Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 2/17/16

Dave Cameron: Alright, let’s chat. Spring Training kinda sorta starts today, so we’re getting closer to actual baseball.

Out of my way, Gyorkass!: Of the two NLC 2016 bottom feeders, who returns to relevance first?

Dave Cameron: The Brewers. Stearns has done a fantastic job of adding talent to te organization this winter, and they still have a pretty big trade chip left in Lucroy.

Out of my way, Gyorkass!: Davis for Nottingham/Derby…perfectly cromulent trade for both sides, or did one get the better of the other?

Dave Cameron: Like it more for the Brewers. The A’s offseason plan has seemed to be to stockpile 1-2 WAR players, which is a good enough plan if you already have the stars to carry you, but the A’s don’t, really. So I’m not sure they’re in a position to take advantage of Davis’ short-term value.

Salicylic : What’s up with the pessimistic projections of the royals AGAIN

Dave Cameron: Sam Miller had a great piece on why PECOTA is down on them over at BP yesterday. The reality is that, whether Royals fans like to hear it or not, their success the last two seasons has been heavily based on sequencing; they’re +20 wins over their BaseRuns expected record over the past two seasons. There is no evidence that teams can sustainably beat BaseRuns on an annual basis, and projection systems aren’t going to project teams to beat BaseRuns. If you think the Royals have magical BaseRuns beating properties, then you can take the over on the projections. But for years, people claimed the Angels had figured out how to beat BaseRuns, until they stopped. Then it was the Orioles. The Royals will stop outperforming BaseRuns pretty soon too.

Music 4 Airports: Thoughts on Dodgers’ bullpen? Is it good enough, or would it be worth a prospect or two to try to solidify the 8th inning role?

Dave Cameron: I like a lot of their young arms, and they have so much SP depth that it shouldn’t be that hard to turn one of the extras into an RP.

Out of my way, Gyorkass!: What team who has not already done so is the next to decide to fold their hand and initiate a rebuild?

Dave Cameron: The Padres.

Out of my way, Gyorkass!: Regarding the Royals – do their offseason financial commitments to Kennedy and Gordon eventually impede their ability to extend some of their upcoming FAs like Hosmer and Moustakas?

Dave Cameron: Yep. It’s not a coincidence that they gave Kennedy the opt-out after the second season, when those guys are up for FA. They’re clearly hoping he’ll opt-out and then they’ll reallocate his money to one of them. It’s unlikely to work out well for them, though.

Dove Cameroon: Buster Olney continues to push the tanking narrative claiming that veterans such as Ryan Raburn wouldn’t still be free agents if tanking wasn’t an issue. What do you think about the perceived abundance of mediocre veterans being unemployed and what it says about the perception of “tanking”?

Dave Cameron: When a player signs is irrelevant. Raburn will sign, and he’ll be on a big league roster on Opening Day.

Glen: Is UZR for 1B’s calculated differently from other positions? e.g. does it include scoops? Does the ARM rating carry as much weight? or matter at all? 1B seems qualitatively different enough from other positions that to have the same data with the same weight seems … not right. I know relying on the “eye test” (especially for a lay person) is foolish – but it seems exceptionally odd that Teixera (for example) has graded out so poorly defensively over his career

Dave Cameron: Yes, scoops are included. They’re also highly overrated, so the perception of good scoopers is skewed relative to their actual value.

Phineas J Whoopee: True or false: Kiley McDaniel single-handedly engineered the Shelby Miller trade.

Dave Cameron: False. When they trade for an airhorn, though, that will be all him.

Bruce Bochy: The Giants have the most homegrown players and produce studs year after year yet farm gets no respect. Why?

Dave Cameron: You think that a prospect should be graded higher because Joe Panik turned out well? Really?

Moop: Are we valuing D too much with WAR>

Dave Cameron: Nope.

Vanderbilt Commodores: At this moment who are the top 5 teams in baseball?

