Otto von Ballpark

Rays are promoting Wander Franco for their game Tuesday night. The Rays already have some good infielders, so if Franco hits well, I expect he could take some DH at-bats too (or push other players into DH), reducing their trade interest in Cruz?

As mentioned in the replies, those numbers are likely skewed by incomplete data. There is an effect, but not nearly that pronounced.

It is official: Buxton activated from the IL today. Astudillo has been optioned to make room.

With the exception of Chalmers, none of those guys were on the 40-man to begin the year — all minor league free agents with zero option years left. I think the first 3 were direct COVID-IL replacements. Every team adds and DFAs a few of these types, every year (and especially this year).

I think your timeline is off by a year. Lynn pitched the full 2017 season for the Cardinals, before signing with the Twins in 2018. (His season missed to TJ surgery was 2016.)

The Red Sox got a tangible benefit out of those deals, though. They got to pay less to very good players and lower their luxury tax hit in many contending seasons (and turned it into a few championships). What makes the Bonilla deal so insane is that there was no on-field benefit. Bonilla was cooked (the Mets were actually releasing him when they came up with the deferred salary deal) and there wasn’t even any luxury tax implications that I am aware of. Of course, we know now it was because the Mets owner was involved in some Ponzi scheme, which explains why it wasn’t rational!

It is kind of misleading. Kazmir’s contract ended after 2018 but it had deferred money. It was a $16 mil AAV deal but they only had to pay him $8 mil per year at the time, and the other $8 mil in a future year. Actually reduced the cost / luxury tax impact of the contract for the team (since they could effectively invest that $8 mil and collect interest on it before they had to pay him, and MLB calculates the luxury tax hit on the present-day value rather than the actual dollars). The Kazmir contract certainly didn’t work out well for the Dodgers, but it wasn’t crazy and it’s hard to argue too much with their overall results since 2016..

Nothing stadium or even position specific here. Seems to just be certain batter ball types that were likely outs anyway. And defensive metrics are just estimates of defensive value relative to the average player. You could probably remove every infield pop-up from the data set and it wouldn’t change anyone’s defensive value, because no MLB players are accumulating value above or below the average player from infield pop-ups.

Texas DFA’d Hyeon-jong Yang. You may remember him for striking out 8 Twins in 3.1 IP in early May — the only Rangers victory he pitched in. He struck out only 11 in his other 25.2 innings, across 7 Rangers losses.

And of course, McCullers signed with Houston when they were a clear contender. Twins right now? Not so much.

The Nola and Severino deals are no longer relevant to Berrios, due to the service time difference. McCullers is close -- he signed for 5/85 just 1 year away from FA. Berrios is still a half-season away from that, but he's also ahead of McCullers by some measures -- McCullers's final arb award was $6.5 mil, but Berrios is already at $6.1 mil in his second-to-last year of arb. (Probably because McCullers missed a year-plus due to Tommy John surgery, and has been on the IL most seasons otherwise.) Also, the McCullers deal takes effect in 2022. So including the 2021 arb award, it's more like 6/91.5. So I'd guess the McCullers deal is the baseline, but wouldn't be shocked if Berrios wanted 5/100 right now, or something like 6/110 including his likely 2022 arb salary.

It shouldn't matter -- sounds like it just didn't record some of the easier plays those years. At the MLB level, nobody's metrics are particularly affected either way by those plays. And most metrics use other sources for their data anyway.

No, I think there were more balls that just didn't have angle/direction recorded before 2020 ("untracked batted balls"). So if you look at pre-2020 Statcast data, be aware that it's not complete in that regard.

I think the Twins in particular have a strong interest in associating themselves with the time period around 1987 and 1991, and distancing themselves from the year 2021.

If you follow that thread, the Senior Data Architect for MLBAM chimes in and says there are measurement/classification issues with the data Parker was likely using. (Basically, pre-2020 there were some likely outs which weren't getting their angles/directions recorded correctly by Statcast, so pre-2020 averages based on angle/direction are artificially high. Parker cited proprietary TruMedia data but they were likely using Statcast angles/directions as a source?) Here's the more reliable data, on his recommendation:

Tampa may have extended him super-early though too. And maybe they wouldn't have to trade him quite yet...

It shouldn't be viewed as Happ AND Shoemaker vs Flexen. It should be Shoemaker vs Flexen, really. (Or if you want to say Happ vs Flexen, I'd assume a better option than Happ would have been signed to be the #4). Just looking at #5 starters in this specific circumstance -- with a #6 like Dobnak ready to step in, plus a few prospects -- there isn't a bright line distinction between Shoemaker and Flexen. To the extent that Flexen is more of a wild card in terms of performance, Shoemaker specifically doesn't offer much health/durability to counter that either. (I think Happ does, which is why you'd need to improve the next spot ahead on the rotation to justify swapping him out.) And there's nothing wrong with choosing Shoemaker over Flexen, although our track record with 1 year vet SPs isn't good enough to warrant disqualifying a guy like Flexen either.

No, I meant his overall numbers were good in the others (unlike Shoemaker). Every back-of-the-rotation pitcher has bad non-disaster starts, so it would be unusual to claim otherwise.

I'll just bow out of this tangent by saying you're under-estimating the risk of any back-of-the-rotation options, even on contending teams. Sometimes that's guys like Shoemaker, sometimes it's guys like Colby Lewis, sometimes it could even be a guy like Flexen. The Shoemakers are way more plentiful, but that doesn't mean the Flexens are automatically disqualified from consideration. Shoemaker wasn't a bad option on paper either, so I'm not blaming the front office for too much here, but I hope they are looking at young guys who are successful foreign major league alongside the 1-year vets they've signed so far, when faced with openings like this.

