The Cubs’ Idea So Nice They’re Trying It Twice
The Cubs weren’t going to win in 2013, and everyone knew it. The organization had begun to find its way, but it was understood it would be a long process, and 2013 would be more about development. That didn’t mean, however, that the Cubs would be inactive in free agency, and one of the things they did was sign veteran starter Scott Feldman for a year and $6 million, with an additional $1 million in possible incentives. Feldman was solid over 15 starts, and then the Cubs flipped him to Baltimore with Steve Clevenger in exchange for Jake Arrieta, Pedro Strop, and some international spending money. In that way, the Cubs turned a stopgap veteran into possible long-term resources. It was perfect execution of a classic idea.
The Cubs aren’t going to win in 2014, and everyone knows it. The organization is still on its way, and overall it’s made progress, but it’s still going to be a long process, and 2014 will be more about development. That doesn’t mean, however, that the Cubs need to be inactive in free agency, and something they just did is sign veteran starter Jason Hammel for a year and $6 million, with an additional $1 million in possible incentives. What Hammel hasn’t been, yet, is flipped for possible long-term resources. But that could be perfect execution of a classic idea.
As a handy reminder that there’s a difference between contract wishes and contracts signed:
Jason Hammel’s reps said to be looking for a 3-4 year deal for the right-hander.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) December 9, 2013
That was never going to happen, not after Hammel’s 2013. Probably, this is better for him. What he’s still got is long-term uncertainty, but 2014 could be all about Hammel rebuilding his value, and the Cubs are more than happy to be the team to allow him to try to do that. The worst case, for them, is that Hammel sucks and gets bounced from a rotation of a team out of the race. Nothing lost, but a little money. The best case is that this follows the Feldman route. Or, I suppose, maybe the best case is that Hammel pitches well and remains in Chicago for a while, but that’s less likely. The Cubs have to be hoping that Hammel just looks a lot better in June and July than he’s looked over this winter. Thanks to the expanded Wild Card, there would be lots of teams in or near the race, and teams always want starting pitching.
So what’s the hope, with Hammel? His most recent season was very much not good. He had an arm injury, and he turned 31 in September. But then, there’s this to consider:
BALTIMORE — The Orioles have placed pitcher Jason Hammel on the 15-day disabled list with right flexor mass tightness.
[…]
Hammel said the nagging issue first began in Spring Training, and it’s most noticeable on his slider.
[…]
“I figured I could pitch through it. As of right now, it’s really not what’s best for this team,” Hammel said. “I haven’t been pitching to my capability, and it’s really not worth going out there and further injuring myself.”
Hammel spent most of the year pitching through arm discomfort, and it’s easy to see how that could have a negative effect on his results. After he came back in September, he pitched well over a few weeks. Not that we can automatically just write everything off to a problem that’s now resolved, but it’s certainly possible. And prior to 2013, Hammel had a pretty intriguing track record.
In 2009, 123 different starters threw at least 100 innings. Hammel ranked
- 18th in FIP-
- 28th in xFIP-
In 2010, 140 different starters threw at least 100 innings. Hammel ranked
- 20th in FIP-
- 35th in xFIP-
In 2012, 128 different starters threw at least 100 innings. Hammel ranked
- 8th in FIP-
- 12th in xFIP-
What’s missing is a 2011 season during which Hammel was mostly miserable. The Rockies even bumped him to the bullpen for a time. There’s no easy way to explain what happened, although Hammel believes his problems were mental. What’s also missing is that Hammel injured his knee in 2012 and had surgery performed. Later on he aggravated the injury, before returning in the playoffs. But in 2009 and 2010, Hammel was a good starter in a terrible environment. And in 2012, when Hammel was healthy, he was among the very best starters in baseball. Though he wasn’t throwing eight or nine innings every turn, he matched Doug Fister in ERA-, David Price in FIP-, and Adam Wainwright in xFIP-. Hammel was probably the best starter on an Orioles team that played in October.
For a while, Hammel was pretty good in Colorado. The Orioles rescued him from that environment, and the first year, he was outstanding. What’s taken place between that year and the present are 26 appearances Hammel mostly made with discomfort in his arm. So he’s a fascinating buy-low, even for a bad team, because players on bad teams can quickly become players on contending teams. The Cubs are probably hoping for another mid-3s ERA and a contending team with a need and expendable youth.