Dave Cameron: I’d say the Cubs and Dodgers are the top two, and then it’s a cluster of teams in that second tier; Mets, Nationals, Red Sox, Astros, Giants, Yankees, Cardinals, Pirates

Kevin: Is it possible to view only blog posts related to a specific team? Such as: I want to see the most recent blog posts pertaining to the Nationals

Dave Cameron: Yes: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/category/nationals/

Dave Cameron: That said, we aren’t always exactly perfect at tagging posts, so if you just bookmarked that page, you might miss some stuff occasionally.

Guest: Another thought for membership: make an option for readers to see only comments by paid members. I’d love this feature.

Dave Cameron: Interesting idea. On the one hand, we don’t want to make commenting an exclusive club, but giving people the ability to opt-out of seeing comments from non-members is different than stopping non-members from commenting.

Dave Cameron: We’ll kick it around.

TKDC: Where would you have ranked the Chapman trade in an entirely made up universe where the only thing that was different was that there were no off-field issues?

Dave Cameron: Top 5, probably, but in that universe, he costs a lot more, so it’s a catch-22.

Schiraldi: Re: the tanking discussion — do we know how ticket prices respond to losing? Is there a linear relationship between losses in year one and attendance in year two, does that relationship significantly change in years two or three of a rebuild, etc…

Dave Cameron: Attendance is a lagging indicator; teams don’t know that their teams are going to be bad until they see it for themselves, mostly. So it shows up in years 2-3 of a rebuild, and often lingers even into the early years of a team being good again.

TL4: Astros fan here. The stros seemed to underperform based on Pathagorean W-L and baseruns. They’re a young team who should get better. Any reason to be pessimistic? Anything to keep an eye on early in the year that may suggest last year was a fluke?

Dave Cameron: I wouldn’t say last year was a fluke, but they’ve got a lot of health risks up and down the roster. Gomez’s health is still a question mark, Springer is hurt a lot, Fister is a big gamble, Fiers hasn’t been healthy much, etc…

Ryan: Which PECOTA projection threw you off the most?

Dave Cameron: That 91 win forecast for the Rays.

TKDC: Care to give some honorable mentions for worst transactions? I was surprised the Simmons trade (for the Braves) wasn’t on it.

Dave Cameron: I definitely didn’t love that trade for them, but Simmons seems unlikely to gain value as he gets older, based on defensive decline and increasing salaries, and if this was the best offer they could get for him now, not entirely sure that holding on to him to trade him next winter would have been a better result. So the question is do they think they should have just kept him if the market for him was this soft, but if they suspected they could get Swanson, keeping him makes one of those two less valuable, and that doesn’t account for Albies. So, while I wouldn’t have made that trade, I don’t hate the idea of trading him.

Ronnie: What is the players best strategy to increase their share of league revenues in the upcoming CBA negotiations?

Dave Cameron: Their current position is that their percentage of the revenues is fair.

Dave Cameron: They have access to better data than we do, so maybe they’re right, but it was an odd thing for Tony Clark to say publcly.

Matt: Looking forward to seeing you at Pitch Talks in Toronto on April 7th. Any plans for a FanGraphs meetup while you’re in town?

Dave Cameron: I don’t know what my schedule will look for the trip yet; if I end up sticking around for part of the weekend, we’ll probably try to do something.

TKDC: If MLB does not exist in 50 years, and you have to guess why, what do you pin it on?

Dave Cameron: President Trump calls someone a loser and so they nuke us.

Out of my way, Gyorkass!: What is your general take on Peraza? Are you with the “something must be wrong with him, being traded away twice” crowd, or are his moves simply the result of needing to trade value to receive value?

Dave Cameron: I’d say he’s a high-floor/low-ceiling prospect, and those guys are often underrated. I think the Dodgers giving him up was probably more about getting guys who fit their needs more, since they are stocked at MI.

Jim: Do you think the tanking narrative that’s popping up is an attempt to influence discussions for the next CBA?

Dave Cameron: Absolutely.

Batman: Hey Dave, ETA for when the updated/aggregated ZIPS projections will be available on the FG projection page?

Dave Cameron: Dan has to give us the spreadsheet, which he usually provides at some point in March, I believe.

