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Justin Verlander is one of the most important home-grown players in the 2012 playoffs. Photo unk via rumorsandrants.com

Every year I do a bit of “Team Construction” analysis to kind of gauge the trends in roster construction. Last year’s post is here, and the links to the side have the underlying spreadsheet of player acquisition methods so you can see the pure details. This topic was also covered in-depth by John Sickels on his minorleaguebaseball.com blog for another viewpoint.

Borrowing from last year’s post, there are four main ways teams can acquire players:

Draft: The player is with the original team that drafted him. In the case of international free agents, if they’re signed as 16-year olds they are considered in this category as well (i.e., Ichiro Suzuki is not a developed player, but an international Free Agent). It could be better defined as “Club developed players.” Simple examples for the Nats: Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper.
Traded MLBers: The player was acquired by the team by virtue of trading an established MLB player. Most of the time these days, this means the player was acquired as a prospect (since most trades seem to be of the prospect-for-established player kind). Example for the Nats would be Michael Morse, who was acquired by our trading an established MLB player in Ryan Langerhans for Morse while he was still (essentially) a minor leaguer.
Traded Prospects: The player was acquired by the team by virtue of trading prospects. This is essentially the reverse of #2. The Nats key example is Gio Gonzalez.
Free Agent: The player was acquired in free agency. This category also includes two other types of acquisitions: waiver claims and cash purchases. These three categories are lumped together since all three indicate that a team has acquired a player with zero outlay in terms of development or prospects. Examples for the Nats: Edwin Jackson, Adam LaRoche.

Here is the summary of roster construction and “Construction Strategy Category” that we’ll talk about next. Note that I only count the “core players” on a team for this analysis. The core players is defined as the 5-man starting rotation, the setup and closer, the 8 out-field players, and the DH for AL teams. I didn’t extend this all the way to the 25-man roster, figuring that these core 15 players are the main reasons teams win and advance. That and huge chunks of the bullpen and the bench are either fill-in FAs or draftees and it would skew the analysis of how teams really got to the playoffs. Here’s the summary (the table is sorted by count of Draftees):

Season	Team	Drafted/Developed	Traded Prospects	Traded MLBs	FA/Waivers	Ttl	Constr Method
2012	Atlanta	11	1	3	0	15	#1
2012	St. Louis	9	0	2	4	15	#1/#4
2012	Washington	8	3	1	3	15	#2
2012	San Francisco	8	2	2	3	15	#2
2012	Cincinnati	8	2	3	2	15	#1
2012	New York Yankees	5	2	1	8	16	#4
2012	Detroit	5	5	2	4	16	#2/#4
2012	Texas	4	2	7	3	16	#3/#4
2012	Baltimore	3	1	8	4	16	#3
2012	Oakland	2	1	7	6	16	#3

So, what are the four construction methods I’ve identified? Again borrowing from last year’s version of this post, they are (with this year’s examples). The complication this year is that some of the 10 playoff teams don’t fall neatly into one specific category.

Method #1: Build from within 100%: (Cincinnati, Atlanta). Atlanta, amazingly, didn’t use a single Free Agent among its core 15 this year. They made a couple of key trades to acquire a few starters, but the rest of their lineup is home-grown draftees. That may change next year as they try to replace Chipper Jones, Michael Bourn and possibly Brian McCann, who may leave via free agency. Meanwhile Cincinnati has just a couple of free agents and mostly rely on guys they’ve grown as well.

Method #2: Ride your developed Core and use your prospects to acquire big names: (Washington, San Francisco and Detroit to an extent): The Nats have transformed themselves over just a couple of seasons, relying less on FAs to plug holes caused by an awful farm system to having most of their core team developed at home (See the table further below to follow the transformation of our team over the past few seasons). Those spots they couldn’t depend on have been filled by trades (three guys acquired by flipping prospects for them; in addition to Gonzalez Kurt Suzuki and Tyler Clippard also count here). San Francisco has seen their payroll skyrocket as they extend their home-grown talent, but for the most part they have stayed true to the team development concept. Their one major Free Agent (Barry Zito) is notoriously one of the worst contracts in baseball and it is somewhat surprising to even see him on the post-season roster. He wouldn’t be if Tim Lincecum was pitching in 2012 like he has regularly done in previous seasons. Detroit was entirely in method #2 until they decided to spend money like the Yankees; we’ll revisit in #4.

Method #3: Go Young and grow up Strong (Baltimore, Oakland and Texas to an extent): Baltimore acquired a massive chunk of their rosters by flipping major leaguers for prospects and watching them blossom into a surprise playoff team. Oakland has made a habit of getting rid of guys before they hit arbitration; fully 7 of their squad was acquired this way. The difference is that Oakland has been forced to buy a big chunk of their core group on the FA market, depending on cast-offs like Brandon Inge and Jonny Gomes to plug leaks and get production on the cheap. I’m guessing that Oakland will transform more into Category #1 as the vast amount of prospects they’ve landed lately continue to matriculate. Lastly Texas was entirely in this category before they dropped major money on the likes of Adrian Beltre and Yu Darvish, transforming them into a spending power to go with their still-excellent farm system.

Method #4: Spend what it takes to win: (New York fully with St Louis, Texas and Detroit partially here): The Yankees are the class-A example of this method (along with Boston and the Dodgers frankly), but the spending that St. Louis, Texas and Detroit cannot be overlooked. The Yankees more and more are depending on expensive FA purchases to replace what their farm system is not developing, and the problem is only being brought into more focus this off-season. Their 3 primary starters are FA acquisitions, their biggest FA is looking like a contract catastrophe, and their developed guys are not stepping up and taking over major roles (especially on the pitching staff). The other three teams mentioned here are mostly built on home-grown talent, but have spent so much money on the FA market lately that they are broaching into the upper echelons of MLB payroll. St. Louis is almost entirely built from within (as noted by other columnists doing this same type of analysis) but still has depended on a couple of key FAs to advance as far as they have.

Conclusions:

There’s no real formula to building a playoff team, as we see from the spread of the 10 teams among the four methods defined.
I think its safe to say that the most difficult methods to depend on are #1 and #3. You need to have a very good farm system to depend on the #1 method to work for you, and over the past few years only a couple of teams really have had success using this method (Atlanta and Tampa Bay). Kansas City has tried #1 for years and has gone nowhere. The #3 method is also frought with issues, since it requires a ton of patience from your fan base and may not be sustainable. Would anyone be surprised if both Oakland and Baltimore collapsed next season? Probably not; you really need to build on a base of players once you’ve established yourself as a good team and continue to augment, either through trade or through FAs. But even that can be dangerous; just ask Philadelphia this year, owners of the 2nd biggest payroll in baseball and just a 3rd place team.
Is Category #1 and #3 the same? No, not really. #1 teams rely much more heavily on personally developed prospects, while #3 teams purposely set out to acquire prospects in trade to combine with their own development mis-fortunes. If Baltimore had a better farm system, they wouldn’t have needed to jettison so many established MLBers to acquire prospects, and they’d probably be closer to a #2 team (a wealthy team who supplements developed players with key FAs, much like what Washington is doing).
Oakland is really a unique case; they do develop players but get rid of them because of a self-imposed incredibly restrictive salary cap. Imagine what Billy Beane could do with that team if he could have purchased just $30M of players on the open market (which would have still left Oakland in the bottom third of payroll).
Buying your way to a team (method #4) can work, but only if you have nearly unlimited money and everything goes right for you. There’s almost no excuse for a $175M payroll to get beat to the playoffs by a $55M payroll team (Oakland). That is unless you overpay for poor FA targets, install the wrong manager and saddle yourself with the worst clubhouse in baseball. In case you were wondering, the 2012 Boston Red Sox were a classic case of why money cannot buy happiness, and why unlimited funds do not necessarily guarantee playoff baseball. The Angels are another example; owing most of their season’s turnaround and success to Mike Trout and his MLB minimum salary providing nearly 10 WAR despite having the 3rd largest payroll in baseball and having just purchased the games pre-emminent hitter in Albert Pujols.
Frequent commenter Clark has a good point; classifying Mark Teixeira and Raul Ibanez as the same type of player (acquired via free agency) is a bit mis-leading. Clearly a $150M player isn’t the same as a $1M player. But, for the purposes of analyzing how much of your team is “bought” versus “developed” the point remains the same whether its a bargain basement guy or a $20M/year player.

So, if I had just purchased a new team, what construction method would I follow? I guess it depends; if I thought I had a patient fan base, I’d probably do exactly what is going on in Houston. I’d gut the MLB roster, trade every tradeable asset and start over payroll-wise. I’d follow strategy #1 until I was at least competitive, and then i’d probably switch over to a #2 strategy or a #3 strategy, depending on just how good my developed players were. You hope for #3; it implies you’ve got so much in-house talent that all you need to do is keep extending your key guys and you’ll keep winning.

