Lathund

As a CF he's not a good defender anymore, and hasn't been for some time. But was just fine in the corner spots. And has produced around 120 wRC+ for the last two years. In other words, a well above average starter. For a big budget team, with very little money guaranteed on other contracts (relative to their max anyway), it makes sense to get more wins that way. The defense bit shouldn't be underestimated even on it's own btw. The extreme ends of the DRS spectrum tend to get a bit, well, extreme. But the Phillies were historically bad by any measure. DRS estimates the difference between the best (Diamondbacks, +157) and the worst (Phillies, -146) at 303 runs. Or roughly 30 wins. Even the more conservative UZR has a difference of 87 runs between best and worst. Suffice it to say, anything even remotely close to a league average defense would have seen them win a lot more games. Cutch replacing Hoskins in a corner, Segura replacing Kingery/Cabrera at SS and Kingery replacing Cabrera/Hernandez (Who played with a broken foot for almost half the season, can't have helped...) at 2B should alone provide a bunch of wins. Their 6 shortstops used combined for -23 DRS; Segura had +5. Hoskins in LF alone managed -24 DRS; Cutch was roughly league average. I'd imagine that in addition to the signings, they'll be putting a lot of effort into improving defensively in any way they can. Their pitching is fine; 6th best xFIP in the majors. 2nd biggest margin between FIP and ERA; which is what defense does. Cubs, Brewers, A's, Braves, Dodgers, Angels, Dbacks were at the other end of that. Offense was below average, but Cutch and Segura should help. As should Harper or Machado if they manage to land one. The NL East will be a bloodbath, so even an improved Phillies team could struggle. But I'd say that the the big defensive improvement they've already got, and even a small boost to offense will see them improve more than one might imagine with their good pitching. Kapler having a season of management under his belt should probably help too.

I hope we're not talking Wade Davis or Aroldis Chapman type of money here. Or anything close to it. Really not a fan of paying relievers that much. If we have that kind of money to spend I'd rather look at some of the better starters out there, like Keuchel or Happ. Or a bat like Grandal. But yeah, if it's somehow connected to another move, as a replacement for Knebel helping land a major target then perhaps there's more sense to it. Or, more likely IMO, it's simply a matter of kicking the tyres like DS has done consistently throughout his tenure. Knowing the market and the ask helps you both with that player and the market at large.

Care to elaborate? His bat is seemingly what this lineup is currently missing. Defense may be an issue, but I'll chalk up his bad defense last year to coming off an injury. He's always been a poor defender at 2B. 2018 was just extra bad. It may still be that his bat and the financial side of things makes him the best option still, but he's definitely a poor defender.

Very solid K/BB ratios in both the minors and majors. DRA quite likes him too. HRs has seemingly been a problem for him. Either way, I like the profile and seems like very useful depth to have in the minors.

Had to replace Jett Bandy somehow. Should trade for Brock Deatherage too.

I thought this was someone bumping last years similar post to be funny. I so wish I had been right.

Jose Martinez batting stance makes me irrationally angry, so I hope he does gets traded to the AL so I won't have to see it as often. He's also a good hitter, so there's another reason right there.

If DJ plays a good 3B (He played all over the diamond in his first few seasons, but only 2B since) and the cost is reasonable then I like the idea. The article above is interesting, in that it's the kind of profile that could improve. The good bat control and ability to put the ball into play is also useful; a metric like tAV which includes situational hitting likes him better than OPS+ does. Still "only" league average, but with very good defense I'm fine with that. And also a fairly stable offensive offensive profile due to the low strikeout rate, and ability to move runners over which complements the existing hitters rather well. It's also not entirely fair to look straight at home/away splits for Rockies players, as you also have to factor in the Coors hangover effect. I haven't seen the data on how big it is, but I'm fairly sure the away splits for Rockies players would be a lot more similar to other teams if you were to look at only the 2nd series and onwards of road trips. It's perhaps not the move I'd advocate for the most, but if you're ever going to sign a below-average hitter, this is the kind of guy you want. For someone to hold down the fort until Hiura (And be insurance in case of injuries or if he's less ready than we think) and, if he can still play a good 3B, spell Shaw vs lefties it's not a bad move. MLBTR predicts 2/18, Fangraphs 2/22. Or to put it another way: If the money is to be spent on 2B/3B, this is one of my favourite options. Interestingly enough Dietrich is perhaps the opposite of DJ, yet it's another move I like. But it may well be that a Dubon/Perez partnership and waiting for Hiura, and spending that money on pitching or catching might be a better option.