TKDC: Trout and Pujols for Rizzo, Soler, Schwaber and Torres: who says no?

Dave Cameron: Cubs, easily.

Dave Cameron: Gap between Trout/Rizzo is not nearly large enough to make up for the other stuff.

Phineas J Whoopee: How often does a bad team with a resurgent second half, fueled largely by prospects, break out the next year? Is second-half team performance a good indicator of the next year’s performance?

Dave Cameron: I don’t know the answer to your first question, but second half performance is a worst projector of the future than full season performance. Don’t throw away data.

The Ghost of Dayn Perry: I know this isn’t your department, but kudos on the FanGraphs Memberships. You guys do amazing work and deserve everything you get.

Dave Cameron: Thank you. It’s an idea that David Appelman has been kicking around for a while, and we’re pleased the response has been so positive to this point. We really appreciate the community here, and look forward to being around for a long time.

klof: With the Nats unlikely to be the ultimate destination for a free agent Harper, when do they decide to trade him?

Dave Cameron: Depends on how this year goes. If they have a terrible season and don’t look like contenders going into 2017, maybe next winter. If they win the NL East and make a playoff run, they’ll keep him as long as they can keep the window open.

Out of my way, Gyorkass!: As an aside to my question about the NLC bottom feeders, what of the three contenders falls from contention first?

Dave Cameron: I’m starting to get worried about the Pirates a bit. I didn’t love their offseason, and if a few things break the wrong way for them, they could end up as a .500ish team.

Jeremy: Jayson Stark just released a survey of 35 team executives. Leading the way with 14 votes for best FA signing was Zack Greinke. In second for worst FA signing with 13 votes was Jason Heyward. Are these really the industry beliefs? Seem crazy.

Dave Cameron: Stark’s sources for that piece appear to be mostly older-school execs. The people actually driving the markets these days don’t have these same “he only hit 13 HRs” ideas.

Doug: Would an Andrew Heaney for Ender Inciarte trade make sense for both sides?

Dave Cameron: Inciarte is worth more than that.

Mike : Great article (and exposure) in the Washington Post this week. This may fall into the category of ‘none of your damn business’, but how are you able to monetize the site? I don’t see a ton of ads, and I’m guessing many aren’t subscribing (I do, however) since the content is mostly free.

Dave Cameron: We don’t have a ton of ads per page, but we have a LOT of pages. Ad revenue is 90% of our income.

Dave Cameron: That’s a made up number; I don’t actually know the real percentage. But it’s way up there.

some guy: Do you pay attention to the other sources’ Top 100 ratings? Any player that surprised you (higher/lower than expected)?

Dave Cameron: Of course; more information is always better. AJ Reed in BA’s Top 10 was surprising to me.

Puddin’: Why, despite 9.5 fWAR in his first two years and a projection to do more of the same in his third year, was Kevin Kiermaier not considered a highly valuable trade asset in your series?

Dave Cameron: Teams don’t pay for defense the same way they pay for offense.

Dustin: I’m about to be downsized out of my job for reasons completely outside of my control. Is that more or less depressing than the season upon which the Atlanta Braves are about to embark?

Dave Cameron: Let’s assume that because you’re reading FG, you’re smart and employable, so you’ll land on your feet. So less depressing.

Dave Cameron: Best of luck to you, by the way.

Matt : Brewers have a Will Smith as well who can bring in a nice haul of prospects as well

Dave Cameron: True; Smith should be one of the big targets of the trade deadline if he stays healthy.

Mike: The projections seem to love the Dodgers. What’s your take on them this year?

Dave Cameron: They’re an excellent team that is underrated by public perception because of their focus on depth over stars.

Jason: STEAMERS says 79 on Royals. PECOTA says 76. Dave Cameron says…

Dave Cameron: 80ish.

jpg: The Mets and Indians are clearly the top two, but which rotation would you say is #3 if you had to pick one for, let’s say, the next 3-5 years?

Dave Cameron: I’d take the Dodgers rotation over the Indians rotation easily.

