Episode 908

On this edition of FanGraphs Audio, we welcome our newest writer to the program before bringing on a true baseball lifer to talk Philly sports.

• At the top of the show, Eric Longenhagen sits down with Kevin Goldstein. Kevin recently joined the FanGraphs staff after many years working with the Houston Astros, and he has plenty of insight to share after his time in the front office. Kevin and Eric discuss what Kevin’s experience was like, what he will be doing at FanGraphs, and how he feels about returning to writing after all this time. [2:11]
• In the second half, David Laurila is joined by Rubén Amaro Jr., former Philadelphia Phillies general manager as well as major league outfielder, first base coach, and television analyst. Amaro has stories about the multitude of sports legends he has encountered over the years, from growing up in Philadelphia while his dad played for the Phillies, to playing in the minors and majors, to being in charge of a successful franchise. David also puts Amaro on the spot as he asks for his Mount Rushmore of Philadelphia Sports. [28:21]

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On September 4, 2020 in Kansas City, Alex Colomé had one of those nights where he just didn’t have it. It took him 40 pitches, only 23 for strikes, to get four outs and preserve a White Sox 7-3 victory over the Royals. With one out in the ninth, he missed a location with the second best of his two pitches. James McCann set up in and Colomé missed out with a 94 mph fastball, which Jorge Soler nailed with an exit velocity approaching 110 mph. If Soler had pulled the ball, it would have been in the seats, but he thankfully couldn’t get around on it; the ball went oppo, and a well-positioned Nomar Mazara easily jogged it down. Check out the end of the video as Colomé shakes his head, knowing he made a mistake, and maybe a couple, in terms of both location and pitch type.

Ten days later in Chicago, Colomé wasn’t especially sharp but kept runs off the board to finish up a 3-1 win over the Twins, who became his new team this week as he inked a one-year deal with a unique mutual option. With two outs in the ninth and looking to end the game, Colomé had the rare extreme miss with his signature cutter. Yasmani Grandal wanted one down and out, knowing Buxton couldn’t do much damage there, but Colomé delivered a center-cut meatball that the center fielder hammered. The good news was that the ball was a line drive to the left fielder. The bad news? That left fielder was Eloy Jiménez, who absolutely zooed the ball, resulting in an inside-the-park home run that was later reversed to a ground-rule double.

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I’m not sure many people expected Joakim Soria to stick around this long. Perhaps that’s the case with any reliever, given how volatile they can be, and how they begin their careers with the inherent flaw of not being starters. Maybe it’s the case for all players in general — how many of today’s prospects would you bet on lasting 14 years in the majors? Careers that stretch into a player’s late-30s are rare across the board, and any player still putting on a uniform 20 years after he was signed for the first time has accomplished something impressive. But it feels especially pertinent to point out in the case of Soria, who began his big league career as a Rule 5 draft pick with a low-90s fastball only to be asked to close games as a rookie. Since then, he’s become one of baseball’s pillars of consistency. And on Wednesday, it was announced that he would be joining the eighth team of his career.

The Arizona Diamondbacks, whose offseason additions prior to this week consisted of just two minor league deals given to 30-and-older relievers, signed Soria to a one-year contract worth $3.5 million, with the potential to add $500,000 more if he hits certain innings incentives:

Per a source, Joakim Soria's performance bonuses break down thusly:

$125K for 40 games pitched
$125K for 50 games pitched
$125K for 60 games pitched
$125K for 65 games pitched

— Zach Buchanan (@ZHBuchanan) February 3, 2021

Soria spent 2020 as one of the best relievers in one of the majors’ best bullpens. In 22.1 innings with the Athletics, he held a 2.82 ERA and 2.97 FIP, striking out 24 batters while issuing 10 free passes (three of which were intentional). That was Soria’s third time in the last four years finishing with a sub-3.00 FIP. Among active pitchers, he’s one of the 10 best relievers in that time span.

