Willihammer

There is a lot of pitching around this year, and not many middle infielders. We still have no idea what the rates will be for their services. But yeah in recent history, middle infielders are the most undervalued. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/positional-differences-in-the-price-of-war-2/

Orlando Hudson? I know Dickbert had a running joke about him running his mouth when he was here, I got the impression it was wearing hard on Gardy by the end of the year. Didn't seem to hurt the product on the field too much. Coming off a horrible year, still only 35.

The fact that he is coming off a down year and has a bad reputation would seem to make him a great buy low candidate. Its worth a phone call at least.

The logic which says, because the wild card will not come from the AL Central, then the Twins should look to the future and not the present, is backwards. It is because the AL Central is weakest, that the Twins should push for now. The Tigers won the division in 2012 with fewer wins than either wildcard. Winning division is a first round bye, and increases a WS odds by double compared to either wildcard team. The playoffs are random, it is binary math, John just went over this.

Revere has barely two years cracked into the arb clock and won't be a FA till 2018. He's a pretty good bet to put up 2 wins+ for bottom dollar over the next 4 seasons. That is a little more than a toss in, esp. when you're weighing him against a guy with 50 million of guaranteed money coming his way. The Jays would snap that up in a heartbeat.

Yeah, check it out: http://katron.org/projects/baseball/hit-location/ It could be bad, or it could be okay. He would have given up 17 home runs at Wrigley in 2009 by my count, if he were a Cub (200 IP).

I like that idea as well but I don't think the Jays would do it, their pitching situation is bad. It would be much more the Jays style to wait until Buehrle exhausts all remaining value and then trade him to the Angels.

>Not wanting to put another runner in scoring position, the Indians held Revere at the bag. Yet another unsung value of speed and getting on base. Good stuff, Parker.

I don't understand. Those season ticket holders will have first dibs at ticket sales in the new park, right? We all remember what happened in 2010 with Target Field. For many games, tickets were impossible to buy from the Twins and on stubhub they were selling for 2-4 times face value, more in some cases. Why shouldn't the season ticket holders have to pay a premium to hold onto their privilege? We are all invested now, whether you had been a fan or not. If you want to go to get a shiny new seat to one of the games, get in line like the rest of us. This is only the market playing itself out.

Its more like $35m in added payroll for 2013, by my count. A deal like this does make you wonder, at least, how did it go down? I would love to know.

This has always been my point... Get to the playoffs often and you have a better chance of winning a title. Absolutely with a big cherry on top. Except there is a first round bye up for grabs so yes, there is a difference between being a 85 win wildcard team and a 95 win divisional winner. Get those extra wins and you double your WS championship chances.

Dang, that hurts.

I have to quibble with you here. I know what you're trying to say, but you're assuming regular season wins aren't a factor in getting into the playoffs when in fact they are more important than ever. 4 whole wildcard spots are handed out according to win total. So I think wins are a very good predictor of a teams chances of winning the WS. That was the whole point of adding a 2nd wildcard - to emphasize those marginal wins needed to win the division outright and avoid that first playoff round (and the chance of being eliminated in it). And also to make the end of the year more exciting, include more teams, profit, etc. I guarantee that if you do this exercise again in 15 years (looking at the 16 years of the 4-wildcard playoff format), you will find that regular season wins are a very good indicator of playoff success due to the fact that more regular season wins translates to more division championships which are essentially a first round bye. The play-in is a round that didn't exist during the period you're looking at here, 1996-2012.

I started making a calculator for measuring probable outcomes of at bats based on zone discipline and count, and BABIP on those counts, and whether a hitter has a green light or red light on 2-0, 3-0, and 3-1. I am stuck. Maybe someone who is good with probabilities can look at this and fill in the blanks? Any help would be appreciated: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5pIzP28qdp-ODRXYkk5ZjBFem8 I think its fairly obvious what I'm trying to do, but if not, pm me.

O-line was dominant esp. in the 4th quarter. Kalil can do anything, he damn near beat AP to the end zone on that 4th qtr TD run after bowling over a linebacker. If he weren't so critical at the line, I'd be curious to see him line up as an eligible receiver in a trick play. I gotta think he is the first guy every defender would just rather not deal with, and therefore he'd be wide open. I think we match up well with the Bears but I just don't trust Ponder to scratch together drives on the road.

