After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Seattle Mariners.

Batters

Let’s go straight to the projection that will likely get the most grumbling: ZiPS does not think that Kyle Lewis is a budding star. It does like him better than Steamer does — it mostly comes down to ZiPS being more willing to believe he’s a .340 BABIP hitter — but not to the level where he projects as a good starter. He had a legitimately excellent rookie season, but it’ll take more than an abridged 2020 to convince ZiPS that the previous translations, generally in the .230/.270/.370 range, no longer have predictive value. That’s not to say Seattle should be actively seeking to replace or upgrade from Lewis. One of the “benefits” of being a rebuilding team is that you can give players chances to improve or show an improvement is for real, after all. But these projections see the 2020 AL Rookie of the Year race a little like 1992, with the runner-up, Luis Robert, playing Kenny Lofton and Lewis as Pat Listach. Bumping a projection up by 70 points of OPS from the results of a 60-game season remains an accomplishment.

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On Christmas, while I was some combination of calorically comatose and consumed by basketball, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported that the Rangers had signed 28-year-old Japanese righty Kohei Arihara. The move continued an active Texas offseason and streak of curious, perhaps antithetical acquisitions made by a Rangers club that seems to have one foot in rebuilding and and the other in competing. What does Arihara bring to the table right now, and how does his acquisition fit as part of a broader shift in the strategy the org seems to be taking to team building?

Before I talk about Arihara, let’s remember the things that change when a pitcher goes from NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) to MLB. In addition to the leap in hitter quality, there is also a heavier workload. Pacific League pitchers start once a week rather than once every five days as they typically do in MLB. It’s a strange cultural workload reversal from high school, where Japanese pitchers can be sometimes driven into the ground and asked to throw upwards of 120 pitches on little rest during important tournaments. There’s no way of knowing what kind of long-term consequences this has for the pitchers being developed there, good or bad.

The baseball itself is also different. The tackiness and seam height of NPB’s ball differs from MLB’s (there’s also variance within each population on its own), and those attributes play an important role in creating movement on pitches. This is why, more and more often, you’ll see MLB pitchers asking the umpire for a new baseball after feeling the seams on the one they’ve just been given and realizing they are lower than they like. All of these things, in addition to the complexities of a cross-planet move and cultural adjustment, play a role in augmenting teams’ understanding of the pitchers they have scouted, via tech and eyeball evaluators, in NPB or any other foreign league. Read the rest of this entry »

Hours after trading for Blake Snell, and hours before swinging a deal for Yu Darvish, the Padres continued their remarkable post-Christmas shopping spree by signing Ha-seong Kim. Kim, a 25-year-old infielder who spent last season with the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes, was listed as our eighth-best free agent in our top 50 roundup this fall, just ahead of Didi Gregorius and Justin Turner. Per Kevin Acee of the San Diego Tribune, it will be a four-year, $25 million deal. Additionally, Kiwoom will collect a bit of a tax, taking a $5 million release fee from San Diego.

In Kim, the Padres get a player who should claim a starting job right away, and potentially ascend from there. The best way to characterize his recent KBO production is to say that he’s outgrown the league. As the starting shortstop for one of the circuit’s better clubs, Kim has notched a 140 wRC+ in each of the last two seasons. He produced a .306/.397/.523 line last year, with 30 homers and more walks than strikeouts. He’s also swiped 56 bases in 62 tries over the last two years, a 90% clip. Mel Rojas Jr.’s absurd power production deservedly won him the KBO MVP award last season, but make no mistake: Kim was the brightest prospect in the league.

The scouting report backs up the numbers. A tremendous athlete, Kim’s a plus runner with quick hands and a plus throwing arm. At the plate, he has a mature approach, displaying good patience without being passive. Most of his power comes to the pull side, and he adeptly hunts pitches he can drive: Both his swing rate and whiff rate were above average last year, notable in a league that runs a lot of deep counts. Read the rest of this entry »

In roughly 24 hours, the San Diego Padres traded away a total of six players who, were they dropped into the amateur draft tomorrow, would come off the board somewhere in the top 50 picks. It’s the kind of talent few orgs have in their systems at all, never mind in such excess that they can ship it away without totally nuking the farm. Rumors that the Padres were in pursuit of Yu Darvish spread through the industry a few days before Christmas, but it’s taken years of focused rebuilding through the draft, international signings, and trades for pro prospects, and the GM himself sometimes roaming the backfields looking at raw, young players, to build toward a week like the one the Padres and their fans have had. On Monday, the rumors became an in-principle agreement to swap Darvish and C/1B Victor Caratini for several exciting young players most recently scouted on the Peoria, Arizona backfields: Reginald Preciado, Ismael Mena, Yeison Santana, and Owen Caissie. I was lucky enough to see more Padres instructs action than any other club’s, and other than Caissie, I’ve had year-over-year looks at all of them.

