FanGraphs Baseball

For much the same reason that he recently published a final statistical report for the Arizona Fall League, the author is publishing here a combined statistical report for the various Caribbean winter leagues — again, not necessarily because such reports are of great utility for evaluating players, but because they provide a means by which to participate in those leagues which doesn’t also require a substantial investment in transportation and lodging.

In this case, what the author has done is to identify the regressed hitting and pitching leaders in the Dominican Winter, Mexican Pacific, Puerto Rican, and Venezuelan Leagues separately. What he’s then done is to combine the hitting and pitching leaders of those leagues into a pair of top-10 lists, which one can find below. Note: all ages are as of July 1, 2014.

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Yesterday, the Atlanta Braves signed Nick Marakis to a four year, $45 million contract. As Mike Petriello noted, the deal just doesn’t make much sense from a numerical perspective, since nearly every piece of evidence we have is that Markakis just isn’t that valuable of a player. I’ve previously compared Markakis to Nori Aoki, and would imagine that Aoki will sign for something like half of what Markakis just received from the Braves.

But, if we’re looking for an explanation of why the Braves — and others, since it’s not like Atlanta was the only team bidding for his services — valued Markakis, it’s actually not that much of a puzzle. The sentiment for the deal can essentially be summed up in this statement.

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Someday, an up-and-coming SABR scientist should try to measure the psychic effect that losing has on ballplayers. As everyone knows from watching “The Natural,” losing is a disease — as contagious as polio, syphilis and bubonic plague. Attacking one but infecting all, though some more than others. And no other major leaguer over the past decade, among hitters, lost as frequently as Josh Willingham did.

Willingham, 35, recently announced his retirement after playing nine full seasons and parts of two more. What a relief it must have been for him to finish as a part-timer with the Kansas City Royals, who made it to the seventh game of the World Series. Only once before had Willingham played significant time for winning team (with the Florida Marlins in 2008), and never had he played in the postseason. Cross it off the list, call it a career. And it was a good one, aside from all of the losing.

Overall, his teams went 503-644 in Willingham’s appearances, producing a .439 winning percentage, the worst among anyone who recorded at least 4,000 plate appearances since he broke into the majors in 2004. It usually wasn’t Willingham’s fault that his team lost; he was the best hitter on the Marlins as a rookie, after Miguel Cabrera, and he was better than Hanley Ramirez. He was the fourth-best hitter in ’07, the third-best in ’08 — and in ’09 and ’10 after being traded to the Washington Nationals. He was the best hitter on the Oakland Athletics in 2011, and the Minnesota Twins in 2012.  It’s just that Willingham’s teams lost anyway.

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The list of non-tenders is out. Time to dream!

It’s actually a very tough place to shop, even if there are a few names that seem attractive this year. Only about one in twelve non-tenders manages to put up a win of value the year after they were let loose. Generally, teams know best which players to keep, and which to jettison.

You’re not going to get 12 non-tenders in your camp in any given year, but there is a way to improve your odds. It’s simple, really: pick up a player that was actually above replacement the year before. If you do that, you double your chance of picking up a productive major leaguer. So let’s look at this year’s market through that lens first.

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It’s been quite a few days since the biggest trade of the offseason to date was consummated, but the Nelson Cruz signing intervened, preventing me from getting around to it until now. The move of Josh Donaldson from Oakland to Toronto in exchange for a significant package headed by Brett Lawrie and hotshot shortstop prospect Franklin Barreto is not only large in scope, it is complex both on and underneath the surface. Is it the Brinks Job that some pundits assert, another example of Billy Beane zigging while everyone else zags, or something altogether different? Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a current story, that Ken Rosenthal has reported and written about. Bryce Harper and the Nationals are butting heads, trying to figure out the specifics of Harper’s arbitration eligibility. At stake are several millions of dollars, now and down the road, and it seems like a situation that could cause there to be bitterness between the player and the team. But, probably, the business side will be separated from the baseball side, and they’ll go on to get along fine. People thought there might be an issue with Mike Trout, too, when the Angels renewed his contract that one time near the league minimum. It seemed like the wrong thing to do to a superstar, and then later on Trout signed maybe the most team-friendly contract extension ever. Sometimes there are feelings, and often those feelings pass.

