The Astros have the worst team strikeout rate in the history of baseball. It’s not even particularly close, as these things go. The Astros have struck out in 26.8% of their plate appearances. The 2010 Diamondbacks struck out in 24.7% of their plate appearances. That’s a gap of more than two percentage points, in a rate that usually fluctuates between 15-25% or so. That’s terrible, and the only consolation is that the Astros were projected to be terrible so no one really cares.

Then right behind the 2010 Diamondbacks are this year’s Braves, at 24.5%. So, this year’s Braves have the third-worst team strikeout rate in the history of baseball. Between third and fourth there’s a gap of another 1.6 percentage points. The Braves, obviously, have the second-worst team strikeout rate this season. Just glancing at their current box score, they’ve struck out six times in four innings against Ian Kennedy on Wednesday. They’re going to strike out more before this game is through. Probably. I guess I can’t be certain.

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Andrelton Simmons is solid with the glove. He makes all the plays he should. Andrelton Simmons is spectacular. You should see his arm. Really, though, Andrelton Simmons is spectacularly solid.

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Ninety-nine — a number rarely seen once, let alone multiple times from the same pitcher. In his last start, Mauricio Cabrera touched 99 mph enough for teammates charting in the stands to chuckle and shake their heads in disbelief.

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Win probability said the Reds had a 4.3 percent chance of winning when Devin Mesoraco stepped to the plate against Craig Kimbrel. There were two outs and nobody on base. Win probability obviously didn’t know Craig Kimbrel was pitching.

According to Tom Tango’s run frequency calculator, given Kimbrel’s career .154/.240/.208 line against, a run is expected to score off Kimbrel 2.3 percent of the time with two outs and the bases empty. Actual win probablity, then, is more like 1.0 percent, considering Atlanta would be expected to win half the times Kimbrel gets out of the inning with a tie.

Naturally, then, Mesoraco and Shin-Soo Choo hit back-to-back home runs, and the Reds left with likely the most improbable walk-off win of the season.

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After a dominant spring, many hoped Julio Teheran had turned a corner. His disappointing 2012 campaign was attributed to a variety of mechanical changes, but offseason reports suggested Teheran had corrected those flaws. His tour of the Grapefruit League appeared to validate winter reports, as he struck out 35 batters in 26 innings and posted 1.04 ERA. While Teheran’s spring was cause for optimism, his first start of the regular season didn’t go so well, and the performance suggests there’s still more work to be done.

Last season, we discussed Teheran’s inconsistencies. Entering 2012, Teheran was ranked FanGraphs’ fifth best prospect in baseball, but he struggled to live up to the hype. To pinpoint the cause of his problems, I watched a random start from the 2011 season. On July 26 against the Durham Bulls, Teheran’s fastball velocity sat 93-95 MPH and frequently neared triple digits. His curveball, while erratic, showed promise. It featured a tight 11-5 break and, when thrown well, caused the Triple-A Rays to flail. His changeup was his best offering. After he established his fastball, hitters were helpless against his low to mid 80s changeup. His three pitch arsenal was electric and justified Marc Hulet’s ranking. Here are a couple of GIFs of Teheran pitching against the Mets in September of 2011, so you can see the movement for yourself.

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There are, I imagine, several questions one could ask about Roy Halladay. Does he eat breakfast? does he eat granola for breakfast? Which is his favorite breakfast granola? But, regarding Halladay as a baseball pitcher, there is one particularly pressing question: will he ever get back to being what he was? It would’ve been nearly impossible for Halladay to conclusively answer that question on Wednesday in Atlanta, and indeed, in the aftermath of Halladay’s start, the question remains unanswered, conclusively.

