2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions

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Mark Prior is retiring, is interested in a front-office job.

Damn shame he didn't pan out the way everyone hoped for.
 
She's "dated" one athlete after another, after another, and you aren't seein an issue with that? :lol: :lol:

She'll be collectin from Carl the whole time and move on to a hockey player within 18 months. Watch.

:lol:, these dudes (by dudes, I mean athletes), get caught up with bad mates all the time anyway.


Mark Prior is retiring, is interested in a front-office job.

Damn shame he didn't pan out the way everyone hoped for.

Dusty Baker destroyed him, :lol:

I thought he retired years ago though laugh.gif

He hasn't pitched in the majors since 2006, he had many failed comeback attempts since.

He's a sharp dude, glad he got a front office gig.
 
What Can Domonic Brown Do For You?

It appears, once again, that Domonic Brown‘s name is once again out there cooking up in the hot stove. Dave and Jeff each touched on Brown when his name last came up in rumors last month when a Brown for Jose Bautista rumor was floated out of Philadelphia. Both pieces laid out the caveats of such a move in that Brown’s career is still immature enough that it could go in either direction. 2013 could as much be his baseline as much as it could be his peak.

Brown’s major league career has consisted of just 1032 plate appearances. Prior to 2013, Brown was on the Philly to Reading shuttle a number of times and also had to recover from a hamate injury, which sapped some of his power through the recovery process. The amount of plate appearances he received in parts of three seasons from 2010 to 2012 were nearly identical to the ones he received in his 2013 as a full-time player for the first time. Not only were the plate appearance totals nearly identical, so were the skills.

Year PA K% BB% O-Swing% Contact% Swing% FB%
2010-2012 492 18.9% 10.4% 26.1% 77.8% 46.0% 36.4%
2013 540 18.0% 7.2% 27.3% 77.7% 48.9% 37.2%
The decline in Brown’s walk rate was a result of a slightly more aggressive approach at the plate, as the percentage of pitches he saw within the strike zone did not change. After all, Brown went the entire month of May 2013 without walking a single time. Pitchers, for whatever reason, preferred to challenge him within the zone 49% of the time rather than forcing him to expand his zone. 17 extra base hits, including 12 home runs later, pitchers changed their approach Brown saw pitches in the strikezone just 44% of the time.

During that hot stretch, Brown’s pull tendencies exceeded his career baseline as he pulled the ball 53% of the time. Once the pitchers adjusted their plan of attack, Brown’s skills returned to their previous levels as he used all fields hitting the ball where it was pitched and accepted his walks.

For 109 plate appearances in May 2013, Domonic Brown had a .432 wOBA. For the other 923 plate appearances in his career, he has had a .324 wOBA. We are reminded, after a season in which Raul Ibanez defied Father Time, that once a player owns a skill, it can resurface. For 11% of his playing career, Brown hit a lot of home runs as pitchers stubbornly threw him a lot of strikes. Once pitchers changed their approach, Brown reverted back to his previous career norms.

The other two elephants in the room are his defense and issues against lefties. His overall defense grades out very poorly and he has a 51-point split in his wOBA for his career. Against righties, Brown has a career .340 wOBA but just a .291 wOBA against lefties in 268 plate appearances. Defensively, a UZR/150 of -15.1 over 2151 innings of play in the outfield corners will be very tough to overlook for a potential National League suitor. Of all outfielders that played at least 2000 innings in the outfield from 2010-2013, Brown ranks 94th in UZR/150. Only Logan Morrison, Carlos Quentin, Matt Kemp, and Michael Morse grade out worse. In terms of defensive runs saved, Brown is tied with the likes to Jonny Gomes at -23. Simply put, there is not a way to polish Brown’s defense before putting him in the storefront window for barter.

The initial reported goal by Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports was that the Phillies wanted to trade Brown for controllable starting pitching. There is no fault in aiming high, but controllable starting pitching is one of the toughest assets to acquire on the trade market. Teams ultimately strive to develop such pitchers so they do not have to attempt to trade for that commodity on the open market. The supply for such pitchers is very low because they are hoarded by teams as a very effective method to control costs when the average player contract value grows annually.

Thus far, most of the pitchers that we have heard about on the trade market are ones nearing the end of their current contractual situations. Justin Masterson is reportedly out there, but he is heading into his final year before becoming a free agent. Brett Anderson‘s name has been floated around, but he is due $8M this season, and has a $12M team option or a $1.5M buyout for 2015. The one team that has been rumored to make available what the Phillies are looking for is the Chicago White Sox.

Jose Quintana and Hector Santiago are two young and controllable pitchers the White Sox have that could realistically be traded. Chris Sale‘s contract would involve a king’s ransom in a deal while John Danks‘s AAV on his deal makes his contract an immovable object unless Chicago were to offset some of the cost. Santiago is team-controlled through the 2017 season, as is Brown, while Quintana is controllable through the 2018 season.

Chicago trading young controllable pitcher seems odd on the surface as their farm system does not have much ready to step in and fill any gaps. Quintana would be the type of pitcher they would want to retain as the 25-year old pitcher has been worth 6.5 RA9-WAR p over 55 major league starts. Santiago has worked as a swingman for the team, and his skills have held up in both roles while being worth 3.8 RA-9 WAR over 78 games.

To date, Brown has been worth 0.4 WAR, and was worth 1.6 WAR as a full-time starter. Oliver projects 7.1 WAR for Brown through his remaining controllable years. Santiago’s swingman role is maintained through his projections s he projects for 1.0WAR through his controllable years. Quintana is viewed much more favorably as he projects for 14.9 WAR through his remaining controllable years in Chicago. Even in a need-based situation which does not exist in Chicago at the moment, it is tough to imagine Santiago being dealt for Brown. Conversely, it is unlikely Philadelphia would accept Santiago in return for Brown.

Brown has overcome both inconsistent playing time and inconsistent health to accomplish what he has thus far. There may indeed be more in the bucket for him, but outside of one magical month, his skills have been rather consistent while his defense remains below-average. If Philadelphia’s goal is to sell high on the player, they will be better off selling their projected vision of Brown over the actual results, to date.

