Lathund

Yeah I think I'm going to enjoy the sight of batters being completely fooled by that 70 mph changeup. Very unusual skill set, I always like seeing atypical or unusual or just plain weird players and playing styles have success in sports.

If I was a GM, I would rather give out a 13 year $330m deal than the 10 year $300m with an opt-out. The lower AAV is useful in building your roster during those years. Funnily enough, if I was Bryce Harper I would also prefer the same deal. I'll take the guaranteed extra guaranteed $30m over the chance of getting slightly more at the risk of getting less. But I suppose that's based on my risk tolerance (Or the lack thereof).

In addition to those pitcher parks there's also the Coors Hangover effect. Now obviously that doesn't account for more than a small part of it, but if Coors was at sea level his road OPS would improve. Then again, 12.6 WAR for 71 million (~5.6m/WAR), and having another star player like Greinke on the roster, would have been a very good outcome for LA. He'd have been a free agent now anyway, without being on the hook for his decline. The benefit for a team in an opt-out isn't the opt-out itself, it's that they might not have been able to sign the player at all without it. Or would have had to pay him more.

Regarding Super 2, I'm not so sure removing it is throwing them a bone. There are real issues with how teams manage service time related to it that needs to change, but removing it entirely means that the 22% of players with 2 years of service time who currently get 4 years of arbitration will now instead get three; and that 4th year arbitration can mean a lot of money. So it'll overall mean less money to players in their team control years. But yeah, overall the service time manipulation is something that needs to definitely be adressed. Hard to see any system that can't be abused in any way though, short of removing it which would require the entire system to be revamped.

.279 BABIP on his batted ball profile is pretty lucky. Putting up a sub 3 era with a 6.55 k/9 is pretty lucky. It certainly helps that he basically walks nobody. Considering how often the ball is in play when a guy has such a low k rate and bb rate, having a very favorable BABIP will seriously swing a guys ERA. Also factor in the Cardinals are going to have a few weak spots on defense this year. Carpenter at 3b, Gyorko will probably play some 2b, Martinez sometimes in corner OF. I can't see this guy posting another sub 3 era season. He'll probably settle in the upper 3s somewhere over the 3 combined seasons, with his 33 and 34 seasons probably being underwhelming. 6.55 K/9 would've been an issue if he hadn't also been the best starter in the league at limiting walks (1.30 BB/9), it's the ratio that matters more than the raw numbers. More baserunners you give up, the more vital it becomes to record a lot of strikeouts. .279 BABIP isn't much of an outlier, there are whole teams who average that. He was good at limiting hard contact, and while there's Gyorko, Martinez and Carpenter there's also Wong, DeJong,Goldschmidt, Molina, Bader and O'Neill. Their defense will unfortunately be just fine overall. So there's not really any reason to think his BABIP will suddenly balloon. A regression to the normal ~.300 won't even hurt him that much. I don't expect another sub 3 ERA either, but that's not even necessary for the deal to be worth it. Upper 3s can mean different things, but there wasn't even one starter per team that managed 170 IP with a 3.70 ERA in 2018. Bring that down to 150 IP and a 3.80 ERA and that number is still below 40. And barring serious injury trouble, I think that's about the worst case scenario. We won't know who's right until a few years from now of course, but it's really not a foolish deal to make. Look at it this way, the FA market this offseason wasn't exactly swarming with pitchers you'd rather give that contract to. Nor will it be after the 2019 season.

I think this one will turn out well for the Cardinals. From what I saw of Mikolas last year, and from looking at the stats, there was nothing flukey about his results. He looked like a really good pitcher. Decline might hit anyway of course, but for that kind of money he can be significantly worse than 2018 and still be worth it. On a deal like this you have to factor in both the risk and reward; if he's anywhere close to 2018 level from here on in, that's a bargain.

Well, Brent Suter went to the DL for a forearm strain... which later turned into a Tommy John... And sometimes (often) a forearm strain is just a forearm strain.

I've only really followed ST for the last couple of years, but certainly seems like the Brewers stick a lot more to 1-inning appearances early on, while many other teams (Like the Angels today) have pitchers going longer than that from the start. No idea what's preferable, mind you.