You can see where I had all the prospects involved evaluated before my Instructional League looks for some context to the movement I’m about to describe, because two of the traded prospects have moved up quite a bit, and a third might still. Let’s start with Panamanian infielder Reggie Preciado, who is the best prospect in the trade and will be on this offseason’s top 100 prospect list as a 50 FV player. Preciado has the overt physical traits that teams have traditionally coveted in the international market. He’s a big-framed (about 6-foot-4) switch-hitter who is athletic enough to stay on the infield. Players like this have a wide range of potential outcomes, and one is for their body to develop in the Goldilocks Zone where they remain agile enough to stay at shortstop, but become big and strong enough to hit for impact power. Though some teams have shown evidence of a philosophical shift in this area, prospects like Preciado are the ones who typically get paid the most money on the international market, and indeed Preciado received $1.3 million, a record for a player from Panama.

When Preciado came to the States for 2019 instructs, he looked like you’d expect a 16-year-old his size to look: raw and uncoordinated. He still had not gained athletic dominion over his frame, and he looked much more like a third base defender than a shortstop. Fast forward a year (because there was no minor league season) to the Fall of 2020 and Preciado now has a batting stance and swing that look an awful lot like Corey Seager’s. It allows him to be relatively short to the baseball despite his lever length, and whether it had to do with the swing change or not, he looked much more comfortable in the box this Fall than he did last year. Because of the missing minor league season, most teams in Arizona brought an older contingent of player to instructs than they usually would, and still Preciado (who is just 17) was striking the ball with consistency and power from both sides of the plate. I still think he ends up at third, but there’s rare hit/power combination potential here and it just takes confidence in one’s eyes to see it might already have arrived. I now have him rated ahead of Cubs first rounder Ed Howard and, barring any more deals, Preciado is likely to rank third or fourth on the Cubs list this offseason. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

By any measure, my first opportunity to cast an official Hall of Fame ballot has been a long time coming. It’s been 10 years since I was admitted to the Baseball Writers Association of America, 17 since I introduced the system that became JAWS, 19 since I first broke down a BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot (making this my 20th election covered), and 51 since I arrived on this planet, kicking and screaming. That paper ballot, the most long-awaited envelope I’ve received since I applied to college, arrived on November 18, and while I’ve mostly known whom I planned to include all along, I went through my full process, give or take a few one-and-done stragglers whom I’ll cover in early January — just as I’ve done with my virtual ballots in years past — before arriving at my final slate.

The irony in getting a ballot in this particular year is that by the standards of recent elections, it’s a dud. A total of 14 players have been elected in their first year of eligibility over the past seven cycles, but this year’s first-year crop has nobody of that caliber. And in the wake of three beloved players overcoming minimal early support to gain entry on their final tries — namely Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, and Larry Walker — there’s much less in the way of impending drama. Which isn’t to say that from among this year’s 25 candidates there aren’t some worthy of following in that trio’s footsteps, with the voting body won over by the efforts of statheads such as myself, but the best of those are a few years away from reaching 75%. Meanwhile, the top four returning candidates are particularly polarizing, with only one really within striking distance during this cycle. We’ve had far more fun with this process in years past, and we’ll have more fun with it in the future, but this year, there’s far less sunshine and fewer lollipops to go around. How very 2020.

If there’s good news, it’s that with a record 22 candidates elected over those seven cycles, what was once a nearly unmanageable backlog has cleared up. Circa 2014, the ballot had 17 players who exceeded the JAWS standards at their respective positions, and 14 who had a JAWS of at least 50.0 (or 40.0 for catchers), thus requiring all but the most small-Hall-minded voters to perform some kind of triage to winnow the field down to 10 candidates who could fit on their ballots.

Even so, there’s still no such thing as a perfect ballot. With my annual exercise comes an acknowledgement of the numerous subjective choices that go into selecting even the most objectively-minded slate. How much leeway to grant if one is using WAR and JAWS? How much emphasis to put on postseason performance, awards, and less quantifiable considerations? Where to draw the line with performance-enhancing drugs? Should we weight the things we’ve learned about these players’ off-field lives that we can’t stomach? Perfection may be unattainable, but that’s not to say it’s not worth pursuing, and if we don’t get there… well, we do the best we can. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs Hall of Fame expert Jay Jaffe (the author of The Cooperstown Casebook) discuss Jay’s experience as a first-time Hall of Fame voter, the case of Curt Schilling, weighing on-field contributions and off-field transgressions, the players on Jay’s ballot, the candidacies of Billy Wagner, Gary Sheffield, Omar Vizquel, and others, adjusting the baseline for Hall of Fame starting pitchers, Jay’s predictions for this year’s voting results, a preview of the upcoming Cooperstown classes, the record number of Hall of Fame players who died in 2020, how to better honor baseball greats while they’re still alive, the Hall of Fame ramifications of reclassifying the Negro Leagues as major leagues, and more.