Finally: Changes to the Posting Agreement With Japan.

It looks like Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball finally have agreed on changes to the posting system between their two bodies. Joel Sherman reports:


Agreement in place between NPB-MLB on new posting system. Last hurdle is MLB exec council must approve, which is expected this week

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) December 10, 2013

Essentially Japanese team will inform MLB plyr is posted and how much up to $20M. Next day 30-day window begins for all teams that (cont)

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) December 10, 2013

have agreed to post fee to negotiate with player. If sign team reaches agreement with plyr, then have to send posting fee to Japanese team

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) December 10, 2013

Since MLB is the last to approve this, and the $20 million cap was their idea, it’s probably going to be approved.

There is one wrinkle that is a bigger deal and could cause consternation with certain clubs. After bandying about proposals that used reverse order of standings to determine the posting winner, this proposal will allow all of the teams that pony up $20 million to get to the negotiating table. Small-market teams will be happy to get to the table with the big boys, but unhappy, perhaps, about having to go toe-to-toe with bigger wallets. Perhaps the fact that there are things to like and not like about these changes — coupled with the $20 million cap that most American teams are probably happy about — means that this is likely to pass in MLB’s Executive Counsel.

This is a coup for the stars of Japanese baseball that wish to come to America. After all sorts of ideas that did not improve their leverage at all, the best Japanese players suddenly have the ability to negotiate with multiple teams. That will have the immediate impact of increasing the player’s share of the money. If the market bore $111 million for Yu Darvish, but he was posted in this system, he’d be $40 million richer. This should also mean that Japanese stars have better incentives for asking their teams to post them to American teams. Market-based solutions for the win.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t losers in this deal. Japan’s teams posting their star players get less money for their troubles. It may even make it less likely that Masahiro Tanaka gets posted. $20 million is not nothing, but it’s also not the $50-60 million that the Rakuten Golden Eagles may have gotten under the old posting system.

And the non-star Japanese players? Looks like it’s business as usual for them. Unless two teams happen to tie, the understanding here is that they’ll negotiate with the team that won the rights with their bid. Perhaps some in-between players that may have gotten a $10 or $15 million bid will find themselves lucky enough to talk to a few teams — the difference between knowing you’re at the table no matter what and hoping is probably worth that extra five million dollars, after all. But those types of bids have been rare in the history of the posting system. Since 2002, the highest bid that wasn’t over $20 million was the $5.1 million the Twins put up for the rights to Tsuyoshi Nishioka.

The posting process will continue to have a ‘stars and scrubs’ type feel to it, now it’s just more ingrained in the rules. Your stars get the leverage that comes from talking to multiple teams, and lesser players may find themselves waiting for free agency if they wish to make a decent salary and play in American baseball. At least now, there’s a system in place and American fans can begin to hope that a certain Rakuten pitcher decides he’d like to come to America. From his perspective, the process just got a lot more attractive, after all.

The Overrated and Underrated Mark Trumbo.

Yesterday, I wrote a mini diatribe on the value (or lack thereof) provided by Nelson Cruz. Because he has earned the label of “right-handed power hitter”, teams are apparently ignoring the fact that he’s not actually that good of a hitter and doesn’t really do anything else to help a team win. Bat only players where the bat isn’t that special are probably the most overrated players in the game, and that is certainly a club to which Cruz belongs.

That description also works pretty well for the eminently available Mark Trumbo. His name is perhaps the most popular of the morning, as the Diamondbacks are apparently working multiple avenues to try and acquire his power from the Angels in exchange for some of their excess pitching. Keith Law has even reported that there’s a chance that they could get the White Sox involved in a three way trade in order to find the right fit to help them acquire Trumbo, and it seems likely at this point that the Angels will move Trumbo in a quest to upgrade their rotation.

If the reported price tag of Adam Eaton and Tyler Skaggs is even remotely close to true, it seems fairly clear that the Diamondbacks are drastically overrating the value of Mark Trumbo, an unsurprising result given that he possesses the skillset that is most often overrated. To give up a prospect like Skaggs for the right to swap a speed-and-defense +2 WAR player for a dingers-and-ribbies +2 WAR player suggests that the Diamondbacks are following the trend of putting far too much emphasis on the ways players create runs and not the amount of runs they create.

Trumbo is simply not an impact player. Over the last three seasons of big league action, he has posted a 112 wRC+, which is terrific if you’re a good defender at an up the middle position but a little less terrific if you’re a first baseman or an outfielder who runs like a first baseman. He turns 28 in a month, so there’s not a lot of room for potential growth here either. Trumbo could still get better, of course, but he’s not some young kid who should be expected to develop into something dramatically better than what he is now. He’s a league average player, basically, and should be expected to be a league average player for the next few seasons.

But it’s worth remembering that Trumbo is a league average player, and those have value. For as much as I think the rumored price tag means that the Diamondbacks are overrating his contributions, it’s also equally wrong to simply quote his on base percentage (which is kind of awful) and ignore the thing that he does do very well. Trumbo has definitive strengths and weaknesses, but just as teams seem to overrate low OBP-high HR guys, statistical types like us can tend to underrate guys who make a lot of outs but do serious damage when they aren’t making outs. Mark Trumbo is not an impact player, but he also doesn’t suck. Positions that focus solely on what he can or can’t do miss the fact that the combination of those skills results in a player of some value.

Not as much as the Diamondbacks think he has, most likely. More than most guys coming off a season with a .294 OBP, however. Used properly, there’s nothing wrong with having Mark Trumbo in your line-up, as long as you understand what he is and aren’t planning on him being your answer to David Ortiz. And he actually has enough athleticism to be a pretty decent defender at first base, so he adds some value with the glove and isn’t a liability in the field.