I don’t think #4 is a sustainable way of building rosters. The Yankees have gotten away with it for years, but only because they initially had a banner crop of developed players (the “core four”) to depend on up their spine. Would anyone be surprised if the Yankees fail to make the playoffs next year? Alex Rodriguez looks incredibly old, Derek Jeter just broke his ankle, they’re losing a number of hitters to FA and they only have a couple of starters locked up. Where’s their starting pitching for 2013? And what happens if they finally get hit with injuries to their rotation to the extent that Boston did this year? I think this is why you see $80M payroll teams beating out $170M payroll teams all the time; teams get bloated, they over pay their own players and suddenly are old, inflexible and unable to adjust financially to buy what they need.

Lastly, here’s what the Nats roster has done over the past few seasons:

Season	Team	Drafted/Developed	Traded Prospects	Traded MLBs	FA/Waivers	Ttl	Constr Method
2010	Washington (end of 2010)	7	1	2	5	15	#2
2011	Wash (2011 opening day)	6	2	1	6	15	#2
2011	Wash (primary Roster for season)	6	2	2	5	15	#2
2011	Wash (end of season)	9	1	2	3	15	#2
2012	Washington (playoff roster)	8	3	1	3	15	#2

The team has been slowly replacing Free Agents with home-grown or acquired talent, and as we all know is well on its way towards a strong, home grown team. This year’s core team only uses 3 pure FAs: Adam LaRoche, Jayson Werth and Edwin Jackson. We could very well see LaRoche replaced outright with the home grown Tyler Moore, and if the team replaced Jackson with someone like John Lannan (not that we’ll possibly see that happen), we could be down to just one FA in the core squad.

Written by Todd Boss

October 19th, 2012 at 11:48 am

NLCS Preview – by the Starters

Divisional Series Matchups – By the Starters

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Verlander has already given the Tigers a huge leg up in their divisional series. Photo unknown via rumorsanddrants.com

As we have already seen in the playoffs thus far, predicting these coin-flip games, or predicting the outcome of individual games, is usually fool’s gold. The first four games of the playoffs featured four Road-team wins. You can argue that the higher-seeded teams in the divisional series are “better” than the home teams and this was to be expected … except that we’re talking about divisional winners/90+ win teams all around. So far, the results have been surprising.

What’s also been tough this year is the lack of “announced” starters. The Tigers seem to know exactly who they’re throwing for all 5 games of the series … but nobody else does. Baltimore’s only announced starter (Jason Hammel) hasn’t pitched since September 11th and they have a handful of guys to pick from. In last year’s version of this post I was able to do match-up analysis. This year i’ll just look at the breadth of the starters to see who has an upper hand.

Washington-St. Louis:

Washington’s likely starters: Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Jackson, Detwiler
St. Louis’ likely starters: Wainwright, Garcia, Carpenter, Lohse

I’ve already talked at depth about this series in my previous post. Just looking at starters, its hard not to see the Nats as the favorite. Our Ace Gonzalez goes twice in the series, St. Louis doesn’t hit righties as well. Carpenter could be a difference maker.

Detroit-Oakland:

Oakland’s likely starters: Parker, Milone, Anderson, Blackley
Detroit’s likely starters: Verlander, Fister, Sanchez and Scherzer

Justin Verlander is as close to unbeatable as there is, again evidenced by his game 1 dominance. (7ip, 3 hits one solo home run). If he’s set to go in game 4, Oakland basically has to win out. The rest of Detroit’s planned starters all sport sub 4.00 ERAs and all of them have at least a 113 ERA+. In fact, how exactly is this only an 88 win team? They have three unbelievable hitters in the middle of their order and plus starting pitching. Max Scherzer and his dominating fastball apparently has recovered enough from a post-game celebration injury and should take the ball in Game 4. Anibel Sanchez has been pretty effective since arriving from Miami in a mid-season trade (is Sanchez an off-season FA target of the Nats for their 5th starter?) and should give the Tigers a great chance to win his game 3 start.

Meanwhile, Oakland has a slew of rookie starters to choose from, all of whom sport sub 4.00 ERAs (the worst season ERA on the staff is Travis Blackley, who may or may not feature in the post-season). Jarrod Parker threw game one and was effective, just not effective enough. I was surprised to see Tommy Milone slated as the game 2 starter (perhaps chosen by virtue of his home/away splits; 2.74 ERA at home, 4.83 ERA away). After that I honestly have no idea who we’ll see. Oakland named 5 starters to its post-season roster, but AJ Griffen was pasted in his last outing and may be a long-man/emergency starter. Brett Anderson is clearly the staff Ace at this point but only returned in late August. Oakland’s been on such a tear though, its hard to bet against them.

Prediction: Verlander already gave Detroit the huge advantage with a game 1 victory. Oakland needs more magic to advance.

New York-Baltimore:

Baltimore’s likely starters: Hammel, Tillman, Chen, Saunders
New York’s likely starters: Sabathia, Pettitte, Kuroda, Phelps?

Baltimore’s only announced starter as of today is Jason Hammel, who (as noted above) hasn’t thrown in 3 weeks. After that? The Orioles used 12 different starters on the season and at one point demoted 3/5ths of their rotation in a week. They seem set to roll out the above named guys after Hammel, but this leaves out both Miguel Gonzalez and Steve Johnson, who were effective down the stretch. I can’t find a link for Baltimore’s named divisional roster as of the time of this writing; which would have helped.

Meanwhile, looking at New York’s options past the above named three guys, I would initially guess that New York is going to a 3-man rotation for the playoffs. What would you rather do? See three effective veterans going on 3 days rest, or to give post-season starts to the likes of Phil Hughes or Ivan Nova? Freddie Garcia lost his starting spot in September when Pettitte returned but isn’t an option because of how ineffective he’s been all season. Would you give a game-4 start to rookie David Phelps? It seems amazing to me that the highest payroll team in the league can’t find an effective 4th and 5th starter (getting Pettitte out of retirement? Giving Garcia 17 starts after signing him off the trash heap?) and I think it continues to be their downfall (only one World Series appearance in 8 years).

New York swept the Orioles in the first series of the season, split a 2-game set in mid-season, but lost EVERY other series exactly 2 games to 1 on the season. Is there any reason not to think they’ll do something similar in this series? I see a split in Baltimore and then New York struggling to win 2 of 3 in New York. Does Sabathia struggle going on 3 days rest? More importantly, does Pettitte?? He should be on a golf course right now, not pitching in October. It should be interesting to see if New York uses a 4th starter.

San Francisco-Cincinnati:

San Francisco’s likely starters: Cain, Bumgarner, Vogelsong, Lincecum
New York’s likely starters: Cueto, Arroyo, Latos, Bailey

We’ve already seen some interesting mishaps with Cincinnati’s best laid plans; Cueto out with bask spasms after just 2 batters, planned game 3 starter Latos forced into action. Now it looks like Cueto will go game 3, with Bailey either pushed to game 4 or skipped outright since Latos only threw 4 innings in game 1. Or perhaps Bailey goes game 4 with Latos pushed to a possible game 5. Either way, the wild-cards here are Cueto’s health and Arroyo’s effectiveness. If Cueto returns for a game 3 start, with Cincinnati haven already “stolen” a game against SF’s ace, the Giants are in trouble.

Meanwhile, has San Francisco made a decision on its starters? They’ve named all 5 (the above four plus Barry Zito) to the post-season roster with an unnamed player dropping to the bullpen. I think they’ll go with supposed ace Tim Lincecum as the 4th starter despite Zito’s numbers being superior. Meanwhile, Ryan Vogelsong has been vulnerable down the stretch despite good numbers on the season.

I think the back-end of the Giant’s rotation is a huge question mark, and if the Reds have already stolen a game against Cain, this series may be short.

Written by Todd Boss

October 7th, 2012 at 2:54 pm

Ewing theory and the Strasburg Shutdown

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How much will Strasburg's shutdown really affect the team? Photo allansgraphics.com

Here we are, September 1st, and every single columnist and blogger who covers baseball has, by law, added their 2 cents to the Stephen Strasburg shutdown debate. And as the imminent shutdown date approaches (I had predicted 9/12 being his last start either in a post or the comments section, and that date still seems to hold; 9/12 gives him 3 more starts, which seems to match what we’ve been hearing lately out of Davey Johnson and the front office), I’m honestly not looking forward to the coming blitz of additional opinions from the blogosphere talking about what idiots the Nationals are, blah blah.

My succinct opinion on the shutdown can be expressed in this metaphor; if you had open heart surgery, and your cardiologist says to you, “take it easy next season and only pitch 160 innings,” wouldn’t you follow his advice? Both the doctor who performed Strasburg’s surgery (Lewis Yocum) and the famed James Andrews (together essentially the two leading experts on the injury and the surgery) have come out in support of the National’s conservative plan. To every other pundit out there who says something like, “there’s no proof that shutting him down will protect him in the long run,” I’ll say this: I trust the guy with the M.D. behind his name over the internet dork sitting in his mom’s basement who thinks he knows better.

