Baseball Prospectus 2014

By Baseball Prospectus

The bestselling annual baseball preview from the smartest analysts in the business Now in its 19th edition, the Baseball Prospectus annual shows once again how it became the industry leader: The 2014 edition includes key stat categories, more controversial player predictions, and the kind of wise, witty baseball commentary that makes this phone-book-thick tome worth reading cover to cover. Baseball Prospectus 2014 provides fantasy players and insiders alike with prescient PECOTA projections, which Sports Illustrated has called "perhaps the game's most accurate projection model." Still, stats are just numbers if you don't see the larger context, and Baseball Prospectus brings together an elite team of analysts to provide the definitive look at all thirty teams—their players, their prospects, and their managers—to explain away flukes, hot streaks, injury-tainted numbers, and park effects. Victory, after all, could come down to choosing between the supposed sleeper and the overrated prospects who won't be able to fool people in the Show like they have down on the farm. Nearly every major-league team has sought the advice of current or former Prospectus writers, and readers of Baseball Prospectus 2014 will understand what all those fans have been raving about. "If you're a baseball fan and you don't know what BP is, you're working in a mine without one of those helmets with the lights on it."—Keith Olbermann "The first time I saw the PECOTA projections, I realized that someone out there understood." —Jeff Luhnow, General Manager, Houston Astros "For me, every year baseball begins with the big, brilliant, beautiful book you are holding in your hands right now."—Joe Posnanski Baseball Prospectus 2013 correctly predicted: *Disappointing performances by Albert Pujols, Dan Haren, Michael Bourn, Justin Upton, and Tommy Hanson. *Breakouts by Paul Goldschmidt, Freddie Freeman, Kyle Seager, Matt Moore, Shelby Miller, and Jason Kipnis, as well as bounceback seasons from Jayson Werth and Shin-Soo Choo. *That Max Scherzer would be a Cy Young contender and Michael Wacha ace-in-waiting for the Cardinals. *That Wil Myers would be a middle-of-the-order bat for Tampa Bay and Josh Donaldson would finally win the Rich Harden trade for the A's. *That CC Sabathia's velocity drop could be a problem, but Felix Hernandez's would not be. *That Joaquin Benoit, Kenley Jansen, and Koji Uehara were better bullpen bets than pre-season closer picks Bruce Rondon, Brandon League, and Joel Hanrahan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781118459263

Book preview

Baseball Prospectus 2014

Baseball

Prospectus

2014

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Baseball

Prospectus

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2014

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE 2014

Edited by Sam Miller and Jason Wojciechowski

R.J. Anderson • Bill Baer • Craig Brown • Ken Funck • Ryan Ghan • Craig

Goldstein • Chris Jaffe • Andrew Koo • Ben Lindbergh • Rob McQuown • Ian

Miller • Jack Moore • Adam J. Morris • Tommy Rancel • Daniel Rathman • Bret

Sayre • Adam Sobsey • Paul Sporer • Matt Sussman • Doug Thorburn • Will

Woods • Geoff Young

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Wiley General Trade, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company

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[phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ISBN 978-1-118-45923-2 (pbk); 978-1-118-45926-3 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

CONTENTS

Foreword, Gabe Kapler

Preface, Sam Miller & Jason Wojciechowski

Statistical Introduction

Teams

Arizona Diamondbacks

Atlanta Braves

Baltimore Orioles

Boston Red Sox

Chicago White Sox

Chicago Cubs

Cincinnati Reds

Cleveland Indians

Colorado Rockies

Detroit Tigers

Houston Astros

Kansas City Royals

Los Angeles Angels

Los Angeles Dodgers

Miami Marlins

Milwaukee Brewers

Minnesota Twins

New York Mets

New York Yankees

Oakland Athletics

Philadelphia Phillies

Pittsburgh Pirates

San Diego Padres

San Francisco Giants

Seattle Mariners

St. Louis Cardinals

Tampa Bay Rays

Texas Rangers

Toronto Blue Jays

Washington Nationals

The Unwritten Essay, Grant Brisbee

N=1, Russell A. Carleton

The Metagame is Far From Solved, Dan Brooks

The Baseball Prospectus Top 101 Prospects, Jason Parks

Team Name Codes

PECOTA Leaderboards

Contributors

Acknowledgments

Index

Foreword

By Gabe Kapler, retired MLB player, Fox Sports 1 MLB analyst

Every morning when I rise and read the Baseball Prospectus Newsletter over a cup of coffee and a plate full of farm fresh scrambled eggs and mushrooms, I'm reminded how lucky I am. I'm grateful for the culinary experience of course, but just as importantly, for the opportunity to digest content that has encouraged me for quite some time now to think about the sport I love in a deeper, more thorough fashion.