The narrative about teams being "smarter" with their money is both true and false. Of course it's smarter to not pay players $20m+ per year into their 40s. But it's only smarter if that money goes to make the team better in other ways; if the money saved on not signing Harper simply goes into the owners pocket, and doesn't help the team in any way, why would it be considered smart for any other sake than their bank balance? If the consequence of not paying those big contracts simply results in the average payroll lowering by $10m or whatever, why would fans consider that a good thing? Lowering expenses won't result in cheaper season tickets, cheaper hot dogs or any such thing. It just means greater profits. The being smarter part would be to use that money saved in a way that improves the team more than, say, Harper would. But league minimum contracts and arbitration contracts will only ever cost so much, and those amounts haven't increased during these slow offseasons. Hiring more analysts or scouts costs a pittance in comparison to player wages. Improving facilities is a one-time cost. So being smart would have to mean spending money elsewhere in free agency. The problem isn't, and has never really been that Harper and Machado might get $250m instead of $350m, but that that money not spent on the formerly expensive free agents doesn't go to other players but simply to increase owners' profits. The current system is one where minor leaguers and players with 0-3 years service time are being underpaid (The minor leaguers in particular. MLB are actively lobbying to be able to pay them less than minimum wage), and where many arbitration players are too. In exchange for that, the players who manage to stick in the majors end up getting rewarded in free agency, often by being overpaid. Now one might say that's not a very good system, and I'd agree. But it's what's there right now. Except that over the last couple of years only one part of that is really in effect; young players are still being underpaid, but free agents aren't getting paid in the same way. There can be many reasons for that, one or more of players getting to the majors later, owners colluding, the end of the steroid era shortening careers, teams getting better at projecting future performance or something else entirely. Regardless of which, of course the players want the system changed. As they should. From any point of view really it would make sense to shift salary so that the salary is higher in the years where the players are at their best. When it comes to the big C-word, I don't think there's any way that it's the same as what the league has done before, with a specific agreement to not sign free agents from other teams, not signing a certain player or not paying more than X. And whatever is left when you take that out might not be collusion in any legal sense. But take a scenario where you know that other teams won't spend beyond a certain point. Where instead of duking it out with $220m payrolls, you know that the other team(s) won't spend more than $200m (And not because they were in the red at $220m, but because they simply want to spend less). You can then either keep spending $220m to try to have an advantage, or you could go down to $200m to have the same scenario as before, but with more profit. Teams now are basically doing the latter. It may not be illegal, there may be no foul play there, it may be decisions made independently. But it's also not good for anyone but the owners themselves. Fans of the teams who can afford spend more, but won't, should be furious. Money doesn't automatically result in wins, but it helps, there's a clear positive correlation between payroll and wins. And why would fans want to not see their team try to win? The above isn't at all far fetched either, it's what the league does with minor league salaries already. Teams could get advantages by paying their minor leaguers more. Not as big as increasing their major league payroll, but still. International signing pools and draft signing bonus pools are capped, while minor league pay isn't. A higher salary would make up for a lower bonus, and you could sign more and better players with the same bonus pool. Players being able to eat well, to have a decent living situation, to be able to not worry about making ends meet, to not have to have offseason jobs all help. There'd be fewer players who would have to give up on their career due to not being able to afford it. Being more attractive to the best minor league free agents is another benefit. Some of these benefits might be marginal, but there's several of them. And teams could double their minor league salaries for a few million per year. So why don't they? Because if it proves beneficial, other teams will do the same, the advantages will disappear and teams will end up paying more for the same as they're already getting. That might be smart, and might not be actual collusion, but again it's not really a desirable system. I'd rather see those couple of million dollars per team go to paying minor leaguers a decent wage rather than go to Nutting, Ricketts, Steinbrenner et al. And so would hundreds of minor leaguers and thier families.

One factor that will always play into projections is that they can only project based on the players the team has. Injuries can only be taken into account to a small degree, but more importantly a projection system can't project team selling and buying at the trade deadline. That alone will take a few wins from the worst teams and add them to some of the better teams. A projection system could be 100% correct on a players true skill, and very accurate on their actual production, and still be way off on team win totals. You could even take it a step further, they could get the run differential right and still be off by several wins due to sequencing and performance in 1-run games etc. Projections are really useful because they provide a very different perspective to what we as individuals predict and guess. They'll miss out on some things, but they'll also not be affected by sentiment or past achievements or any other way that us humans misinterpret data and other input. If nothing else, take advantage of projections that differ significantly from your own beliefs. There's *something* that makes them believe or not believe in a team or player, so find out what that is. Maybe there are other factors that make up for those things that the projection system can't see, in which case you could ignore it entirely, or take it into account in the sense that it adds some risk and volatility. But maybe you've missed something in your own analysis, something that a purely data-driven model would catch but a human wouldn't.

