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 Atlanta Braves. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
Although it hasn’t been published here yet, one assumes that Jason Heyward’s projection (when it is available) will be one of the best among Atlanta’s collection of field players. Heyward, of course, won’t be playing for the club in 2015, having recently been traded to St. Louis in exchange for Shelby Miller et al. What that means, immediately, for the Atlantans is a more playing time for Evan Gattis in left field, at which position he made zero appearances in 2014 after starting there 47 times in 2013.

Expected to inherent Gattis’s catching role from 2014 is Christian Bethancourt, who enters just his age-23 season. Despite having recorded just a 54 wRC+ and -0.2 WAR over 117 plate appearances last year in what was effectively his debut (he appeared in a single game in 2013), Bethancourt is expected to produce enough offensively to render himself a league-average player.

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As November turns into December, we have a pretty good idea of what most teams are attempting to do with their short-term futures. The Red Sox are going for it, obviously, and so are the Blue Jays. The White Sox seem like they’re trying to improve for 2015; the Phillies might finally be ready to accept that they need to start over. Teams like the Cubs, Dodgers and Yankees haven’t yet made much noise, but their intentions are clear. Other than whatever it is the A’s are trying to pull, where most teams are on the success cycle is more or less an open secret.

Other than the Braves, that is. The trade that sent Jason Heyward and Jordan Walden to St. Louis for Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins was largely unpopular in Atlanta, but it made a considerable amount of sense for both sides, because the Cardinals got one year of the best player involved and the Braves got 10 years of two pitchers with upside. For the long term, assuming they had decided that extending Heyward was just not going to happen, it’s a smart move. For the short term, it almost unquestionably made their 2015 team worse, and there’s been at least one recent media report that indicates that “it sounds as if the Braves will make moves aimed toward competing for titles in 2017 rather than the next two seasons.”

If so, that makes sense. There’s obvious appeal in having a winner ready for the new ballpark the club will move into in 2017, and this current Braves team, as constructed, isn’t likely to be particularly good. There’s constant rumors that Justin Upton could be traded, too, and Evan Gattis might follow him out the door as well — or worse, start every day in left field. There’s not currently a second baseman, or realistic hope for B.J. Upton, and the rotation is full of question marks. This was a bad offense last year, and without Heyward, now it looks worse.

With that reality, here’s the question: Why not trade Craig Kimbrel? Like, now? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss the surprising Josh Donaldson-Brett Lawrie deal between the A’s and the Blue Jays.

Tyrone Taylor is happy to be in the Milwaukee Brewers organization. He could just as easily be roaming the outfield at Cal State-Fullerton. Football was another option, as Taylor rushed for over 1,500 yards in his senior year at Torrance (CA) High School.

Playing baseball for a living has always been his dream.

“I really just played football for fun,” Taylor told me. “I had a blast doing it, but I’ve known I want to be a professional baseball player since I was a little kid. I got letters from schools about football, and it was a hard decision not to go college, but once the Brewers showed how interested they were, my mind was made up.”

Taylor signed for $750,000 as Milwaukee’s second-round pick in 2012. It was enough for him to forgo Fullerton and dive headlong into the not-so-glamorous lifestyle of a minor-leaguer. Culture shock came fast.

“I’d heard I was going to Helena and expected it to be pretty populated, as it’s the capital of Montana,” explained Taylor. “But we cruised in there on the smallest plane ever and the airport was almost like a cabin. I was pretty overwhelmed by that. My first full year was in (Appleton) Wisconsin which, being a 19-year-old kid from California, was kind of lonely. There wasn’t much to do. It’s been a great experience though.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll try to complete the FanGraphs analysis of the Josh Donaldson deal, with Dave covering the A’s perspective of the deal and Drew Fairservice covering it from the Jays perspective while I’ll jump in with the prospect end of things. Those two prior pieces do a good job analyzing the various angles of this deal, with the main question being what the next few moves are for Oakland, since they seem far from done shuffling their roster.

Dave’s piece made the points that the gap between Donaldson and Brett Lawrie may be smaller than 2013-2014 would lead you to believe, so if one of the prospects end up as a star or a piece that can be used in another deal, it could swing the balance of the deal toward Oakland.  There’s an expectation that Lawrie won’t match Donaldson’s production, hence the three minor leaguers included. While Lawrie will be the player watched most closely in 2015 from this deal, one exec I talked to last night said Franklin Barreto is the key to the deal, so let’s start with him.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was the Diamondbacks who managed to swoop in and get Yasmany Tomas signed to a contract. The raw terms are six years and $68.5 million, which is a bit lower than what was expected, but then that skips over the critical opt-out clause after year four. The clause is a benefit to the player and not to the team, so the clause has significant value, and you barely have to value it at anything to conclude that Tomas signed what’s effectively the biggest contract yet for a Cuban. While his deal doesn’t have the highest sum, it is the most player-friendly.

It remains to be seen what the Diamondbacks do with Tomas. It remains to be seen what the Diamondbacks do with the rest of their roster, and it remains to be seen whether this deal will end up being worth it. Arizona now has an extra-crowded outfield, with first base occupied by a young superstar, so it seems like some pieces will have to be moved around. That’s something to be thought about another day. For this day, let’s consider, what kind of player might Yasmany Tomas be?