Most baseball fans still get their sports news from the morning newspaper—or, more accurately, some online adaptation of the morning newspaper—with an RBIs-and-Ws type of approach to the game. In doing so, these fans are missing an opportunity to truly connect with what happened in each game, and to understand what’s likely to happen in the next one. Folks who actually make decisions in the sport—the game within the game—are utilizing different, more advanced, and ever-changing metrics. They’re evaluating players, teams and other executives in ways that a box score and a wire report can no longer decode. Baseball Prospectus is not just a slightly smarter newspaper. It’s the window into the world of these executives. In fact, many of the front office minds I’m alluding to use Baseball Prospectus as a resource or as a jumping-off point to formulate ideas.

In 2007, just before I embarked on a season as minor-league manager in the Red Sox’ system, Boston General Manager Ben Cherington gave me a study on the sacrifice bunt and how it was being misused at the major-league level. I laid down 20 sacrifice bunts in my playing career; being able and willing to do the little things contributed to my consistent employment as a player. It would have been very easy for me to discard Cherington’s information. That would have been an ego-driven approach, based on the rigid belief that because I played the game at a high level, I had little left to learn.

Many players have chosen that route. Executives in the game (like Cherington) have moved on from old-school statistics to newer metrics when it comes to player analysis, yet most of the players themselves have not. But that stance would have left me stagnant while more open-minded individuals continued their growth. We shouldn’t want to be left behind, and I’m driven not to be. In my quest, I’m led by the ingenuity and substance of publications like the one you hold.

I am now a sponge dabbing at BP’s content. Because I know that I need assistance, I’m able to learn from Baseball Prospectus why FIP is often a better indicator of a pitcher’s future performance than WHIP; about which Rule 5 draftees (I’m talking about you, Brian Moran) are most likely to stick with their new clubs and make an impact; I can confidently make predictions about the coming season, thanks to BP’s game simulators. But, more importantly, I’ve discovered something bigger about baseball knowledge: I’ve learned that finding good teammates who can inspire intellectual growth is essential. You can only attempt to master baseball by listening intently, by absorbing and by never thinking you've got it licked.

After my eggs and mushrooms over BP’s morning newsletter, I work out to BP’s Effectively Wild podcast, with Sam Miller and Ben Lindbergh. It’s an odd choice—what could be invigorating about these guys’ informative nonsense, right?—but I laugh and sweat along with them, and am moved not just by the content but the deliberate, thoughtful delivery. The information is unique and intricate, as is all of BP's content. My opinion and intelligence as a reader is respected—and not just because I was a mediocre MLB baseball player for a long time. Quite simply, I feel like if I was in the room with these guys, I'd be included in the discussion.

Like the podcast and the web site, the book you hold in your hand makes content king. The writing style is thoughtfully unapologetic, open-mindedly direct.

Most importantly, it’s refreshingly counter to what else is out there.

Preface

Just before the 1996 season began, just before Mariano Rivera the failed starter with a 5.51 ERA turned into Mariano Rivera the greatest relief pitcher of all time, Baseball Prospectus sent out its first preseason annual, 51 words of which were devoted to Rivera: Skinny swingman who has good control of the corners of the strike zone. His K rate seemed to jump up a little as of late, and if that's development rather than a fluke, this kid could really be something special. Looks way too skinny to be durable, but you never know.