The good news, if you missed it: Halladay finished with nine strikeouts. The bad news, if you missed it: the rest. Halladay allowed five runs in 3.1 innings, and he became the first pitcher in recorded baseball history to record nine strikeouts in so brief an outing. Of course, we know better than to look at innings thrown — more meaningful is the number of batters faced, and in that regard Halladay’s start was not unprecedented. Four times before, pitchers have struck out nine of 15 batters, while Halladay faced 19 Braves. Dan Osinski once struck out ten of 16 batters. Just last April, Marco Estrada struck out nine of 17 batters. But anyway, this isn’t about establishing an historical context — this is about Halladay, and what he is, and what just happened.

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As we explained yesterday in Part 1 of the series, we’re looking at the financial health of all thirty major league teams. The focus is on attendance, local TV contracts, and estimated 2013 payroll. We’re not ranking the teams one to thirty because we lack the kind of detailed information that would make such a ranking meaningful. We do, however, have enough information to paint with broad strokes, so as part of our attempt to give an overview of where each team stands as 2013 begins, we’ll look at their access to monetary resources for the upcoming season.

We’ve grouped the teams in tiers. Today we look at the ten teams in the middle.

In alphabetical order, by team name:

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Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

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What’s all this, then? For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Third base is a little deeper than it used to be, and only a handful of teams have little to no hope of being productive at the position. The devil is in the details at the hot corner, as there has been very little turnover among the top 20 teams here. Teams that have quality reserves or prospects coming up the pipeline see a bump here, as we’re looking holistically at the position and not just at the nominal starter. This is an important consideration across the diamond, but particularly so at third given how physically demanding the position is. Only six third basemen suited up in 150 or more games last year. Compare that to 13 at second base and 11 at first base and shortstop, and it becomes clear that depth is important at third base. Unfortunately, most teams don’t have adequate depth, hence the bump for the teams that do.

Let’s get on to the rankings!

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When I originally published my findings around CLIFFORD — my metric for predicting players that are at a higher risk of experiencing a collapse in their wOBA (defined as a drop of at least .30 points of wOBA) — I presented a limited number of players for 2013. The list only included six players that qualified under the criteria. As a reminder, players that experienced a significant decline in three out of four metrics (Z-Contact%, FA%, UBR, Spd) were tagged as CLIFFORD candidates. These players had 3.4 times the odds of collapse (53% versus 25% for non-CLIFFORD players).

The single largest driver of collapse was change in Z-Contact% — the percent of pitches in the strike zone that a batter swings and makes contact with. Hitters who saw their Z-Contact% decline by at least 1.4% had 1.68 times the odds of collapsing than those that did not experience such a decline. Since there were far more players that qualified with their Z-Contact% than the full CLIFFORD criteria I thought it would be helpful to share that data with everyone.

Behold!

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After the Braves acquired Justin Upton, uniting him and brother B.J. Upton on the same team, our very own Jeff Sullivan got curious about brothers playing together, and presented some salient information on the brother effect. Or more to the point, the lack thereof. I became curious about it much after that (I’m slow), and while Jeff already did the pertinent research, nobody has ever accused me of doing pertinent research, so I thought today we could look at the best seasons put together by brothers on the same team.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Atlanta Braves. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cardinals / Cubs / Diamondbacks / Dodgers / Giants / Mariners / Marlins / Mets / Nationals / Orioles / Padres / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Rays / Reds / Red Sox / Rockies / Royals / Tigers / Twins / White Sox / Yankees.

Batters
Basically every starter for Atlanta — plus the Francisco/Johnson platoon at third — appears likely to produce something between two and four wins above replacement. For obvious reasons, that’s more of a good thing than a bad one — on account of, I mean, more wins is better than fewer wins. If there is a downside to having such a balanced roster, it’s that upgrading at midseason is more challenging. Last season, for example, the Chicago White Sox had the blackest of possible holes at third base. Therefore, their late-June acquisition of Kevin Youkilis represented a considerable improvement over the status quo. As of now, the possibility that the Braves will have such a glaring weakness is on the low-ish end of things.