And then, sometimes, they don’t. At the end of the year, Mariners officials made some pointed remarks about Michael Saunders‘ preparedness and durability. They were unusually specific, and they hadn’t bothered to talk to Saunders first, and so Saunders’ side shot back. There was a rift, and while there was a chance things could be patched over, it seemed likely that the Mariners would send Saunders away so he could try to thrive somewhere else. Jerry Crasnick had reported that Saunders was being shopped at the GM meetings, and, at last, Saunders has been traded, from a team that didn’t value him to a team that could badly use him.

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Over the last few days, rumors circulated that the Braves were pushing hard to sign Nick Markakis, so this morning, Mike Petriello wrote up a piece on Markakis’ value, questioning just MLB teams see in him that we don’t see. He didn’t find an answer, and besides durability, I don’t really have one either, but clearly the Atlanta Braves see something in Nick Markakis that they really value, as Jeff Passan reports they’ve signed him to a four year, ~$44 million contract.

Source: OF Nick Markakis agrees to four-year deal with Atlanta Braves. Dollars unclear, but sides discussed a deal in neighborhood of $44M.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 3, 2014

Rather than just re-hash what Mike wrote this morning, I’ll just quote his conclusion.

Let’s say you disagree with Markakis’ defensive ratings, that you prefer to think of him as a 2 WAR player, which isn’t unfair. That’s a league-average player. Markakis seems like a league-average player. If wins are somewhere around $7 million this winter, you can make the argument that he’s worth $14 million next year. Let’s even call it $15 million, if you really like not striking out. But even if we go with that, he’s already shown that the last two years are the start of his decline. A four-year deal easily takes you to below-average or replacement or worse. It’s hard to see a team coming out ahead on that.

When I started this, I really wanted to see what I’d been missing. I wanted to know why the public perception and the advanced metrics seem so far apart. I’m not really sure I accomplished that. Markakis is a steady player, nothing more, with little upside remaining and age squarely against him, one who could look worse outside of Camden depending on where he winds up. Some team is going to pay heavily for that. Some team is going to regret doing so.

Maybe the Braves believe they can get him to rediscover his power. Maybe they think he’s really an above average defender, not a below average one. You can stretch and see how this could kinda work, if you didn’t also see Nori Aoki — they are the same player, basically — sitting around looking to sign for half this price, most likely. But more likely, Markakis is what he is, and the Braves will end up wondering why they spent $44 million on an underpowered corner outfielder entering his decline years.

There was precedent for Wade Davis‘ amazing Royals transformation. You could, for example, point to Wade Davis, in 2012. Or you could point to any number of other guys who’ve found comfortable homes in the bullpen after struggling as starters. But a year before Davis turned into an unhittable Royals reliever — that is, the same year that Davis was a very much hittable Royals starter — there was, in the same uniform, Luke Hochevar. Hochevar, for years, was a very mediocre starter. In 2013, he took off in relief, and he projected to be of great help again in 2014, until he blew out his elbow at the start of spring training.

So, Hochevar had Tommy John surgery. And the Royals, famously, didn’t miss him. They rode defense and their bullpen almost all the way to a championship, and then they arrived at more or less the present day. And after paying Hochevar millions of dollars to not pitch in 2014, the Royals are going to pay Hochevar millions of dollars to hopefully pitch in 2015 and beyond. Word’s out that Hochevar has re-signed as a free agent, for two years and $10 million, and now one’s left to wonder what the Royals might do about their roster construction.

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Tuesday night represented the deadline for clubs to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players. MLB Trade Rumors has rendered a service to the public by publishing a list of those players who were not tendered contracts by their respective clubs and who have, as a result, become free agents.

What follows is suspiciously like the aforementioned MLB Trade Rumors’ post, except for that the author — who remains employed by the present site for uncertain reasons — has also included the Steamer projections for all the non-tendered players prorated to 600 plate appearances for hitters (450 PA for catchers) and 200 innings for pitchers (65 IP for relievers).

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