Considering Rivera’s pedigree—low-bonus signee out of a country that had never produced an All-Star pitcher; 26-year-old already confined to relief work; never appeared on a top-100 prospects list; as yet no fall-to-your-knees-and-weep cut fastball—you have to give that 1996 author an awful lot of credit. The comment nails Rivera’s strength (the ability to avoid the middle of the plate) and his weakness (he wouldn’t hold up as a starter), but what leaps out is the borderline prescient could really be something special. Naturally, the comment doesn't predict two exceptional, game-changing decades, but who ever can?

This year sees the 19th Baseball Prospectus player comment for Rivera. Each year, his story changed a bit: We called him quite possibly the most important player in the game in 1997 but worried that something very bad is happening in 1999, were skeptical that a pitcher [can] survive on one pitch [even] if that one pitch is perhaps the best in baseball in 2000, called it patently absurd when folks wanted to save him room in the Hall of Fame in 2001, conceded in 2004 that Rivera is, without question, the best one-pitch pitcher ever, regretted that by 2006 there were no longer any superlatives left with which to garland Rivera, found one we'd missed by calling him the closest thing baseball has to Fred Astaire in 2009, called the obvious first-ballot Hall of Famer beyond encomiums (which is itself arguably an encomium) in 2011, and, finally, this year, find ourselves getting misty in an uncharacteristically sentimental sendoff.

Of course, this isn't a book about Rivera; we invoke him as synecdoche. All these comments, ever changing, ever adapting, always attempting to learn from themselves, don’t just give us a chronology of one great career. They give us a chronology of the great career of Baseball Prospectus itself.

There's a simplicity to that first Rivera comment. Facts, judgment. In the years that follow, the tone gets more incisive, the judgments more certain. As baseball’s amateur sabermetricians consolidated their findings during an extraordinary period of research, they could quite fairly claim authority arising from being years ahead of the sport’s conventional wisdom.

In 2000, the word I disappears. Sabermetrics had coalesced from a collection of message board denizens into a semi-organized movement (political, religious, ideological, revolutionary), and the comments began to reflect the growth of a new conventional wisdom—one based on data, one upending the sport.

By the end of the decade, sabermetrics was no longer upending the sport; it was intrinsic in the sport. The comments became self-aware. One revisited all the superlatives that had been bestowed on Rivera in BP comments through the years. (Sound familiar?) Another tweaked a classic piece of sabermetric jargon (coined by John Sickels) to turn a joke about Rivera's encroaching fragility: Rivera is slowly turning into the world’s greatest variation on the LOOGY, the CLOOGY (CLoser Only Occasionally Guy).

Always learning, always changing. So what is the state of BP writing in 2014, for Rivera’s final comment? It incorporates scouting far more than BP did in the culture-war years. The input of BP’s sizeable scouting bureau should be apparent in comments about prospects. Where scouts were once (unfairly) a punchline in sabermetric circles, we now appreciate that good information comes from a variety of sources and disciplines, and good conclusions come from incorporating all of them. (And scouting, it should be said, grows to use new data and tools as well. It was not so long ago that old-school scouts came to games equipped only with their eyes and scorned these new kids with their radar guns and stopwatches.)

BP is also not as snarky as the early years. Back then, sabermetrics were outside the game, marginalized while entrenched baseball executives often operated with incomplete information and poor processes. The former isn’t true at all anymore (no fewer than three BP staffers have been hired by teams since last year’s Annual) and the latter can be confined to a few stubborn cases, if that. That’s not to say teams don’t make mistakes, or that we don’t mock them as mercilessly as the situation calls for. It means merely that we start with the presumption of competence, not idiocy, and we appreciate that teams have access to information we don’t.

Absence of snark does not mean absence of humor: We guarantee you no fewer than 500 jokes in this book. (We'll give you one in this paragraph for free.) Baseball remains an awkward game, an absurd game, a game that gives us hours of down time to appreciate that awkwardness and absurdity. It’s a game with the best names, the highest-hiked pants, the strangest injuries, the most aggressively anachronistic scribes and the most self-serious rigidity to mock. It also has the Marlins.

Finally, we promise you good writing. We—the editors of this book—are both decidedly second-generation BPers. We discovered Baseball Prospectus in our formative years and have bookshelves bent under the weight of previous Annuals. We learned to write and we learned to think from reading these books, and we consider the form something unique and special. All of that goes for nearly everybody who contributed to this year’s Annual. A great deal of effort has gone into stocking this book with the best writers and the best writing possible.