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Jeter Downs can swing it. As Eric Longenhgan wrote last month, the top prospect in the Boston Red Sox organization “has been a polished, advanced-for-his-age hitter dating back to high school.” That attribute led to Downs being drafted 32nd overall by the Cincinnati Reds in 2017, and subsequently included in a pair of major trades. In December 2018, he went to the Los Angeles Dodgers as part of a seven-player swap that included Matt Kemp, Yasiel Puig and Alex Wood, and 12 months ago he came to Boston as part of the Mookie Betts deal. A 22-year-old second baseman who finished 2019 in Double-A, Downs projects, per Longenhgan, as an everyday player at the major-league level.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with a self scouting report: How would you describe yourself as a hitter?

Jeter Downs: “I like to think of myself as a contact-first guy. I’m not the biggest guy in the world — I’m 5-foot-11 and usually between 185 and 188 [pounds] — so I don’t try to hit for power. That’s something that comes naturally, from having the right approach. I call home runs ‘a mistake,’ honestly. You don’t try to hit home runs; they just happen. Basically, I just try to get in good counts and swing at good pitches.”

Laurila: How would you describe your swing?

Downs: “If you go by numbers and results, they would show that I’m more of a loft guy. But at the end of the day, I just try to put a nice level swing on the ball and hit it hard. I’m not trying to hit the ball in the air. I’m just trying to hit nice line drives everywhere.”

Laurila: Eric Longenhagen wrote that you punish pitches down in the zone, but that you could be susceptible to getting tied up by velocity in on your hands. Do you agree with that? Read the rest of this entry »

With the players’ union rejecting Major League Baseball’s proposal to delay the start of the 2021 season by a month in hopes of winter coronavirus rates declining, the start of spring training is less than two weeks away, and from a logistical standpoint, so much remains undecided. Will there be a universal designated hitter? Will last year’s experiments with seven-inning doubleheader games and man-on-second extra inning rules carry over? What will the playoff format be? From a personnel standpoint, more than 150 free agents are still looking for work.  

The ice has begun to thaw for some of the top free agents, particularly in the past two weeks as the likes of George Springer, J.T. Realmuto, Michael Brantley, Brad Hand, Marcus Semien, Nelson Cruz, Kolten Wong, Joakim Soria, and Alex Colomé have found homes; news of the last three doing so broke while I was working on this very piece. That still leaves 14 members of our annual Top 50 Free Agents list in limbo, as well as numerous other players outside the 50 who could fill substantial roles.

What follows here is a quick trip around the diamond to note the best players still available at each position, whether they’re in our Top 50 (as six of the following were) or not; admittedly, the cupboard is better stocked in some spots than others. I’ll have a companion piece on the starters and relievers in the near future. Read the rest of this entry »

You know it’s almost time for baseball season when all of the major projection systems forecast Kyle Hendricks‘ ERA one run per nine innings too high.

As much as this sounds like a knock on those who develop projections, it’s not. What Jared Cross (Steamer), Dan Szymborski (ZiPS), Derek Carty (THE BAT), and the folks at Baseball Prospectus (PECOTA) do is no small feat. If I weren’t too cowardly to even try to create my own projection system, I would be too stupid to design one that is half as effective as theirs. Glass houses and all that.

That said, I am just smart enough to know that projected ERAs ranging from 3.84 to 4.42 for Hendricks, who boasts a career ERA of 3.12 and has never finished a season with an ERA above 3.46 (except that dastardly 3.95 ERA in 2015), are too high. It’s easy to poke holes in the obvious outliers, but projections succeed by describing and then predicting the talents of most pitchers, not the ones whose talents deviate dramatically from expectation. Hendricks is every projection system’s known blind spot.

It’s not just projections that struggle with Hendricks, either. We, the sabermetric community, frequently use ERA estimators as shorthand to characterize a pitcher’s talent level. If you frequent FanGraphs, you’re familiar with Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), expected FIP (xFIP), and Skill-Interactive ERA (SIERA). By virtue of how they’re constructed, each metric makes assumptions about the skills a pitcher theoretically “owns”:

• FIP: strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed
• xFIP: strikeouts, walks, and fly balls induced
• SIERA: a complicated combination of strikeouts, walks, net groundballs (groundballs minus fly balls), and their squared terms and interactions with one another

