FanGraphs Baseball

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 San Francisco Giants. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Oakland / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
With regard to their field players, San Francisco doesn’t currently feature so much a stars-and-scrubs sort of configuration as they do a Buster-Posey-surrounded-by-roughly-average-players one. Posey is projected by ZiPS not only to record the highest wOBA among Giants hitters by over 20 points but also to play slightly above-average defense at a position that receives the largest positive adjustment in the calculation of WAR.

Of some note, perhaps, is ZiPS’ seeming pessimism regarding Hunter Pence. After averaging five wins per season over the last two years, Pence is forecast to produce only half that figure in 2015. In fact, there’s probably less decline projected for ZiPS than one might think at first glance. Pence, for example, has recorded nearly 1.5 wins due to baserunning alone over the last two years after having posted mostly just average seasons by that measure before that. Even just applying regression here accounts for some of Pence’s seeming decline.

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Is there a more infuriating player in the game than Colby Rasmus? Rasmus put up a 4-win age-23 season with St. Louis in 2010 and looked like a future star thanks to power, on-base skills (combining for a 130 wRC+) and adequate center field defense. By the end of 2011, though, he was a Blue Jay — pushed out of St. Louis amid reports that he (and, at times, his father) couldn’t find a way to coexist with Tony LaRussa. Rasmus would put up a career-worst 2012 but then had a smashingly successful 2013, matching his 2010 production and adding better defense for what was essentially a 5-win age-26 season. But in 2014, he saw all his progress collapse. He missed a month with a hamstring injury, and he was eventually benched in favor of Dalton Pompey and Anthony Gose in September.

Now he’s a free agent, and he’s among the only intriguing hitters remaining. If you look at the free-agent list, you’ll see that only four active unsigned outfielders are projected for even a single win: Rasmus, Nori Aoki, Chris Denorfia and Andy Dirks. Aoki is the safest bet, easily, though with little remaining upside — he’ll plug a hole, but won’t move the needle. Denorfia turns 35 next year and is coming off the worst year of his career; Dirks missed the entire season due to a back injury and was recently non-tendered.

Rasmus, 28, is the most frustrating of the bunch, with his two star-level seasons stuck amid three replacement-level campaigns. But how true is that? For all the talk that Rasmus’ offense fell apart in 2014 — and a .287 OBP obviously isn’t acceptable — he still hit for enough power to be a league-average hitter (103 wRC+), which isn’t exactly the disaster you might have expected. His batted-ball distance increased from 2012 to 2013, and then again in 2014. Last season’s 290.09 batted-ball distance was equal to or better than Carlos Santana’s, Anthony Rizzo’s, Chris Carter’s and Edwin Encarnacion’s. Rasmus also had a career-best line drive rate, and a career-best HR/FB rate. His infield fly ball rate dropped for the third year in a row.

His plate discipline and contact skills weren’t good last year, which explains a large part (as does a BABIP drop) of his lessened offensive production, but the items above all make for things to like. After all, even in a bad year, he was a league-average hitter. For his career, he’s been a league-average hitter. In 2015, Steamer projects him to be a league-average hitter. It’s rarely that simple, though, because prior to 2014 he’d gotten to “league-average” by a combination of ups and downs. Still, bear with me for a moment and ponder this: If Rasmus were a league-average hitter with an equal chance of breakout as collapse — and paired that with league-average defense in center field — that would make for a valuable player who could help many teams.

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Ben and Sam banter about John Smoltz’s Hall of Fame candidacy, then try to decipher how A.J. Preller’s Padres rebuilt in the blink of an eye.

Last Sunday’s column included several perspectives on the strike zone. Arizona Diamondbacks’ senior vice president of baseball operations De Jon Watson wasn’t one of the people quoted, but I did address the subject with him at the winter meetings.

Watson told me his club is paying attention, and is thus aware the 2014 zone was lower than it’s been in the past. He said teams need to be cognizant of everything going on in the industry, including how umpires are calling games. As for how a lower strike zone relates to player acquisition, Watson – like others in the industry – wasn’t very forthcoming.

“With each player, we assess and evaluate what they handle best and what balls they’re putting in play on a consistent basis,” said Watson. “We do our homework to make sure we’re procuring guys who fit our ballpark, our need, and really, where the game is going. We’re always studying trends.”

What Watson said about the strike zone as it pertains to player development was far more intriguing. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 515
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the very ill guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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 44 min play time.)

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A move that wasn’t a Padres move happened Friday.