I'm not arguing Flexen is the equal of Mikolas, or even comparing their talent at all -- just that neither was particularly good in their limited pre-Asia MLB innings. The context of the discussion was the claim that no contending team would ever give a guy like Flexen a chance to be their #5 starter. Mikolas is a better pitcher, with the better foreign resume, but that hardly disqualifies Flexen. FWIW, you're quoting FIP for a 1.2 IP season in there, but even the small 3 year totals miss a lot of important context: Mikolas was a college draftee with 4 months of AA/AFL experience, plus a full MLB spring training, before he made his MLB debut in low-leverage relief. And after he struggled with control a bit, walking 9 in his first 13.2 innings, he got to go to AAA for awhile before coming back up to MLB (again in low-leverage relief). Flexen, on the other hand, was a HS draftee with a month and a half of AA experience -- no AFL, no MLB spring training -- before he was thrown into an MLB rotation for an extended period. Again, not comparing their talent or equating their performances, but if you had to explain why one of these guys had a longer struggle with outlier control/performance issues during their early MLB exposure, it wouldn't be too difficult. That's why samples like these aren't disqualifying once you're evaluating their performance from another professional league. Of course, if anyone thought Flexen was really a 7.1 BB/9 pitcher like he was with the Mets (after 2.9 in the minors, and 2.3 in KBO), they shouldn't have touched him with a 39 and a half foot pole! But I'm guessing his KBO experience addressed that concern quite a bit, even if there were (and still are) remaining performance questions.

Again, no one claimed he's front of the rotation material. He signed for 2 years, $4.75 mil total. But at that price, I think he was an intriguing alternative to signing Shoemaker at #5. (Also, while KBO is not close to MLB talent-wise, I think it's encouraging to see a young guy go into a very unfamiliar environment and succeed like that, perhaps more than similar success at AAA in America. Obviously you'll want some scouting to back up the numbers too.) Never claimed that, of course. Just noted the similarity to Shoemaker's disaster start, yet the gulf between the overall lines. He may well falter in the future -- most back of the rotation pitchers do, at some point -- but I think it was an interesting, low-risk signing, the kind the Twins may have to explore if they can't figure out what they are doing wrong identifying/coaching MLB veteran SP on 1-year deals.

Mikolas did not have "success in MLB prior". He was a mop-up reliever with an empty ERA (bad FIP) as a rookie, but predictably struggled following. He was also a reliever in the minors. Mikolas had more success overseas, but Flexen was cheaper and younger coming back too. Flexen also has a strong argument that he was rushed -- promoted straight to MLB after only 7 AA starts as a rookie, when he logged the bulk of his bad MLB performance in front of the worse defense in MLB by far. Only got 1 MLB start each of the next 2 years. (And his AAA experience those 2 years were under poor conditions for pitchers -- the PCL and the "rabbit ball" 2019 IL.) As for not being the norm, there aren't many MLB pitchers who go to Asia successfully then come back. So the rarity is probably more of a sample size issue, rather than contending teams rejecting such pitchers in favor of Shoemaker types. Thad Levine's 2010 Rangers brought back Colby Lewis from Japan and went to the WS the next 2 years. Again, no one is claiming Flexen is top of the rotation material but fan reaction would not have been materially different to him taking Shoemaker's spot at #5, with Dobnak at #6. There are other ways to augment a staff, of course, but this FO doesn't look like it's having much success on the 1-year veteran deals. Every team brings in creative/upside bullpen options, every year. Ours just universally stunk this year. (As did a few of our less creative options.)

St. Louis brought in Miles Mikolas in 2018 under similar circumstances. I think you underestimate the #5 starter depth that even "teams trying to win the World Series" have to sign every year. The Braves picked up Anibal Sanchez in 2018 but aren't having as much success with Drew Smyly now. Heck, even the Yankees acquired 2 guys for their rotation who barely pitched the last 2 years and they might be dealing with the consequences of that now. Unless you're loaded like the Dodgers, your #5 guy probably has some significant question marks. Shoemaker did too. No one is saying that signing Flexen instead of Shoemaker would have been universally applauded by the fanbase. But it would have represented some creativity / upside risk that perhaps the FO should have been more open too.

If we use ZiPS preseason projections as a proxy for expectations, Brock's list is still pretty accurate although Maeda would be up there. Here's a table of current 2021 fWAR totals, compared to their preseason projected ZiPS WAR (prorated to their current number of innings): Pitcher Actual fWAR ZiPS fWAR Difference Randy Dobnak -0.5 0.38 -0.88 Matt Shoemaker -0.4 0.47 -0.87 J.A. Happ 0.2 0.91 -0.71 Kenta Maeda 0.3 0.97 -0.67 Alex Colome -0.4 0.21 -0.61 Michael Pineda 0.5 0.87 -0.37 Tyler Duffey 0 0.24 -0.24 Derek Law -0.2 0.03 -0.23 Jorge Alcala -0.2 0.00 -0.20 Jose Berrios 1.3 1.47 -0.17 Juan Minaya -0.1 0.00 -0.10 Hansel Robles 0.1 0.16 -0.06 Shaun Anderson 0 0.04 -0.04 Devin Smeltzer 0 0.03 -0.03 Lewis Thorpe 0.2 0.06 0.14 Cody Stashak 0.2 0.05 0.15 Caleb Thielbar 0.3 0.11 0.19 Taylor Rogers 0.8 0.45 0.35 TOTAL 2.1 6.47 -4.37 Of course, WAR is a counting stat and it's going to have a higher scale for starters than relievers, so I think it's far to rank Colomé as worse than Maeda. On the flip side, Rogers has been excellent, and Berrios has been as advertised without missing any starts. (And Stashak has a massive ERA-FIP difference!)