Earlier this week on Twitter, I was part of a discussion comparing Troy Tulowitzki and Evan Longoria, two of the best players in the game. I personally give Longoria a slight edge, but obviously Tulowitzki is great, too. If someone prefers him to Longoria, that is fine, and I could probably be talked in to it. What really spurs this particular post is the discussion we had about comparing their offense. Keeping in mind that this was a casual discussion rather than a deep evaluation of "true talent" involving all of the necessary regression and adjustments, someone noted that over the last three seasons (2009-2011) the two players have had virtually identical offensive value per plate appearance: Tulowitzki has a 137 wRC+, and Longoria has a 136 wRC+. I argued that Longoria's performance was more impressive given that the American League has superior pitching relative to the National League. However, Dave Cameron made an interesting point: the Rockies play in the National League West, where hitters seemingly face s larger proportion of stud pitchers -- Dave mentioned Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Clayton Kershaw, and Mat Latos in this connection. He also pointed out that Longoria did not have to face the Rays' own excellent pitching staff. So I decided to look at it more closely. The point is not to settle the Longoria versus Tulowitzki dispute. Rather, I am interested in whether individual hitters face (or do not face) particular pitchers enough that they require a "divisional" adjustment of some sort. Read the rest of this entry »While playing competitive baseball the summer before I started high school I had a teammate named "Rusty" who always wore an Atlanta Braves baseball cap. Although he was the best hitter on the team he was constantly bombarded with ridicule because of his choice of chapeau. Atlanta was the bottom feeder in the National League and was coming off a 65-97 season, which saw them finish at least fifth in the six-team division for the sixth straight season. A funny thing happened in 1991, though. Atlanta got good. And stayed good for... well until today. The success of the organization has revolved around its ability to maintain strong pitching and currently has three of the best pitching prospects in the game - and that trio could be MLB-ready by the end of 2012. The minor league system also boasts some intriguing up-the-middle offensive talents. 1. Julio Teheran, RHP BORN: Jan. 27, 1991 EXPERIENCE: 4 seasons ACQUIRED: 2007 international free agent 2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 1st Teheran leads the charge for Atlanta's young arms. He attacks hitters with an explosive repertoire that screams future No. 1 starter... if he can polish one of his two breaking balls. His fastball, which can touch 96-97 mph, and changeup are both plus pitches at times and just need more consistency. Teheran has both above-average control and understanding of his craft for his age. He is a fly-ball pitcher but he does a nice job of keeping the ball in the park after allowing just five home runs in 144.2 innings at triple-A. Despite a strong changeup, Teheran struggled against left-handed batters (at least in comparison to right-handed hitters who hit .199) by allowing a .276 batting-average-against. He just recently turned 21 years old and already has 20 innings of big league experience under his belt. Atlanta has excellent pitching depth at the big league level so Teheran should receive some more seasoning at the triple-A level to begin 2012. Read the rest of this entry »This is a featured article from our fantasy baseball blog: RotoGraphs.Come by to talk fantasy or real baseball. Beer and sandwich talk is always welcome. In response to yesterday's post about the risk-reward balance of prospect valuation, commenter "Hunter fan" made the following observation: Another reason lists could be so pitcher heavy is that apparently pitcher, for some analysts, are easier to project. Sickles just did a few articles on this. Top pitchers, almost without exception, he rated as A or B+ prospects. The position players were all over the place, with several good position players being B- or C level prospects.
Just food for thought. Pretty interesting food, actually. I'm not sure why I hadn't thought of this earlier, but on the surface, this comment seems to pass the smell test. Kids in high school can throw in the mid-90s, and that's a pretty easy thing to scout. They can throw nasty breaking balls that no one can hit. Likewise, there are always a few college arms who command their pitches so well that they're considered to be nearly Major League ready before they ever sign a pro contract. With these types of premium pitching prospects, there's not really a lot of projecting to be done - the forecasting involved is more along the lines of whether they'll be able to stay healthy or not. Read the rest of this entry »
The Klaw!
