FanGraphs Baseball

If you hadn’t noticed, the White Sox are going for it. No, they haven’t officially landed Jeff Samardzija yet, but they have just completed a pretty dramatic upgrade of their bullpen.

Source confirms: #WhiteSox signing David Robertson to four-year deal for at least $40M. First reported: @bobnightengale.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 9, 2014

The White Sox bullpen was a huge problem. Overall, our forecast had the entire group being worth +0.3 WAR, the second worst collection of relievers in baseball. David Robertson immediately changes that calculation, given that he’s forecast for +1.8 WAR in 65 innings pitched. Adding Robertson to the White Sox group pushes them from something like worst in the league to middle of the pack. He’s that good.

Over the last three years, among relievers who have averaged 60 IP per season, Robertson ranks 10th in ERA-, 6th in FIP-, and 5th in xFIP-. He’s not quite Craig Kimbrel or Aroldis Chapman, but he’s comfortably in the next tier of dominant relievers. You don’t want to overpay a free agent closer just because a good reliever happened to be given the 9th inning and accrued a bunch of cheap saves, but that’s not Robertson’s resume. He’s a true relief ace.

Now, relievers are still highly volatile, and nearly every big money contract for an ace reliever has gone south in recent years. $40 million — or maybe more, given the “at least” in Rosenthal’s tweet — plus the surrendering of a second round draft choice means that Robertson isn’t coming cheap, and it’s unlikely that he’ll still be one of the game’s best relievers by the time this contract ends.

But for the next couple of years, Robertson should make the White Sox quite a bit better. And given that they’ve clearly decided to push their chips in on 2015, making short-term upgrades is probably a good plan. You don’t trade for Jeff Samardzija and surround him with the 2014 White Sox roster. If you’re going to make that kind of move, you’re also going to try and put a supporting cast in place to try and make that move worthwhile.

David Robertson is the kind of player who can help do just that. The White Sox bullpen was terrible. David Robertson makes it kind of okay. If they add Samardzija tomorrow and find a couple more position players, the White Sox could be pretty interesting next year.

The last time I put up an InstaGraphs post about a potential Jeff Samardzija trade, it turned out to actually be the Josh Donaldson trade. This time, though, it appears that the A’s really are dealing their ace, with multiple reporters confirming that a deal is close between the A’s and White Sox.

Sources: #WhiteSox close to acquiring Samardzija from #Athletics. @JonHeymanCBS and @JeffPassan were on it.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 9, 2014

The White Sox would be acquiring one year of Samardzija’s rights, plus an exclusive window to negotiate an extension. Failing that, they’d have the ability to make him a qualifying offer at the end of the year, or if they aren’t in the race in July, flip him for talent mid-season.

Samardzija would join Chris Sale and Jose Quintana, giving Chicago one of the better top-three rotations in the American League. More importantly, he would represent a significant upgrade over whichever #5 starter candidate would get pushed out of the picture; both both Chris Bassit and Erik Johnson project as essentially replacement level arms for 2015, and #4 starter Hector Noesi isn’t too far above that. This is a team that needed pitching depth, and Samardzija likely represents a larger upgrade for Chicago than nearly any other team in the league.

No word on the specific return that might go back to Oakland, but Susan Slusser has suggested that the team is interested in both major league infielder Marcus Semien and minor league infielder Tim Anderson. Kiley McDaniel just rated Anderson as the White Sox #2 prospect, concluding with these guesstimates of future value:

Upside: .280/.330/.450, 15-18 homers, solid average defense, plus baserunning value
FV/Risk: 60, High (4 on a 1-5 scale)
Projected Path: 2015: AA, 2016: AAA/MLB, 2017: MLB

Semien was rated as their #1 “big league growth asset” on the same list, and as Carson Cistulli has repeatedly noted, the statistical projections for him are often quite optimistic. In fact, Steamer sees Semien as an average big leaguer in 2015, as his minor league numbers suggest he’s a better player than he’s been in parts of 2013 and 2014 in the Majors.

We’ll have a full write up on the deal once it’s official and all the parts are known. For now, it looks like the A’s might be continuing to weaken their 2015 team to strengthen their future, while the White Sox are joining the very long list of AL teams going for the ring next year.

Episode 510
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 discusses all baseball’s most recent transactions expressly not from the Winter Meetings in San Diego.

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 38 min play time.)

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It would appear that, today or tomorrow, Jon Lester will decide where he’s going to pitch, and that move will set a whole lot of others in motion. One way or the other, the Red Sox will gain some clarity. The Cubs will gain some clarity, and the Giants will gain some clarity, and other teams unrelated to the pursuit will also gain some clarity. Lester will cause an already active market to accelerate, and what’s interesting about that is that Lester isn’t even the best pitcher available. Unless he is, which, well, let’s get into this.

Last year, Lester and Max Scherzer was basically even. Lester was perhaps even a little better, but when you factor in the uncertainty that’s always there, both of them were right around six-win pitchers. That tells you one thing. Looking at a longer track record tells you another thing. Over a three-year period, Scherzer’s been superior. The margin’s not even that close. This is one of the reasons Phillies fans believe that Cole Hamels has significant trade value — they don’t see him as being worse than Lester. Last year was an important one for Jon Lester, and the result is he’s going to earn a lot more money than he would’ve otherwise, but the big pressing question is, how much did last year mean, relative to the previous years?

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With the Winter Meetings officially underway, the Cleveland Indians wasted no time making a splash, acquiring first baseman/outfielder Brandon Moss from the Athletics in exchange for second base prospect Joey Wendle, the team announced Monday afternoon.