Even my wife has added her 2 cents; while watching Saturday’s game (a pretty amazing back and forth offensive outburst ending with St. Louis scraping a run against Drew Storen to take it 10-9), one of the telecasters added his opinion on the matter and my wife asked me why the Nats didn’t just “let him pitch less” earlier on in the season. A common theme for Strasburg shutdown critics; to which I say this: if you think the whole shutdown thing isn’t playing will with the Veterans in the Nationals clubhouse, exactly how do you think it would have played out if the entire pitching rotation was manipulated all season on account of one guy? Baseball is a team game; you have 25 guys out there who contribute to each win, and I’m pretty sure the veterans on this team wouldn’t have taken well to having their routines thrown off in an effort to squeeze 5 more starts out of a 24 yr old (no matter how promising he may be).

But I digress slightly from the point of this post. I’m of the opinion that we may see an interesting phenomenon occur when Strasburg gets shutdown for the season. We may see a theory that Bill Simmons has come to popularize called “The Ewing Theory.” In essence, the theory says that teams with stars who receive an inordinate amount of media attention often perform better once that star has either left the team or gone down with injury. Teams rally around each other after their star player either leaves or goes down with injury partly because of the “relief” they get from media questions, partly to show that they can win without the big name, and partly (in some cases) because the star player was “holding the team back” by virtue of his presence (this happens more in sports like Basketball, where one player can really command an entire team’s attention; less so in Football or Baseball). It is named after Patrick Ewing because his 1998-99 New York Knicks ended up in the finals despite Ewing going down with injury. The phenomena has repeated itself in a number of notable ways over the years; off the top of my head these situations fit the theory:

UVA basketball went as far in the NCAA tournament without Ralph Sampson in 1984 than they ever did with him.
The NY Giants won the super bowl the year AFTER Tiki Barber retired.
The Seattle Mariners won 116 games the year after Alex Rodriguez left as a free agent.
The Tennessee Volunteers won the National title the year AFTER Peyton Manning graduated.

I think this team may exhibit a bit of inadvertent Ewing Theory once Strasburg sits. You have to think the players are tired of being asked about it; who’s to say they won’t just keep on rolling and play even better once Strasburg gets shutdown and the issue is done? Plus, here’s some corroborating evidence that may help out;

1. After September 12th, the Nats will only miss three Strasburg starts. The difference between Strasburg starting those three games and John Lannan is likely to be nearly negligible. Strasburg’s Wins above Replacement (bWAR) figure for the season is 2.6 right now through 26 starts. That’s .1 WAR per start that Strasburg gives the team over a replacement player. And Lannan isn’t exactly a replacement-level pitcher; he owns a sub 4.00 ERA and a 103 ERA+ for his career. Lannan’s WAR for his two spot starts this year? Exactly .2, or the same .1 WAR contributed per game as Strasburg.

2. Lannan is the quintessential guy pitching for a contract, and in all likelihood will use these three spot starts to showcase himself for his eventual new team in 2013. It isn’t that Lannan isn’t a good pitcher, its just that he isn’t the type of guy Mike Rizzo likes to have in his rotation (i.e., power arms with high k/9 rates). So I’d bet dollars to donuts that Lannan pitches three quality games in mid-to-late September, then gets left off the post-season roster and eventually gets non-tendered at the arbitration offer deadline.

3. Of the 6 series that the Nats play between September 12th and the end of the season, at least 3 will be against teams with no playoff implications (home-and-home versus Philadelphia plus a 4-game home series against Milwaukee). The Nats are also at St. Louis in the second to last series, by which time the Cardinals may very well be completely out of the Wild Card race. If the end of 2011 showed us anything, its that teams out of playoff contention in September have a tendency to play really, really weak lineups of prospects and September 1 call-ups. Look at some of the lineups that the Nats faced in September of last year (especially some of the New York line-ups): they were literally two regulars and 7 AAA guys. There’s no reason to think that the Nats won’t improve on the .655 winning percentage they’ve had for the last two months despite not having Strasburg in the rotation.

But, the critic may say, wouldn’t you rather have Strasburg pitching Game 1 of your divisional series? Well, yes of course. In arguably putting out a playoff rotation of Strasburg-Gonzalez-Zimmermann-Jackson is better than Gonzalez-Zimmermann-Jackson-Detwiler. But, our playoff rotation is still pretty darn good. Using the probable playoff teams as of this writing, here’s how our playoff rotation would rank with other NL playoff teams (the ranking is league rank in ERA)

Washington: Gonzalez (12), Zimmermann (8), Jackson (17), Detwiler (13). Strasburg, btw, is 10th.
Cincinnati: Cueto (1), Latos (27), Arroyo (29), Bailey (37). Leake, their #5 starter, is 43rd.
San Francisco: Cain (4), Vogelsong (9), Bumgarner (11), Zito (42). Except there’s no way they’d go with Zito in a playoff series, so you’d be seeing Lincecum, amazingly ranked 50th of 51 qualifying NL starters in ERA this year.
Atlanta: Maholm (14), Hudson (25), Minor (46). Their likely 4th starter would be Medlen, who in 6 starts has a 1.71ERA.
St. Louis: Lohse (3), Wainwright (32), Westbrook (33). Their likely 4th starter would be Garcia over Lynn, but Garcia’s era would rank him 45th or so if he qualified.

San Francisco’s rotation looks pretty tough. Until you remember that the Nats swept them at home and just beat them 2 of 3 on the road for a 5-1 season split. In fact, of probable playoff teams here’s the Nats current season records:

Cincinnati: 5-2. We beat them 3 of 4 in April, then took 2 of 3 in Cincinnati in May.
San Francisco: 5-1. Swept at home, took 2 of 3 on the road.
Atlanta: 10-5 at current, with 3 critical games in Atlanta in mid September.
St. Louis: 3-1 in the series just concluded, with a 3 game set in St. Louis in late September.

Wow. I didn’t even realize just how well the Nats have played against the league’s best until I looked it up. This has to give any Nats fan some serious confidence heading into a playoff series, no matter who we may end up playing.

Here’s hoping the Strasburg shutdown doesn’t affect the team as much as pundits seem to believe.

Written by Todd Boss

September 3rd, 2012 at 5:59 pm

My 2012 Fantasy Baseball Team

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Kemp reacts to being the first overall pick in my fantasy league. Photo unknown via ladodgertalk.com

As with last year’s edition of this post, feel free to stop reading now if you don’t want to read fantasy team analysis of a league that you’re not necessarily in. I know that really grates some people, and I understand. For those of you who do play fantasy, I’ll try to talk about who was available and who I had to choose from for each pick so you can get a context of the decisions I made.

League overview: 12 team 6×6 head to head. Your categories are:

Hitting: Runs, HRs, RBIs, SBs, Batting Average and OPS.
Pitching: Wins, Saves, K’s, ERA, WHIP and Holds.

Last year we had Losses as a category instead of Holds but too many of the league hated the Losses category, but wanted to keep OPS as a 6th category. So we’ve introduced Holds as a category for the 2012 season. I proposed this but rather inadvertantly; my strategy going into this 2012 season was going to be to go after the exact type of pitcher who normally gets holds; the setup-guy, the excellent specialized reliever who pitchers 60-70 innings but gets 70-80 K’s with excellent ERAs and WHIPs. With no Losses to worry about, the value of holding any type of pitcher increased over last year’s edition of the league. The only downside was that we are also introducing a transaction limit for the season (65 over the 21 week season). So picking good arms early will be crucial.

We added an 11th and 12th team to the league at the last minute, two newer guys to fantasy baseball who made some “interesting” picks throughout the night. I was picking 1st out of the 12 in a typical snake draft order.

My draft strategy for 2012 is as follows:

Get the minimum number of hitters, and get them early to get the best players available.
Focus on Homers. Homers lead to Runs and RBIs, 3 of your 6 offensive categories.
Get a couple of top end starters early, then spend the entire 2nd half of the draft on pitching.
Focus on NL, high K/9 starters only.
Get a high end closer if they’re available, but don’t over spend.
Focus on the high-end Holds leaders and setup guys, getting guys who can close in a pinch.

What became apparent about 5 rounds into the draft is the disservice of drafting 1st (or last) in such a huge league; if a run starts on a position, you have almost no chance of getting any of the top guys. Catchers, top-end Holds guys and top-end Closers all had major runs without my even getting a consideration to get a pick in. Once all the top closers were gone, I decided not to scrounge for saves, at all. If a guy like Rodriguez or Holland becomes a closer and I get free saves, all the better. But what I really want are low ERA, low WHIP innings all week that help lower the overall team ERA/WHIP.

Below are my round-by-round picks. Yahoo O-Ranks are given; this is Yahoo’s rank for the player for the 2012 season. Average Draft Rank (ADR) is listed as per MockDraftCentral’s ratings, though honestly after the Holds guys start going off the board the ADR is mostly useless. Plus ADR reports are based on the classic 5×5 league, not the 6×6 league that we’re doing. But it does illustrate some of the over-drafts and/or value picks I got.

