FanGraphs Baseball

In the latest in a series of legal challenges to the minor league salary structure, a new federal class-action lawsuit filed on Friday alleges that Major League Baseball’s treatment of minor league baseball players runs afoul of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In Miranda v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, four former minor league players (Sergio Miranda, Jeff Dominguez, Jorge Padilla and Cirilo Cruz) contend that MLB teams have violated federal antitrust law by illegally conspiring to fix minor league players’ salaries at below-market rates. Still, despite the merits of the players’ claims, the suit’s odds of success are relatively low.

The Miranda suit alleges that MLB unlawfully suppresses minor league players’ salaries in a variety of ways. By subjecting North American amateur players to the first-year player draft each June, Major League Baseball prevents draftees from selling their services to the highest bidder — instead forcing them to negotiate with only a single team. MLB then artificially reduces the size of the signing bonuses that entry level players receive through its domestic and international signing bonus pool restrictions.

Once players have entered the minor leagues, their annual salaries are then largely dictated on a take-it-or-leave-it basis by their teams in accordance with MLB-imposed, minor league salary “guidelines.” And because MLB teams retain the exclusive rights to their minor league players’ services for seven years, many players go their entire careers without ever being able to sell their services in a competitive market. As a result, the suit asserts that most minor league players earn as little as $3,000 to $7,500 per year. 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 Milwaukee Brewers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Miami / Tampa Bay.

Batters
It’s not a matter of great urgency — but nonetheless a briefly compelling thought exercise — to attempt to identify who is the star of the Milwaukee Brewers, if pressed to choose just one. Ryan Braun has certainly been the club’s most talented player in the past. Jonathan Lucroy, meanwhile, produced one of the majors’ best seasons in 2014 and finished fourth overall in MVP voting. And Carlos Gomez, one finds, has recorded the most wins among the club’s field players by a non-negligible margin over the past three years. So far as present talent is concerned, ZiPS favors Lucroy among the three — although by less than half a win over Gomez, rendering it an effective tie.

As in recent years, there’s a divide between the club’s best and less-best starters — although it’s less pronounced than in the past. In 2014, for example, ZiPS projected only two players (Aramis Ramirez and Jean Segura) outside the aforementioned triumvirate to record a 1.5 WAR or better. This year, six players appear above that projection threshold.

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It’s pretty easy to poke holes in Chase Headley’s free agent case. Three years ago, he was one of the best players in baseball, but it was based on an anomalous power spike that immediately regressed and has yet to reappear. For the last couple of seasons, he’s essentially been a slightly above average hitter, and while he’s produced +8 WAR over those two years, that value is heavily based on his defensive contributions, which teams generally haven’t paid market price for.

If you don’t think Headley is an elite defender, then he’s basically just a good role player, a solid contributor but not any kind of star. And he’s now heading into his decline phase, and since defense peaks early, you probably want to regress that aspect of his value more heavily going forward.

Interestingly, however, that entire paragraph also applied to a member of last year’s free agent class, and the player who fit that same description signed a seven year, $153 million contract. That player, of course, is Jacoby Ellsbury, and his contract with the Yankees was the third largest deal handed out last winter; only Robinson Cano and Masahiro Tanaka received larger paydays than Ellsbury. Ellsbury and Headley aren’t really the same kind of player, but they hit free agency with similar kinds of pros and cons.

And their career numbers are actually pretty darn similar.

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Ben and Sam banter about rumors, David Robertson, and the Winter Meetings, then revisit the Josh Donaldson trade to decide whether Billy Beane is bad for baseball.

Chili Davis is now the hitting coach in Boston. Josh Donaldson is now a Blue Jay. For the past three seasons they were together in Oakland, where they didn’t always see eye-to-eye.

Davis is a note-taker. He logs how his hitters are being pitched to, as well any bad habits they might be getting into. He also logs conversations. If Davis sees a player getting away from what he does well, he can reference his notebook and address the situation from there. There was a certain amount of push-back when he approached the club’s all-star third baseman.

“Donaldson was stubborn,” Davis told me earlier this week. ‘Donaldson was, ‘This is how I do things.’ And that’s fine if you’re swinging it good. But if you’re not swinging good, and not implementing what you told me you like to do, I need to bring you back to when you were doing things right.

“Donaldson, at times, would say things that contradict how I think. I’m not saying he’s wrong – that’s just how he thinks – but I had to adjust to that.”

According to Davis, Donaldson’s mechanics – he utilizes a leg kick – require “more rhythm and sync” and can “get violent at times, too aggressive.” He said Donaldson needed to focus on being under control, and not jumpy.

Davis made clear that while Donaldson could be stubborn, he wasn’t inflexible. Read the rest of this entry »

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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Episode 509
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 topics various and sundry and also various.

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 46 min play time.)

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There are a lot of people out there wary of giving any reliever a four-year contract. That much is understandable; relievers are capricious. Just yesterday, I tried to make the case that Andrew Miller would be worth Nick Markakis money. And now, Miller has been given Nick Markakis money, almost. He gets the same four years, but Miller’s getting $36 million, not $44 million. This kind of contract was inevitable, and it appears justifiable. At the same time, it’s not a surprise the contract was drawn up by the Yankees.