Sometimes, it doesn’t work. A year ago, the Cubs also took a chance on Scott Baker, and he basically never did anything. The injury Hammel had last season is often a precursor for Tommy John surgery, and though Hammel opted to rest before things got that bad, you never know if he might be in trouble. He might pitch healthy and poorly, like he did in 2011. If Hammel were a better bet, he would’ve signed a better contract with a better team. There’s risk involved.
But the Cubs can afford it, because the Cubs have money and little to play for in the immediate. They don’t lose much if Hammel stinks. They could gain quite a bit if Hammel rebounds. It seems pretty easy to see what they’re doing, but there’s the potential for all parties to win. Hammel just has to delay a payday he wasn’t going to get in the first place. Three good months on a bad team could mean three or four more months in the hunt.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
his value in a given season appears to be tied to his HR/FB rate. 2009, 2010, and 2012 were the only years that his HR/FB ratio was less than 10% and coincidentally are the only years that he has better than average ERA- and FIP-. He also appears to consistenly have ERA that underperforms his FIP and xFIP, which could also indicate issues with keeping the ball in the park
Think the big gap between ERA and FIP/xFIP has more to do with an elevated BABIP and poor strand rate in his years with the Rockies (. His FIP is barely above his xFIP, which actually means that he’s pretty close to average at suppressing home runs, maybe a bit better than average considering the vast majority of his innings have been in Colorado and Orioles, two of the five most homer-friendly parks (as evidenced by his 99 FIP- versus his 103 xFIP-).
Actually didn’t they do this in 2012 with Paul Maholm?
Good call! Returned an interesting prospect for them in Arodys Vizcaino, although so far health has kept him from doing anything for the Cubs.
Yep, 1-year deal $4.75MM deal that included a 2013 club option for $6.5MM with a $500K buyout, plus up to $550K in incentives each year.
[src]
His velocity has remained more or less stable as is his pitch selection. And he seemed to pitch better at the end of 2013, so maybe he can avoid the Tommy John surgery.
Going to Wrigley isn’t ideal given that it’s a pretty good park for homers and, as Larry pointed out, preventing homers is the key to Hammel’s success. But it’s a great value signing by the Cubs, more so than just being a potential trade asset. Even though they’re not going to compete, they really needed quality pitching and Hammel has the potential to give them six solid innings every 5th day.
Wrigley commonly gets miscast as a HR haven, but the wind blows in as much as it blows out. Fangraphs gives it a HR factor of 102, making is roughly
average.
http://www.fangraphs.com/guts.aspx?type=pf&season=2013&teamid=0
The Cell it is not…
I don’t watch many games played at Wrigley, but is it fair to say it’s almost two different parks in terms of homer susceptibility depending on weather conditions? If so, you could certainly see how some Cubs pitchers could get wrecked (or buoyed) by circumstances largely outside their control.
but it’s not entirely out of their control. When the wind is blowing out, the pitcher needs to induce ground balls. This is a learnable skill. When the wind blows in, the pitcher need to let his defense and the park take the load – not try to be too perfect, not to overthrow, not try to strike every batter out. This too is a learned skill, something Maddux excelled at and something Jeff Samardzija needs to learn.
exactly, pitching to the situation is essential, just like when pitchers pitch to the score
@benny krian
I’m going to assume, based on your post and username, that your post is sarcastic. I think pitching to the situation is a legitimate skill, even though pitching to the score is not.
Pitchers do have some control over the distribution of their outcomes. A pitcher might have a 45% ground ball rate, 3% HR rate, 16% K rate, 8% BB rate… etc. However, that is an average over a whole season, not his actual probabilities for every plate appearance. Sometimes he might pound the zone, thus increasing the chances of a ball being put in play, and decreasing the chances of a walk or a K. Sometimes he might keep the ball down, decreasing K and FB rates, but decreasing HR while increasing GB.
This is not some silly post hoc reasoning to justify a stat that has no predictive power. There are times when the run values of events like strikeouts, home runs, and walks actually change relative to one another, so it makes sense for a pitcher to pitch in a way that changes the relative frequency of those events.
Example 1: with the bases empty and none out, walking a batter increases the offense’s run expectancy by 0.4, while a home run increases it by 1, and a K decreases it by 0.25. So a walk has about 40% the run value of a homer.
Example 2: with runners on 2nd and 3rd and 2 out, a walk has a run value of 0.2, and a homer has a run value of about 2.5 (3 runs scored, minus the run expectancy lost by going from -23 to —). So in this case, a walk has less than 10% the run value of a homer. Also, a K reduces the run expectancy by 0.6. So a K prevents more runs, a walk adds fewer runs, and a homer adds far more.