Matt Kemp: (Yahoo #2, ADR #2) With the first overall pick I really was choosing between Kemp and Miguel Cabrera. I liked Cabrera because he’ll be gaining positional flexibility at 3B, a relatively thin position. I also like Cabrera because he’s gaining Prince Fielder to provide lineup protection. However; Kemp was the #1 producer last season, had 39 Hrs to Cabrera’s 30 and threw in 40 steals for good measure. I think Kemp is the best player in baseball and I see no reason that he won’t at least repeat his (near) 40/40 performance. With the understanding that I’ll be missing most of the high end infielders by virtue of not picking again until the 23rd overall pick, I take Kemp. Cabrera’s grounder to the face just a few hours before the draft didn’t really factor into the decision. Ironically Ryan Braun was ADR #1 but he didn’t go until 4th or 5th in our league.
Ian Kinsler: (Yahoo #20, ADR #23). With the 24th pick, I really wanted Curtis Granderson, who was a bit undervalued (Yahoo ranked #22 but 6th best player in 2011), but he got snagged just before I picked. Kinsler was highest guy on the board and was the natural pick. I’ve had Kinsler before and he’s always a solid, mid 20s producer with some consistency. He was hurt in 2010 but in 2009 was a top 10 player. Lets hope for a similar season. 2B is thin (even more so with Chase Utley‘s injury), so I didn’t mind getting a halfway decent one this high.
Giancarlo Stanton: (Yahoo #25, ADR #26): With the 25th pick, I reached a little bit for Stanton. I didn’t want to go with slighly higher ranked guys like Mark Teixeira and certainly not Hanley Ramirez (who Itook #2 overall last year and absolutely killed my team). Cliff Lee (Yahoo #24) should have been there but was drafted incredibly early by one of the new guys in the league. So, faced with a slew of positional guys after Stanton on the Yahoo chart who all under performed last year (Beltre, McCutchen, Wright) and therefore were not worth the draft position, I took a gamble on Stanton. Personally I think this guy is going to be one of the biggest names in the game; a 45 homer guy who helps bring his team back to relevance. Unfortunately I wasn’t aware that he’s been dinged up in Spring Training and now may miss opening day. That’s not good drafting. But i’d rather have him and miss a couple weeks than be frustrated with an injury prone guy.
Tim Lincecum: (Yahoo #28, ADR #24)
Cole Hamels: (Yahoo #32, ADR #29): After 22 more picks, drafting with the 48th and 49th overall pick I was stunned to see two NL heavyweight starters sitting there available for the taking. According to ADR both these guys should have been long gone. Lincecum struggled last year clearly, but Hamels overperformed based on his Yahoo ranking (#21 performer in 2011) and fit my profile of an NL starter with good stats. No argument here; I took the two leading starters available. Its like a repeat of 2011: I had both these starters last year and I’m looking forward to having them both again this year.
Brett Lawrie (Yahoo #45, ADR #53): With the 72nd overall pick I again got great value in Lawrie. At this point I had not drafted either a 3B or a 1B, having missed out on the first couple of tiers of both. I had a 1B targeted (see pick #8) so I went for an upside pick. Lawrie had 9 homers in just 150 ABs in 2011 and based on his minor league production he seems set to be a monster hitter in this league. Based on who was left on the board at that position at this time (Mark Reynolds, David Frese, Martin Prado) I went with the best available guy. That being said, Lawrie is a risk. I’m slightly worried that 2 of my top 4 hitters are relatively young guys who could go south; this strategy failed me last year (when Jason Heyward and Pedro Alvarez both underperformed so badly that I had to drop them).
Alex Gordon; (Yahoo #66, ADR #61): Right after Lawrie with the 73rd overall pick, I was scanning down the available hitters, with an eye on 2011 performance, I was amazed again to find a near top 20 guy from last year. Gordon was ranked #23 in 2011 performance but was still on the board. I grabbed him. 23 Homers, 87 rbi along with 17 steals and I think this is a halfway decent pick. He takes my last OF spot.
Lance Berkman: (Yahoo #86, ADR #95); With the 96th pick I nabbed Berkman. Waiting until the 8th round to find a first baseman is not usually a good strategy … but it has served me well in the past. Instead of overpaying for one of the top 1Bs, I like to wait and get nearly as good a player but many rounds below. Last year it was Paul Konerko (who I would have loved to get again but Jamos snapped him up a few rounds earlier) so this year I targeted Berkman. Another undervalued pick (his 2011 yahoo ranking: 32) who qualifies at both OF and 1B but who will be playing the far less taxing 1B position fulltime in 2012. Because of this shift to the infield, i’m hoping for a healther season and more ABs. Berkman proved last year he can still hit, and with a relatively decent lineup still around him he should still see pitches to hit despite the Cardinals losing Pujols. 31 homers last year in just 488 ABs; he could broach 40 if he gets 600 Abs like he should.
Jimmy Rollins: (Yahoo #73, ADR #88). 97th overall, still continuing to get value. Rollins isn’t the best SS out there, but by the 9th round he’s as good as you’re going to get. He was a decent producer in 2011 but is a far cry from his 2007-2009 numbers (when in consecutive seasons he was the 5th, 9th and 12th ranked fantasy player). He has some power, 30 SB capability and a decent bat. With the Phillies injury concerns, perhaps more RBI opportunities will fall to Rollins.
Joe Mauer (Yahoo #95, ADR #82). At the 120th pick, I was missing two positional players: a catcher and a utility guy. I’ve been burned in the past drafting catchers too high, and frankly am happy to roll the dice with the recovering Mauer. Mauer has positional flexibility of qualifying for 1B if needed but what I really need is for him to be in the lineup and hitting. If Mauer returns anywhere close to his 2009 form (#12 fantasy producer) this will be the steal of the draft.
Josh Johnson (Yahoo #101, ADR #99). More value, but also more risk, with the #121 pick. Johnson fits my profile of high K NL starters … but of course is coming off of a major arm injury. Is he ready to go? If he’s healthy, this is a 4th or 5th round talent way down in the 11th. If not … well there’s always the waiver wire.
Drew Stubbs: (Yahoo #92, ADR #79). With the 144th pick I needed one last hitter to supplement my bench and noticed the huge number of SBs that Stubbs had last year (40). He was decently ranked for value and I think this is a pretty decent pick. The ADR of 79 probably is skewed higher because in a 5×5 league steals are more important. But Steals are important here as well, and looking at this team i’ve got a ton of them. Big fan of this pick here.
Mike Adams. Pick #145 and the beginning of my main 2012 strategy; focus on setup guys who get holds and have good peripherals. By the 13th round the top Holds guys from 2011 (Clippard, Venters, Robinson, and Marshall) were all gone; I was most disappointed to have missed on Robinson in particular, who went just a few picks before I went. I grabbed Adams as the best holds guy available. (note from here on out I won’t bother with Yahoo ranks or ADRs for Holds guys since they doesn’t make any sense).
Ricky Romero: (Yahoo #109, ADR #86): At this point in the draft I was targeting a few more starters and a few more setup guys and went for best players available. but getting a guy of Romero’s caliber with the 168th pick is great. Romero isn’t entirely my kind of starter; he’s AL, and more importantly he’s AL East. But his K/9 is improved and he’s a good pitcher on a team that will get wins. He had 15 wins last year with a sub 3.00 ERA; imagine if he pitched in the NL. Regardless, he’s a good pickup at this point in the draft.
Francisco Rodriguez: I like K-Rod because, well, if Milwaukee’s closer (John Axford) falters or gets hurt, suddenly I’ve got a pretty good closer getting saves. As it stands, Rodriguez will get a ton of Hold opportunities and has all the incidentals I want in a back-end reliever (good K/9, good holds from 2011). The only downside on him is his ERA; its a bit high for an 8th inning guy.
Fernando Salas: Salas was St. Louis’ closer for most of 2011 but got demoted after a couple of blown saves in August. He didn’t get demoted because his numbers were bad; in fact his 2011 numbers were great. Unfortunately for Salas, Jason Motte lit it up in the post season and enters 2012 with the job clearly in hand. Which means, like Rodriguez, he’ll get save opportunities as the former closer and would be the presumptive replacement in case of injury or ineffectiveness.
Jeremy Hellickson (Yahoo #183, ADR #127); Going against my better judgement, I picked up yet another AL East pitcher, but once again went for value. Hellickson was my 193rd pick and despite being Yahoo ranked 183, he was 86th in performance in 2011. Lots of people think Hellickson will regress in 2012 because of his amazingly low BABIP (.223 in 2011). However not all of Hellickson’s BABIP variation is attributed to “luck;” He’s a flyball pitcher. And flyball pitchers will have more of their balls in play caught, keeping BABIP low. Hellickson had only 35% of balls in play be grounders in 2011. Roy Halladay, by way of comparison, has been 50% or more groundballs every year of his career. Where this should be catching up to Hellickson is in homers given up (more fly balls should lead to more homers), but his home ballpark helps. Either way. I’ll take him with the 193rd pick.
Mark Melancon: Another deposed closer in Melancon, who got 20 saves for Houston last year but joins Boston as the presumptive 8th inning guy behind Andrew Bailey. Remember; Bailey missed 2 months in 2011 with a forearm strain; Melancon ably fits into the closer spot. This pick may be affected by recent news that Daniel Bard will be returning to the bullpen, but holds guys don’t have to be 8th inning guys.
Greg Holland: What a find here; Holland has fantastic numbers and could be another steal since KC closer Soria has blown out his elbow. I don’t think Holland gets the call as the closer immediately, but if new acquisition Broxton doesn’t step up Holland will.
Alexi Ogando (Yahoo #227, ADP #208); Looking for two more starters I went for best names on the board. Ogando may not be the best but he’ll get Ks and he has a big arm. And at the 240th pick of the night I’m happy to get a 13 game winner on a playoff team.
Josh Collmenter (Yahoo #312, ADP #305): I don’t understand why Collmenter is so low; he plays in the weaker NL West, is in the NL, and won 10 games with good numbers last year (#140 ranked yahoo fantasy in 2011). Oh; just found out why; he’s got a 14.00 ERA in Spring Training thus far. Ouch. We’ll keep an eye on his first couple starts (perhaps sitting him if he’s going against a touch lineup) and see how he goes.