Unless you put him in the outfield, where his size limits his range and makes his physical limitations more obvious and more harmful. And this would be the plan in Arizona, as they already have Paul Goldschmidt entrenched at first base, so Trumbo would be acquired to roam the outfield. Trumbo as a left fielder is likely less valuable than Trumbo as a first baseman, as the gap in his own defensive value at the two positions is probably larger than the gap in positional scarcity between the two spots. It is possible that he could improve significantly with a lot of work, and perhaps even become a passable defender in the outfield, but his size means that he’s probably never going to be an asset out there.

And so the Diamondbacks would be acquiring a league average player who they were forced to use sub-optimally, meaning that in Arizona, he’d probably produce at a slightly below average level. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance that Mark Trumbo as an outfielder would produce less value than Adam Eaton as an outfielder, and simply swapping those two players would make the Diamondbacks worse.

There’s likely going to be more pieces involved in any deal that gets completed, and perhaps by the time the deal is revealed, it will be more evident why the Diamondbacks are interested in completing this deal. For their sakes, though, I hope they get some other things in value in return, because Mark Trumbo is not the kind of guy that is going to justify giving up Adam Eaton and Tyler Skaggs. He’s not as worthless as his OBP might suggest, but the fact that it takes him 500 outs to hit 30 home runs means that his overall value is limited.

Mark Trumbo isn’t great. And Mark Trumbo doesn’t suck. He’s okay. If you pay for okay, there’s nothing wrong with trading for Mark Trumbo. The Diamondbacks need to make sure they’re paying for okay, because that’s what he is.

A Fun Tidbit on Rajai Davis.

According to Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet, the Tigers have agreed to terms on a two year contract with Rajai Davis. Davis will give the Tigers a little outfield depth and form a nifty little platoon with Andy Dirks in left field. Davis isn’t a great hitter, but he’s historically done well against left-handers, and should be a nice complement to the underrated Dirks.

The Tigers aren’t really signing Rajai Davis for his bat, though. They’re signing him for his legs, because those are the reasons he’s still employed in Major League Baseball. They’re the reason he’s valuable.

Last year, two players in baseball racked up 10+ runs of value from baserunning: Jacoby Ellsbury (+11.4) and Davis (+10.2). But it’s pretty easy to make the case that Davis was baseball’s best baserunner, as he accumulated that value as a part-time player, coming to bat only 360 times all year. Ellsbury hit 636 times, for comparison. In fact, every other player who racked up at least +7 runs of baserunning value was basically an everyday player, so getting to +10 as a part-time guy is a pretty amazing accomplishment.

But this is basically the story of Davis’ career. Since his debut in 2006, he’s racked up nearly +42 runs of baserunning value despite only getting 500 plate appearances in a season in one of his eight seasons. Since he debuted, he’s 8th in baseball in baserunning value, and the seven guys ahead of him all got at least 1,000 more plate appearances than he did. Rajai Davis creates baserunning value at a full-time player clip while getting part-time player at-bats.

He’s going to be 33 next year, and this is the kind of thing you don’t expect to last forever, but Davis is showing no signs of slowing down and should be a valuable runner for the Tigers again in 2014. Even on days when a right-handed starter means that he begins the game on the bench, Davis can still be a real weapon, taking high leverage bases late in games. For a contender, this kind kind of minor thing can actually turn into a difference in wins, and Davis should be a nice little addition for the Tigers. He’s not a great hitter or fielder, but he excels at one thing that has some value, and he does it well enough that he’s carved out a nice little niche for himself in the game.

Yankees Retain the Quietest Workhorse.

Imagine, if you will, that the Yankees signed Matt Garza. Alternatively, imagine that the Yankees signed Ervin Santana, or Ubaldo Jimenez. Those guys have been considered the three best domestic free-agent starting pitchers, and if the Yankees were to pick up one of them, it would be a major investment and it would be considered a major improvement to a rotation in some need. It would make headlines, and it would cost the Yankees three or four or five guaranteed years at something in the neighborhood of $15 million each. It would be a splash, the latest in what would be a series of offseason splashes for the front office.

The Yankees just recently signed a free agent who was more valuable than each of those guys in 2013. They signed a free agent who was more valuable than each of those guys between 2011-2013, and they signed a free agent who projects to be more valuable than each of those guys in 2014. I’ll grant that what Hiroki Kuroda doesn’t have on his side is age, but what he does have is ability, and for a year and $16 million, he ought to be Hiroki Kuroda again. Which is likely to be under-appreciated, again.

Of course, the situation is different. Garza, Jimenez, Santana — these guys are free to sign anywhere. Kuroda’s up there in years, and consensus was that he would either re-sign with the Yankees or return to Japan. There wasn’t much in the way of consideration that he might find a new big-league ballclub. So in that sense it isn’t the biggest surprise that he’s remaining in New York for at least another season, but the Yankees would be hard-pressed to find a bigger upgrade than going from a rotation without Kuroda to a rotation with him.

He’s 38, and he’ll be 39 in February, which is worryingly old for any player. But people like to say “there’s no such thing as a bad one-year contract” because that one year is the most projectable, and with Kuroda there’s no other reason to believe he’s teetering on the edge. He’s an aging pitcher, which is a red flag, generally. But he’s been the exact same pitcher since he broke into the majors in 2008. He’s always posted a strikeout rate just low enough to not be thought of as a strikeout pitcher. He’s always posted an ERA just high enough to not be thought of as an ace. But his stuff’s all there, and his results are all there. His decline down the stretch last season looks like it can be easily explained by simple randomness.

Let’s take a quick glance at xFIP-. The best mark of Kuroda’s career is 85. The worst mark of his career is 92. By ERA-, the best mark of his career is 79, and the worst mark is 93. His OBPs against have bounced between .282 and .300. No matter where you look, it’s all more or less the same, over the years. Kuroda has neither improved nor declined. He’s demonstrated some ability to suppress hits. The last four years, he’s started 128 games, and whatever concern there might’ve been about his transition from Los Angeles to New York has been proven insignificant. He’s adjusted fine. He’s been very quietly terrific.