As these numbers show, it is absolutely in a pitcher’s best interest to keep the ball down and stay out of a hitter’s sweet spot in the second situation. In the first situation, a pitcher may want to stay in the zone and get some more fly balls, since a home run is not as severe, and a walk is pretty bad.
Do we have wind-adjusted stats on Cubs’ pitchers?
Pitching to the score most certainly is a thing. We’ve seen over and over that pitcher’s GB/FB/BB/K numbers all change when they have a big lead.
Pitchers don’t pitch BETTER with a big lead, but they most certainly do pitch differently.
That’s exactly right. Wrigley is just much more open and exposed to the prevailing wind conditions than bigger, more modern ballparks, and when combined with the always shifting Chicago weather it makes for some dramatic differences in home run conditions.
It averages out to being pretty neutral, but on any given day Wrigley is usually dramatically on one end of the spectrum or the other. It tends to be wind blowing in April and September and wind blowing out in June and July, but that’s not the case 100% of the time.
Interesting how almost all the low numbers on that list are for California teams. Is it the park dimensions? The weather?
Also, is it just me or Hammel and Feldman similar 2 seam/sinking fastball cutter combo guys that get a lot of ground balls which may play better than average with Wrigley’s long infield grass?
That’s true, plus the unit of Valbuena, Castro, Barney, and Rizzo gives the Cubs a quite solid infield defense. Valbuena and Barney will probably keep their jobs just as long as Hammel stays with the Cubs.
is that the same Castro that tied for the league lead in SS errors with 22 and a dWAR of -0.2?
The infield is more than the abilities of one man, and if Castro is just average, the rest of them are comfortably above average.
Sorry, this was a stupid sign. You spent $6M for a guy that is not going to help them win anymore games that will matter. If say he does do well, but the team overall doesn’t and won’t, yes, you can flip him for a likely Feldman-like swap – a reliever and a failed or failing SP. Which is fine and dandy, if they at all pan out, or have several seasons of cheap control. (Arrieta has the best potential – but has issues, endurance, mistake pitches – not sold on Strop.)
But at the end of 2014, if this guy provided 1-2 more wins that cost you a draft slotting – say a shot at no.1 compared to a no.3 slot – you may have cost yourself both 6 million in the overpay for the marginal wins this guy adds, plus the WAR potential lost of picking just 1-2 slots higher in 2015 because he won those 1-2 more games, if you religiously believe in WAR value. Frankly, if you ain’t trying to win IT ALL (by signing 2/3+ year deals, showing commitment) – like the Cubs moves have indicated towards – then why spend $6M on a guy that ain’t gonna be there in 2015? (And he won’t – good or bad – good, he shops around for his 3-year deal; bad you won’t keep him.)
You mention development. Which this guy is not gonna be around to see the real development needed from the Big 4-6 minor leaguers (Baez, Edwards, et. al.) so, why are you putting in roadblocks for young arms they might as well tryout? (They have 3-4 young SP, not highly regarded, that might as well be your 5th guy.) Even if you do swap Samardzija, why not sign like an Erik Bedard – for 2-3M – save 3-4M and throw that fungible piece to the drafting or development you seek? In short, be bad – 1st pick overall bad in 2015. And throw cash around in the 2015 off-season.
Adding these flippable assets is pointless if the league doesn’t give you the quantity and quality back. (And before we can call all those 2013 moves great, how bout we let them do something to prove it in 2014.)
I would have been more impressed with other arms signed much earlier in the off season (Kazmir, for example). Frankly, the analysis and the Cubs spin machine are over-washing their uniforms. Sanitizing the truth of the matters at hand to feed their fan base and their critics lines of BS, over and over. Their ownership has screwed the entire franchise up through political missteps, negotiations that fell apart, and failure to understand the ramifications of restrictive debt loads on a team that was not as bad as they made it…(rebuild or not, their are more ways to skin cats.)
I’d prefer an entirely different plan, but if you are all about getting better through low cost, then draft position is better than taking another’s leftovers, midseason, who were available for a reason.
By now we should know that the rebuilding process is more than trading away all your decent players and intentionally tanking for a few years to get high draft picks. Fielding a terrible team has significant ramifications on attendance and viewership, which affects revenue. A move like this to make a team projected to be one of the 2-3 worst teams in baseball a little more bearable to watch for half of the season can have some meaning to the fans.