We’ve already got a couple Moss pieces up on the site, which I suggest you read. Dave Cameron compared Moss’ offensive production over the last three years favorably to Matt Kemp, and Eno Sarris speculated what kind of fantasy production Moss could bring with his move to Cleveland.

As for the logistics of the trade itself, it’s interesting. The deal was first rumored as early as last Wednesday, but took nearly a week to complete, despite it being a one-for-one trade. This makes some sense, given the recent history of the players involved. Let’s analyze this move from the Indians perspective by breaking it down into five pieces.
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Let’s play a fun little game. Below are the 2012-2014 performances of two players. One of them was just traded for Joey Wendle, because the A’s didn’t want to pay him $7 million via arbitration next year. The other one is due $107 million over the next five years, and the Dodgers are asking for several of another team’s best young players in a trade.

Of course, this isn’t the whole story with either player. Kemp was an absolute monster in the second half, playing at a very high level, while Moss struggled with a hip problem that sapped all of his power. Moss is a year older. Moss is a lefty who probably needs to be platooned, while Kemp is right-handed and can play everyday. Kemp is a good athlete with obvious physical skills, while Moss has been outperforming scouting expectations with every season of success.

Like with my Chase Headley/Jacoby Ellsbury comparison this morning, I’m not suggesting that Moss is Kemp’s equal going forward, or that their market values should be the same. However, I will suggest that maybe the marginal difference between them isn’t actually that large, especially if the surgery Moss had on his hip doesn’t continue to hinder him going forward.

Steamer forecasts a 128 wRC+ and +2.3 WAR per 600 PAs for Kemp versus a 121 wRC+ and +1.9 WAR per 600 PAs for Moss. Toss in the risk associated with Moss’ hip problems, and maybe you think the gap is even a little bit bigger than that. And perhaps Kemp’s handedness is worth a premium, given how much more teams are paying for right-handed power than their left-handed equivalents.

But man, it’s hard to not like the Indians picking up Moss for a song when you see what the asking price for Matt Kemp is.

A little while ago, I wrote an article for the Community Research blog about projecting plate appearances before they happen based on the batter and the pitcher. It was pretty well received (which was nice, because I put some serious work into that thing), and apparently it was good enough for Dave Cameron to foolishly kindly decide to call me up to the big leagues.

If you read through the comments there (or if you left a comment!) you probably realized that no, the Outcome Machine — as the tool was dubbed — was not perfect. There were flaws in the way I conducted my research, and some of the assertions I made probably weren’t 100% true. So in this article, I am going to follow up on that first one and hopefully remedy any errors. Those include:

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You might have heard offense is down around baseball. There’s talk of new rules to stop the shift, as if that was the cause. But maybe the game will police itself without help from the rules committee. It looks like there’s already some batters that shouldn’t be shifted as much as they are currently.

First, it seems strange to blame the shift for the current state of run scoring, even if you ignore that it’s been around for a long time. Here’s a handy little chart showing the batting average on balls in play since free agency began. There have been more shifts, as the number of players shifted 100+ times has gone from 15 to 44 from 2013 to 2014 alone. But it doesn’t look like more shifts have moved the overall BABIP needle at all.

BABIP used to live in the .280s until the mid nineties. Since then, it’s been within a few points of .300 most years. You’d think shifting would catch a few more of those balls in play as they’ve become more prevalent.

You might think we’ll take the easy way out here, and say that we should stop shifting the guys that are hitting well into the shift. But only three players — David Ortiz, Ryan Howard, and Brian McCann — were shifted as much as 300 times. If we focus on their results (Ortiz had a BABIP that was 100 points higher when the shift was on), we’re basically looking at the fate of a few bouncing balls in what amounts to one half-season of at-bats.

So no mention — other than in passing — of the fact that Matt Adams led baseball in shift BABIP (.374) or that Victor Martinez was top-five in that department (.332).

Let’s instead identify the type of hitter that we would not want to shift against. Beyond just “goes the opposite way.”

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

When the Cubs traded Jason Hammel to the A’s, Hammel made it clear that he’d enjoyed his time in Chicago and would be open to returning. He wasn’t kidding, apparently, he’s reportedly reached a deal to return to Chicago. According to Chris Cotillo, the deal is in the range of $18 million over two years with a likely team option.

That price would put him a little under what the average-ish veteran starter got last winter. Tim Hudson, Bronson Arroyo, Bartolo Colon all landed deals in excess of 2/$20M, while Scott Feldman got 3/$30M from the Astros. The crowdsourcing project and and I both expected Hammel to get something close to Feldman’s deal, but he ended up settling for a little less than the older pitchers got a year ago.

At 32, Hammel doesn’t have a ton of upside, but he’s essentially the definition of a league average starter. If he can give the Cubs 350-400 average-ish innings over the next two years, he’ll easily be worth the $18 million. There’s value in having solid arms at the back of your rotation, especially when they come at a bit of a discount.

As everyone assumes that the Cubs will add a front-line starter this offseason as well, this move could push Travis Wood out of the rotation, or potentially make him a chip to be used in a trade. If they add Jon Lester to the fold, a rotation of Lester, Jake Arrieta, Hammel, Kyle Hendricks, and either Edwin Jackson or Tsuyoshi Wada would be pretty interesting.

The signing of Hammel won’t draw big headlines, but it’s a nice depth signing for the Cubs, and pushes them closer towards contending in 2015. For the price he apparently gave them, it’s hard to argue with this deal from the Cubs perspective.