While each estimator features a batted ball component, they focus on trajectory (launch angle), not on authority (exit velocity). This is a fair assumption, frankly. I have illustrated how a pitcher can influence hitter launch angle, operating under the assumption they bear little to no influence over hitter exit velocity. It’s not quite that bleak; certified baseball genius Rob Arthur found that the average pitcher’s effect on a baseball’s exit velocity: roughly five parts hitter, one part pitcher. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, one NL Central team has acquired the best defender at a key infield position. He’ll be playing the 2021 season at age-30, and he was below average offensively in 2020, so it’s not as though there aren’t red flags, but great defense doesn’t grow on trees. That’s right: the Brewers signed Kolten Wong to a two-year, $18 million contract, as Jon Morosi first reported.

While Nolan Arenado might have fallen behind Matt Chapman in the third base defense hierarchy, Wong reigns supreme at second. For three straight years, he’s won the Fielding Bible award at second base. Every advanced defensive metric sees him as the best fielder in the game over the past three years. Bigger fan of the eye test? He can do this:

Okay, fine, single defensive highlights are a bad reflection of talent. But he can do this, too:

I could go on all day if there weren’t an article to write. Wong is one of my very favorite players to watch. This is a transaction analysis, though, so I’ll restrain myself, and merely say that our very good defensive projections for Wong might still be conservative. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley recap the Rockies’ press conference about the Nolan Arenado trade and GM Jeff Bridich claiming the belt as the game’s most-maligned GM, then discuss Angels pitching coach Mickey Callaway’s suspension and Andrelton Simmons’ comments about his mental state in 2020, analyze the Twins re-signing Nelson Cruz and signing Alex Colomé, the Rays reuniting with Chris Archer, the Reds adding Sean Doolittle, and the Brewers landing Kolten Wong, touch on A.J. Preller’s promotion and extension and examine the potential conflict between Theo Epstein’s MLB consultancy and his new private-equity job, and conclude with a Stat Blast about the incredible consistency of Leroy Stanton.

Audio intro: Earth Girls, "Only Human"
Audio outro: Matthew Sweet, "Split Personality"

Link to Emma Baccellieri on the Rockies
Link to Marc Carig on the Rockies
Link to Nick Groke on the Arenado trade
Link to story about Monfort’s 94-win prediction
Link to Ben Clemens on Arenado’s new deal
Link to The Athletic report about Callaway
Link to Ginny Searle on Callaway
Link to Jeff Passan on Drew Robinson
Link to Jeff Fletcher on Simmons
Link to Kevin Goldstein on the Cruz signing
Link to Clemens on Cruz last September
Link to EW episode about Cruz
Link to Tony Wolfe on the Archer signing
Link to Ben on the Archer trade
Link to story about Archer’s sinker usage
Link to report about Epstein’s new gig
Link to Dan Fox on platoon splits
Link to Stanton’s career splits page

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Maybe the Rays are getting nervous. Two and half months ago, they watched Charlie Morton sign with Atlanta as a free agent. About a month later, they traded staff ace Blake Snell to San Diego. Those were the two best starters on a team that leaned heavily on its rotation, but Tampa’s only addition so far this winter has been embattled right-hander Michael Wacha at a mere $3 million. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays have landed one major free agent after another, and the Yankees still look very much like a juggernaut. As of Tuesday morning, Tampa Bay ranked 10th in the American League in our Depth Charts projected WAR standings — fourth in the AL East — just a few months after winning the pennant.

But with spring training (theoretically) fast approaching, the Rays finally signed another starting pitcher on Tuesday, adding a familiar face to the rotation.

Right-hander Chris Archer and the Tampa Bay Rays are in agreement on a one-year, $6.5 million deal, pending physical, sources tell ESPN.

Archer, 32, returns to the organization where he debuted and found his greatest success.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) February 2, 2021

To be clear, Chris Archer is no replacement for the starters Tampa Bay lost this winter. He’s posted an ERA over 4.00 in each of his last four seasons and missed all of 2020 after undergoing surgery to treat neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome. Effectiveness in the first season back from that injury — one of the most serious a pitcher can experience — is far from guaranteed. Tampa’s familiarity with Archer, however, made the team willing to bet on the 32-year-old right-hander anyway.

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