There’s little that Kuroda does to draw attention to himself. Performance-wise, he’s solid across the board without being amazing at anything, and if we change our opinions of players based on how they change as players, we haven’t changed our Kuroda opinions in half a decade. We know that he’s solid and that’s old hat. He goes about his business while people think about newer pieces, or shinier pieces.

It’s interesting, now, to reflect a little bit on Kuroda’s time in Japan, given how successful he’s been in the States. At 32, in his last year with Hiroshima, he posted his highest ERA in years, and his lowest strikeout rate in years. Also, his highest walk and dinger rates in years. At that point, there was reason for concern that Kuroda might be wearing down, but that obviously hasn’t been the case as he’s been effective and mostly durable. He was well-scouted by the Dodgers, yet I don’t know how many people expected him to still be pitching in the majors in 2014, as an important component of a hopeful contender.

The Yankees say they’re not done looking for pitching help, and as long as they can afford it, they might as well keep looking for upgrades. They’re expected to be in deep on Masahiro Tanaka in the event that he’s actually posted. Brian Cashman says the desire is to add 400 innings behind CC Sabathia and Ivan Nova, with Kuroda accounting for half of that. But while the Yankees want to get better, and while the Yankees have room to get better, they’re already in pretty decent shape as far as the rotation is concerned. According to our current projected WAR, the Yankees’ rotation ranks fourth, between the Rangers and Nationals. Steamer thinks that Sabathia, Nova, and Kuroda will be three of baseball’s 30 most valuable starters or so. Sabathia’s a question mark, but he was terrific as recently as 2012. Nova is coming off a year with an arm problem, but he also solved his dinger issues at the age of 26. It’s a pretty good front, even without an ace, and there’s the additional major wild card in Michael Pineda, who for all I know is back to 100%.

The Yankees’ starting rotation, right now, is a bit underrated. Its most stable, reliable starter is a bit underrated. The move to re-sign him has been a bit underrated. There’s no way that enough people out there properly appreciate Hiroki Kuroda, but thankfully for the Yankees, wins and losses aren’t based on appreciation. For a year and too little money, given his talent, the Yankees should hand the ball to Kuroda 30-odd times and focus their worries on everything else.

A Frightening List of Nelson Cruz Comparisons.

I don’t mean to pick on Nelson Cruz. I know I already named him as the biggest land mine of the 2014 free agent class, and I’m not trying to pile on. But down here in Orlando, it is widely expected that Cruz is going to sign in the next few days, probably for around $15 million per year for between three and five years, depending on how intense the bidding gets.

It’s nuts. The way the market for Cruz is shaping up, he very well could sign the most ridiculous free agent contract since the Barry Zito deal. Sure, there have been some serious overpays for overrated players in previous years, but in most of those cases, it’s just been too much money for a still-good player. Prince Fielder wasn’t worth $216 million, but Prince Fielder was a legitimately good player. Nelson Cruz isn’t even that. Nelson Cruz is a mediocrity on the verge of getting paid like a guy who matters.

So, teams bidding for Nelson Cruz, I would like to offer you a sobering list of comparisons that might make you reconsider your bids.

To identify Cruz-like players of recent vintage, I looked at all position players over the last 30 years with at at least 1,500 plate appearances in their age 30-32 seasons. I then filtered for players with similar offensive production by wRC+ (between 110 and 120) who created most of their value by hitting for power (ISO over .200) but not through accumulating walks (BB% less than 11%). Those filters produce this leaderboard:


Name PA BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR
Eric Karros 1,866 9% 18% 0.213 0.302 0.283 0.345 0.496 0.361 118 -0.6 43.7 -13.7 8.7
Torii Hunter 1,869 7% 17% 0.207 0.303 0.281 0.338 0.488 0.352 114 3.2 36.2 -16.2 8.2
Andre Dawson 1,778 6% 15% 0.225 0.280 0.276 0.320 0.501 0.350 117 0.3 36.0 -15.3 8.1
Geoff Jenkins 1,637 9% 23% 0.200 0.329 0.274 0.353 0.474 0.353 111 -6.2 17.4 1.1 7.3
Casey Blake 1,707 9% 20% 0.204 0.297 0.263 0.339 0.467 0.346 111 -0.1 23.4 -9.9 7.0
Luke Scott 1,559 11% 20% 0.231 0.289 0.266 0.348 0.497 0.362 119 -5.7 30.0 -26.4 5.7
Geronimo Berroa 1,907 10% 18% 0.200 0.308 0.284 0.354 0.484 0.364 117 -2.9 39.8 -58.3 4.7
Dante Bichette 1,815 5% 15% 0.246 0.330 0.320 0.354 0.566 0.390 116 -0.2 37.7 -52.1 4.2
Nelson Cruz 1,611 7% 23% 0.226 0.295 0.263 0.319 0.489 0.348 114 -8.1 17.1 -33.1 3.9
Ryan Howard 1,556 10% 28% 0.227 0.312 0.256 0.339 0.483 0.351 118 -21.9 11.3 -46.5 1.5
Average 1,731 8% 20% 0.218 0.305 0.277 0.341 0.495 0.358 116 -4.2 29.3 -27.0 5.9
As a group, those players posted a 116 wRC+, pretty close to the 114 wRC+ that Cruz put up over the last three years. He was a little worse than the group average at defense and baserunning and not getting suspended, so he grades out as 9th most valuable of the 10 players, but I think it’s fair to say that these guys are mostly Nelson Cruz type of hitters at least. Torii Hunter wasn’t really the same kind of player, since he could also run and play center field at least a credible level, but we’ll just keep him in the sample as the most optimistic evaluation of Cruz’s abilities.

So, how’d the other nine Cruz-like hitters do from ages 33 to 37, which would cover all five years of a potential deal if a team pushed that far? Take a look.