Table of ContentsHere's the table of contents for today's edition of Offseason Notes. 1. Prospecting: Keith Law's Top-100 Prospect List2. Video: Hak-Ju Lee and Julio Teheran3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Tampa Bay TelevisionProspecting: Keith Law's Top-100 Prospect ListKeith Law has published his top-100 prospect list for 2012. (Insider only.) Here are some notes on same: • Regarding the top-est of the top prospects, they're all generally where you'd expect. Law ranks Mike Trout first of the Trout- Bryce Harper- Matt Moore triumvirate. Manny Machado at fourth overall is probably slightly higher than on other lists you'll see, but not particularly so. Atlanta right-handed prospect Julio Teheran at 18th overall is decidedly lower than on other lists. (Teheran was, for example, ranked fourth, fourth, fourth, and sixth, respectively, by Baseball America's Jim Callis, J.J. Cooper, Will Lingo, and John Manuel on their top-50 lists from the BA Prospect Handbook.) Read the rest of this entry »First of all, yes, I'll admit it: I'm eating my words right now. After writing my aggressively-headlined " Good Luck Shopping A.J. Burnett, Yanks" piece on Wednesday, it turns out the Yankees have found at least one potential suitor for Burnett in the Pirates. The two sides are still haggling over how much money the Yankees should eat, but considering the Yankees' incentive to get rid of Burnett, it seems likely that a deal will happen eventually. Trading Burnett is a no-brainer for the Yankees; they would be freeing up payroll space while simultaneously opening up a spot in their rotation for Phil Hughes or Freddy Garcia. But why would the Pirates be interested in adding Burnett? As it turns out, the Pirates are in a unique predicament that makes them one of the few teams in the majors in a position to add Burnett. They have a weak rotation, headlined by the enigmatic Charlie Morton (who had off-season surgery and is doubtful for the beginning of the season) and the injury-prone Erik Bedard, and they have been rebuffed by numerous free agent pitchers this offseason. They offered Edwin Jackson a three-year deal, but he turned it down in favor of taking a one-year deal with the Nationals; they also attempted to woo Roy Oswalt, but he has limited his search to a handful of contending teams. Burnett is no Oswalt or Jackson. He has upside in Pittsburgh's park -- which is considerably less home-run-prone than Yankee Stadium -- but he's still only a +2 to +3 win pitcher who is under contract for two more seasons. He's not the final piece that will allow them to put together a competitive team, and he's not going to be able to compensate for the other holes in the Pirates' rotation. He's an improvement and will likely come at a good value -- although the Yankees had better be ready to pony up more dough -- but why are the Pirates spending their resources on a mediocre upgrade? Teams that have struggled for a long period of time have a vicious cycle holding them down, making it difficult for them to become contenders. Losing teams generally have weaker revenue streams than successful teams, and they face the added challenge of the top free agents typically don't want to go to a perpetually losing team, even if they are offering boatloads of money. Based on this offseason's progression, it seems like the Pirates are stuck in that position. They have some exciting young position players, but they desperately need to add pitching depth if they want to take their club to the next level. And even if A.J. Burnett doesn't solve all their problems, he's got three things going for him: he's a step in the right direction, he'll come at a fair value, and he isn't going to say no. Even an incremental upgrade might make it more likely that the next player the Pirates pursue will say yes. Professional baseball is one of the purest meritocracies in the American job market: if someone possesses baseball talent, odds are that they will be tendered a job offer. But baseball reflects American society, and like all other sectors of American society, baseball has a history of discrimination which it still has to deal with. In previous columns for Fangraphs, I've discussed homophobia in the context of the anti-discrimination language in the new CBA; sexism in the context of Kim Ng's move to the commissioner's office, as well as the increasing presence of women in all levels of the game; and racism in the context of Milton Bradley's retirement. I recently came across a scholarly article that used data from the 1880 census to examine anti-Irish discrimination in baseball in the late 19th century. It offers interesting parallels with the recent history we're more familiar with. As the author, E. Woodrow "Woody" Eckard, an economics professor at the UC Denver Business School, concludes: First, Irish players had to display superior performance to earn regular positions. Second, they generally were