Team analysis

Hitters: I’ve got a ton of power, but also a ton of SB capability. Kemp is 40/40 guy, Kinsler and Lawrie project to be 30/30 and Gordon a 20/20 guy. Rollins and Stubbs both get a ton of steals. I’ve got 5 guys with 30+ homer capability. Homers lead to runs and RBIs. What may hurt me is AVG and OPS: Kinsler, Stanton and Stubbs all seem to be .250 hitters. Rollins and Stubbs both are < .800 OPS guys. So we’ll take the good with the bad. But I do like my hitters.

Name	Team	Pos	O-rank	2011 Actual	Owned	H/AB	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	OPS
Lance Berkman	StL	1B,OF	86	32	97%	147/488	90	31	94	2	0.301	0.959
Ian Kinsler	Tex	2B	20	22	99%	158/620	121	32	77	30	0.255	0.832
Brett Lawrie	Tor	3B	45	771	97%	44/150	26	9	25	7	0.293	0.953
Joe Mauer	Min	C,1B	95	820	97%	85/296	38	3	30	0	0.287	0.728
Matt Kemp	LAD	OF	2	1	99%	195/602	115	39	126	40	0.324	0.985
Giancarlo Stanton	Mia	OF	25	66	99%	135/516	79	34	87	5	0.262	0.893
Alex Gordon	KC	OF	66	23	98%	185/611	101	23	87	17	0.303	0.878
Jimmy Rollins	Phi	SS	73	67	97%	152/567	87	16	63	30	0.268	0.737
Drew Stubbs	Cin	OF	92	103	93%	147/604	92	15	44	40	0.243	0.685

Pitchers: I’m less liking my starters versus what I had last year. I have three good NL guns but then have three #2/#3 AL starters. And I have a big injury risk in Johnson to go with spring dismal performances out of Collmenter. I may be playing some waiver wire games.

Name	Team	Pos	O-rank	2011 Actual	Owned	IP	W	SV	K	HLD	ERA	WHIP
Tim Lincecum	SF	SP	28	49	99%	217	13	0	220	0	2.74	1.21
Cole Hamels	Phi	SP	32	21	99%	216	14	0	194	0	2.79	0.99
Josh Johnson	Mia	SP	101	183	97%	60.1	3	0	56	0	1.64	0.98
Ricky Romero	Tor	SP	109	46	95%	225	15	0	178	0	2.92	1.14
Jeremy Hellickson	TB	SP	183	86	86%	189	13	0	117	0	2.95	1.15
Alexi Ogando	Tex	SP	227	131	68%	169	13	0	126	0	3.51	1.14
Josh Collmenter	Ari	SP,RP	312	140	21%	154.1	10	0	100	0	3.38	1.07

The middle relief/holds strategy should be interesting; with a transaction limit in place we’re going to have to monitor the 5 RPs closely. I’m not after saves (clearly; having not drafted a single closer) but I wouldn’t mind getting a few here and there. I have tried the no-closer route in the past; it didn’t work exactly as I wanted. I had too many mediocre starters and got killed in ERA and WHIP. This time around is slightly different; by focusing on middle relievers who generally have great stats, I’m hoping to keep ERA and WHIP down and continually add Ks and holds.

Name	Team	Pos	O-rank	2011 Actual	Owned	IP	W	SV	K	HLD	ERA	WHIP
Mike Adams	Tex	RP	305	83	32%	73.2	5	2	74	32	1.47	0.79
Francisco Rodriguez	Mil	RP	374	149	33%	71.2	6	23	79	17	2.64	1.3
Fernando Salas	StL	RP	371	73	31%	75	5	24	75	6	2.28	0.95
Mark Melancon	Bos	RP	379	138	14%	74.1	8	20	66	3	2.78	1.22
Greg Holland	KC	RP	383	135	11%	60	5	4	74	18	1.8	0.93

That’s your fantasy team. What do you think?

Written by Todd Boss

March 23rd, 2012 at 3:23 pm

Can we put the “Bryce Harper will make the team” stories to rest?

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We all know what Harper’s potential is; but shouldn’t we wait until the ramifications of early promotion have passed? Photo unknown via curlyw.mlbblog.com

Davey Johnson inadvertently has started a storyline that just won’t go to bed; by saying that he wants Bryce Harper to break camp with the 25-man team, national writers and local beat reporters keep reporting about the possibility of Harper playing RF for the team on opening day.

Here’s the facts that that these reporters conveniently forget:

If Harper starts the season with the big league club, then he reaches Free Agency one year earlier.
If Harper joins the big league club after mid April but before mid-to-late June, then the financial penalties to the club are severe.

In case you weren’t aware of these two issues, lets discuss.

1. Reaching Free Agency a year early: See this excellent Service Time Consideration post from Ben Nicholson-Smith at mlbtraderumors.com. Simply put, if the Nats start Harper with the big league club as of April 1st, then he will be eligible for free agency at the end of the 2017 season. If we wait a few weeks, then that buys the club an entire extra season of Harper’s time for the 2018 season. As has been put simply by other writers, a few weeks of Harper’s rookie season at age 19 is absolutely not going to be worth the value he will provide to the team during an entire 2018 season, by which point he looks to have many full seasons of experience and should be nearing his baseball peak at age 25.

2. Super 2 Status implications: As we should all know by now, the financial implications of bringing up super stars too early can be severe. Dave Sheinin did this analysis best back when we were asking the same question about Stephen Strasburg, looking at the Tim Lincecum case as a lesson learned. The Giants called up Lincecum about two weeks prior to the Super-2 status deadline and it has roughly cost them $18million in unneeded salary.

Lots has been said about how Davey Johnson broke camp with two young superstars in Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry during his time with the Mets in the mid 1980s, with the narrative being that he’s not afraid to give young players a shot early. That’s a great story but it omits one key point: the Super-2 status didn’t exist when Johnson made these decisions! The Super-2 status didn’t exist in the Collective Bargaining Agreement until 1990, when the players negotiated in the status as a way of getting more money earlier to their union members. A great idea at the time, but it has had the unintended effect of teams now keeping their best prospects in the minors until the mid-June time-frame as a way of gaming the system and keeping their pay low.

Frankly, I’m tired of reading stories about Harper that don’t at least tacitly acknowledge these two important points, and to me any story that talks of Harper making the team blindly without addressing these two modern baseball issues is lazy sports writing. Johnson may want the guy now, but Mike Rizzo is the guy who has to answer to fans as to why the Nats won’t be able to get a free agent in 3 year’s time because of the payroll implications (upwards of $18M in some cases) of screwing up these decisions. $18M in payroll generally buys you two starting players on the free agency market, and those two players can make the difference far more than a few weeks of Harper hitting .200 as a 19-yr old.

Honestly, everyone thought that this issue would have been addressed in the latest version of the CBA, negotiated ad-naseum over the past off season. The clause helps no one; players are kept in the minors longer to game the system, teams have to wait to bring up players that could help them win now, and fans are forced to wait to see the best young stars. Instead the two sides managed to make the situation WORSE, by increasing the percentage of players that qualify for Super-2 and now forcing teams to keep players in the minors even longer. It was an inexplicable decision by both sides to further exacerbate the problem. I realize that no matter what you do, there has to be a cutoff date for service time deadlines to qualify for free agency and/or super-2 status, but why no just make that date early in the season and fix all the problems caused by super-2?

As a fan of the team this season, yeah I’d love to see Harper up and starting in RF. Who wouldn’t? But as a long term fan, I want this team to have the best chance of winning for years to come. And thus I want Harper in the minors until these two issues are non-issues any longer.

Written by Todd Boss

March 5th, 2012 at 11:17 am

Posted in Majors Pitching,Nats in General

Tagged with ben nicholson-smith, bryce harper, daryl strawberry, dave sheinin, davey johnson, dwight gooden, mike rizzo, stephen strasburg, tim lincecum

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 1/22/12 edition

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Gonzalez signs a long term deal; we're committed now. Photo Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images via nydailynews.com

This is your semi-weekly/periodic wrap-up of Nats and other baseball news that caught my eye. Apologies for the delay in posting; new rules on laptop usage at work have thwarted my typical read-sports-news-at-lunch habits. I’ll have to get creative.