If the White Sox happen to flag Reynolds for 3b duty, that will make 3 guys capable of 200 Ks (dunn, Flowers, Reynolds).

I think John's point was that since the playoffs are a crapshoot, then the interdivision imbalance is irrelavant. All that matters is being good enough to get in, so a team doesn't get extra credit for winning 90 games in the regular season like the Rays did this year when the Tigers won 88, because the Tigers got in and the Rays didn't. With a wildcard, now two wildcards, combined with the unbalanced schedule, there is a higher premium in being able to defeat interdivisional rivals in the AL than there ever has been. To Aaron's point, this is easier done by improving your club in absolute terms, because now those 7-9 games against the Rangers, Rays, Orioles, and Angels are about as critical as the 19 games against the White Sox and Tigers. In fact, I haven't done the math, but they may even be slightly more critical. edit: Oh and the Yankees and I guess Red Sox. Basically, since there is a 2nd wild card up for grabs, everyone else in the AL regardless of division is now challenged to beat up on the best teams in all AL divisions if they are going to have a shot at that 2nd wildcard. Obviously only the Rangers were up for that challenge in 2012.

Gregorius bats lefthanded, that's one thing going for him. But the more I think about it, the less I like trading any of our outfielders for SS's of this caliber. We have Carroll for 1-2 years still. Dozier had such a horrible year year at the MLB and MilB level, it looks suspiciously like it was a one-off. Parmelee's year looks suspiciously like a one-off. Worst thing would be to trade one of our 3-4 win outfielders, bring in a marginal upgrade at SS, and then find out that Dozier is tearing it up at AAA while Parmelee is stinking it up getting everyday at bats with the Twins.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2012/11/anibal-sanchez-wants-six-year-90mm-contract.html MLBTR thinks the deciding factor could be whether 6th year is guaranteed,

Pastornicky?

The Braves also have Simmons backing up Pastornicky at SS. That guy can flash some leather.

I'm revisiting this topic after the Case for Trading Span thread discussion. I believe that Revere's extreme contact proficiency is causing him to prematurely terminate at-bats to the detriment of his OBP. Here I want to estimate what Revere's OBP would be if he never swung at another 2-0, 3-0, or 3-1 pitch again by looking at the probabilities of outcomes based on Revere's first 1068 PAs. For data, I'm using fangraphs' PITCHf/x Plate Discipline, and Baseball-Reference's Pitch Summary -- Batting pages. I will assume that pitchers throw Revere strikes at a constant rate, regardless of count. I admit that in terms of a game scenario where there' s a man, and not pitchFX calling balls and strikes, that this is a bit of a reach owing to things like the Compassionate Umpire effect, although there is a more or less equivalent counter effect in the Merciless Umpire. For my calculations, I will not account for human error in calling balls and strikes. For Revere, the rate at which pitchers throw him pitches that fall within PITCHf/x's strike zone is 53.4%. This is before Revere swings or doesn't swing. Of Pitches, inside the zone, Revere swings at 51.4%, making contact 96.7% of the time and whiffing 3.3%. Contact is defined as balls put in play or fouled off. Unfortunately, I'm unable to assign different foul ball swing%'s to balls in or out of the zone, so I will assume it is the same for both. That rate (called F/Str on baseball-reference) is 21% of all strikes seen. 64% of pitches are either a swinging or non-swinging strike. And Revere's Z-swing% is 51.4%. So of all strikes thrown to Revere, 39.3% are swung on and put into play, 10.4% are swung on and fouled off, 1.7% are swung on and missed, and the rest, 48.6%, are taken. Revere's O-Swing% (Swings at pitches out of the zone / Pitches out of the zone) is 26.2%, and his contact rate is 82.1%. so of all pitches thrown outside the zone (46.6%), 16.9% are swung on and put into play, 4.5% are fouled off, 4.0% are swung on and missed, and the rest, 74.6%, are taken. in 1068 PAs so far, Revere's seen 122 2-0 counts and swung 41 times. We can assume 5.0 of those were balls (26.2% O-swing% / ball rate of 46.6% x 41). Of the 36.0 strikes swung on, 27.3 were put in play, 7.3 were fouled off, 1.4 were whiffed.