Let’s say there are teams who believe that Miller will be worth the money. Yet, it’s a clear risk, so, who could most afford the potential downside? The answer in this case, and in all cases: New York. From Kiley McDaniel not too long ago:

A Yankees source told me they could break even financially with a $500 million payroll expenditure[…]

When you put it that way, it’s like, why even bother with analysis? The Yankees don’t have the same worries other teams do. The Yankees do have their limits, but to some extent those limits are artificial, so if you’re in a bidding war for a player the Yankees both like and need, you have to be prepared to lose. It’s the winner’s-curse argument, with a twist where the cursed team is also uniquely blessed.

For the Yankees, it hasn’t been a case of Andrew Miller or David Robertson, necessarily, because they could still conceivably bring their own guy back, but at least, the Yankees have gone with Miller first. He was a little better than Robertson last year. He’s been very similar over the last three years. They’re the same age, and while Robertson’s good against lefties, Miller’s just plain left-handed, which could make him less vulnerable to the peculiarities of Yankee Stadium. And then there’s this: Miller was traded last summer. Robertson turned down a qualifying offer. So if the Yankees were to sign Robertson, they’d be forfeiting a potential compensation pick. There’s value in that, whereas with Miller, all the Yankees are surrendering is money.

And Miller’s great. Obscenely great. Now he gets to be paired with Dellin Betances, and, here’s where those two pitchers ranked last year among all relievers with 40+ innings:

Miller has one career save to his name. Betances, as well. Yet, statistically, last year these two were no worse than Wade Davis and Greg Holland, so if they’re great again in 2015, the Yankees could approach the late innings by deploying their best relievers based on the matchups. You could see both end up with 20+ saves; alternatively, one could emerge, or neither could get the role, if Robertson comes back or someone else does something. Even as a non-closer last season, Miller was worth a ton, so he doesn’t need to close to justify this deal. It’s just something he could end up doing, because he’s more than good enough.

On Friday, the Yankees opened up a hole in their starting rotation by dealing Shane Greene. Yet, they also plugged a hole in their pitching staff by adding Andrew Miller, and Miller should be no less valuable than some No. 4 or 5 starter the Yankees find as a replacement. There’s no such thing as a bargain reliever contract that costs thirty-six million dollars. But the Yankees have to worry about that less than anyone, and Miller is almost as good as it gets. He told Ken Rosenthal he likes to pitch in the AL East. The AL East hitters are probably getting sick of him.

There’s an awful lot you can learn from the way that a player gets pitched. Often, you could just look at the player’s statistics, I suppose, but let’s make believe we live in a world without publicly-accessible performance statistics. All right, so, now we’re imagining. Last year, no regular player saw a higher rate of fastballs than Ben Revere. Why would that be? No regular player saw a lower rate of fastballs than Josh Hamilton. Why would that be? First basemen saw far, far fewer fastballs than American League pitchers. If all we had was this information, we could still interpret it, figuring out clues as to how the hitters are perceived.

Of course, it’s not just about fastball rate. You can look at fastballs, or you can look at pitches in the zone, or you can look at types of pitches in particular parts of the zone — there’s a lot you can examine. Players get pitched according to the scouting reports that teams have on those players, and since we can’t look at those scouting reports, we can use the information we have to examine them indirectly.

One thing you can do is look at a guy’s pitch patterns. Yet another powerful indicator of something can be a change in a guy’s pitch patterns. What that would suggest is a change in a guy’s ability level or approach. Yasiel Puig, for example, was pitched differently in 2014 from how he was pitched as a rookie. That’s because Puig evidently corrected a weakness against inside fastballs. If we look at drop in rate of fastballs seen, no hitter saw a bigger drop between 2013 and 2014 than J.D. Martinez. There’s a pretty simple explanation: Martinez changed his swing mechanics and became an out-of-nowhere slugger. So pitchers found themselves having to be more careful.

At the other end, Mike Trout saw an increase in his fastball rate. Opponents tried to seize a perceived weakness against high heat. Allen Craig saw an increase in his fastball rate. Opponents identified that he was missing bat speed and couldn’t get around on hard pitches in. And yet, of all the players, no one saw a bigger year-to-year fastball-rate increase than Hanley Ramirez. Ramirez was productive, and Ramirez just signed a big contract with the Red Sox, but clearly, pitchers saw him differently in the season recently completed.

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

I was asked the other day why there hadn’t even so much as been any noise on the Yankees trying to find a new shortstop. It was a known wide-open hole, and it didn’t seem like any negotiations had developed. But, sometimes, things come together quickly. Other times, things come together slowly, and we just don’t hear about them in the lead-up. The Yankees now have their new shortstop, and it’s a player who’s been rumored to be available for a while. Yet what we don’t have is a two-team straight-up player swap.

The Yankees are getting Didi Gregorius, who’s long been a candidate to fill the vacancy, what with Arizona also having Chris Owings. But this is a three-team trade, with the Tigers involved, and they’re getting Shane Greene from New York. Finally, the Diamondbacks are getting Robbie Ray and one Domingo Leyba, both from Detroit. It’s a trade full of second-tier intrigue, and I think the best way to do this is to discuss the move by breaking it up into team-specific sections. It seems to me like the Yankees did well, and the Tigers did well, too. The Diamondbacks are taking the biggest risk.

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