I wonder how does this type of deal work for a player out of options? Will he be signed to a minor league deal and thus not be on the 40-man for now? Or is it a major league contract but where he'll be exposed to waivers every time he gets sent to the minors, but if he accepts being outrighted he'll earn the higher salary negotiated?

Did not expect that at all tbh. Would have thought for sure that they'd go with Piña + new signing of some kind. But I guess this yet again shows that this regime values the defensive aspect highly, and that they like how pitchers worked with him. I hope it works out, in his short time here so far he has seemed like a really good teammate and good person overall. But I do have my doubts.

Also this just showed up in my twitter feed, a look into some reasons why Bumgarner won't fetch the kind of return his name would lead you to believe: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/madison-bumgarner-wont-fetch-the-giants-that-much/

Burnes, Woodruff and Peralta have all three shown that they are MLB-quality pitchers, and they're all under (cheap) team control for 6 more seasons. It remains to be seen what their MLB roles will be, but even if it's "only" a #4-5 or setup man type of reliever, that's still valuable to get for minimum wage. And they all have the upside to suggest that they could be better than that. Developing pitchers is risky, and to me you just don't give that up once you've taken all that risk and they've gotten to the majors. The years of control is the major factor for me. It's not as simple as saying that because of the 6 years vs 1 year Bum needs to be 6x better in 2018, as it matters when and how you get the production and not just the total of it. But when comparing major league players, it does factor in. From everything Stearns, Attanasio and Counsell have said (and done) the team aims to be competitive for more than just the next year or two. In which case you have to look beyond just 2019. And the $12m Bumgarner is due factors into it as well. One way to think of it is that Bumgarner would have to outperform Woodruff/Peralta by 1-1.5 WAR (Depending on if you take the average for all free agents (~8m/WAR) or take a more pessimistic view of what we could get in the open market for those $12m) just to break even for this year alone. And that's assuming a 1-for-1 trade. Now there's a good chance he does that, but then there are 5 more years after that. You have to ask yourself, just how big of a premium do you want to pay for 1-3 extra wins in 2019? If Woodruff lives up to the 50 FV billing Fangraphs has on him (i.e ~2 WAR/year over the 6 years of team control) then he'd produce ~12 WAR over the length of his years of team control. And that 3 WAR number is the result of some very generous assumptions about Bumgarner; like how he'd be worth 5 WAR in 2019 despite averaging 3.5 WAR over his first 9 full seasons, how it'd be a 1:1 trade, how it'd assume Woodruff/Peralta struggling some and being worth 1 WAR only, and assuming only 1 WAR for the $12m. This is obviously very ad-hoc methodology, and WAR isn't a perfect illustration of value, and it doesn't factor in playoff experience or knock-on ability on the bullpen and so on. So take the exact numbers with a grain of salt. But what I'm trying to illustrate is that if the goal is to be competitive beyond 2019 then the trade carries some significant negative expected value. If it gets us a World Series then I don't care, but anything short of that and it's not a great idea. And the likelyhood of a WS win isn't great even if the Brewers are indeed one of the 4 best teams based on getting to the NLCSi in 2018. So I'd much rather keep Woodruff/Peralta and spend $12m on a free agent or a salary dump. Or I'd try to get the deal done with talent further removed from the majors, in which case I'm all for it.