Spending money on Hammel makes sense for two reasons. First, with new restrictions on draft and international spending, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to turn money into prospects. Why sign Hammel instead of Bedard? To start, he’s four year younger. On tap of that, Hammel has been worth over 2.5 WAR in three of the past five seasons. Bedard’s season high in that span is 2.1 WAR. As Jeff outlined above, Hammel is just one season removed from being one of the best starters in baseball when healthy. You can’t say the same about Bedard.
I agree with Jason and disagree with you. One of the best SP in baseball doesn’t comp closely with Scott Feldman…another SP that wasn’t kept on the team.
Scenario 1 – Hammel sucks: Your point about the draft is moot. Hammel doesn’t win any games for the Cubs, so their draft position doesn’t get worse. Very likely they find someone to take his place. IF one of their prospects is definitely ready for the show, they let him get some experience, so this point about “blocking” is moot too.
Scenario 2 – Hammel is good: Sure he wins a few more games for the Cubs. Maybe he knocks their position in the draft down a place to two. However, if/when they trade him mid-season for a prospect or two, that will more than make up for it, even if the prospect is no one special.
Drafting is a extremely inexact science. Since the Cubs are not likely to have the #1 overall (and probably not even top 3), you can’t convincingly say that they are losing any measurable value by dropping down a slot or two. It’s not like, with this signing, they are forcing themselves to choose between the draft and the return they get for Hammel. The choice is more like this:
(#5 overall pick) vs. (#7 overall pick + marginal prospect + ok role-player.)
I’d take the latter any day. Also, not that I need any examples of how draft position doesn’t correlate very strongly with player value, but Clayton Kershaw was drafted 7th overall in 2006. The two ahead of him were Andrew Miller and Brandon Morrow, and #1 overall was Luke Hochevar.
With regard to a pitching prospect that Hammel may block, teams usually don’t bring up their prospects until mid-season anyway, for service time reasons. Also, remember that a team has an incentive to not start the clock on its prospects. As soon as a player is promoted to the big leagues, the amount of time they can pay him the minimum salary start to go down. The ideal situation for the Cubs is that their young prospects are coming up and producing all at the same time, so they can pay as little as possible for that value, and then have as much money as possible left over to fill out the roster with free agents.
If a player is ready for the majors, you don’t want to just let him sit in the minors and stall his development, but the Cubs have a lot of incentive not to rush any of their prospects too.
I certainly agree with Jason and don’t agree with you. I have a problem with your Scenario 1: He will be blocking younger SP they have. Why? Because regardless of whether or not he sucks, the team sucks. Theo did this with Marmol in the closer role time and again when Marmol had no business being in the closer’s role last year.
Scenario 2: Trading Hammel mid-season doesn’t exclude the fact that the Feldman trade didn’t return prospects. Guys in their late 20s aren’t prospects…sorry that’s just silly.
Having the #1 pick in the draft is important because it would allow the Cubs to dictate the draft. While drafting isn’t an exact science, one would expect that Jason MacLeod and staff know what they’re doing. If they didn’t, the Cubs’ farm system wouldn’t be generating the ratings, it’s generating in two short years of farm development. So, having the #1 could be the difference between having a dominant starter and getting a riskier SP at #4, where they’re slated to pick this year. This is important because it’s a key area in their farm system that, other than CJ Edwards, the organization doesn’t have in abundance and dearly needs to compliment the age range and timetable of its young offense.
So, no I’ll take the #5 pick in draft any day of the week over 27-28 fringe players, most likely acquired for this guy.
Do they really have a prospect who’s close enough to being ready that Hammel will likely block him this year? Again, the Cubs have incentive not to start the clock on their projects, until they can bring them up all at once.
Hammel is unlikely to be good enough to cause the Cubs to go go down more than one draft slot. Plus, as the link below shows, the difference in WAR between draft picks decreases as pick number increases. The cubs had the 7th worst run differential lay year. As their prospects graduate, they’ll probably get better. All this is to say they are not in competition for #1 overall, so the better they are, the less they lose by going down a slot or two. Based on the link below, the difference between the 5th and 7th overall pick is 1.4 career WAR on average. Their return for Hammel will very likely provide more career value than that, even if it’s just a decent reliever.
Also, again, it’s not
(#5 pick) vs (late 20’s role players)
it’s
(#5 pick) vs (late 20’s role players + #7 pick)
and the link below shows that the difference between those two picks are 1.4 career WAR on average. The #5 is not considerably more likely to be an impact player, just look at the last 20 years of 1st round drafts. So no, you have to get more players, even if they aren’t impact players, because there is no surefire way to get young, impact players.