Interesting article about Josh Tomlin and Driveline, about what he has learned about his mechanics and pitch usage. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/josh-tomlin-on-what-he-learned-at-driveline/

I'd imagine that it showed either the combined ZiPS+Steamer, or ZiPS only for a while, and that what's currently there (Brewers with 82 wins) is Steamer but with Moose added. Or that they're doing some work on the depth chart / playing time side of things, which can obviously affect the team outcome for projections even while not changing any individual ones.

I don't know if MLB Pipeline use the overall 20-80 scale somwhat differently to Fangraphs/BPro, or if they're just more generous overall, or if they simply like the Brewers farm a lot more. Regardless it's interesting to see that they have 9 overall 50s, while FG has 3 and and BPro have 3-4 too (They give a value for both likely best-case and a more conservative likely outcome). At least the way Fangraphs define their FV, 50 is a player who averages ~2 WAR per year over their years of team control. By that definition, having 9 players whose mean or most likely outcome is a 2 WAR player is very good.

There's a chance that even if Nelson is fully healthy, velocity is back and they view him as a member of the rotation that he'll still start in AAA. He might need to work his way up to a full starter workload, and while they might be willing to let him do that in the majors, they also might not. Or he may be put straight into the rotation. Anyway, regardless of his status I have a hard time seeing anyone other than Chacin as the opening day starter, he earned that in 2018. So Nelson's status is still somewhat up in the air even if the reports are good so far, and to me the question for the last spot also comes down to who is of most use elsewhere. I think Woodruff is a better option out of the 'pen than Peralta, Anderson or Davies for instance. I guess I'll go with Chacin Anderson Davies Burnes Peralta/Nelson depending on Nelson's health Pen: Woodruff, Guerra, Hader, Knebel, Jeffress, Claudio, Albers (If he looks like 2017 or early 2018 Albers in ST), Barnes. (Williams, Wahl, Houser and Wilkerson on the shuttle. Could be any one of them instead of Barnes or Albers to start the year). AAA: Peralta/Nelson - I don't want either one there, they're better than that. But I also don't think there's much point sending Davies there. Peralta staying stretched out and working on that changeup for when he'll inevitably be needed in Milwaukee might be for the best. The 'pen is an option too, but less likely IMO. Overall I'd like to get all three of Woodruff, Peralta and Burnes into the rotation. But at the same time, the overall depth works better (IMO anyway) with the above setup. I'm not a big believer in Anderson, and while I like Davies more, 2018 worried me a bit. But they have both had good MLB seasons, and keeping them around and active is probably a good thing. The youngsters will be there when needed.

Over the last four years, Machado has been the 9th most valuable player in the majors by fWAR. Ahead of him are Trout, Betts, Altuve, Bryant, Lindor, Donaldson, Goldschmidt and Votto. All of whom either didn't or won't hit free agency, or will do so at a later age. Over 6 full seasons worth of PAs he's averaged 5 fWAR. That kind of production, for someone who is only 26, puts him in the absolute top tier among free agents this century. That's easy to overlook, especially with his attitude clouding things. The last few years probably won't be very good (but they might, noone knows), but put it another way: How many other chances do you get to secure a player of that calibre in his prime, to 7 or so good and productive years? And not giving up any draft picks or prospects or anything, only money. Their payroll is still only something like $110m. They're a much better team today than they were yesterday. Free agency isn't the most efficient way to get better, nor the way to build your whole team. But it is the quickest and most certain way, despite all the pitfalls. Basically when you have one of, if not the best, farm systems in the majors ready to graduate players, signing free agents makes perfect sense. Most of your team will cost very little for many years to come, which is exactly when you can afford free agents the most. That this would be worse than the Hosmer signing as someone said earlier is laughable. Now that was an awful signing; I liked the concept of it (i.e spending in free agency to go with your farm system) but spending that kind of money on Hosmer specifically I wasn't a fan of to say the least. I'd feel real iffy about this if it was the Brewers, since Machado is one of my least favourite players in baseball. But apart from that, it's a really good deal. As for Harper, a lot of what was said about Machado applies to him too. Over the same last 4 years, min 1500 PAs, he's the 5th best hitter in baseball with a 149 wRC+. Behind only Trout, Votto, Donaldson and Martinez. Better than Goldy, Freeman, Bryant, Stanton, Rizzo, Betts, Arenado etc. 11th by fWAR over that period. I see all kinds of attempts to cherry-pick stats, like the "ignoring his best season" variety or picking his worst season and the defensive metric that paints the least favourable picture etc. However you do it, there's no escaping that he's a really good player. More importantly again is the idea of scarcity: He's not the best player in the game, not even top 5 or top 10. After that the debate starts. But, in terms of which players will reach free agency at an age where you can reasonably expect 6-8 productive seasons? He's about as good as it gets. Basically this makes all the sense in the world for a team in the Padres situation. If they hadn't signed Hosmer (Who was 2 years older, a worse hitter and a worse defender at a position further down the defensive spectrum, and overall worth less than half the fWAR of Machado), going for Harper too would have made sense.