To that end, and prompted by our obligation to be as critical of ourselves as we are of others, we’ve made one big change to this year’s book. For the first time, the essays are bylined. As you'll see from those bylines, we’ve gone outside our immediate BP family to build a staff of amazing writers bringing a bevy of styles and perspectives to the essays. We have announcers and beat writers, bloggers and book authors, even a few writers who have made their names in fields other than baseball. We were elated when each of the 30 said yes, and we gave them latitude to approach the essays in whatever style they felt best. This is a more demanding assignment than it might seem, but they flourished with that freedom.

We’re immensely proud of the book you’re holding, we're proud to continue the distinguished tradition established by the 18 Annuals that came before and, most of all, we're proud to be part of the extraordinarily talented and dedicated BP family that comes together to make this book a reality. The authors on the title page and above the essays are only the beginning. The book would, quite simply, not exist without Rob McQuown taking charge on technical issues, the stats backbone created and shepherded by Colin Wyers (who was rudely stolen from us midprocess by the Astros) and Harry Pavlidis, and the general leadership of Dave Pease and Joe Hamrahi, who have quietly steered BP from a rude upstart kicking up an outsider fuss to a force to be reckoned with. Bill Skelton, Ryan Lind, Andrew Koo and Stuart Wallace provided valuable assistance, as did Jason Parks and his scouting team, as did Dan Brooks and BrooksBaseball.net, as did Eric Nelson and his expert steering.

The book and the site owe debts of gratitude to many others who help us grow and improve: Cory Schwartz, Jeff Volk, Dinn Mann, Marissa Fish and Jim Jenks at MLB Advanced Media; Jerry Ford, Brad Clement, Patrick Ebert, Darron Sutton, Steve Griffin, Tyson Kim, Jason Gerst, Todd Gold, David Rawnsley, Kendall Rogers, Taylor McCollough, Frankie Piliere and Allan Simpson at Perfect Game USA; Mike Ferrin, Chris Eno, Olivia Branco and Zach Wilt at SiriusXM; A.J. Hinch, John Coppolella, Michael Girsch, Dan Kantrovitz, Jon Daniels, Don Welke, Ned Colletti, Brian Minniti, Adam Cromie, Jeff Luhnow, Kevin Goldstein, Mike Fast, Sig Mejdal, John Tumminia, Dennis Sheehan, Chris Calo, Mike Groopman, Jeff Evans, Dustin Morse, Steve Grande, Shannon Forde and John Dever with MLB teams; and Dan Evans, Blake Rhodes, Gary Gillette, Pete Palmer, Kevin Kerrane, Jason Martinez, C.J. Nitkowski, Ken Rosenthal, Chuck Fox, Shaun Clancy, Angela Parker, Erica Brooks, Amanda Rykoff, Bill Mitchell, District Lines and Yardbarker.

But you opened this book for the words themselves, not our words about the words. Go.

Sam Miller & Jason Wojciechowski

December 26, 2013

Statistical Introduction

Why don't you get your nose out of those numbers and watch a game?

It's a false dilemma, of course. I would wager that Baseball Prospectus readers watch more games than the typical fan. They also probably pay better attention when they do. The numbers do not replace observation, they supplement it. Having the numbers allows you to learn things not readily seen by mere watching, and to keep up on many more players than any one person could on their own.

So this book doesn't ask you to choose between the two. Instead, we combine numerical analysis with the observations of a lot of very bright people. They won't always agree. Just as the eyes don't always see what the numbers do, the reverse can be true. In order to get the most out of this book, however, it helps to understand the numbers we're presenting and why.

Offense

The core of our offense measurements is True Average, which attempts to quantify everything a player does at the plate—hitting for power, taking walks, striking out and even productive outs—and scale it to batting average. A player with a TAv of .260 is average, .300 exceptional, .200 rather awful.