I'm revisiting this topic after the Case for Trading Span thread discussion. I believe that Revere's extreme contact proficiency is causing him to prematurely terminate at-bats to the detriment of his OBP. Here I want to estimate what Revere's OBP would be if he never swung at another 2-0, 3-0, or 3-1 pitch again by looking at the probabilities of outcomes based on Revere's first 1068 PAs. For data, I'm using fangraphs' PITCHf/x Plate Discipline, and Baseball-Reference's Pitch Summary -- Batting pages. I will assume that pitchers throw Revere strikes at a constant rate, regardless of count. I admit that in terms of a game scenario where there' s a man, and not pitchFX calling balls and strikes, that this is a bit of a reach owing to things like the Compassionate Umpire effect, although there is a more or less equivalent counter effect in the Merciless Umpire. For my calculations, I will not account for human error in calling balls and strikes. For Revere, the rate at which pitchers throw him pitches that fall within PITCHf/x's strike zone is 53.4%. This is before Revere swings or doesn't swing. Of Pitches, inside the zone, Revere swings at 51.4%, making contact 96.7% of the time and whiffing 3.3%. Contact is defined as balls put in play or fouled off. Unfortunately, I'm unable to assign different foul ball swing%'s to balls in or out of the zone, so I will assume it is the same for both. That rate (called F/Str on baseball-reference) is 21% of all strikes seen. 64% of pitches are either a swinging or non-swinging strike. And Revere's Z-swing% is 51.4%. So of all strikes thrown to Revere, 39.3% are swung on and put into play, 10.4% are swung on and fouled off, 1.7% are swung on and missed, and the rest, 48.6%, are taken. Revere's O-Swing% (Swings at pitches out of the zone / Pitches out of the zone) is 26.2%, and his contact rate is 82.1%. so of all pitches thrown outside the zone (46.6%), 16.9% are swung on and put into play, 4.5% are fouled off, 4.0% are swung on and missed, and the rest, 74.6%, are taken. in 1068 PAs so far, Revere's seen 122 2-0 counts and swung 41 times. We can assume 5.0 of those were balls (26.2% O-swing% / ball rate of 46.6% x 41). Of the 36.0 strikes swung on, 27.3 were put in play, 7.3 were fouled off, 1.4 were whiffed.

There is an easy fix to this. Due to Revere's extreme contact proficiency,it is more beneficial for him to simply stop swinging when he gets ahead in the count, and avoid terminating his at-bat prematurely by putting a ball in play. Specifically if he avoided swinging on all 2-0, 3-0, and 3-1 counts, I believe he could raise his OBP .040 or .050 points or more overnight. I made some rough calculations to arrive at that conclusion here: How many such counts did he have? Since he has no power, I can't believe he was able to build too many such hitter-friendly counts. 233 counts total in 1064 PAs. Would have been more if he hadn't swung 79 times (and put most of those balls into play). I will have to go through all the math again, but there are a lot of walks he's leaving on the table. He does rake on 2-0 and 3-1 in terms of batting avg but I am convinced that after you account for the probabilities of strike and ball sequences, that Revere is actually having a slight negative effect on his OBP. And then you can further account for the hits he is not sacrificing due to him being still a very effective hitter in 2-1 and 3-2 (though less in 2-2). Again, I will go through the math which factors in his plate discipline and the percentage of non-swinging strikes he is actually seeing, and how these iterations would play out, and probably make another blog post to clarify this hypothesis.

I believe the Rays proprietary defensive scheme has allowed them to "artificially" inflate the market value of their pitchers. While the rest of baseball lags behind, someone will overpay for their pitching talent. Since 2011, only the Nats and A's have outperformed their xFIPs better (xFIP minus ERA). And no one has been more reliant on that defensive scheme than Hellickson (7.3 FDP wins in the last two years). I will be watching this closely, whoever trades for Hellickson, unless they plan on warping into the Rays defensively, is going to get fleeced.