I was a proponent of going for Donaldson if it was indeed a prove-it type of deal, i.e 1 year or some kind of 1 year + options type of deal. But 23m is too steep. Makes total sense for a team like the Braves though.

Pass. Unless they eat basically the entire contract; and even then I'm not really sold on it. There's a real risk of the decline hitting him hard without the PEDs. Or continuing to juice and getting caught again. I was even looking forward to being able to condemn cheating after 2020 without being called a hypocrite by fans of other teams, wouldn't want to push that forward even further.

1. Make cryptic tweet 2. Wait for something to happen that could fit in with said cryptic tweet 3. Take credit

Yes, and stay there the whole season. Which is why it makes very little sense to me to pick a catcher who has had less than 400 PAs above A ball. I tried to find out if his defense has anything to do with the obsession of picking him in the rule 5 draft, and can't find much except (from mlb.com) "Mazeika’s defense behind the plate remains a work in progress, both his fringy arm — an elbow injury that delayed his full-season debut by a month didn’t help — and his overall receving skills. He has made some strides, but he still has a ways to go". As for offense, a 96 wRC+ at AA isn't bad at all for a catcher, but it doesn't exactly scream immediate impact bat. To put it into context, Jacob Nottingham in 2017 in AA was 2 years younger than Mazieka, and put up a 102 wRC+. He then went on prove himself at AAA as well (126 wRC+ factors in the park and league environment to an extent). And he doesn't need to be on the roster the whole year. I suspect it's a matter of looking for players with as many, or more, walks than strikeouts and finding Mazieka. Seems to be Clancy's type.

Eric Longenhagen at Fangraphs has covered the AFL, said in his recent chat re Hiuras defense: "Eric A Longenhagen: Better, totally fine at 2B, arm strength is about average". Which is what Iv'e mostly seen from others as well, no one seems worried about the defense and suggest he's at worst a below average defender.

Would've liked CC to win it, but I don't have any issue whatsoever with Snitker winning. I mean the award in general is stupid, and we really have no clue at all what impact the manager actually has, but judging by how that award is usually decided Snitker was a fine choice. As would CC have been. Also in regard to deGrom's much deserved Cy Young (Got 29/30 first place votes), some more data to illustrate just how amazing it was. And how stupid and misleading pitcher Wins are. Taken from a Grant Brisbee piece: "In deGrom’s worst start of 2018, he allowed four runs in six innings. It’s the only time he allowed four runs in a start. It’s so, so easy for a starting pitcher to allow a bloop and a blast in one inning, followed by two doubles and a single in another, without anyone wondering what’s wrong. Allowing a bloop and a blast is what pitchers do. Sometimes they nibble on a 3-2 pitch, and sometimes their defense can’t make the great play that will bail them out. Happens. Oh, my, how it happens. Except it didn’t happen to deGrom. In 29 out of 32 starts, deGrom threw a quality start (6+ innings pitched, 3 or fewer earned runs), and that’s remarkable, but it still undersells him. We’ll have to invent a new stat, a step up. Instead of the quality start, let’s search for the dominant start, in which a starter throws at least seven innings with two runs or fewer allowed. deGrom did this in 18 out of his 32 starts. Only two starters had more games with seven innings pitched period. deGrom had more starts with seven innings pitched than the Brewers. That’s not enough, though. We need to invent another new metric, the badass start, which is when a starter throws at least eight innings with one run or fewer. deGrom had five of them. Twenty-two different MLB teams didn’t have as many. The Brewers and Rangers didn’t have any." Jacob deGrom had a 2.71 ERA in his 9 losses, a 1.62 ERA in his 13 ND, and a 0.89 ERA in his 10 wins. Imagine a league-average offense in those games. Or hell, imagine one of the worst offenses producing the average runs/game total for the year, and he'd have a ton more wins. Or imagine if he had Hader and Jeffress to close out the games. The arguments made that he didn't deserve it because of his low amount of Wins were among the dumbest things I've seen or heard all year. And that's saying a lot.