True Average also accounts for the context a player performs in. That means we adjust it based on the mix of parks a player plays in. Also, rather than use a blanket park adjustment for every player on a team, a player who plays a disproportionate amount of his games at home will see that reflected in his numbers. We also adjust based upon league quality: The average player in the AL is better than the average player in the NL, and True Average accounts for this.

Because hitting runs isn't the entirety of scoring runs, we also look at a player's Baserunning Runs. BRR accounts for the value of a player's ability to steal bases, of course, but also accounts for his ability to go first to third on a single, or advance on a fly ball.

Defense

Defense is a much thornier issue. The general move in the sabermetric community has been toward stats based on zone data, where human stringers record the type of batted ball (grounder, liner, fly ball) and its presumed landing location. That data is used to compile expected outs for comparing a fielder's actual performance.

The trouble with zone data is twofold. First, unlike the sorts of data that we use in the calculation of the statistics you see in this book, zone data wasn't made publicly available; the data was recorded by commercial data providers who kept the raw data private, only disclosing it to a select few who paid for it. Second, as we've seen the field of zone-based defensive analysis open up—more data and more metrics based upon that data coming to light—we see that the conclusions of zone-based defensive metrics don't hold up to outside scrutiny. Different data providers can come to very different conclusions about the same events. And even two metrics based upon the same data set can come to radically different conclusions based upon their starting assumptions—assumptions that haven't been tested, using methods that can't be duplicated or verified by outside analysts.

The quality of the fielder can bias the data: Zone-based fielding metrics will tend to attribute more expected outs to good fielders than bad fielders, irrespective of the distribution of batted balls. Scorers who work in parks with high press boxes will tend to score more line drives than scorers who work in parks with low press boxes.

Our FRAA incorporates play-by-play data, allowing us to study the issue of defense at a granular level, without resorting to the sorts of subjective data used in some other fielding metrics. We count how many plays a player made, as well as expected plays for the average player at that position based upon a pitcher's estimated groundball tendencies and the handedness of the batter. There are also adjustments for park and the base-out situations.

Pitching

Of course, how we measure fielding influences how we measure pitching.

Most sabermetric analysis of pitching has been inspired by Voros McCracken, who stated, There is little if any difference among major-league pitchers in their ability to prevent hits on balls hit in the field of play. When first published, this statement was extremely controversial, but later research has by-and-large validated it. McCracken (and others) went forth from that finding to come up with a variety of defense-independent pitching measures.

The trouble is that many efforts to separate pitching from fielding have ended up separating pitching from pitching—looking at only a handful of variables (typically walks, strikeouts, and home runs—the three true outcomes) in isolation from the situation in which they occurred. What we've done instead is take a pitcher's actual results—not just what happened, but when it happened—and adjust it for the quality of a pitcher's defensive support, as measured by FRAA.

Applying FRAA to pitchers in this sense is easier than applying it to fielders. We don't have to worry about figuring out which fielder is responsible for making an out, only identifying the likelihood of an out being made. So there is far less uncertainty here than there is in fielding analysis.

Note that Fair RA means exactly that, , not his earned runs allowed per game. Looking only at earned runs tends over time to overrate three kinds of pitchers:

1. Pitchers who play in parks where scorers hand out more errors. Looking at error rates between parks tells us scorers differ significantly in how likely they are to score any given play as an error (as opposed to an infield hit);

2. Groundball pitchers, because a substantial proportion of errors occur on groundballs; and

3. Pitchers who aren't very good. Good pitchers tend to allow fewer unearned runs than bad pitchers, because good pitchers have more ways to get out of jams than bad pitchers. They're more likely to get a strikeout to end the inning, and less likely to give up a home run.

For a metric that provides a more forward-looking perspective, we have Fielding Independent Pitching, a metric developed independently by Tom Tango and Clay Dreslough that says what a pitcher's expected ERA would be given his walks, strikeouts, and homeruns allowed. FIP is attempting to answer a different question than Fair RA; instead of saying how well a pitcher performed, it tells us how much of a pitcher's performance we think is due to things the pitcher has direct control over. Over time, we see pitchers who consistently over- or underperform their FIPs through some skill that isn't picked up by the rather limited components. FIP may be useful in identifying pitchers who were lucky or unlucky, but some caution must be exercised.