Name PA BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR
Torii Hunter 3037 8% 19% 0.171 0.332 0.291 0.350 0.462 0.353 123 1.5 82.7 -19.1 17.1
Andre Dawson 2858 6% 12% 0.208 0.285 0.284 0.327 0.493 0.355 121 1.3 68.3 -31.5 13.7
Casey Blake 2638 9% 21% 0.170 0.315 0.267 0.342 0.437 0.339 109 0.4 28.6 19.6 13.6
Dante Bichette 3007 6% 14% 0.197 0.322 0.306 0.347 0.503 0.364 101 -1.7 3.6 -84 1.6
Ryan Howard 317 7% 30% 0.199 0.349 0.266 0.319 0.465 0.334 111 -2.9 0.9 -6.5 0.4
Geoff Jenkins 322 8% 21% 0.147 0.286 0.246 0.301 0.392 0.299 75 0.3 -9.7 2.8 0.4
Luke Scott 871 9% 23% 0.191 0.264 0.231 0.303 0.421 0.314 99 -2.8 -3.8 -22.4 0.2
Eric Karros 1534 7% 15% 0.143 0.282 0.258 0.315 0.400 0.312 90 -5.7 -25.3 -28.4 -0.3
Geronimo Berroa 325 11% 21% 0.077 0.284 0.222 0.320 0.299 0.286 64 -0.2 -15.4 -5.3 -0.9
Average 1657 8% 19% 0.167 0.302 0.263 0.325 0.430 0.328 99 -1.1 14.4 -19.4 5.1
Ryan Howard has only had his age-33 season, but he doesn’t exactly look like a guy on the cusp of producing significant value over the next few years, and is a grim reminder of just how quickly a player like this can go south. And the rest of the group isn’t particularly encouraging either. Geoff Jenkins and Geronimo Berroa were basically useless, and Luke Scott has been a replacement level scrub for the last three years after being one of the game’s best hitters at age-32. Even Erik Karros and Dante Bichette, who managed to hang around for a while and accumulate a decent amount of playing time, were essentially replacement level from age-33 on.

Three of the nine guys went on to be perfectly productive big leaguers, but they are also perhaps the three least Cruz-like players on the original list. Hunter, as noted, was a pretty athletic center fielder, and we’ve already shown that good athletes with broad skill sets usually age pretty well. Dawson hadn’t been a center fielder for a while, but he was also a pretty fantastic athlete, and his earlier career performance established a much higher level of talent than anything Cruz has shown to date. And Casey Blake was a third baseman who accumulated a lot of his late career value through positive fielding ratings; his 109 wRC+ would have made him a marginal starter if he was a Cruz-like defender.

So, basically, 2/3 of the guys who looked like Nelson Cruz at a similar point in their careers were worthless after age-33, and the 1/3 who weren’t created a lot of value in ways that Cruz does not. And remember, they were all significantly more valuable players from 30-32 than Cruz was, as they produced an average of about +2.5 WAR per 600 plate appearances during the three year comparison period, while Cruz is only at +1.4 WAR per 600 over the last three years.

If Cruz could play defense, his upside would be Casey Blake. If he could play defense and run, then maybe he’d have a shot at being Andre Dawson or Torii Hunter. Those guys were valuable contributors in their mid-30s, and their performance levels would justify the kind of contract Cruz is seeking.

Really, though, Cruz is much more like Dante Bichette, Ryan Howard, Geronimo Berroa, and Luke Scott. He’s a bat-only player whose bat isn’t that special. When the bat declines, he’s not going to have anything left to fall back on. Those guys, the hitter-only versions of this kind of player, were pretty much all terrible from this point on.

I thought Nelson Cruz would be a bad signing at the crowd’s forecasted contract of $32 million over three years. Now, it sounds like he might double that guaranteed dollar figure, simply because teams have gotten hung up on finding “right-handed power” and are ignoring the huge red flags that go along with this particular right-handed power hitter. It is kind of crazy to give up these reported kinds of significant dollars — and a draft pick, since Cruz got a qualifying offer from the Rangers — for a player who has a very real chance of being an absolute zero from the moment he signs the deal.

Run away, interested teams. Do anything else. Give anyone else your money. It will be better spent than giving it to Nelson Cruz.

Red Sox Land an Eight-Figure Bargain.

The goal, always, is to win a championship, and indeed there’s nothing better than being able to win a championship, but such a triumph can come with certain consequences. Prominent among them is the common desire to keep a championship team together, even if other moves might be more useful. There’s also the tendency to over-favor a championship model, since, you know, the plan already worked once. But an advantage of winning it all can be that other people want to join the team, or that quality members want to come back. After the Red Sox won it all, Mike Napoli became a free agent. And late last week, Napoli re-signed, reportedly leaving money and years on the table to give the Sox a discount.

Consider that Napoli is 32 years old, and he re-signed for two years and $32 million. Curtis Granderson is 32 years old, and he signed for just about twice that much despite coming off a bad year. Carlos Beltran is 36 years old, and he signed for an extra year despite age leaving him a mess in the field. All three players were extended qualifying offers. It’s not directly comparable, but Tim Lincecum was given a slightly bigger contract than Napoli despite having allowed a billion runs over the last two seasons. Napoli’s getting up there, yeah, and the issue with which he was diagnosed a year ago hasn’t gone away, but as players in his situation go, he’s signed to something of a bargain deal that fits right within Boston’s organizational model.

Specifically because Napoli left money on the table, it wouldn’t be fair to say this is how he was valued by the market. Reportedly, there was a three-year offer, and there was a more lucrative offer, which might’ve been the same thing. It’s not that the market underrated Napoli — it’s that Napoli just didn’t chase after the biggest deal he could get. He presumably did last offseason, when he signed for three years and $39 million before having that cut into a fraction following a troublesome physical. Now Napoli’s set to make that money and then some, so he’s coming out of this all right.

A year ago, even before the physical exam, there were some questions about Napoli’s health, about his bat, and about how he’d handle himself defensively. Now he’s coming off a healthy season in which he hit like himself and played well at a new full-time position. You’d think that might’ve helped him to get a much bigger deal, but don’t forget that bit about the qualifying offer. For one obvious thing, Napoli now is a year older and a year closer to retirement. But last year, Napoli wasn’t extended an offer by the Rangers. This year, he declined an offer from the Red Sox, so this time that was a consideration and teams appear reluctant to give up a draft pick for non-elite talent.