Posing some difficulty to those who would prefer to draw strong conclusions about Atlanta based on these projections is what one might call, were he/she in the mood, the Brian McCann Shoulder Situation. The very good Braves catcher had surgery on his right shoulder in October — of which procedure Dan Szymborski’s math computer is entirely unaware. Reports suggest that McCann should be ready by mid-April, but even that timetable is liable to futz around with McCann’s “real” projection for 2013.

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Bill Baer coined the term “Goldilocks Syndrome” to describe when we, as fans, get discouraged with a player or prospect because he isn’t perfect or what we hoped he would be, and Christian Bethancourt isn’t “just right”. Signed out of Panama in 2008, Bethancourt had elite potential behind the plate with good athleticism and an incredibly strong arm. The concern, however, was whether or not he could hit enough to even get the stellar defense to the majors, and four years after his signing, there are still serious concerns about Bethancourt’s bat, especially after hitting .243/.275/.291 in AA Mississippi. Bethancourt’s stock has predictably, and deservedly, fallen from the top prospect ranks, but while he’s no longer a “top prospect”, what can we still expect from him?

The chances of Bethancourt becoming a star have, indeed, fallen. One of Bethancourt’s most common comparisons is Yadier Molina because of their strong arms and inability to hit early in their careers, and the hope was (and still is to some degree) that Bethancourt can make the offensive improvements that Molina has.

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Craig Calcaterra made me do something I have not done for a long time yesterday: think about Deion Sanders. Calcaterra’s post is worth reading in itself (at least click the link to see an incredibly time-bound photograph), as it is reflection on Buster Olney’s (annual) reflection (how meta!) on some interaction Olney had with Deion Sanders years ago as a rookie reporter. Okay, that sounds equal parts boring and confusing, but Craig makes it funny, at least to me. Leaving aside the mystery of why Olney makes this his annual Spring Training Kickoff Tradition and what it is supposed to mean (nothing against Olney; like Craig, I am simply baffled by the whole thing): man, it has been a long time since I’ve thought about Deion Sanders, especially Deion Sanders the baseball player.

My memories of that are pretty hazy, so others can recall various cool, fun, or just ridiculous Deion Sanders stories. I do not want to take that approach and end up with a car wreck of a post. Sanders had his moments on the diamond, and the whole part-time football/baseball thing is itself a curious artifact of the past. (The latter is worth a long post in its own right. “Well, sure, I could make millions guaranteed, but I think I’d rather spend part of the year doing something far more dangerous for non-guaranteed money.”) Leaving all of that aside, I was struck by just how unusual, especially these days, Sanders combination of skills was. What players recently have had seasons like Neon Deion at his best?

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On Monday, we looked at three vetoed trades, and I thought today we’d look at three more.

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According to Kevin Towers, a few days ago he was prepared to move on without having traded Justin Upton, as he wasn’t finding enough value on the market. In lieu of an Upton trade, the Diamondbacks presumably would’ve made a Jason Kubel trade, presumably with the Orioles. But things changed, and they must have changed swiftly — on Thursday, the Diamondbacks officially announced an Upton trade with the Braves, as Justin will join his brother B.J. in the Atlanta outfield. Or, this, in other words.

Dave already wrote about the trade overall, from both sides. Mike Newman already took a look at the prospects involved. I, personally, got curious about the brother angle. This was something Justin was hoping for; he turned down a trade to Seattle, hoping for a trade somewhere else, somewhere more familiar, somewhere closer to home. Speculation was that he wanted Atlanta more than anything else. It’s an odd quirk that Upton will play beside his own brother. But I found myself wondering if the psychology involved has any effect on performance. In short: historically, have players gotten better when they’ve been teammates with a sibling? On one hand, it would be surprising if they did; on the other hand, it would be surprising if they didn’t. Players are always talking about the importance of comfort. What could be more comfortable than playing with family?