relegated to less important field positions. Regular Irish players were also more likely to be assigned to fill in at field positions other than their regular ones. Last, the Irish were underrepresented as managers. The evidence also suggests fan discrimination, with the presence of Irish players positively correlated with their cities’ Irish populations. These patterns, again with the exception of pitcher, mirror those observed for African Americans in the first decade or two after Jackie Robinson broke the MLB “color line” in 1947. Read the rest of this entry »Alternate post title: Wade Davis, The Reliever I'll admit it: when Andrew Friedman said at the beginning of the off-season that the Rays didn't need to trade a starter, I called bull. It's no secret that the Rays have a glut of major-league-ready starting pitching, with seven starters who could theoretically be in the opening day rotation*, so I wrote off Friedman's comments as positioning. You don't want to announce to the world that you desperately need to trade a starter, thereby jettisoning your leverage. Friedman was playing his hand, but there's no chance the Rays would actually enter the 2012 season without dealing a starter...right? *In case you're having a brain fart: David Price, James Shields, Jeremy Hellickson, Matt Moore, Jeff Niemann, Wade Davis, and Alex Cobb.As it turns out, wrong. The market ended up being flooded with starters, and there was never a surplus of demand that would have pushed up offers for either Jeff Niemann or Wade Davis. Who saw Gio Gonzalez and Jeremy Guthrie being traded? Or Roy Oswalt staying on the market this late? It was a poor off-season to be stuck trying to deal a mediocre starter, so now the Rays are faced with the task of making all their pitchers fit their roster without decreasing anyone's trade value. But the solution to this glut of pitching is simpler than it seems: keep Alex Cobb in Triple-A, and move Wade Davis to the bullpen. That may not seem ideal, but based on his pitch repertoire and success, Davis may be destined to move to the bullpen anyway. Read the rest of this entry »With how good Nelson Cruz has been for the Rangers over the last few seasons, it can be easy to forget just how tumultuous his road to the majors was. It wasn't too long ago, however, that Cruz was the definition of the "Quad-A" player, crushing Triple-A pitching but stymied against pitching in the major leagues. That's why, despite turning 32 in July, Cruz is entering just his second year of arbitration. That also may be why the Rangers weren't willing to buy out any of Cruz's free agent seasons, going beyond his age 34 season. The Rangers did sign Cruz to an extension Thursday, buying out his final two seasons of arbitration for $16 million, Fox Sports's Ken Rosenthal reports. Read the rest of this entry »After gaining significant helium during the 2010 off-season, prospect followers expected young left-hander Carlos Perez to firmly establish himself as the best of the next wave of young Braves pitchers. With Randall Delgado, Arodys Vizcaino, Julio Teheran and Mike Minor in the midst of breaking through at the Major League level, along with prospect fallout from the Michael Bourn deal, a void between what's now and what's next has developed. By statistical measures, Carlos Perez had a marginally successful 2011 at best. Over 126 innings, he struck out nearly eight batters per nine innings and proved to be a durable starter whose innings needed to be monitored closely the final two months of the 2011 season to avoid overuse. Unfortunately, Perez also surrendered more hits than innings pitched and his poor walk rates led to the worst WHIP among qualified pitchers in the South Atlantic League. Video after the jumpRead the rest of this entry »Last week, in Part 1, I set out my criteria for "best value players" and selected the pitcher, catcher, first baseman, and second baseman that, in my view, best met those criteria in the twenty seasons from 1992 to 2011. Today, in Part 2, I select the "best value players" at shortstop, third base, left field, center field, and right field over the same twenty-year period. First, a note about values prior to 2002. In Part 1, I explained that the Wizards of FanGraphs had calculated the dollar value per WAR for the years 2002-2011, but not for 1992-2001. When comparing contracts from the 1990's to contracts in the 2000's, I did my best to estimate values by taking inflation into account. I agree with several of the comments that simply taking the value of contracts from the 1990's and estimating their present value based on inflation may not be the most accurate way to go about it. Read the rest of this entry »Keith Law's list of the Top 100 prospects in baseball came out today, though you have to be an ESPN Insider subscriber in order to see the rankings. Since the content is behind a paywall, I'm not going to give away too many of the rankings, but