Nationals In General

Nats extend Gio Gonzalez for 5 years. Terms: 5yrs, $42M with two more club options. A little more than $8m AAV, or in other words what we were paying Jason Marquis. I’m sure its backloaded somewhat, but I like the deal for two main reasons. First, we buy out all the arbitration years ahead of time and avoid the arbitration process altogether (which does nothing but serve to bruise the fragile egos of professional athletes over a few hundred thousand dollars of salary). Secondly, it locks up the player for the longer term and gives the team some stability for the next few years.
Jim Callis at BaseballAmerica answered a question about what an updated Nats top 10 prospect list would look like post trade: he’d promote up Destin Hood, Chris Marrero, and Michael Taylor. Considering what Marrero’s prospect status is now, considering how long it has taken Hood to get the hang of playing baseball, and how far away Taylor is from the majors, I think its safe to say our farm system is officially “thin.”
Nice little piece on Bryce Harper from Buster Olney, who relays the well known opinion that Davey Johnson really likes young superstars and predicts that Harper may break camp with the team. Why doesn’t anyone relay all the facts in this case? Like the fact that there wasn’t a concept of “Super-2” when Johnson promoted Gooden and Strawberry and there wasn’t a punitive financial issue lurking by doing so.
Great news to see so many of our arbitration eligible guys settled well ahead of going in front of the arbitrator. These cases don’t help anyone in the long run and end up arguing semantics over a few hundred thousand dollars that the team can clearly pay.
Though I havn’t seen any confirmation of this elsewhere, Bill Ladson reports that the Nats are engaged in extension talks with Ryan Zimmerman. If so, this comes at a relatively good time for the team to be doing the negotiating; Zimmerman’s value is as low now as it has been since before his rookie season, on account of multiple injuries and a lack of overall production. Which is exactly why I don’t think any long term deal is going to be struck this off-season frankly; Zimmerman would expect a Troy Tulowitzki like deal and I don’t think he’s done enough to earn it.

Free Agents/Player Transaction News

The arbitration case to watch this coming off-season will be Tim Lincecum; he is asking for $21.5M for 2012, with the Giants offering $17M. Wow. There’s really no case like his out there to use as a precedent; if you think he should earn roughly 80% of his FA value, then $21.5M equates with an annual salary of $26.875/year AAV. That’s more than Cliff Lee, CC Sabathia or Johan Santana (the three highest paid pitchers at current). So I guess you have to ask yourself; is Lincecum the best pitcher in the league? Because he’s about to be paid in line with that title.

Hall of Fame items

Not HoF specific, but inspired by it. David Shoenfield compiles a list of the best players by running 5-year WAR figures to show some enlightening information. WAR has some limitations over longer terms but I like what it shows for season-to-season value for players. His point was that some relatively unsupported hall of fame claims appear on these lists. For me the last couple periods showing guys like Chase Utley and Matt Holliday were kind of eye opening.

General Baseball News

Phillies sign Joel Pineiro to a minor league deal. I know he struggled in LA last season, but at one point this guy was pretty decent. If he can regain his health and his St. Louis form, suddenly the Phillies might have themselves a pretty good 5th starter option to take mediocre innings away from Joe Blanton. I’m surprised they were able to get him on a minor league contract.
I’ve read bits and pieces about the fall of Puerto Rican baseball before; but this is the first article i’ve seen that really delves into it deeply. Rob Neyer lists the cause and effect; baseball subjected Puerto Rican’s to the normal draft and almost immediately killed baseball in the country. This is the lesson/concern about going to an international draft; individual teams won’t cultivate and build off-site academies if they serve to build players who can be drafted by other teams. This is what happened in Puerto Rico and its probably what would happen in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other developing countries. Its a scary thought.
Related to the above Puerto Rican story is this: Cleveland pitcher Fausto Carmona arrested in the Dominican Republic for falsifying his name and age ahead of his big signing. For all the lamenting of the above Puerto Rican situation … this is yet another example (see Gonzalez, Smiley for Nats fans) of the flip side of the lack of an international draft. Draft experts and scouting mavens lament the loss of Puerto Rican development and think that the exact same thing would happen in the D.R. if they were included in the draft, and yes its hard to argue differently. But the down side of having such a “lottery” for 15-16 yr old players in the impoverished D.R. is the continued fraud among players growing up there related to age falsification.
Sabre-nerds may decry the lack of statistical science behind it, but Tom Verducci‘s annual “Year After” effect (which has come to be known as the Verducci-effect by others) has had an 84% success factor in predicting either injury or distinct decline in performance for his named pitchers. The most interesting names on the list are newly traded Michael Pineda, Jeremy Hellickson, and both Texas mid-rotation starters Matt Harrison and Derek Holland. Holland in particular threw a whopping 77 more innings this year over last.

General News; other

Not that any of us needed to read any more about the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State Scandal, but reading Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins‘ front page story with Joe Paterno‘s first interview post-scandal was an interesting read. Frankly, I don’t buy some of the way the story reads (intimating that Paterno had “little to do” with Sandusky by the time the 2002 allegations came around, for example). It doesn’t seem like Paterno was really challenged in the interview. Gene Wojciechowski echos some of these sentiments in this analysis piece here, criticizing Paterno’s convenient stance on the scandal and on the multitude of other stories that have come out about his manipulation of the system and real influence at the university. The real problem is just the nature of dealing with a legend; he worked for Penn State for 61 years and made the university what it is; how do you possibly deal with such a figure, who clearly was larger than the university? Update: just prior to publishing this, Paterno lost his battle with lung cancer, a quick and unfortunate end to his legendary career. Its amazing to consider that just 3 months ago, Paterno was still the larger than life legend and nothing bad had ever happened on the campus.
I’m sure the real story is somewhere in-between the original story and the “Update” at the end, but there seems to be enough truth in the former to not necessarily believe the latter. A new Utah high school’s board decided that the student-voted mascot name “Cougars” can’t be used because the name is derogatory towards middle-aged women who hook up with younger men. Seriously.

Written by Todd Boss

January 22nd, 2012 at 6:27 pm

At this point, what really is the Fielder FA market?

17 comments

I swear, I wasn't looking for the obvious pun photo of Prince Fielder eating. Photo: The Onion

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know by now that Prince Fielder is looking for a 9 figure contract, that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of suitors for him, and that he keeps being linked to the Washington Nationals, despite sources saying we’re not interested.

So I thought to myself; what *really* is the market for Fielder right now? Who wants, or more importantly needs, a big-money, big-time hitting, trip-over-his-feet defending at first base Fielder? Here’s each of the 30 teams organized into categories to help get some clarity:

1. Teams that have long-term, major money commitments to established 1B stars, right now.

These teams are absolutely not in the market for Fielder. Team and current 1B:

Boston: Adrian Gonzalez
Chicago WS: Konerko/Dunn
Detroit: Miguel Cabrera
LA Angels: Albert Pujols
Minnesota: Justin Morneau
NY Yankees: Mark Teixeira
Cincinnati: Joey Votto
Colorado: Todd Helton (not that he’s a major committment, but he did just re-sign thru 2013).
Miami: Gaby Sanchez (not really a major star, but he was a 2011 all-star and is pre-arbitration)
Philadelphia: Ryan Howard

You could quibble with the selection of Miami as not being in the market; after all they were throwing money at Pujols and have committed something in the range of $165M in heavily back-loaded contracts already this off-season. But I havn’t read a single sentence indicating any interest with Fielder.

You could slightly quibble with Colorado, but if so I’ll say that Colorado also falls into one of the “No” categories below. Read on.

2. Teams that are so bad, right now, that I couldn’t imagine Fielder actually going there

Baltimore

Baltimore. That’s it. Anyone that signs in Baltimore is essentially saying, “I want to play for the worst organization in baseball and guarantee myself 5th place finishes for the entirety of my contract.” Who would possibly go to play there unless they’re a lower-tier FA who wants to guarantee himself a starting job? Such a shame; this was the highest payroll team in the game in the mid 90s. We talk about how Bud Selig needs to take away the Mets … how about forcing Angelos to sell this former jewel franchise to someone who actually wants to see them win?

3. Teams that are aren’t in the market for financial reasons

LA Dodgers
NY Mets
SF Giants
St. Louis

Obviously the situation with the Dodgers and Mets prevents them from doing such a franchise-altering commitment. Plus both teams have half-way decent options playing at 1B for them now (James Loney and Ike Davis). The Giants were at $118M in 2011 and seem tapped out; they have $84M committed prior to their Arb cases, including a potentially record-setting arbitration case with Tim Lincecum. They’ll easily be above $100M once these cases are said and done. Lastly St. Louis: if they were willing to pay $25M/year, they would have re-signed Pujols. So clearly they’ve reached a financial threshold themselves.

I’d also put Colorado in this category; they aren’t exactly a small-market team but they also don’t seem like they’re in the mood to increase payroll $25M/year.