Yankees send to Marlins:

• Martin Prado
• David Phelps
• $6 million

Marlins send to Yankees:

• Nathan Eovaldi
• Garrett Jones
• Domingo German

German is a prospect. Eovaldi has three more years of team control, while Jones has one. Prado has two more years of team control, and Phelps has four, although he’s a Super-Two asset. The way it’s being phrased, the Yankees are chipping in $3 million in each of the next two years to partially pay down Prado’s salary. But if you’d like, you can mentally cancel out the $6 million and German. Now, German is actually an intriguing, live-armed prospect, so his value is probably a little north of $6 million, but they’re close enough to being even. This is mostly about the major-league players, and the one who grabs your attention is Eovaldi. That’s the guy with the big, big upside.

From their end, you can see what the Marlins are doing. They didn’t need Eovaldi, and Phelps is useful enough, and Prado can play all over the place. But from the other side, the Yankees might well be ecstatic. Theirs was a roster in need of help in the rotation. It’s not often you can land an arm like Eovaldi’s without paying through the nose. It was this very player who, a few years ago, got traded for Hanley Ramirez. Eovaldi’s not even 25 years old, and he can run it up to the triple digits.

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For the first time since perhaps lovable Tony Gwynn Sr. was swattin’ singles around the yard, the San Diego Padres have commanded the full attentions of the baseball world. The architect of these numerous wheelings and dealings, first-year General Manager A.J. Preller, would be hard for even dedicated fans to pick out of a crowd simply because he has been on the job for slightly over four months (and one of those months was the thrilling playoffs, when nobody was too concerned about the Padres).

Today, let’s get to know Preller a little bit via the stray scraps of video interviews that have been released since his hire. Personally, count me a fan of his simultaneously methodical and relaxed demeanor. More importantly, let’s comb through this unofficial archive in search for any clues that the Padres would dramatically reshape their team this offseason. Presented in chronological order:

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There are plenty of ways to poo-poo Nathan Eovaldi. Dude has thrown 300 changeups and they’ve been bad, for the most part. Dude has gas, but his four-seamer gets only gets average whiffs. Dude’s thrown almost 500 innings and been league average. Dude’s done this in pitcher-friendly parks and leagues and now is headed to Yankee Stadium. Dude.

There’s at least one way to get excited about Eovaldi. By arsenal shape, speed, and peripheral results, he’s pretty much Garrett Richards.

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The internship starts in mid-February and wraps up at the conclusion of the Major League baseball season. Candidates with only summer availability will also be considered for a shorter term internship.

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• Excellent knowledge of baseball
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It’s the last weekend before Christmas, and everyone is scrambling to finish up their holiday shopping, including Major League teams, apparently. So in between the flurry of the 42 trades made by the Padres this morning, the Yankees and Marlins have also reportedly struck a deal. According to Jack Curry, the Yankees have traded Martin Prado and David Phelps to Miami for Nathan Eovaldi and Garrett Jones, with some minor pieces included as well.

Update: Domingo German is reportedly heading to NY as well. Here’s a write-up on him from September.

This deal seems to be a decent depth-for-needs the Yankees. After the signing of Chase Headley, they had less of a need for Prado, especially given their depth of interesting/maybe decent second base types, including Robert Refsnyder. Their rotation was still pretty thin, however, and Eovaldi should be a pretty solid upgrade over Phelps. As a lefty 1B/DH type, Jones fits as a potential DH partner with Alex Rodriguez and a backup for Mark Teixeira.

On the other side of things, I don’t see this making quite as much sense. The Marlins rotation got pretty crowded after trading for both Mat Latos and Dan Haren, so those moves have essentially squeezed out Eovaldi, but he may be as good or better than both. Still, they have enough depth of arms to be okay without him, and Prado is a useful player, but it’s not entirely clear where he’s going to play. The team seemed somewhat enamored with Casey McGehee’s bounceback, who was a league average third baseman last year, and they just filled second base by trading for Dee Gordon.

Maybe the Marlins realize that either McGehee and Gordon aren’t that good, and Prado will split time between both positions. But then, did they really need to give up an interesting young arm for a part-time infielder on the downside of his career? I like Prado more than most, but and I’d play him over McGehee, but even I don’t see that as a huge upgrade. This looks more like the Marlins moving wins around than getting better, but they definitely got older in the process.

I’m guessing more details will come out that might help explain the trade, such as the Yankees paying nearly the entirety of Prado’s remaining salary or something. Just on talent, though, this seems like a pretty nice move for NYY and a bit of a strange one for a Marlins team that is having a very strange offseason.