there were a few things on the list that caused me to do some thinking, and those thoughts inspired this post. The first thing I noticed was how heavy the list was on pitchers. There's only two pitching prospects in the top nine, but then 12 of the next 16 spots go to hurlers, and overall, 49 of the 100 spots on the list are occupied by pitchers. It's not exactly breaking news that young pitching prospects get hurt and flame out at rates much higher than comparable hitting prospects, so in order to compensate for the extra risk they bring to the table, their placement has to be justified through additional upside. Keith's a smart guy and understands all this, and I'm sure he'd be able to make a valid argument that each pitcher on the list has enough potential to justify their ranking even with the understanding of greater risk. Read the rest of this entry »It is a simple question. What is sabermetrics? Not the history of it, but what is it, right now? What is, in our nerdiest of lingoes, its derivative? Where is it pointing? What does it do? Last Tuesday I created no little stir when I listed the 2012 saber teams, delineating them according to their perceived embrace of modern sabermetrics. Today, I recognize I needed to take a step back and first define sabermetrics, because it became obvious quickly I did not have the same definition at heart as some of the readers and protesters who gathered outside my apartment. I believe, and this is my belief -- as researcher and a linguist -- that sabermetrics is not statistics. The term itself has come to -- or needs to -- describe more than just on-base percentage, weighted runs created plus, fielding independent pitching, and wins above replacement. Sabermetrics is the advanced study of baseball, not the burying of one's head in numbers. Read the rest of this entry »Wednesday was Media Day at Stanford University. Some of the most successful coaches in the college game were gathered in Palo Alto to introduce their teams and take questions about the upcoming season. While there were little snippets of saber-awareness throughout, the overall feeling was perhaps more old-school than the professional game. Up first was Mark Marquess, Stanford coach since 1977. Proud of his team, recently named the pre-season number two in the nation, he probably the most sabrermetrically-friendly of the group. First, he reacted to the new ball. After giving the caveat that the new bat was "here to stay," he pointed out that decreasing offense was risky in terms of attendance and popularity of the game. He then added something that FanGraphs readers might applaud. Third and fourth hitters in the pros are not bunting. They are in college. Maybe another year of adjustment will change things, but that's how people reacted to the bat last year and it wasn't necessarily a good thing. -- Mark Marquess Read the rest of this entry »Each year, baseball fans and commentators across the nation make bold predictions about what they expect in the coming year. They frequently make outlandish claims like “ Adam Dunn is going to hit 50 home runs in Comerica Park!” or “This is the year that Joe Mauer finally hits .400!” but such predictions are far more likely to be high than low. Sure, if you said Jose Bautista was going to summon greatness going into 2010, you looked pretty smart, but anyone who predicts performance seriously knows that you need to hedge your bets. While frequently accused of being overly pessimistic about whoever your Home Nine are, on average, they land high about as often as they land low. This field of “projection systems” grows by the year, but there are significant differences between them. Today, I’ll evaluate their 2011 projections for hitters and pitchers. Firstly, lets peak at the candidates: Read the rest of this entry »According to CSN's Ray Ratto, who attributes this piece of news to Peter Gammons, Rich Harden will miss the upcoming season due to a torn capsule in his shoulder. While a visit to Dr. James Andrews is never a good thing, it almost seemed inevitable for Harden. After a tremendous 2004 season, in which he compiled a 4.5 WAR in 189.2 innings, Harden's career has been riddled with injuries. Harden has been on the DL at least five times since 2005 — really six if you count his lat injury last season — with arm-related injuries, but he's also had trouble with his back, hip and obliques over his career. Though his injuries haven't affected his ability to strike out hitters, Harden's effectiveness and stamina have suffered. Though he still missed considerable time this past season, Harden managed to reestablish some of his value with his return to Oakland. He maintained a high strikeout rate and got his walks back to an acceptable level. Harden actually remained healthy enough to be involved in a potential trade to the Boston Red Sox at the deadline. The Red Sox declined after looking at Harden's medical reports. While