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As of Thursday, an awful lot of people are happy. The Diamondbacks are happy, because they were able to move Justin Upton for value. The Braves are happy, because they were able to get Justin Upton for a good but not outstanding package. And Justin Upton is happy, because he gets to go play in Atlanta, instead of Seattle or somewhere else. Upton was hoping for a destination like this, if not this destination specifically, and now he can put his alleged malcontent days behind him and play alongside his brother. This is a move that felt like it had to be made, and now it’s been made, officially.

But from the Braves’ perspective, there are not zero concerns. For one thing, now they’re down a Martin Prado, and their third-base situation could be stronger than it is. And then there’s the matter of Upton, and the strikeouts that he brings. He’ll share an outfield with B.J. Upton, who strikes out, and Jason Heyward, who strikes out too. There’s been some degree of concern that the new Braves might strike out too often, which means there’s concern that the Braves’ offense might underachieve.

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Earlier in the week, I discussed the type of prospect package the Diamondbacks would require from the Atlanta Braves for a deal to make sense for both franchises. Little did I know the Braves would be willing to part with Martin Prado, a lynchpin of the organization who has averaged nearly four-wins per season from 2010-2012.

When a player of Prado’s ilk is included, the prospect haul is bound to shrink. While all four youngsters have Major League possibilities, the group is void of impact potential. Read the rest of this entry »

The Diamondbacks have traded Justin Upton again. This time, he’s actually going away. After he rejected a deal to Seattle, they’ve found a new trade partner in the Atlanta Braves, and have crafted a pretty interesting deal that isn’t at all similar to the one they previously tried to make.

In exchange for Upton and third baseman Chris Johnson, the Diamondbacks reportedly are going to receive Martin Prado, Randall Delgado, Nick Ahmed, Zeke Spruill, and Brandon Drury. While they previously tried to trade him for a high risk/high reward pitching prospect and a middle infielder who is probably a year away from the big leagues, this trade doesn’t really make the Diamondbacks that much worse in 2013, and appears to be more of a win-now kind of trade.

With Prado, the Diamondbacks finally get the third baseman they’ve been looking for, and a pretty good one at that. No, he’s not going to repeat the +6 WAR season he put up last year, which was driven by an outlier UZR, but he’s got a nice base of skills that should allow him to remain an above average player. He makes a ton of contact and has some pull power that should play well in Arizona, and he’s probably at least an average defender at third base. In his career, Prado has averaged +3.4 WAR per 600 PA — exactly the same mark that ZIPS projected for Upton this year, by the way — and at age 29, he shouldn’t be in for a huge drop-off. The D’Backs probably get an equivalent upgrade at third base to the downgrade they’ll receive in the outfield, and then they also get some more pitching depth and three prospects of some value.

From just a 2013 perspective, this deal probably doesn’t move the needle that much. Both teams received one above average player, and no one else in the deal is likely to make a huge impact at the big league level this year. It’s the years after this one that will determine whether this trade was worth it for both sides.

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In this week’s edition of “As the Upton Waits”, the Mets and Braves inquire, while the Rangers continue to lurk in the periphery.

Maybe the Texas Rangers are employing a brilliant strategy of waiting out the Arizona Diamondbacks before swooping in and acquiring 25-year old Justin Upton. Or, maybe the Rangers lucked out when Upton rejected a trade to the Mariners for Taijuan Walker, Nick Franklin and a pair of relievers. Regardless, the Rangers still find themselves in the best position to land the young right-fielder. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 296
Prospect analyst Mike Newman considers, among other matters, the candidates for entering the season as 2013′s “top prospect” — and what significance that designation has, if any. Also: Mike Zunino‘s status in the wake of catcher John Jaso‘s departure from Seattle. Also-also: teams with and without the requisite prospect packages for acquiring Justin Upton from Arizona.

impact a deep minor-league system can have on an organization’s ability to acquire major-league talent — not unlike what happened in the recent trade that saw Toronto acquire Mark Buehrle, John Johnson, and Jose Reyes from Miami.

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 45 min play time.)

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