markos

I don't think it is completely unreasonable to expect the Tigers to be better record-wise and expect their mid-30s stars get worse. The Tigers had a really weird season last year. Offensively, they were the Anti-Twins. They hit really well (1st in hits, 2nd in OPS+, 3rd in OPS), but struggled to actually score runs (only 10th in the AL). In fact, the Twins outscored the Tigers for the season despite having 185 fewer baserunners. All that despite losing Miguel Cabrera for 40 games, trading away Cespedes, and getting absolutely nothing from Victor Martinez. They could hit worse overall as a team next season and still score more runs. Their biggest problem was their pitching, particularly the back end of the rotation and bullpen. Their worst 10 pitchers from last year (by bWAR) pitched 577 innings with a -9.2 bWAR. Zimmermann certainly doesn't replace Price - he might be 50% of Price. But the bigger question is whether or not they can find replacement level or better pitchers to replace the dumpster fire they had to deal with last year. If they can find just below-average pitchers for those innings - either through some positive regression or the arms they added - they could have a huge improvement over last year despite losing a guy like Price.

His contract doesn't impact my expectations at all, since once the Twins won the bidding there was basically zero leverage for Park to get much more than that. I would have been more excited if the winning bid was higher, or if multiple teams had made the maximum $20M bid.

I don't think it is a silly exercise at all. I don't have good insight into how Park is perceived around the league, so this is another data point for setting my expectations into how he will adjust and perform in the big leagues. And I think that having him at #7 is meaningful for two reasons: 1) Most of the other top international players that have come over (Darvish, Tanaka, Abreu, Ryu, Puig, et. al) have all been top-50 overall prospects from BA, and usually one of the best, if not the best, prospect in a team's system. That Park is #7 in the Twins top-10 certainly seems to indicate that Berardino (or the people he talked with) didn't think too highly of him relative to other big-name international signings. 2) I am much more familiar with these Twins prospects, so ranking Park next to them gives me another comparison point. Now it is difficult to figure out exactly what balance of value/potential/ceilling/floor/tools/stats Berardino used when ranking this, but just based on who Park is near, I would guess that Berardino (or the people he's talking with) is expecting Park to be a average-regular at best, with limited upside.

Here is a good (but long) explanation on what these projections are saying: http://www.hardballtimes.com/projecting-uncertainty-a-roadmap-to-the-projected-standings/ Some key points: 1) Last year, they projected the Tigers to win 85 games. But based on their model that just means they thought there was a 6% chance that they would win EXACTLY 85 games - it was the most likely option, but the error range is pretty large. 2) The above Tigers projection was the top one in the Central, but at the same time they projected that the winner of the Central would win 90 games. Personally, I like to use these projections as an indication of the level of talent on the teams. And it seems to me that the talent level in the Central is pretty uniform.

KC 43 33 Cle 39 34 Min 34 39 Chi 35 41 Det 30 43

Also surprised by the Park rating. Kind of expected him to be #4 or so.

This kind of cuts both ways, right? I mean, he could be great in 2016 but have a crappy or injured season in 2017, at which point he missed his best chance to strike it rich in free agency. And another counterpoint is that he needs to avoid major injury for two seasons rather than just one. My general rule of thumb for players is "get to free agency as quickly as possible." But there is so much volatility with relievers that it might not be best for them. Your points are certainly valid, which makes me think that the expected overall return is probably pretty close regardless of the decision.

I can't see the logic of a one-year extension from Jepsen's perspective. He is guaranteed $5M-6M this season, and then he hits free agency. Given how hot the bullpen market has been, if he has any kind of decent season in 2016 he has a good chance at a 3 year deal for $15M+. That seems like a lot of money to potentially leave on the table in exchange for an extra $5M of security, particularly since he's made something like $7M+ already for his career.

It is going to be fascinating to watch and see how their front office navigates the next two years. Here is a list of players that will be free agents after the 2017 season: Cain Davis Hosmer Moustakas Escobar Vargas Volquez Morales Hochevar Medlen Duffy Dyson Will they go all in for the next two years, and continue to trade away prospects from a good-but-not-great farm system to help them win now? Or will they start to trade away some of their major league talent to win in 2018+?

This is a lame excuse. The front office certainly didn't care that it might "potentially clog the system's internal pipeline" when it signed/re-signed/extended mid-level (or worse) starting pitchers the past two off-seasons or a DH this off-season. Personally, I'm not a proponent of spending big money on a reliever, but any concerns about clogging the internal bullpen pipeline seem absolutely ridiculous to me. The bullpen is the part of the roster with the most flexibility and the most year-to-year variability. There is always someone replaceable in the bullpen - it is the last place I would worry about potentially blocking some prospect that is more than a year away. Also, the money commitment for relievers is so low (even with multi-year deals) that cutting someone in year 2 or 3 of a deal shouldn't be any significant financial setback to the team.