Dave Cameron: And I’m not sure it’s clear that the Mets rotation isn’t definitely better than LA’s either.

Andrew : Do you think the Indians acquire either Uribe or Freese to start at 3B?

Dave Cameron: Uribe.

Am I a Muppet or a Manship?: What happens if Neil Walker plays as expected and Dilson Herrera is on fire in AAA? Neither guy really plays another position. Do the Mets bump Walker or does Herrera just hang out by the phone all season? Is a trade possible?

Dave Cameron: If Walker plays as expected, he’s better than Herrera, so yeah, Herrera is depth.

Don’t Undersell Me Bro: Steamer Projects Daniel Murphy to have a higher batting average (.308) in 2016 than all players Except Miguel Cabrera. Really his whole .308/.350/.440 projection seems very high given his career .288/.331/.424 line and his age (31). Did they incorporate something into Steamer that could suss out approach changes? Unless you are buying his postseason as the new normal I can’t see that career best projection at age 31.

Dave Cameron: K% is one of the things that stabilizes quickest, and his huge reduction in strikeouts is thus more sticky in the projection.

Dave Cameron: A guy who can cut his strikeouts down that far while also adding power is a lot more interesting than a usual 30+ guy.

RMR: PECOTA has the Reds at 74 wins — closer to the Cardinals (82 wins) than the Phillies (65). Don’t me get me wrong, the Reds are going to be bad. But is PECOTA nuts or are most of the commentariat being overly pessimistic?

Dave Cameron: Well, the Reds still have an elite first baseman, Hamilton is still productive when healthy, they haven’t traded Bruce yet, Suarez is useful, Phillips is fine… they’re not contenders, but they’re clearly better than the Phillies and Braves.

Guest: Butler and a prospect for Kemp and cash still makes sense, right?

Dave Cameron: Why would the A’s want Matt Kemp? Why would the Padres want Billy Butler?

el crapo: Hi Dave. Does FG typically have a presence at Sloan? Will there be a FG presence there this year? Apologies if this has been addressed elsewhere.

Dave Cameron: I was on the baseball panel a year ago, but I won’t be there this year.

Out of my way, Gyorkass!: Building off of Dove Cameroon’s question, won’t all of those mediocre veterans eventually find a price point at which someone takes them – even the “tanking” teams will eventually take them at the right price, hoping for a hot early half/midseason trade possibility, right?

Dave Cameron: Of course. Teams aren’t going to leave quality players unemployed.

Urban: The Washington Post article says you didn’t meet David Appelman until 2009. Have you met him since?!

Dave Cameron: Yeah, we’ve spent a good amount of time together in the last ~7 years. I go up to DC a couple of times per year, and then we meet up at various events throughout the season; spring training, the winter meetings, the Saber Seminar, etc…

Slew: How does your chat software work? Do you see the most recent questions asked, or is there a long list you see in chronological order?

Dave Cameron: I start from the oldest question and scroll through, and am usually 20-30 minutes behind when the questions are asked.

Dave Cameron: For instance, that question was asked at 12:15

Dave Cameron: I haven’t yet gotten to any question asked since then.

Josh: Will JP Crawford be called up before September or at all?

Dave Cameron: I’d assume after the Super Two deadline.

Josh: How long do you think it will be before we can replace wOBA with stats derived from statcast?

Dave Cameron: They serve two very different functions. I don’t think you’ll ever want to replace a metric that answers the “how valuable was this guy’s past performance” question; Statcast data will mostly help with “how good is this player’s true talent level” questions.

Guest: I would think that you guys are pretty pleased with the response/reaction to the membership, based on the comments on Appleman’s post. Is that right?

Dave Cameron: For sure. Any time you’re asking people for money, you don’t know entirely what to expect. The communities reaction has been great, and we’re really encouraged that you guys want to help support the site.

primantis: Isn’t the arbitration process horribly broken when Arrieta has to agree to a one year deal valued at less than JA Happ gets for average annual value on a three year deal? It just makes no sense.