There are a handful of good scouting reports out there to be read. Scouting reports provide a good idea of the current understanding of a player’s various strengths and weaknesses, and Tomas has been written up by Ben Badler and Kiley McDaniel, among others. My intention here is to take things one step further. Drawing upon what’s been written by people like Badler, McDaniel, and Jesse Sanchez, I want to identify player comparisons such that I can find an estimate of Tomas’ overall value. This, then, is a bit of an experiment, but let’s make a player out of the Yasmany Tomas scouting reports.

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

Four months ago, the A’s made the biggest splash of the summer, trading elite prospect Addison Russell in a package that landed them both Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel. It was a clear go-for-it trade, giving up a player rated as one of the 5-10 best prospects in baseball in exchange for a short-term upgrade, as they were renting just a few months of Hammel’s services, and only getting another year and change from Samardzija. It was the kind of deal that the team would likely regret if they didn’t have a deep playoff run in either 2014 or 2015. They followed up on that aggressive stance by trading Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester, moving even more of their assets into the present at the expense of the future.

We know what happened to finish out 2014; the A’s played very poorly down the stretch, lost out in the division race to the Angels, and then saw the Royals literally outrun them in Game 163. The window that the team worked so hard to open slammed shut in their face. Lester and Hammel are both going to pitch elsewhere next year, and Jed Lowrie and Luke Gregerson are almost certainly going to find new homes this winter as well. Next year’s A’s were simply never going to look like last year’s version, and the A’s just made extra sure of that by trading away their best player, third baseman Josh Donaldson.

On the surface, it’s easy to look at this move and think that it suggests the A’s are switching back into a build-for-the-future mode. Beane’s post-trade comments even suggest that this is perhaps the right interpretation of this trade. From MLB.com’s Jane Lee:

Read the rest of this entry »

After the 2011 season, it seemed improbable that the Blue Jays would ever trade Brett Lawrie. He was the native son who exploded onto the scene, bounding his way into the hearts of baseball fans from Victoria to Corner Brook. Always a great hitter in the minor leagues, Lawrie hit .293/.373/.580 with 9 home runs in a 40-game big league tease that set completely unrealistic expectations .

Three injury-ravaged and underwhelming seasons later, Lawrie and three prospects are gone and Josh Donaldson is the new starting third baseman in Toronto as the Blue Jays try to accomplish one goal: reach the playoffs for the first time in a generation. No passport or sentiment will stand in their way as they try to end a long streak without playoff baseball.

Adding Donaldson is a significant upgrade for the Jays, as any team would expect when they pick up one of the premier players in baseball. Conservatively, switching out Donaldson for Lawrie is about a two win upgrade on talent alone. Lawrie’s spotty injury history and inability to translate his minor league offense at the big league level suggest it might be an even bigger gulf.

With two top-ten MVP finishes and 53 total home runs in the last two years, the Jays get a star – a star moving from an offensive sinkhole to a very friendly space for right-handed power hitters. Donaldson is an older player, heading into arbitration for the first time (he’s a Super Two) as well as his age-29 season. Unlike the A’s side of the deal, the four years of control that come with Toronto’s new third baseman is purely secondary to his ability to help them win in 2015.

The Jays wanted an upgrade and, according to Alex Anthopoulos, it was the inclusion of Lawrie in the talks that brought this deal to life. They sell low on Lawrie, who always hit before struggling (mightily at times) at the big league level. He’s as talented a player as there is, one Oakland hopes they can reshape into a more well-rounded big leaguer.

His talent is undeniable, Lawrie is perhaps the defensive equal of Donaldson at third base, and like Oakland’s Fielding Bible Award winner, Lawrie is a former catcher. Perhaps Oakland can get the countless moving parts of his swing in order and awaken the one tool that brought him to the big leagues at 21.

Toronto also gives up a very promising international free agent in Franklin Barreto, a shortstop at 18 with his stock on the rise, fast-rising pitcher in Kendall Graveman, and slightly stalled prospect in Sean Nolin. In terms of bulk control years, the Jays give up a lot. But that future surplus value finishes a distant second to the chance the Jays are building the best team in their division.

Some might look at the Jays rotation and wonder if they have the talent to win a championship. To that I say: look around. The state of the game swung so heavily in favor of pitchers, adding Donaldson’s bat to the likes of Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista — to say nothing of Russell Martin — suggests the Jays believe the road to the postseason is paved with extra base hits.

Like the Red Sox, the Jays seem focused on piling more offense on top of their already-deep pool of sluggers. In Donaldson the Blue Jays add another home run threat who actually strikes out at a below-league average rate. As the league heads in one direction, it appears Toronto is headed in another.

It is easy to search for additional meaning in this trade and the Blue Jays interest in Josh Donaldson. Simply put, they targeted a great player they thought could help their team win a division title and more. They added a player who saved more than 30 runs with his glove since 2012 while putting up a 125 wRC+. His 14 WAR over the last two years trails only Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen. Rather than hope their third baseman realized his potential, Toronto acquired one of the best in the game.