Those 2 players alone would not be enough, especially compared to trade packages other teams would offer if MadBum was put onto the market... It might not be enough, but that's a very good reason to stay far away from it. It's just one year, for $12m, of a very good pitcher who has nonetheless struggled to stay healthy and has shown some decline. Now he's still young and could very well get back to his old self, but it is something to think about. In most plausible scenarios MadBum would out perform Peralta in 2019, but I don't see him doing it by enough to outweigh the $12m (That's $11.5m less to spend at 2B/C/wherever), and the 12 years of Peralta/Ray we'd be losing. Trading MLB-ready pitching prospects for short-term MLB pitching is a losing proposition the way I see it. Something you only do if you have literally everything else in place already.

The stunning part of this is that the author (McDaniel) rates Hiura #22, Lutz #68 and Ray #89. Hiura's ranking looks fairly accurate. But IMO that ranking for Lutz is EXTREMELY high compared to what I would consider the "general opinion" and maybe Ray is a bit high as well...although placing Ray at the back end of the top 100 certainly isn't unreasonable. McDaniel is using Fangraphs Top 100: https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board/?type=&pos=&team=all Which he is responsible, along with Eric Longenhagen, for making. IIRC McDaniel is a long time Lutz fan though. He was working for the Braves ahead of the 2017 draft, and was extremely impressed by what their data and private workouts with him showed. I'm trying to recall what specifically he said about it, but basically there were signs and/or data pointing to potentially having immense game power. So since then he's been regularly rated higher on Fangraphs lists than elsewhere.

In the case of the Mariners, this is exactly what they've been doing for the last few years, they've been extremely active in the trade market. "Attempting to make improvements on the margins" is Jerry Dipoto's middle name. I don't quite know what his parents were thinking there. But it hasn't gotten them anywhere, and has depleted their farm system with nothing to show for it. They're nowhere near the Astros, the A's have a great young core and will be good for years, and even the Angels should be better than they are. One of the WCs should go to the Red Sox/Yankees every year for the next few years. If you do the teardown while you still have some assets to sell you get back to competitive ways sooner. They can try to learn from the Brewers rebuild. If you wait too long to tear it down you end up like the Orioles. And the Mariners weren't good in 2018. That incredible record in 1-run games, probably largely due to Edwin Diaz having an amazing season, managed to gloss over the fact that they're a sub-500 team by run differential.

What makes you think that? It's a combination of Framing Runs + Blocking Runs + Throwing Runs, and I would find it very hard to believe that "Blocking Runs" doesn't include passed balls and wild pitches.

Of the main defensive stats, I believe Baseball Prospectus with FRAA is the only one to also include pitch framing, so that's the one I tend to use most when looking at catcher defense as it's the most complete.

I want the priority for a catcher to be on defense, hence why I'm not too keen on Ramos. For an offensive upgrade I'd rather spend on a 2B/3B/OF type of player. If the club was to spend big on a FA catcher I'd much rather do it on Grandal, even if he'll be more expensive than Ramos. And no, one bad playoff series does not mean Grandal is a bad defender. Over his career he's consistently been one of the better defensive catchers in thr game.

It's a purely data-driven analysis, and thus doesn't make any assumptions of shifting intent. Brewers ran a low payroll for the last few years while rebuilding, but obviously the data doesn't know that so it expects the payroll to stay at similar levels. Likewise the Orioles have run a high payroll for many years, yet they or Detroit clearly won't spend $100m+ on FAs. It also assumes that tenders are extended to all arbitration-eligible players. I think the useful part of that article is seeing the payroll estimates for next year; things like the Cubs already being above the luxury tax without any FA signings (Don't know if the Smyly trade changes that) which I hadn't realized; i knew they had a lot of money committed, but not quite that much. Or how much room teams like the Rays and White Sox have. I could see some surprise teams in on some big free agents, acquiring those players on long-term deals a year or two ahead of schedule. A bit like with Hosmer, except hopefully smarter...