4. Teams that have waved the white flag and are in 100% rebuilding mode

Oakland
Houston

Both these teams should be obvious just by their mention. Oakland is going to try to field a $20M payroll team, and Houston has bottomed out and clearly is starting over.

5. Teams that have big-name prospects currently installed at 1B and who don’t seem like they’re in the market

Cleveland (Matt LaPorta); also arguably in the “Small Market” category
Kansas City (Eric Hosmer); also in the “Small Market” category
Seattle (Justin Smoak); also in the “Teams that are really bad” category
Atlanta (Freddie Freeman): also in the “Teams that are tapped out financially” category
San Diego (Yonder Alonso); also in the “Small market” category
Chicago Cubs (Anthony Rizzo): probably more in the “rebuilding mode” category; Epstein likes Rizzo, just re-acquired him and I’d be shocked if they blocked him by getting Fielder.

Most of these teams could fit into multiple categories. Lots of rumors out there saying that Seattle is a natural landing spot for Fielder but I don’t see it: Smoak is the reason Seattle agreed to trade Cliff Lee, and you don’t just give up on guys like that. Meanwhile Seattle is now miles behind their divisional rivals and may not compete for a decade. Why would Fielder go there?

Meanwhile, the Cubs seem like an interesting case. NL team, NL central team, storied name. But they didn’t hire Theo Epstein to just make the leap; their ownership clearly realized that their franchise was on the downside both at the MLB level and in the farm system. Bad contracts, bad clubhouse. They’re rebuilding for a renewed run in a few year’s time.

6. Small Market teams that certainly don’t seem to be in the market for a $25M/year player

Tampa Bay
Arizona
Milwaukee (else he’d be looking at re-signing there)
Pittsburgh

All these teams seem to be pretty self-explanatory. Maybe Arizona gets into the market, but they’ve gone to great pains to lose payroll, paring it down to just $56M last year while somehow winning the division. Their highest paid player in 2011 was just $5.8M. A $25M/year guy doesn’t fit with their team.

So, after all that, Here’s the teams Left: This is the actual Market for Fielder, right now. Teams listed with their current starting 1B

Texas: Mitch Moreland
Toronto: Adam Lind
Washington: Adam LaRoche

And here’s arguments for and against each team:

Pro Texas: they are getting a massive amount of money influx in. They may or may not win the Yu Darvish sweepstakes, meaning they may or may not have an “extra” $120M or so sitting around in a couple weeks. Moreland isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire and wouldn’t be an impediment.
Con Texas: They don’t NEED more offense; they’ve bashed their way to two consecutive AL pennants by having an offense ranked in the top 3 in pretty much every category. They had a guy who hit 29 homers batting 7th for them in the off-season (Nelson Cruz).

Pro Toronto: they have payroll room. They can let Fielder DH some of the time. They have a good young pitching staff they can build on. Lind hit 26 homers but isn’t blocking them from acquiring someone better. They do need to improve their offense and he’d fit naturally behind Jose Bautista, giving him even better pitches to turn on.
Con Toronto: they’re the 4th best team in the AL East and havn’t made the playoffs since the Wild Card era. What makes you think they’re going to catch the 3 teams above them, no matter how much they spend? This has to come into Fielder’s thought process, doesn’t it? They also don’t have the pitching right now to really compete in the AL East, having traded away their main studs for prospects in recent years.

Pro Washington: This team needs offense; we’ve declined in runs scored 3 years running. Plain and simple.
Con Washington: he can’t DH. We’d be lighting the $8M we owe to LaRoche on fire. He doesn’t fit Rizzo’s pro-defense concept of finding players. He may expose a payroll ceiling that the team hasn’t broached before, resulting in the team possibly losing franchise players in the future because “we can’t afford them.”

In the end though, if Texas signs Darvish I’d think they’d be out of the running. And Toronto hasn’t really shown an inclination to spend Fielder kinds of money, and seem more in a rebuilding phase than a “go for it now” phase.

Which means the Fielder market may be …. just Washington.

What do you think? Are there any teams besides Texas, Toronto and the Nats that are *really* in the conversation? Or is Boras negotiating against himself right now?

Written by Todd Boss

January 12th, 2012 at 9:30 am

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 11/18/11 edition

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With more Wild Cards, get ready to see scenes like this more and more. AP Photo via infopop.cc

Here’s a weekly wrap up of Nats-related news items, along with other general interest baseball articles, with my thoughts as appropriate. (Note: these news items are more or less chronological in the Saturday-to-Friday blog post news cycle i’m using, with me going back and adding in clarifying links as needed).