Yes, I will agree that there are a lot of terrible starting pitchers that completely re-invented themselves in order to salvage their careers. But that isn't really the situation that Milone is in, and it doesn't really matter for the question I'm trying to answer. I probably made this rather unclear, but the question I'm trying to answer is "how much better will Milone be in the bullpen versus as a starter?" It isn't a question of whether he will be better or not (he will be), it is a question of degree. If Milone is projected to have a 4.10 ERA as a starter (per Steamer), his times-through-the-order ability does matter (at least a little) when trying to make an educated guess about how much better he will perform as a reliever. What do you think his ERA will be as a reliever? 3.10? 3.50? 3.75? This matters because it will determine the best allocation of the current roster. May (also per Steamer) is projected for at 3.50 ERA as a reliever. Using this, with May pitching say 70 innings and Milone pitching 180, you end up with roughly 109 runs. Now the two questions are "What will May's ERA be as a starter?" and "What will Milone's ERA be as a reliever?". I contend for many reasons (times-through-the-order penalty just one) that the change for May will be larger than the change for Milone. And if that difference is big enough (say May as starter is 4.00 ERA (+0.50) and Milone as reliever is 3.85 (-0.25)), then the 2016 team will give up fewer runs total with May in the bullpen. It is still only December, so a lot can change with the roster. But that is the question that I'm trying to wrap my mind around. I would be very interested to get your thoughts/predictions about both players' deltas between bullpen and rotation. Unless you think that the delta is the same for every pitcher or is completely random, at which point we will just have to agree to disagree. And as a final aside, my personal thought is that May should be in the rotation this year because I don't care about maximizing 2016 run prevention. If I was in charge, it is by far better for the 2017 and beyond teams to know if May can get his performance to actually match the mid-rotation stuff that he has, which means he needs to be in the rotation now.

Arguments used to help predict future performance in baseball aren't like mathematical proofs in the sense that they are proven false in light of a single counter-example. It can still be true that times-through-the-order splits matter for predicting bullpen performance for the majority of pitchers even if Glen Perkins (and dozens of others) appear to be the opposite. In your opinion, are there any indicators that will help us predict how well a starter like Milone will transition to a relief role? Or are they all just "false arguments", and instead we should just assume that every single starting pitcher will be a relief-ace when moved to the bullpen?

I agree that in general there are structural reasons for pitchers to do better in relief, and that as a general rule of thumb a starter will do better in relief. However, some of the reasons are specific to the pitcher, and in Milone's case I have some doubts. 1) Avoiding any times-through-the-order penalty. Milone doesn't have much of a penalty. 2) Increased velocity. How helpful will it be for him to be throwing 89-91 instead of 86-88? 3) Minimize platoon issues. Milone doesn't have big platoon splits. So I think he would pitch better in relief, but not necessarily a lot better.

Regarding the international market, the Royals have been one of the most aggressive teams in the past 10 years or so. They were the 4th highest spender between the 2010-2011 seasons, spending over $9M in total, including $2M on Raul Mondesi Jr. And just this past year they were one of 4 teams that went significantly over their bonus pool, signing two players to seven-figure deals and several other smaller deals.

It is hard to take this article too seriously considering the his "argument" is basically just asserting over and over again that nothing has changed. He doesn't really offer any evidence to support this argument other than pointing out that the same people are in charge and then contrasts the Twins rebuild with the Cubs and Astros. Which doesn't necessarily follow, right? Maybe I'm mis-reading it, but it certainly seems like a simplified, less eloquent article would basically just be: (Same people in charge) + (they didn't rebuild like the Astros or Cubs) => THEY HAVEN'T CHANGED AT ALL!!! SHAME! SHAME!

Rosario is a tough player to project. His bat-to-ball skills are pretty amazing, and his ability to hit bad pitches is also pretty crazy. So does that mean that all the "normal" rules about hitting don't apply to him in the same way? I don't know. But there are a lot of warning signs from his performance last season: 1) He had a reverse platoon split, hitting lefties (117 wRC+) much better than righties (91 wRC+). That is rarely sustainable. 2) He crushed it at Target Field (140 wRC+) and was a pumpkin everywhere else (58 wRC+). 3) He had a high BABIP despite being a flyball hitter. Of the 46 players with a BABIP above .330 last year, he had the 5th lowest GB/FB ratio, and he had the 2nd highest popup rate.

I have two problems with this analysis: 1) Using a historical search based on size ignores the fact that athletes across all sports are getting bigger and bigger without losing their athletic abilities. 40 years ago, someone Calvin Johnson's height and weight was a lineman. 20 years ago he was a tight end. If Lebron James or Rob Gronkowski were to switch to baseball, no one would bat an eye about putting them in the outfield, and they are both 250+. So anyone talking about Sano's (or anyone else's) move to a position by saying "Only X players bigger than Y have ever played there... " is ignoring this trend. 2) Assuming this move to the outfield is only a 2 or 3 year temporary resting place, the historical examples that Sheehan provides actually run counter to his point. Almost all of the "historically bad" defensive numbers for those players occurred when those players were in the late-20s or older. If you just look at their age 23-25 seasons, Dunn, Lee and Young all has slightly positive defensive value in the outfield.