Bip, yes they have Justin Grimm or should just stay with Scott Rusin until Kyle Hendricks is ready mid-season. It doesn’t matter about late twenties role players….they don’t make much of a difference. Also, you need rephrase you example. Your example should be the #1-3 pick vs number 5 plus late twenties reliever. The #1-3 picks do make a difference. Since Theo’s been here the Cubs have only picked below #4 once. While the Cubs are bad, they should be trying for a higher pick than #4.
I think you mean Chris Rusin, who is 27, or, as you said about Arrieta, is a late twenties role player.
“you can’t convincingly say that they are losing any measurable value by dropping down a slot or two.”
Yes, you can: http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/06/draft_picks_and.php
As the first comment on that article points out, the variance and uncertainty with prospects is so huge, that although the formula says the Cubs would likely lose about 1.4 WAR from dropping from #5 to #7 overall – 8.8 career WAR to 7.4 – we still have next to no idea how the drafted player will turn out. Both #5 and #7 are very likely to never even make the majors.
That’s not to say that the #5 pick isn’t better than the #7 pick. Of course it is better. My point is that the best way to assure yourself of acquiring useful player is to get a lot of them. The chances a #5 overall will bust is only slightly less than the chance a #7 overall will bust. However, the chances of two prospects both busting is much smaller than the chances of just one.
You’re also approaching this totally wrong. You can’t evaluate a trade by how the players turned out. The theory is good – you need to stock up on young, cheap players to build a sustainably good team. The main drawback with young players is that you have little idea how they will pan out, which is why you try to get a lot of them. Arrieta himself may not turn out that great, but the more trades like this they do, the more players they will get, and the better the chances they will get someone who provides a lot of value for very little cost.
Another Astros-style signing by the team with the 4th-highest annual revenues in baseball.
Let’s play none.
It drives me crazy that the Cubs keep talking about needing to generate more revenues when they are already sitting on a cash cow. Once they get their new local media deal they will have no excuse not to spend like the Yankees and Dogers, but….. I’m betting they don’t.
Why would the Cubs pay a guy $6M if he may have to have T.J. Surgery?? Hopefully that isn’t the case,as Hammel is capable of being Scott Feldman 2.0. However,I think that predicting an ERA under 4 is being kind. We need to keep in mind where he is pitching,and what teams he is pitching against. Hammel will likely be good for 6-9 wins and an ERA some where between 4 and 4.5.
I wish they would trade samardzfdkasdkasjza. It doesn’t take a scout to see that guy will never be able to limit his walks. There is nothing more annoying to me than pitchers that walk guys. I also would like them to dump castro for pennies on the dollar. he is a cancer
I think that’s the problem, scouts from other teams see that he’s never going to be a true ace or even a guy you want in a playoff rotation. Then there’s the fact that he’s only started through one complete season and that his armed tired at the end of it. I think the Cubs were very anxious to dump him this offseason but there were no real takers.
well i remember hearing that they wanted ridiculous pieces in return, so im not surprised a deal never got done. off the top of my head, they asked the Braves for Heyward or JUp plus other pieces
“The town name is “Goblin” backwards!” (said with the same stupid horrified/pissy face I makes THE ENTIRE MOVIE)
I don’t know that the idea of signing a mediocre starter hoping that he’ll bounce back is such a great strategy when numbers like this are involved. Its something I’d like to see fangraphs study in greater depth. Obviously I can see the benefit of signing a guy, using him for part of a season, and then trading him for a low cost, controlled player. However, when you use that strategy for higher priced players such as Maholm/ Feldman/ Hammel, I question whether it makes sense. The Cubs will pay each of those guys $4M or so for the part of the season until they trade them. Is that $4M worth Pedro Strop and Arrieta? I know there’s always hope with younger arms like that but neither did well in their brief time with the Cubs.
Then there’s the fact that the signing will not always work out. Last year the Cubs tried the same thing with Scott Baker and basically wasted $5M.
Or, they could pocket the $6MM? How does that help anyone? It’s a no brainer for me……a good signing.
Or… they could wait out one of the free agents who are actually good and then do the same thing with them without having to worry about whether Hammel actually regains his form. We’re talking about a guy who has had one very good and one good season in his career with all the rest of the seasons just adequate. $6M is a lot to spend on him in the hopes of trading him later when the price of a several players who are better than him is likely to fall into that range before long. Arroyo isn’t going to get much more than that, IMHO.