The Red Sox, then, didn’t just re-sign Napoli for two years and $32 million. They re-signed him for two years, $32 million, and the value of the compensation draft pick they now will not receive, which you could value at a few more million dollars. So that of course does make things more steep, but the Sox won’t have to worry about Napoli’s age-34 or age-35 seasons, like the Mets will with Granderson. The Yankees gave up a pick to pay Beltran until he’s almost 40. You could say it was “very Red Sox” when the team signed Edward Mujica, and it’s very Red Sox to re-sign a good player to a two-year deal, because again the team isn’t putting itself in much danger. The story was talent without long-term commitments. The story remains talent without long-term commitments.

Napoli is coming off a major improvement. He hit well, but then he hit about as well as he was expected to hit. He exceeded 500 plate appearances, but he’d done that a few years before. Used to be that Napoli was a catcher. Then he was a part-time catcher and a part-time first baseman. In 2013, he was a full-time first baseman, and out of 19 qualified first basemen in baseball, Napoli was the league leader in UZR and UZR/150 games.

Napoli played first for nearly 1,100 innings. Previously, he’d played first for a little over 1,000 innings. Previously, as a first baseman, he was worth zero Defensive Runs Saved, and he posted a UZR of -3. Last year, he was worth +10 Defensive Runs Saved, and he posted a UZR of +10 as well. Napoli took a new job, and he thrived.

Obviously, given the nature of defensive statistics, everything we look at has a range, and we can’t be certain by just how much Napoli improved. But it makes sense that Napoli could improve a lot by being able to fully commit himself to first base instead of splitting time between that and a much more demanding position. People around the Red Sox wrote about Napoli’s defensive improvements throughout the year, and here’s a Howard Megdal piece from the end of October on the same subject. Napoli surprised even the Red Sox with his defensive ability, so it isn’t hard to buy the idea of his getting five or ten runs better. He’s now proven himself more than capable, which makes that one fewer question he has to answer going forward.

As a note, we have UZR data going back to 2002. Since then, there have been 82 player-seasons turned in by first basemen 30 or older, fielding at least 1,000 innings. Adrian Gonzalez has posted the highest UZR/150 among them, in 2012. In second, there’s Napoli’s 2013, meaning not only was he good — he was especially good for a first baseman his age. Of course, the fact he was playing first base means he’s probably not capable of playing, say, second or third all that well, but Napoli adds value where he is, meaning he’s not a one-tool slugger. Already, he’s aging more gracefully than one might’ve projected.

There’s plenty of aging left to be done. Steamer thinks Napoli’s going to lose ten points off his wRC+, and it doesn’t buy the extent of his defensive improvement. It projects nearly 100 fewer plate appearance, and therefore a WAR just over two. Yet the Red Sox probably feel like Napoli is pretty healthy, and they’ve seen his defense first-hand. They understand it better than a projection system does. He’s coming off a four-win season, and the next two years he probably ought to be worth another five or six wins, which can be worth lots on the market. And the market reportedly tried to reward him a little more, but Napoli had more in mind than just maximizing his dollars. Which is how the Red Sox wound up with a good player again, without a real long-term commitment, again.

Roy Halladay, Deserving Hall of Famer, to Retire.

Roy Halladay is calling it a career, having been prematurely pushed out of the game by a shoulder that simply would no longer cooperate. According to Jon Heyman, the Blue Jays will officially sign Halladay to a one day contract and announce his retirement this afternoon, so that he can finish his career with the organization where he made his mark as one of the game’s best pitchers. And make no mistake; Halladay is one of the best hurlers of his generation, and he belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Halladay doesn’t have the legacy numbers that usually go with Hall of Fame induction. He will finish with 203 career wins and just 2,749 innings, putting him at the very low end of acceptable totals for induction among starting pitchers in those two categories. But, thankfully for Halladay, baseball is moving away from evaluating pitchers by career win totals, and his run of dominance makes him deserving of a place in Cooperstown.

For reference, here is Halladay’s 10 year run of dominance (2002-2011) compared to that of Sandy Koufax (1957-1966):


Name IP ERA- FIP- WAR RA9-WAR
Roy Halladay 2,194 67 71 60.9 67.2
Sandy Koufax 2,224 73 74 57.4 60.0
Koufax, at his absolute peak, was definitely better than Halladay at his absolute peak — or anyone else, for that matter — but his peak only lasted four years before injuries cut short his career. Halladay’s run of excellence was a little less excellent, but also a lot longer. For reference, if you stack up Halladay and Koufax’s individual seasons next to each other, the four best belong to Koufax, but then the next eight best seasons belong to Halladay.

Hall of Fame candidacies are all about balancing a player’s peak performance with the value of a long productive career, with ideal candidates possessing both traits. But there is no question that the BBWAA has found room for short career players who simply were too dominant at top form to ignore, with Koufax being the prime example of inducting a guy with a short-but-amazing career. It is certainly possible to argue that Halladay isn’t Koufax, given the difference in value in their three best seasons, as Koufax racked up a ridiculous +34.8 RA9-WAR during his best three years compared to just +24.7 for Halladay in his three best seasons. But even if we accept that Peak Halladay was only 70% of Peak Koufax, Almost Peak Halladay was vastly superior to Almost Peak Koufax, and those years have to count too.

Maybe you put enough weight on the peak years that the +10 WAR gap in the best three seasons is a much bigger deal than the offsetting +10 WAR gap in the next seven years, but you have to vastly overweight those top few seasons to come out with a definitive conclusion that Koufax is a clear yes and Halladay a clear no. With any kind of emphasis being put on the value of sustained dominance beyond their three best years, Halladay closes the gap, and the two should be viewed in a fairly similar light. It is perfectly reasonable to prefer Koufax’s incredible peak and slightly less incredible non-peak over Halladay’s more consistent performance, but we shouldn’t act like the difference in distributions of value make Koufax one of the all-time greats while Halladay isn’t worth considering.

