announced five international free agent signings this period, with Badler reporting that two of the signings received $350,000 apiece, so they had already spent close to $1 million of their $2.3 million in allocated funds. By adding Lopez’s $8.25 million to the total, they’re looking at an overage tax of roughly $7 million, so the pure financial cost of signing him is really more like $15 million. And that’s without factoring in the opportunity cost of surrendering the largest pool allocation in next year’s international signing period, and potentially one of the largest bonus pools in the signing period after that as well.

This signing just made Lopez one of the most expensive pitching prospects in history. The signing bonus might look like peanuts in today’s baseball economy, but Lopez cost Arizona a lot more than just his $8 mlilion signing bonus.

Adding in a couple of comments from Kiley McDaniel, which he noted on Twitter.

Scout told me Yoan Lopez similar to Nick Howard (19th pick 2014 draft). Another prefers Lopez “by a hair” to teammate Touki Toussaint (16th)

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) January 13, 2015

I repeated those two quotes to a third source, who said he’s much lower on Lopez & he sees RP. Pro debut should clear a lot of this up.

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) January 13, 2015

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A few weeks back, we took a look at the 2014 offensive ball-in-play leaders and laggards from both leagues. As the second half of the offseason kicks into gear, let’s now take a look at the same information from the pitcher’s perspective. Today: the American League. Read the rest of this entry »

Clayton Kershaw is coming off what was legitimately one of the best starting-pitcher seasons of all time. Though he would miss a few turns due to injury, that problem was quickly forgotten, as Kershaw still approached 200 innings and finished with both an ERA and an FIP that were half the league average. There was one stretch where Kershaw didn’t allow a single run over four consecutive starts, and that stretch was bookended by a pair of one-run outings. Yet as amazing as Kershaw was, there was one game where he allowed seven runs in under two innings to the Diamondbacks. Those seven runs were 17% of Kershaw’s regular-season total. In July, I tried to investigate what went wrong.

Kershaw, in 2014, had one of the better pitcher seasons ever. Pedro Martinez, in 1999, had maybe the best pitcher season ever. Pedro posted the lowest FIP- ever by a starter, at 28. The next-best mark is 36, also posted by Pedro. The best non-Pedro mark is 45. Over the course of baseball history, that 1999 FIP- is a full five standard deviations better than the mean. Pedro’s strikeout rate that season was 5.4 standard deviations better than the mean. I should note that this doesn’t include what Pedro did in the All-Star Game, or in the playoffs. In the All-Star Game, he struck out five of six batters, with one reaching on an error. In the playoffs, Pedro spun 17 shutout innings, allowing five hits and a .267 OPS. Pedro Martinez, that season, was probably the best that any starting pitcher has been. The statistics are unreal even before you remember to adjust them for the era.

Yet on July 18, Pedro faced the Florida Marlins and couldn’t get out of the fourth. His final line shows nine runs on a dozen hits, with no other season run total exceeding four. That year’s Marlins had one of the worst offenses in either league, and they’d lose 98 games. Just as Kershaw’s disaster was fascinating, so, too, was Pedro’s, particularly in retrospect. How did one of the best pitchers ever, in probably the best pitcher season ever, get killed at home against a bad team on the wrong side of a fire sale?

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Episode 520
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he analyzes both baseball and also two weeks of parenthood.

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 43 min play time.)

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Earlier today, 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 nothing more enviable than a collection of stars. Generally speaking, people tend to focus on the top of a given roster, because that’s where you find the most impressive players, the players most likely to make a significant difference. The fantasy world operates like a video game with injuries turned off: you go in with your starting lineup and starting rotation, and you never need to replace anyone, and everyone’s competent. Every so often, teams do have sufficient health to be able to rely on the expected regulars. But more often than not, depth becomes a major factor. Sometimes this is even intentional — teams will accumulate depth in lieu of adding higher-quality starters. We’ve seen the A’s, for example, focus on depth, at practically every position. It’s not the most important thing; it’s just an important thing, frequently.

And it can be a tricky thing to measure, ahead of time. You can go about it by feel, on a case-by-case basis, but I thought I’d try something quick and easy. Which teams project to have the most and least depth for the season ahead, based on where things stand today? Presented below is not the final word, but it should be at least a starting point. Some numbers will change when, say, Max Scherzer and James Shields make up their minds, but they aren’t going to flip this graph on its head.

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By the time you are voted into the Hall of Fame, you gather as many urban legends as legitimate accolades: Babe Ruth called his shot, Harmon Killebrew was the model for the MLB logo, Wade Boggs drank 64 beers on a flight once. It has been said that peak Pedro Martinez had four pitches and each was the best of its type in baseball. Legit or legend?

The current crop of Hall of Fame inductees are the first that have any data that give us any hope of answering this question. The PITCHf/x era is said to have started in 2007, and that is indeed when the numbers linking individual pitches to their outcomes begin.

Unfortunately, it’s not very instructive to say that Martinez’s changeup had the 42nd-best swinging strike rate among the 78 pitchers that threw at least 300 changeups in 2008. Pedro was 38 years old that year, and though he pitched over 100 innings, by wins above replacement it was the worst effort of his career. Not a great time to test the legend.

Over at FanGraphs, though, we have Baseball Info Solutions data back to 2002. That year, Pedro won 20 games and had probably the third-best season of his career. He was 31, and it wasn’t his best year, and the numbers come to us from humans rather than computers, but it’s the best we can do with available statistics.

Here’s how Pedro’s change, curve, and fastball did that season by swinging strikes. Whiffs are not the only way to judge a pitch, but they are what we have on hand currently — and the pitcher never had an above-average overall grounder rate, so it’s not likely his individual pitches were elite by that measure either. By whiffs at least, he was comfortably above the league’s averages with those three pitches.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

As most of you know, I grew up in Seattle. My parents owned their own small business not far from Sea-Tac Airport, which meant that I spent a lot of after-school time at an auto parts store, trying to entertain myself with things that were of minimal interest to a child. But the store had a radio, and in the spring and summer, KIRO 710 broadcast baseball games. Combined with access to 25-cent packs of baseball cards at the 7-11 down the street, baseball became my babysitter.

We didn’t have a television until I was a bit older, and my parents worked too much to take us to the Kingdome very often, so I fell in love with the sport through the radio broadcasts of Dave Niehaus. I was taught about the game by his play-by-play calls, as neither of my parents were big sports fans, and the mid-80s Mariners weren’t exactly the kind of team that drew in anyone but those who truly loved the sport. I essentially became the sole reason my Mom and Dad paid any attention to baseball at all; even their moderate interest was mostly because, being good parents, they wanted to be involved in the things that I enjoyed.

I’m writing about this because, two weeks ago, I became a father, and in between diaper changes, I’ve been thinking about my son’s future relationship with baseball. How am I going to introduce him to the game? How am I going to teach him not just about the sport of baseball, but about being a fan?

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Do you guys want to yell about the Hall of Fame just a little bit more? I feel like there hasn’t been enough of that lately. It’s not my intention for this post to cause yelling, but it seems any discussion about the Hall of Fame inevitably leads to yelling, so let’s get to it.

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