It also signals Toronto is serious about overhauling their clubhouse culture, though there is no better cure for a divided clubhouse than a whole pile of wins. Any team that boasts Reyes-Martin-Bautista-Encarnacion-Donaldson at the top of their batting order figures to give pitchers fits, though another left-handed bat in that mix (Reyes switch hits, the rest are all righties) must be a priority.

There is still work to do in Toronto, as huge questions loom in left field as well as second base. Their presumed starting center fielder is 43 big league plate appearances into his career (barely 200 PA above A-ball for Dalton Pompey, another Canadian.) They might not be done yet, but adding an elite ballplayer for the second time in two weeks is a nice way to head into the Winter Meetings.

Deals like this are how teams climb from the 80-85 win treadmill to the 90-win tier of World Series favorites. As they did with Russell Martin, the Blue Jays looked at a decent (and affordable) spot on their roster and thought they could improve it. They gave up a chunk of their identity and whole lot of prospect capital to do it, but it looks like these aren’t your older brother’s Toronto Blue Jays – though I’ve said that before.

So, Jeff Samardzija isn’t going anywhere — tonight, at least — but the A’s are still making big moves. Per Ken Rosenthal:

Sources: Donaldson going to #BlueJays. Lawrie, RHP Kendall Graveman among those going to #Athletics.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 29, 2014

This is kind of a fascinating challenge trade. Josh Donaldson and Brett Lawrie are both third baseman by trade, but Donaldson is the better player and is actually under control for one year longer. Even though he’s a Super Two player, which means he’s going to get expensive in a hurry, he offers significantly more value than Lawrie going forward.

To make up the difference, the A’s are getting 24 year old RHP Sean Nolin, 23 year old RHP Kendall Graveman, and 18 year old shortstop Franklin Barreto. Both Nolin and Graveman have already reached the big leagues and could potentially help the A’s in 2015, but it seems like Barreto might be the key to this deal for Oakland; he was an offensive monster in the Northwest League, putting up a 141 wRC+ as a teenager in a league that is primarily filled with college-age competition.

Marc Hulet had ranked Barreto 11th on the Blue Jays list a year ago despite only playing complex ball to that point, and Baseball America had him at #5 on their recent list of the Blue Jays top 10 prospects. If the A’s see Barreto as something of a replacement for Addison Russell — though with a more delayed timeline, given his youth — then perhaps the return in talent was too much to turn down the downgrade from Donaldson to Lawrie. Or perhaps they don’t see a massive downgrade there at all, given Lawrie’s advantage in youth his own rather good performances (3.4 WAR per 600 PA) when he’s been on the field.

This deal continues the Blue Jays desire to push chips into the middle on 2015, following up on their acquisition of Russell Martin. Lawrie is a talented player, but his long injury history made him difficult to depend on, and Donaldson is an immediate upgrade at third base. And since he’s under control through 2018, he’s certainly nothing like a rental. This move makes the Blue Jays immediately better, and from their perspective, the long-term risk of giving up three prospects wasn’t enough of a cost to pass up on acquiring maybe the best third baseman in baseball right now, or at least a guy who figures prominently in the discussion.

We’ll have a more full write-up on this later, but it’s certainly an interesting deal for both sides.

Update: Ken Rosenthal suggests the A’s are talking trade, but not Samardzija related.

So now you can speculate wildly about almost anything you want.

Well, this is interesting.

I am hearing rumblings that the #Athletics are close to a fairly significant deal that involves Jeff Samardzija.

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) November 29, 2014

#Athletics would be getting back several pieces, and they're targeting hitters, an ML source tells me.

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) November 29, 2014

Again, source tells me that #Athletics nearing major deal that involves Samardzija for several players, team targeting hitters.

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) November 29, 2014

The A’s paid a very high price to land Samardzija last July, so if they’re going to move him this winter, it would figure that they’re getting a pretty nice return back; selling for pennies on the dollar wouldn’t seem to serve any purpose.

The most obvious fit would be with the Red Sox, who have every good right-handed hitter alive and no pitching to speak of. Yoenis Cespedes would be an interesting piece given that he just went from Oakland to Boston, but I’d imagine the Red Sox would have to sweeten the pot quite a bit to get the A’s to swap those two. And if the acquisitions of Billy Butler and Ike Davis were designed to push Brandon Moss back to the outfield, then Cespedes doesn’t necessarily fit the A’s needs anymore either.

What Oakland really needs is middle infield help. Of teams with depth at 2B/SS, the one most obviously in the market for a short-term rotation upgrade is the Rangers; perhaps the A’s are willing to bet on Jurickson Profar’s health, or really like Rougned Odor? It would be a pretty daring move to make that large of a trade within the division, but the pieces would seem to line up to some degree, and Billy Beane and Jon Daniels have made a number of trades together over the years.

Are there other fits out there that I’m not seeing? Feel free to speculate wildly, since we have limited information at this time. And you probably want to start following Susan Slusser on Twitter, if you weren’t already.