There are 18 pitchers in baseball history that have thrown 2,500 or more innings and posted an ERA- of 76 or better. Roy Halladay is one of those 18. We can knock Halladay for a lack of career value, but there are 69 pitchers in the Hall of Fame, and I don’t see a credible argument that the difference between 2,700 innings and 3,400 innings should be enough to knock Halladay down from top-20 pitcher to not-top-70 pitcher.

Yes, using rate stats like ERA- will overrate pitchers like Halladay who choose not to stick around for their decline years, which pull down a player’s overall averages as he finishes out his career as something less than he was at a his peak. But just for fun, let’s add in a mediocre decline phase for Halladay, and give him another 750 innings of below average pitching, which would bring him up to 3,500 career innings pitched, squarely in the realm of a normal length of career for a Hall of Fame pitcher. If we assign him a 110 ERA- — the equivalent of something like Jason Vargas‘ career, in other words — over those 750 innings, his new career ERA- would be 83.

There are 22 pitchers in baseball history who have managed to throw 3,500 innings and post a career ERA- of 83 or better. Juan Marichal, a deserving Hall of Famer, threw almost exactly 3,500 innings and had an ERA- of 81. Basically, we’re saying the difference between Roy Halladay and Juan Marichal was hanging around for another four years as a below average pitcher.

Is that really what we want the Hall of Fame to be? Hey, you were one of the best pitchers of your generation, but your shoulder gave out and cost you four years where you weren’t going to produce much value anyway, and we really needed to see you hang around for four years as a #5 starter in order to recognize your prior greatness. Sorry, bad luck about that shoulder costing you those non-valuable years that don’t really matter much, but without those, we just can’t let you in.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think it should be necessary for a great player to be a bad player for a few years at the end of his career for us to recognize his greatness. Halladay’s peak was both great enough and long enough for him to be Hall of Fame worthy in my eyes. Congratulations on a great career, Mr. Halladay, and I hope baseball chooses to remember you with its highest honor.
 
Trumbo to Arizona.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLa. – The Los Angeles Angels, Chicago White Sox and Arizona Diamondbacks have agreed to a three-team trade that would send Mark Trumbo to Arizona, Adam Eaton to Chicago and pitchers Hector Santiago and Tyler Skaggs to the Angels, according to sources.

Arizona also will reportedly receive two players to be named later -- those names likely withheld because at least one of those players will be exposed in Thursday's Rule V draft.

Trumbo has hit more than 30 home runs in each of his past two seasons. He batted .234 with 34 home runs and 100 RBIs last season while hitting in one of the more pitcher-friendly parks in baseball. He will play left field for the Diamondbacks and give them, with Paul Goldschmidt, considerable right-handed power.

The White Sox acquire a young everyday center fielder and leadoff hitter in Eaton, who went into 2013 as a Rookie of the Year candidate but missed most of the season with a knee injury. Eaton batted .252 with a .314 on-base percentage and 44 runs scored.

Tweeted Eaton of the trade: "Well, that escalated quickly."

The Angels acquired the pitching depth they have been seeking after finishing last season 24th in the major leagues in ERA and finishing a disappointing third in the AL West. Santiago, 25, was 4-9 with a 3.56 ERA for the White Sox last season. He has often struggled with his control, walking 72 batters in 149 innings.

Skaggs, a 22-year old lefty from Santa Monica, Cal., is a former first-round pick of the Angels who was traded in 2010 to acquire Dan Haren. He spent most of last season at Triple-A and went 2-3 with a 5.12 ERA in seven starts for the Diamondbacks.
 
Some athletes don't learn. Evelyn is pure evil. Chad is still reeling from the domestic dispute.

I blame Dusty for everything bad that happens to Prior or Wood.
 
Drew should still be an Indian. Even though he may not be as good of an arm as well all expected.

Trumbo to Arizona effectively takes the D-Backs out of the Choo sweepstakes. From the start, I've only thought Detroit, Boston, and Texas are serious contenders. Somewhere between Werth and Ells' new contract.

O's rumored to want Murph from NYM. Mets are desperate to move Eric Young, Jr., to 2B.

Phils shopping everybody. Dom, Cliff Lee, Hamels.

Friedman is second in my baseball GM's list. He'll push Daniels if he can pry Walker for Price. Not that Pittsburgh would do this, but I'd move Matty Moore for Jameson Taillon in a heartbeat.
 
Bringing back Eric O'Flaherty is crucial for the A. You especially can't lose him to the Nats of all teams.

Those Nats/Braves pitching duels will be fun all season.
 
Supposedly he changed his delivery after watching Paco Rodriquez. Mulder is my dude, but he hasn't pitched since 2008. :lol: I'd be shocked if someone signed him.
 
jcrasnick Jerry Crasnick
Mulder hasn't pitched in majors since 2008 with #stlcards. Recently auditioned for three teams and hit 89-90 mph on the gun.
 
Anderson a sensible snag for Rockies.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- The trade for Brett Anderson is exactly the kind of deal the Colorado Rockies should be making -- rolling the dice on a pitcher with some upside, accepting the risk as the price they have to pay to get someone whose stuff and command could make a real difference pitching at Coors Field.

"Finding Brett Anderson" would actually make sense as a reality show on the Discovery Channel given frequently he's been injured in his major league career. Banking on him for any kind of regular workload is risky, as he's only qualified for the ERA title once, in his rookie year in 2009, when he looked like an ace in the making. Anderson can still get his fastball up to 94 mph but will likely pitch at 90-92 with an above-average to plus slider, above-average changeup, and average-ish curveball, although the breaking stuff may play differently in Denver's high altitude.

He's always had good feel, as you'd hope from the son of a longtime coach at Oklahoma State, and good command, so it's just a question of him hauling himself out to the mound. For $6 million in 2014 -- once you factor in the $2 million the A's are sending in the deal -- it's worth the gamble to see if he can be worth a win or two above replacement, which given his history might only mean a dozen starts.