This split is something that has plagued May since his days with the Phillies. Regardless, we are kind of getting in the weeds here. The point I was trying to get across is that I don't think it is an open-and-shut case that May is one of the top-5 starters on this team, much less the best that his 3.35 FIP might indicate. Some of May's particular outliers (men-on-base splits, high BABIPs) that he has consistently demonstrated over the past 8 seasons will cause his FIP to overstate his actual run-prevention abilities. Not by a lot, but by enough that the gap between him and someone like Milone isn't as large as it might seem. Other stats back this up. Baseball Prospectus's DRA ranked May as only their 5th best starter last season: Santana 3.79 Gibson 3.88 Duffey 3.99 Milone 4.03 May 4.43 Pelfrey 4.54 Hughes 4.98 Further, as we project next season, we should really be looking at xFIP rather than FIP. And xFIP isn't nearly so kind to May (3.96 as a starter last year), and the gap between May and Milone is pretty tiny -just 0.26, or basically 5 runs over the full season. We will know more once more projection systems release their numbers for next year (ZIPS, PECOTA, etc). Right now we only have Steamer on Fangraphs, and unfortunately they only project May's numbers as a reliever. Right now, my personal 'best rotation' would be: Hughes (assuming full health) Gibson Santana Berrios Duffey I have May and Milone as my #6 and #7, with Duffey, May and Milone all very close.

He has maintained a 5%-10% gap between his strikeout rate with bases empty versus runners on for his entire career, both minors and majors. Last year it was 24.9% vs 19.2%. MLB average is about 2%. So he gives up a lot more contact, and subsequently hits, with runners on base relative to the model that FIP uses. Therefore, it is quite possible that he will give up more runs than FIP would predict.

I'm not willing to ignore the ~800 minor league innings where he exhibited the exact same issues.

I'm not 100% certain that the normal FIP/xFIP/k/9 rules apply to May. He struggles with runners on base, and his splits there are significantly larger than league average. Additionally, he has very high BABIPs, which may not be just randomness. These are issues that have plagued him throughout his minor league career. He has had only one season (2012 in AA) with a BABIP less than .305, and a majority season with a BABIP of .320 or higher. He might end up being another pitcher like Nolsaco who consistently underperforms his FIP.

This is a great article. Thanks for doing the research and posting it here. At this point, if the Twins aren't willing or able to bring in a very good arm that pushes May, Jepsen and even Perkins down a slot, then I think they should just try to fill out the back of the bullpen with a few fliers and hope that between reclamation projects and internal options they can be effective. This reminds me of an article Sam Miller wrote a couple years ago about the A's bullpen, back when it was really good and really cheap. He documented all the work that went into it. Hopefully it is no longer behind the BP paywall. If it is, this is a pretty good summary: "So yes, you can build an amazing bullpen. You can spend about $8 million on the entire group. You can do it by trading things you don’t want, scavenging for things nobody else wants, and asking other teams nicely, and letting your low-minors position players indulge their fantasies. It just takes 30 or 40 arms to make it work. And heaven help you if, instead of six or seven useful relievers out of those 40, you end up with only four." http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=21767

As someone who has lived in DC for a while now and been to dozen of games over the past few seasons, it has been a fun team to root for - at least until July of this year or so. I'm starting to think that this season will be the last hurrah for Rizzo, and that they completely blow up the front office and team if they fail to make the playoffs again.

First Zobrist, now Heyward. It certainly seems like players really want to play for the Cubs and really don't want to play for the Nationals.

Criticizing past trades based on current information is often unfair, but I do think that the following questions are (potentially) valid criticism of the front office: 1) There is certainly a lot more liquidity in the catcher market right now than there was a month ago. Could this have been predicted in advance with a careful analysis of the FA market, arbitration decisions, 40-man roster situations on all the other teams, etc? I certainly didn't anticipate this, but then again, it isn't my job to figure that stuff out. 2) Is there every a good case for acquiring average or worse players (either via free agency or trades) prior to the arbitration/40-man roster deadline in late November? I honestly don't know the answer to this, but I kind of suspect that in most cases, there are usually more/better options available afterwards. So is it possible that moving early for non-elite players is counterproductive? Both of these questions also apply to the other big deal of the offseason - the signing of Park. The Twins signed a bat-only slugger to a long-term (but reasonable) deal right before several bat-only sluggers were either non-tendered (Chris Carter, Pedro Alvarez) or freely available (Mark Trumbo). Again, was this something that a careful analysis of the landscape could have predicted beforehand?