Dave Cameron: Has nothing to do with arbitration process; it’s entirely a design of the system to funnel money to veteran players, which is how the union wants it.

Bad Hermit: Would Braun no longer be a big trade chip for the Brewers?

Dave Cameron: He probably has negative trade value at this point.

Joe: With the new CBA, do you think its possible that the players may get a redistribution of wealth (ie significant increase in minimum salary) that could actually cause a decrease in next year’s $/WAR in FA? If so how much of a negative impact could that have on teams who went on a spending spree this offseason?

Dave Cameron: My guess is the minimum will go up but not dramatically so. The low-revenue clubs are going to push back against changes that drive up their costs more than the higher-revenue clubs, and the PA will probably push more for a significant raise in the luxury tax instead.

Ernie Camacho: Is this basically right?: the “projected standings” show your estimates of a team’s “true talent,” and the eventual “playoff odds” page shows the median W/L total from simulating seasons with the actual 2016 schedule, based on those team true talent estimates.

Dave Cameron: Yeah, pretty much.

Dan: You praise/criticise moves based on value exchanged. Do you undervalue the risk?

Dave Cameron: Risk is part of value.

Guest: What were your thoughts on the Giles trade from the Astros side? I noticed that didn’t come in on either list…did we give up too much?

Dave Cameron: It actually did come on the best transactions list, for the Phillies side. I think the Astros overpaid a bit for a reliever.

brad: who are the 8 full time writers at FG? you, Jeff S., August, Eno, Carson, Jeff Z, Paul and Craig?

Dave Cameron: First seven are correct: Dan Farnsworth is the eighth.

Dave Cameron: Wait, sorry, didn’t see you snuck Jeff Zimmerman in there. Replace him with Appelman.

Urban: I’m not a Royals fan, but your response and many from the stats community about the Royals success feels flat. Their eventual failure, as all winning teams run their course, does not undo their success or that the stats community got it wrong.

Dave Cameron: There’s a huge difference between a winning team running their course and unsustainable success due to variance not continuing.

Sean : Health aside, how do you think age will affect Greinke’s performance over the next 6 years? Do you think he can remain elite for a lot of it?

Dave Cameron: I’d bet on him aging fairly well, given his command and intelligence.

Rick: Any chance the Worst Transactions post will be updated to reflect that the Reds’ cited international signing didn’t actually happen?

Dave Cameron: The Reds haven’t announced it yet; that’s very different from it not happening. Sanchez/Badler don’t get stuff like this wrong.

@outfieldgrass24: The projections seem to see Shelby Miller as a 1.7 – 2.3 WAR pitcher. He changed his repertoire drastically, got hit less hard and generated more ground balls. Is this a case of the projections weighting his 2014 campaign and not accounting for the changes? Is he just a casualty of how projections work or is he just a league average pitcher?

Dave Cameron: You’ve created a post-hoc explanation without any real evidence for why it explains Miller’s results. The projections are based on data, not theories.

PR: can you get to see who is a member when chat questions are posted. Would be nice for members to have their questions answered…

Dave Cameron: We explicitly did not want to create a tier of users; once you start offering priority access to members on some aspects of the site, you’ve effectively created a paywall.

Kimball: Are you surprised that Steamer and PECOTA aren’t higher on the Rangers? They seem to be really well positioned, resurgent in a relatively weak division.

Dave Cameron: No, I think the projections are about right; they’re an average team.

PR: how many GMs do you have somewhat regular contact with

Dave Cameron: A few.

Ross: If you were looking at just fair value and not if it was likely to happen would Felix for the younger Seager be fair?

Dave Cameron: No, Seager is worth more than Felix now, by a good amount.

Am I a Muppet or a Manship?: If you could recruit any one person to be a full time fangraphs writer who has never written for the site before, who would it be?

Dave Cameron: Ben Bernanke.

Aaron: Just another Torontonian chiming in to say a Toronto FanGraphs meetup would be great

Dave Cameron: We’ll see what we can do!