his 5.12 ERA was worse than his 4.69 FIP and 3.68 xFIP suggested, the A's made him a free agent this winter. Interest in Harden this winter has been mild. While there was some talk that Harden could be used as a reliever, nothing materialized. A move to the bullpen may have allowed Harden to limit his innings, but he's probably not the type of guy who should be pitching consecutive days. Pitching fewer innings could have maximized Harden's value, but he would still have to be handled with extreme care. Harden probably would have pitched so infrequently that teams didn't think it was the worth the trouble to take a chance on him. Gammons responded to the story this morning, claiming Harden has always been hurt, and will finally come back healthy in 2013. While that might explain Harden's past arm issues, one has to wonder how the injury went undetected for several seasons as Gammons' tweet seems to suggest. Now that he's expected to miss the 2012 season, Harden's career could be over. And he's only 30. After having a major shoulder surgery, teams are going to be concerned with how he'll hold up next season. Injury prone veterans coming off torn capsule surgery aren't the most desirable free-agent targets. Unless Harden comes back stronger than ever, this could be the end of the line. The Diamondbacks had two of the first seven picks in last June’s amateur draft, and to say that scouting director Ray Montgomery is excited about those players is an understatement. You can’t blame him. Right-hander Trevor Bauer, who was taken third overall out of UCLA, is already close to big-league ready with the potential to become a perennial all-star. Archie Bradley, a 19-year-old right-hander, came out of Broken Arrow, Okla., with a high-90s fastball and an equally good chance to become a dominant front-line starter. Montgomery gave scouting reports on both pitchers. He broke down their deliveries, their repertoires and their mindsets. ------ Montgomery on Trevor Bauer: “I think you can start with the fact that prior to us re-signing Joe Saunders, Trevor was going into major-league camp with designs on that fifth-starter spot. That says a lot about his talent. “He’s a four-pitch guy. He’ll tell you that it’s six pitches, but I think that four is what he’ll end up throwing once he moves into the upper echelon. They’re all average to above. He works off his fastball, which is plus-plus at times. “He throws a plus fastball, a plus-plus curveball, a tick-above-average slider -- which is almost a cutter -- and a split-changeup. The fifth is kind of a screwball, which he calls a 'reverse.' Basically, it’s a changeup with screwball action and he’ll throw it to both right- and left-handed hitters. He throws variations of his pitches, which sort of accounts for what he means when he tells you it’s six. Read the rest of this entry »Episode 138Chris Harris and Chris Thomas are the editors of the internet site BaseballCardPedia, the only free and editable encyclopedia dedicated to baseball cards. In this episode, Chrises Harris and Thomas discuss the BaseballCardPedia project and provide a primer of sort for anyone interested in becoming part of The Hobby. Don't hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things. Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min. play time.) Read the rest of this entry » FanGraphs+ (formerly The Second Opinion) is now available for just $4.99!Here's what you get: Player Profiles - Over 1100 player profiles written by the FanGraphs and RotoGraphs contributors you’re already familiar with. Available on either the player pages or in blog format. Articles - 11 in-depth articles to help you win your league: -Keeper League Prospect & Rookie Strategies -How to Use PITCHf/x in Your Fantasy League -Keepr Conundrum: Bryce Harper or Mike Trout -Improve Your Control and Break Out -The Difficulty in Predicting Saves -Valuing Upside Graphically -Ottoneu Strategies for Every Setting -Projections and Playing Through Pain -Mining for Under (and Over) Performers: Strikeouts -Prospects with Pedigree: Eno's Rookie Lineup -The 2nd Annual Cistulli-Sarris Prospect Face-Off Challenge Quick Opinions - Short one to two sentence profile that give you the bottom line about a player. These are also integrated into our various projection pages so you can quickly get more information about a player. FanGraphs+ Year Round Content - FanGraphs has partnerned with ESPN Insider again this season and everything we write for ESPN will be available. (2 - 3 articles weekly) FanGraphs+ Archives - Our previous two year's worth of FanGraphs+ content will also be available to you. For those of you wondering, there is no PDF (again) this year. I know we released one sometime in mid-March last year, but I just don't feel comfortable promising a half-hearted PDF. The idea of FanGraphs+ is to enhance your FanGraphs online experience and I think for $4.99, it's really an amazing bargain. |