Shaw, with his 3 remaining years of team control, is the more long-term option. Makes a certain amount of sense to move the likely temporary option instead of the permanent one to another position. Perhaps that plays into it.

Projection systems like Moose this year. ZiPS project him for 3.2 fWAR with less than 600 PA, and PECOTA have him at 2.5 WARP. Normally these things are fairly conservative, it's encouraging to see that at least two of them see something they like.

Spangenberg or Gamel gets optioned, and on any given day we'll have a bench of Piña, Perez and two from Hiura/Moose/Shaw/Aguilar/Braun/Thames with the other four playing. Could also spell the end of Thames of course, but IMO should only do that for a decent return, not just for the sake of it. I'd have prefered an actual 2B, but I'm OK with this. We know who Moose is, and clearly he liked Milwaukee and the players, coaches and front office liked Moose. It makes the team better, there's no long term risk involved. Similar to last season we'd be talking about a logjam, but it worked itself out then and it will again. Having too many good players is never a bad problem to have.

I was surprised when Cedeño wasn't tendered. But I think that with the way the Brewers use their bullpen, having a LOOGY (Far fewer IP than appearances) is a bit of a luxury. Claudio is also a lefty specialist, but one who averages over 1 IP per appearance. From that point alone it's a better fit. I also believe Claudio is the better player, but even if it was close in ability I'd have prefered Claudio. Another thing with Cedeño is that he doesn't exactly have a great track record. The fact that he went unsigned until the start of training camp, and signed for as little as he did, would indicate that other teams share the Brewers view of him to some extent. He was a useful pickup at the time, but not someone I'll really miss.

Any team has to balance three (Well, probably more than that really, but those are the main ones IMO) different areas in their pitcher usage; 1. Maximizing the chances of winning any one individual game. The optimal way to do that is probably to use a ton of different relievers, trying to play as much matchups as possible, having them all go all out for short stints. 2. Maintaining a reasonable workload, reducing the risk for fatigue and injury. A consideration directly opposed to #1. Best way to do this is probably to have some kind of piggybacking, or starter + long reliever almost every game. Have relievers never throw on consecutive days, and ideally always with 2 days rest. Trying to keep your relievers on a "rotation" too. 3. Flexibility and availability to use your best relievers in the highest leverage situations. And all this within the constraints of the 25- and 40-man roster rules. Focus too heavily on one, and the others will suffer. To be able to deploy your main weapons at will, to have the right pitchers available for the matchups you want them to face, you need the other pitchers to cover the remaining innings. In order to cover a large amount of innnings, you need rest between outings. And you need to ideally get the "bulk innings" with as few pitchers as possible, due to the limited number of pitchers available. Whenever you take away one inning from a starter, that means one more inning for someone on shorter rest to cover, you end up in a situation where the fewer innings the starter pitches, the more innings the long reliever does. Which creates a situation where you need to find more "bulk pitchers" of some kind. Bringing another factor into it: scarcity (In terms of both payrolls and actually available players). Even if you devise the "ultimate" plan, you need the right players to execute it and they may not be available. Reducing the workload of the starters who are usually the best pitchers means each inning they pitch will likely be slightly better. But it also means giving more innings to worse pitchers. Those are just a few of the considerations in devising how to deploy a pitching staff. There are tradeoffs to whatever choice you make. and it's hard to know what to prioritize. Some make more sense in the long term, and some in the short term. And to win you need to be good at both. And as I look at it, the 5-man rotation remains a good start in that it provides bulk innings using few pitchers, enabling points #1 and #3 fairly well. In terms of #2 there's always the balance between total IP (or # of pitches thrown) and frequency of those innings, and I don't have the answer there what's the right balance, what something like a 4-man rotation with slightly shorter outings does, or a 6-man rotation with longer. Perhaps the 5-man rotaiton is what it is because of tradition (Though it's not some ancient phenomenon either), maybe it became such a staple for a good reason. Probably a little bit of both. Either way, when looking at how I want to see the pitching staff employed, I'm sticking with the rough foundation of a 5-man rotation. The main problem it has is the widely known struggles to maintain performance deep into games. Shortening outings means more bullpen innings, which can both increase fatigue, injury risk and reduce flexibility. The way I'd solve that is pretty similar to what the Brewers did in 2018, with some modifications. So, in general terms: - 5-man rotation. Depending on how good the #5 starter is, skipping him when rest days allows for it may be a good idea. Occasional bullpen/piggyback/hybrid day when bullpen workload allows for it. - Prioritize the quick hooks for the back of the rotation. The smaller the drop-off 3rd time through the order, the more leeway they get. - When starters can be left in, leave them in. Be aggressive with hooks in very close games, more conservative otherwise. - Utilize the long reliever as such. Whether it's the AAA shuttle, the 5th starter when he's being skipped or a dedicated long reliever or two. Ideally use only two pitchers total on the days he pitches, give the bullpen a day off. - Be aggressive about protecting a lead. Use the best arms early if they're available. If you extend the lead while they're in, you might be able to get away without using them in the 9th. - Despite the above stagger the elite relievers at least somewhat. Try to never be in a situation where none of them are available. Or where you have to use them in low leverage. - Do the above two while, to the greatest possible extent, avoiding using relievers on consecutive days. To avoid injury/fatigue in a reliever, I believe that's the key. - Don't use a elite multi-inning reliever for one inning. Use him for 2-3, thus saving some other arm for the next day or day after that. Kept them in general terms, but it's obvious how some of them apply to the current Brewers pitching staff. The long relief usage, usage on consecutive days, and slightly slower hooks when the situation allows for it are the areas where I hope to see improvement in 2019. I also hope they learned from the brief experiment of using Hader as a more traditional 1-inning guy. Simply use him for 2-3 innings, even if he needs 3 days off, that's IMO how you get the best balance between high total IP, high leverage situations and avoiding injury. This ended up really long, so well done if you made it this far