Am I a Muppet or a Manship?: So based on this chat (and, you know, everything fangraphs says), we are not overvaluing defense and teams don’t pay as much for defense as they do for offense. So would it make sense for a team to pay substantially for defense over offense. Any recent teams that have done this and been successful?

Dave Cameron: The Royals just won the World Series with exactly that model.

critic: you say teams dont pay for defense but say ender inciarte is more valueable than an arm… where does ender inciarte’s value come from?

Dave Cameron: Andrew Heaney’s arm isn’t that special, and Inciarte can also hit and run.

moo: So in terms of raising money, where do you and Appelman stand on this ‘Indecent Proposal’: you’re offered $1m for fangraphs to host and present a Hank Harrelson appreciation conference all about TWTW. All of you guys would have to give lectures on TWTW theories and ‘research’ (i.e. relaying anecdotes where A has TWTW, but B doesn’t, so A’s team won the pennant…), and dedicate the site to TWTW for the period of the conference…

Dave Cameron: How long does the conference last?

Dave Cameron: And where can I sign?

jpg: Interesting. I get that Kershaw is the ultimate equalizer and they have terrific depth when you consider guys like Wood and McCarthy are probably outside the top five on the staff… But saying the Dodgers have arguably the best rotation? That pretty bullish.

Dave Cameron: Kershaw is as good as most teams #1 and #2 put together. Kazmir and Anderson are clearly above average pitchers, Ryu is very good when healthy, Maeda looks to be a solid average pitcher, and Wood is average at worst. The idea that this rotation isn’t one of the best in baseball is weird.

Dave Cameron: And that’s without mentioning that they have a couple of elite close-to-the-majors prospects, plus McCarthy coming back mid-season, plus Bolsinger, and Zach Lee isn’t a zero.

Derek: How bad does Swanson have to be for the D-Backs to not regret that trade?

Dave Cameron: It would have to come out that he had the bubonic plague, and that the D’Backs traded him to keep their minor league players alive, while Swanson wipes out Atlanta’s entire farm system. Short of that, it’s regrettable no matter what happens.

el gasolino: have you seen anyone with a better hit tool than ichiro?

Dave Cameron: Tony Gwynn, maybe.

Dave Cameron: Wade Boggs was up there too.

Slew: Since you’re 30 min behind and it’s currently 12:48, this question will never be read. Just me shouting into the great abyss, drifting alone in the infinite universe.

Dave Cameron: I do eventually catch up.

Dave Cameron: Well, sort of.

Dave Cameron: At the end, I go into speedy-reader mode and get more selective with the last 5-10 questions.

Joe: Other than national baseball writer, is there any high profile job where employees can be willfully ignorant of developments in their industry? It is amazing to me that after all these years, some national writers (who get paid to do nothing but follow baseball) still don’t have the faintest idea how to interpret Steamer- or Pecota-projected standings.

Dave Cameron: To be fair, their job isn’t to understand those things; it’s to draw readership. Skip Bayless and Stephen A Smith aren’t being paid for the quality of their discussion. It’s sad, but it is what it is.

Josh: statcast would allow you to ask how well a guy hit the ball as opposed to what seem to be a somewhat more arbitrary result (Single, Double, etc.). Arguing that wOBA is better for measuring value to team seems a bit like arguing that RBIs are a good measure of value for team.

Dave Cameron: Until they start awarding runs based on exit velocity, you’re incorrect.

Danny: RE: Scoops and UZR. Is there a piece you can link to that discusses scoops? Hosmer is an “elite scooper” but his defense doesn’t show statistically. Just wanted to read more on the subject.

Dave Cameron: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/first-basemen-scoops/

Yo dawg: I’m surprised that “intelligence” is still a factor in pitchers’ makeup, frankly. Don’t teams have optimized pitch strategy by now? Surely 10 guys with excel spreadsheets signalling to the catcher are better than the intuition and flow of the C/P combo?

Dave Cameron: Intelligence isn’t just pitch selection. It’s willingness to study patterns, to make changes, to learn about how to maximize what a pitcher has at any given point in time.

Dave Cameron: Alright, on that note, off to get some lunch. Thanks for chatting again everyone.