The Rockies' rotation remains thin, but if Anderson can give them 120-140 innings as the nominal third starter, they're a lot more respectable after Jorge de la Rosa and Jhoulys Chacin, and can bridge the gap until prospects Eddie Butler and/or Jonathan Gray arrive as soon as the middle or end of 2014. Of those four, only de la Rosa isn't under team control in 2015, with the Rockies holding a $12 million option on Anderson for that year, when this rotation could be far more dangerous than any the Rockies have run out there since 2008. They could use a second baseman and a better defensive catcher, but otherwise the team is fairly complete.

A's add some depth

The A's clear that $6 million from their payroll while also adding Drew Pomeranz, an out-of-favor pitching prospect who was once highly regarded enough to be the fifth overall pick in the 2010 draft. He was selected by Cleveland, went to Colorado in the Ubaldo Jimenez trade but could not handle the challenge of pitching at altitude, not in Denver, even struggling in his first time around in Triple-A Colorado Springs before a better performance in 2013 that wasn't accompanied by glowing reports on his stuff.

Pomeranz has regressed to an average-fastball/plus-curveball guy who destroys left-handed hitters but whose changeup has been ineffective at higher levels. Right-handed hitters hit .316/.403/.485 off him in Triple-A, while lefties hit .168/.235/.312. I'd send him to Triple-A Sacramento to work as a starter and see if the changeup improves and if he regains any velocity when he's not trying to place every fastball, hoping for a No. 4 starter with stuff over command, with the downside that he goes to the pen and can be a wipeout reliever against lefties.

Right-hander Chris Jensen, the other pitcher headed to Oakland, is just a guy, a right-handed starter with control but not command, showing below-average arm speed on a low-90s fastball and no out pitch. His numbers were solid for the high Class A California League but not spectacular, as Modesto is one of the best pitchers' parks in a league better known for the low-gravity environments of High Desert and Lancaster.

Angels win the three-team Trumbo trade.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- The three-team deal involving the Chicago White Sox, Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Angels feels very lopsided, with one team clearly ahead (on paper), one in the middle and one clearly behind, in large part because two of the teams addressed serious needs while the third acquired a player they didn't need and can't easily deploy.

This deal is an enormous win for the Angels, who needed starting pitching of any sort, but especially needed young pitching with many years of control remaining. For one replaceable asset, they obtained two such starters, one who has already established himself as a major league starter, another who is a major league-ready option in need of some minor delivery tweaks.

Angels' haul

Hector Santiago gives the Angels a solid back-end starter option, a fifth-starter floor with the potential for more if he can continue to throw more strikes. Santiago is unique among major league starters as a practitioner of the almost-lost art of throwing the screwball, a pitch that can be hard on the elbow but is especially effective because major league hitters never see it.

His fastball is just average and he's been fly ball-prone, but the latter is less of a problem in Angel Stadium than in U.S. Cellular Field. Santiago's main issue has been lack of control, although he cut his walk rate from 13.1 percent to 11 percent from 2012 to 2013, and I doubt he'll ever be better than "adequate" in that department, but he can miss enough bats to be worth maybe 2 WAR and fill 180 or so innings, both of which fill a real need for the Angels in the short term.

Tyler Skaggs was originally drafted by the Angels and went to Arizona in the Dan Haren trade, making this the second time that Angels GM Jerry Dipoto -- who used to work for Arizona -- has traded for him. Still just 22 years old, Skaggs took a step back in 2013 as the Diamondbacks shortened his stride, resulting in a higher release point that cost him several miles per hour on his fastball and depth on his breaking ball. Lengthen him out so he finishes out over his front side again and he should be back to 90-94 mph again with the hammer he had as recently as 2012, when he projected as a potential No. 2 starter and was the best left-handed starter prospect in the game.

Both Skaggs and Santiago are pre-arbitration players, so the Angels save nearly $4 million in the transaction for 2014.

Chicago fills a need

The White Sox picked up a player who was a favorite of mine heading into the 2013 season, outfielder Adam Eaton, a scrappy, hard-nosed, grinder type who has worked to make himself into a good enough defender that he could be average in center with work on his reads and above average or better in a corner.

He has an outstanding approach at the plate, getting himself into a lot of hitter's counts with the ability to foul off pitches he doesn't feel like he can take. He's an above-average runner whose only real negative is fringy power that could end up as 15-plus homers in the White Sox's homer-friendly home park.

Alejandro De Aza is their incumbent center fielder, so Eaton could end up replacing Alex Rios in right, posting a .370-380 OBP with very good defense. Santiago has value to them, but they have more arms who can replace him (like Erik Johnson) while they don't have anyone with Eaton's OBP potential -- Rios led the team in 2013 with a .328 mark before he was traded.

Trumbo a square peg in Arizona

The Diamondbacks' end of this leaves me at a total loss. They acquired a player they didn't need who doesn't fit their current roster and gave up two young, cheap, controllable assets on whom they seem to have completely soured in the past 10 months. Mark Trumbo is a very limited player overall -- he can only play first base and his huge raw power (at least a 70 on the 20-80) scale is mitigated by his inability to hit breaking stuff, resulting in chronic sub-.300 OBPs.

With Paul Goldschmidt kind of OK over there at first, Trumbo will have to play left field, which will bring back memories of Ryan Klesko for those of you old enough to remember that adventure; I can picture the Diamondbacks' front office sitting there at Salt River Fields in late March and wondering what the heck they've done. The minor leaguers coming to Arizona -- one from the Angels, reportedly fringy relief prospect AJ Schugel, and one from the White Sox -- don't matter enough to change the fact this is a net loss of value for the Diamondbacks.

There could be a ripple effect for Arizona, as now third baseman Matt Davidson becomes a surplus asset with Martin Prado likely moving from left field to third base. The Diamondbacks also have two comparable shortstops in Didi Gregorius and Chris Owings, only needing to keep one of them, and could try to use these two players to fill any remaining holes.
 
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