After an update to the projections, Cubs are now projected to finish last in the division with 80 wins. So what's even better than Christmas everyday?

I'd love to hear some concrete arguments against the methodology behind the publcly available framing metrics. It's one thing to say that it feels like the effect are too big (Which I'm sure many of us felt when we first saw those numbers), but it needs more than that to dismiss. Batter, pitcher, umpire are taken into account. Breaking balls are compared to breaking balls, fastballs to fastballs. It both correlates well with scouts grading of receiving skills, and correlates well from season to season, so whatever it does measure, it measures so consistently. The methodology seems sound to me. I'm genuinely curious to see if I'm missing something obvious here. Also something that's separate from how well we can measure framing ability, and which should be less controversial, is the average impact of a ball turning into a strike, regardless of whether it's due to the pitcher, catcher, batter or umpire. With the tens of thousands of pitches thrown each season you get really good data on it. On average, and I believe this not only takes into account the impact it has on each count but also how common each count is, the difference between each ball and strike is .14 runs. To take the example from earlier about how the best framers average 1 favourable call per game (I don't know where that stat comes from, but let's go with it as it was used as an example of how framing isn't as impactful), then 162*0.14 = 22.68 runs. And the worst framers, getting a similar amount of unfavourable calls, would make the difference between best and worst even larger than that. An introduction to Baseball Prospectus CSAA can be found here.

That the Brewers will be very good defensively doesn't seem unlikely to me at all. They were one of the best teams defensively in 2018, and should be good again. Keep in mind that this is Baseball Prospectus, so their defensive metrics include pitch framing, which Grandal is one of the very best at, while Contreras is not good at all at it. The difference between Contreras and Grandal alone accounts for 32 out of the 46 run differential. FRAA really doesn't seem to rate Baez or Almora very highly though. They're no gold glove type of players, but rating them as below average seems a bit harsh.

Nothing to go on yet except an Instagram post by the man himself, and nothing about the nature of the deal. Can't imagine anyhting other than a minor league deal though. https://www.instagram.com/p/Btq6B4XHIIR/

+1 I am a daily lurker logging in for the first time in maybe years to agree with this. Anyone actually bothered by this change needs to sit down and take a deep breath. Expressing outrage (faux or for real) about "political correctness gone mad" over non-issues is a very popular pasttime in certain circles for some reason. Has been for a long time.