Great news: Wilson Ramos was rescued with apparently on 11/11/11 no bodily harm and no ransom paid. This is a great end to this saga, which really could have gone so much worse for Ramos and his family. Mark Zuckerman reports on the details of the rescue.
Interesting read from Jon Paul Morosi, who interviews an anonymous american player about life in the Venezuelan Winter League. The player wanted to stay anonymous, but he didn’t seem to really say anything of note that would require protecting his identity. Better safe than sorry though.
Joe Sheehan, writing for si.com, mentions both Bryce Harper and Sammy Solis in his AFL review of players to watch on 11/10/11. He saw Solis’ 4-inning/9 K game and was impressed. I would be to if a 6’5″ lefty could throw 94mph and punch out guys at will. That’s Solis’ “ceiling.”
As if it wasn’t enough to do analysis of the current FA crop, Buster Olney apparently was bored and did a year-too-early analysis of the 2012 free agent crop. I only post this because it corresponds with one of my frequent matras about this off season; don’t waste your FA dollars competing for 2-3 front-line pitchers. Wait for 2012 when there’s 10-12 good candidates.
More BA links related to the Nats top 10 prospects, announced last week. Here’s the free version of the top-10 with scouting reports, the Organization quick-overview page.
BA’s Jim Callis 11/9/11 editorial piece about how the Nats picked “a good time to be bad.”
For Yu Darvish fans, yet another scouting report. And another one. Tom Verducci posted a very well done piece demonstrating how most pitchers from NPB hit “The Wall” 2 years into their MLB careers, also noting that there has never been a single Japanese pitcher to make more than one all-star team. Fangraphs.com has a bunch more articles on Darvish from a few weeks ago, and BaseballAmerica has some as well for you to find at your leisure. Side-story: In one of the weekly chats last week (can’t remember which one) a very good point was made about using previous Japanese pitchers as comparisons to Darvish. The chat-host flat out called it racist. I have certainly drawn those same comparisons, looking at player’s birth place (as a way of determining NPB-graduates) and asking whether or not there’s ever been a huge success story for a Japanese-born pitcher. I don’t view this as racist; just factual. When I point out that there’s never been (for example) a French-born star baseball player, there isn’t a subsequent implication that “there fore all French baseball players are crap.” Therefore I will continue to point out that Darvish, as a NPB-graduate, comes with risk no matter what his scouting report or genetic make up happens to be. And my stance is that the risk involved isn’t worth the likely 9-figure price tag.
Wow the Marlins are doing some serious FA inquiries. Rumors this week that they’re talking with Jose Reyes, Albert Pujols, Mark Buehrle AND new Cuban FA Yoenis Cespedes. Those players alone would probably represent something in the range of $400M of guaranteed contracts. I just have a really hard time believing that this club, which has sucked revenue sharing money for years and easily transferred it into the owner’s pockets, will suddenly do an about-face and actually spend the money they need to be competitive. Really hard time believing it until I see it. Jeff Passan agrees with me.
Thanks to DistrictOnDeck for transcribing a few points of the Mike Rizzo–Jim Bowden conversation on mlb radio this week. I can’t help but taking note of the glaring discrepancy in Rizzo’s double-speak when it comes to pitching. Despite having his 1-2-3 already being set for the 2012 rotation (Strasburg, Zimmermann, Lannan) and re-signing Wang this week, Rizzo still says that at the same time he wants to “bring in another starter” AND have the likes of Milone/Peacock/Detwiler compete for the 5th starter. Well, which is it? Because if you buy another FA starter, there is no 5th spot available. Not unless we’re about to see a non-tender for John Lannan.
Excellent post from David Schoenfeld, in the wake of the Ryan Madson $44M contract being withdrawn, about the value of closers and the need to have a marquee closer at all in the modern game. In the post, he lists the named closers of the past 10 WS winners, and his point is this; its littered with names of guys who were clearly not elite-level closers.
Interesting opinion piece from Jim Breen on FanGraphs about Hard-Slotting. Breen posits the same opinion i’ve read over and over from Keith Law in the anti-draft slotting camp; they both claim it will “drive players to other sports.” They use names like Zach Lee, Bubba Starling, and Archie Bradley as recent examples of guys who were legitimate 2-sport stars and were “bought” out of football commitments at major Div-I universities by virtue of the large bonuses they received. Here’s the problem I have with this stance: where’s the proof? I just have a hard time believing that these athletes, when presented with a choice, would have a larger-than-slot bonus make up their minds. You’re either a baseball-first player or not, irrespective of your talents and desires in a secondary sport. Nowhere in these arguments have I ever seen an interview or a survey where these two-sport stars are actually asked the basic question, “Would you be playing college football if your guaranteed baseball bonus was smaller than what you got.” Its all assumptions, and this article is no different (posting the assumption that Lee “would not be playing baseball right now if there was a hard-slotting system.”
Good information to know from Dave Cameron‘s fangraphs chat: the BABIP on ground-balls is .235 for ground balls, .130 for fly balls, .720 for line drives. Cool.
Here’s a funny article from Baseball Prospectus on Hot Stove League terminology and how to interpret it.
Joe Lemire writes a great piece highlighting the safety issues and general decline of Venezuelan baseball over the past decade, in light of the Ramos kidnapping.
I first took note of Tax issues during last off-season’s Cliff Lee sweepstakes, noting that he faced perhaps a 12% difference in salary by taking a deal to stay in Texas versus New York. Eric Seidman looks at the same issue and more with his great article in FanGraphs titled “Jock Tax.” Conclusion; taxes for athletes are ridiculously complex.
Phillies sign Jonathan Papelbon to a 4 yr/$50M contract. Well, I guess they’re not going to be re-signing Ryan Madson. The Phillies resign Papelbon basically for the same money they had been paying Brad Lidge, so its not going to directly lead to an increase in their payroll. But as someone who openly questions the value of closers in general, I have to criticize the move as wasting money on a player they could replace from within for a fraction of the cost. David Schoenfield agrees with this sentiment.
Adam Kilgore has a nice little primer on the upcoming GM and Owners meetings in Milwaukee. He does some quick Nats off-season planning analysis, and I agree with him that it’s looking more and more like the team is going to pursue someone like Mark Buehrle or Roy Oswalt, meaning that the Detwiler/Peacock/Milone battle for 5th starter may not actually happen. This would imply the team is looking to trade these guys, presumably for CF talent. Lots of moving parts.
Si.com’s Jon Heyman broke news on 11/14 from the GM meetings that prospective Houston Astro’s owner Jim Crane has accepted the condition of moving his team to the AL west as a prerequisite to ownership approval. Interleague blurring, here we come. ESPN reports that this MLB “demand” was a condition of the sale of the team to Crane. You have to love Bud Selig and his hard-line ways, given his precious anti-trust exemption.
The Nats outrighted both Cole Kimball and Corey Brown from the 40-man on 11/16/11 and lost Kimball to Toronto. My thoughts here along with a healthy discussion.
Courtesy of Craig Caltaterra, a fantastic blog entry just crucifying Peter Angelos.
Op-ed piece about proposed draft changes, from ESPN’s David Shoenfeld.
Another Collective bargaining agreement fall out: elimination of compensation picks for type-B free Agents. Probably a wise move; type B free agents are usually not valued nearly as much as a supplemental first round pick, leading to hijinks in the draft system by teams who covet these picks. Frankly, the revampment to the system that needs to be done is the reliever classification. How is Darren Oliver, a 41-yr old loogy possibly a type A free agent?? That classification immediately eliminates half the league from even looking at him, and probably the other half as well (meaning they’d be giving up a 2nd round pick at worst). The union has to be upset at the way their veteran players have their job movement limited by this classification. Ironically, about 5 minutes after I wrote this, Buster Olney also used Oliver as an example as to why the system needs to change.
In the “no surprise here” category, Hanley Ramirez isn’t keen on switching positions should the Marlins, who have been woo-ing every FA out there this off season, somehow acquire Jose Reyes. Ramirez is pretty much the ultimate non-team player and the Marlins have spent far too long coddling him and cow-towing to his demands. Good luck EVER getting him to agree to anything that isn’t Hanley-first.
Ex-Nats rumors: Jason Marquis apparently has interest from his “hometown” NY Mets for a 2012 contract. I say that’s great news for the Veteran hurler, who had to be dismayed when he broke his leg in a contract year. Even if its a non-guaranteed deal, or for significantly less money than he got from us two years ago (2yrs $15M), he deserves another shot.
Interesting side effect of MLB’s obscure player transaction rules: by virtue of the Angels only sending Mike Trout down for 17 days instead of 20, the demotion still counted towards his 2011 service time. This has two implications: Trout officially now has served his rookie season and won’t be eligible for the 2012 Rookie of the Year award, AND the Angels now are in serious jeopardy of exposing Trout to eventual “Super-2” status. The first point is a slight shame for Trout, who seems set to rocket into prominence in this league based on his minor league production. The second point is “shame on the Angels” for not knowing the rules; if Trout is as good as promised, this mistake could cost them millions and millions of dollars. WP Dave Sheinin did a great study about Stephen Strasburg‘s super-2 status, comparing it to Tim Lincecum‘s, and concluded that avoiding super-2 for superstars can save a team almost $20Million. Seriously.
Why is this news? The Nats and Ryan Zimmerman, a player who is signed through 2013 havn’t talked about a contract extension. So what? This shouldn’t be news until NEXT off-season. I don’t care that Kemp signed a big deal, or that Braun got locked up for a few more years, or that Tulowitzki signed a ridiculous deal through 2020. Just because YOU jumped off a bridge doesn’t mean I have to. If i’m the Nats GM, I wouldn’t sign on for an 8year contract, let alone a 5year, for a guy who has missed significant chunks of the last few seasons through injury until I saw him back at the 155-160 game level. He’s only 26, but has already had three major injuries (hamate bone surgery, left labrum and this year’s abdomen surgery). Plus he missed the last couple weeks of the 2010 season with a muscle strain. That’s a lot of medical on a young guy. Maybe the musings of some other Nats bloggers on the topic could have some credence.
Its official; two wild cards coming in 2013. Judge Landis is rolling in his grave. Actually I’m somewhat ok with this news; I think more needs to be done to mitigate the possibilities of Wild Cards winning the World Series. If a play-in round is introduced that thins your pitching staff and makes it harder to advance, i’m all for it. I’m not a 100% traditionalist but I do like to see teams that win the most regular season games actually competing for the World Series, instead of the St. Louis Cardinals sneaking in as a last-second wild card and winning the championship.

Written by Todd Boss

November 18th, 2011 at 9:06 am

Posted in Baseball in General,Nats in General,Weekly News

Tagged with adam kilgore, albert pujols, archie bradley, brad lidge, brad peacock, bryce harper, bubba starling, bud selig, buster olney, chien-ming wang, cliff lee, cole kimball, corey brown, craig calcaterra, craig counsell, darren oliver, dave cameron, dave sheinin, david schoenfield, eric seidman, hanley ramirez, jason marquis, jeff passan, jim bowden, jim breen, jim callis, jim crane, joe lemire, joe sheehan, john lannan, jon heyman, jon paul morosi, jonathan papelbon, jordan zimmermann, jose reyes, keith law, kinesaw mountain landis, mark buehrle, mark zuckerman, matt kemp, mike rizzo, mike trout, peter angelos, ross detwiler, roy oswalt, ryan braun, ryan madson, ryan zimmerman, sammy solis, stephen strasburg, tim lincecum, tom verducci, tommy milone, troy tulowitzki, wilson ramos, yoenis cespedes, yu darvish, zach lee

Series	GM#	Date/time (EST)	Home-Visitor	Home Starter	Visiting Starter	Advantage
ALCS	1	10/13/2012	Det-NYY	Pettitte	Fister	Tossup
ALCS	2	10/14/2012	Det-NYY	Phelps?	Sanchez	Tossup
ALCS	3	10/16/2012	NYY-Det	Verlander	Sabathia	Det
ALCS	4	10/17/2012	NYY-Det	Scherzer	Kuroda?	Det
ALCS	5	10/18/2012	NYY-Det	Fister	Pettitte	Det
ALCS	6	10/20/2012	Det-NYY	Hughes?	Sanchez	Tossup
ALCS	7	10/21/2012	Det-NYY	Sabathia	Verlander	Det

Series	GM#	Date/time (EST)	Home-Visitor	Home Starter	Visiting Starter	Advantage
NLCS	1	10/14/2012	SF-Stl	Bumgarner	Lynn	SF
NLCS	2	10/15/2012	SF-Stl	Vogelsong	Carpenter	Stl
NLCS	3	10/17/2012	Stl-SF	Wainwright	Cain	SF
NLCS	4	10/18/2012	Stl-SF	Lohse	Lincecum?	Stl
NLCS	5	10/19/2012	Stl-SF	Lynn	Bumgarner	Tossup
NLCS	6	10/21/2012	SF-Stl	Carpenter	Vogelsong	Stl
NLCS	7	10/22/2012	SF-Stl	Wainwright	Cain	Tossup

Nationals Arm Race

Archive for the ‘tim lincecum’ tag

Possible 2013 WBC Nationals participants?

Roster Construction Analysis of 10 Playoff Teams; 2012 edition

NLCS Preview – by the Starters

Divisional Series Matchups – By the Starters

Ewing theory and the Strasburg Shutdown

My 2012 Fantasy Baseball Team

Can we put the “Bryce Harper will make the team” stories to rest?

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 1/22/12 edition

At this point, what really is the Fielder FA market?

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 11/18/11 edition

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