Audio intro: Guided By Voices, "High Five Hall of Famers"
Audio outro: The Felice Brothers, "Cooperstown"

Link to Jay’s ballot post
Link to The Cooperstown Casebook
Link to Jay on this ballot’s big questions
Link to the HoF Ballot Tracker
Link to Jay on Schilling
Link to Craig Calcaterra on Schilling
Link to Zach Hayes on Schilling
Link to Jay on Vizquel
Link to The Athletic report on Vizquel
Link to Sam on Pettitte
Link to Jeff Snider on Hall of Famer deaths
Link to Jay on Allen
Link to story on overlooked Negro Leaguers
Link to story on reclassification and Cooperstown

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Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen convene to discuss the latest epic Padres transaction spree (in which San Diego traded for Blake Snell and Yu Darvish and signed Ha-seong Kim 김하성), touching on A.J. Preller’s penchant for frenetic activity, the Padres’ rebuilt rotation and crowded infield, the prospect packages going to the Rays and the Cubs, the state of the stacked Rays and Padres farm systems, why the Rays traded Snell, what dealing Darvish signifies for the Cubs, salary dumps vs. cost-cutting competitive trades, whether the Padres can catch the Dodgers, and much more.

Audio intro: Bring it On (Original Broadway Cast Recording), "It’s All Happening"
Audio outro: The Posies, "All in a Day’s Work"

Link to Ben Clemens on the Snell trade
Link to Brendan Gawlowski on the Kim signing
Link to Eric on the Rays’ system
Link to Eric on the Cubs’ return for Darvish
Link to Craig Edwards on the Darvish trade
Link to Ben on Preller’s trades
Link to Ben on the formerly nondescript Padres
Link to FanGraphs farm system rankings

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After trading for Blake Snell on Sunday, it was fair to wonder just how far away the Padres are from the World Series-winning Dodgers in the NL West. That gap has narrowed even more if not closed entirely after their latest blockbuster, with Yu Darvish going from Chicago to San Diego on Monday night in a seven-player deal. As for the Cubs, the self-inflicted wounds continue as they cut salary and get worse heading into the final years of team control for the core members of the 2016 championship team.

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Minnesota Twins.

Batters

I’m surprised that the Twins haven’t come to an agreement with Nelson Cruz, who seems almost immune to the ravages of time. The Twinkies dropped from second in the AL in runs scored to 10th, but that’s not Cruz’s fault: He hit .303/.397/.595 as the DH despite turning 40 in July. Is there a better fit for him than the Twin Cities? He’s well-liked in town(s), and this is arguably the franchise that needs his services most. That confluence of events tends to result in mutually beneficial contracts.

Without Cruz, Minnesota projects as a slight underdog to the White Sox, based on current rosters. Bringing him back and letting Alex Kirilloff get the bulk of playing time in left flips that standing to slight favorites. With few players signed, there are a lot of directions to go, but 40-year-olds don’t typically command enough resources that adding Cruz would preclude other moves. There is downside — Steamer and ZiPS massively disagree on his 2021 dropoff — but if he were a guarantee, he ought to get a one-year-deal at $25 million.

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As is fast becoming a holiday tradition, the Padres and Rays made a high-profile trade last night. Blake Snell, the former Cy Young winner and Rays ace, is headed to San Diego, as Dennis Lin, Josh Tolentino, and Ken Rosenthal first reported. The Padres are sending a bevy of players back, both prospects and major leaguers: Luis Patiño, Francisco Mejía, Blake Hunt, and Cole Wilcox.

Last time the two teams hooked up, Snell was virally critical of Tampa Bay’s perennial strategy: trade players a year too early rather than a year too late, prioritizing team control and pre-arbitration salaries over current production. Last year, that was Tommy Pham, whose $7 million arbitration projection simply didn’t work in Tampa. This time, Snell himself is the monetary sacrifice. The extension he signed before 2019 has three years and $40.8 million remaining, which is a phenomenal bargain for his employer and also too expensive for the penny-pinching Rays.

Snell immediately becomes the best pitcher in the Padres rotation, which boasts Chris Paddack, Dinelson Lamet, Zach Davies, and a sampler platter of interesting prospects headlined by Mackenzie Gore and Adrian Morejon. Mike Clevinger will miss 2021 after undergoing Tommy John surgery, but he’ll return in 2022 to co-star in a spectacular rotation.

Snell may never recapture the overall production of his 2018 Cy Young season (1.89 ERA, 221 strikeouts in 180.2 innings), but he’s been consistently excellent for years now, albeit on a shorter leash than many elite pitchers. His strikeout rates hardly waver: 31.6% in 2018, 33.3% in 2019, and 31 % in 2020. His walk rates have been consistent as well: 9.1%, 9.1%, and 8.9% respectively. Read the rest of this entry »