Projection

Of course, many of you aren't turning to this book just for a look at what a player has done, but a look at what a player is going to do—the PECOTA projections.

PECOTA, initially developed by Nate Silver (who has moved on to greater fame as a political analyst), consists of three parts:

1. Major league equivalencies, to allow us to use minor-league stats to project how a player will perform in the majors;

2. Baseline forecasts, which use weighted averages and regression to the mean to produce an estimate of a player's true talent level; and

3. A career path adjustment, which incorporates information on how comparable players' stats changed over time.

Now that we've gone over the stats, let’s go over what's in the book.

The Team Prospectus

The bulk of this book comprises team chapters, with one for each of the 30 major-league franchises. On the first page of each chapter, you will be greeted by a box laying out some key statistics for each team.

Diamondbacks.eps

2013 W-L is exactly as it sounds, the unadjusted tally of wins and losses. Pythag tallies wins and losses on an adjusted basis by taking the runs scored per game (RS/G) and allowed (RA/G) by a team in a season and running them through a version of Bill James' Pythagorean formula refined and developed by David Smyth and Brandon Heipp called Pythagenpat.

A team's runs scored is accompanied by True Average and Baserunning Runs to give a picture of how a team scores its runs. In terms of run-prevention ability, we present a team's TAv against, FIP, and Defensive Efficiency Rating, which is its rate of balls in play turned into outs.

Then we have several measures not directly related to on-field performance. B-Age and P-Age tell us the average age of a team's batters and pitchers, respectively. Salary tells us how much the team cost to put on the field, and Doug Pappas' Marginal Dollars per Marginal Win (M$/MW) tells us how much bang for the buck a team got out of its payroll.

This year we're expanding the annual's coverage of injuries. We count up the number of disabled-list days a team has, as well as the estimated WARP that a team lost in those DL days, to quantify the impact of the specific players who were out of commission.

Position Players

After a bylined opening essay about teach team, each chapter moves onto the player comments, which are written by the Baseball Prospectus team. Each player is listed with the major-league team with which he was employed as of December 25, 2013, meaning that free agents who changed teams after that date will be listed under their previous employer. As an example, take a look at the winter's big offseason prize, Robinson Cano.

The player-specific sections begin with biographical information before moving onto the column headers and actual data. The column headers begin with more standard information like year, team, level (majors or minors, and which level of the minors), and the raw, untranslated tallies found on the back of a baseball card: PA (Plate Appearances), R (Runs), 2B (doubles), 3B (triples), HR (home runs), RBI (runs batted in), BB (walks), SO (strikeouts), SB (stolen bases), and CS (caught stealing).

Following those are the untranslated triple-slash rate statistics: batting average (AVG), on base percentage (OBP), and slugging percentage (SLG). Their slash nickname is derived from the occasional presentation of slash-delimitation, such as noting that Cano hit .314/.383/.516. The slash line is followed by True Average (TAv), which rolls all those things and more into one easy-to-digest number.

BABIP stands for Batting Average on Balls in Play, and is meant to show how well a hitter did when he put the ball in play. An especially low or high BABIP may mean a hitter was especially lucky or unlucky. However, line drive hitters will tend to have especially high BABIPs from season to season; so will speedy hitters who are able to beat out more grounders for base hits.

Next is Baserunning Runs (BRR) which, as mentioned earlier, covers all sorts of baserunning accomplishments, not just stolen bases. Then comes Fielding Runs Above Average; for historical stats, we have the number of games played at each position in parenthesis.

The last column is Wins Above Replacement Player. WARP combines a player's batting runs above average (derived from a player's True Average), BRR, FRAA, an adjustment based upon position played, and a credit for plate appearances based upon the difference between the replacement level (derived from looking at the quality of players added to a team's roster after the start of the season) and the league average.

Pitchers

Now let's look at how pitchers are presented, looking at the American League's reigning Cy Young:

The first line and the YEAR, TM, LVL, and AGE columns are the same as in the hitter's example above. The next set of columns—W (Wins), L (Losses), SV (Saves), G (Games pitched), GS (Games Started), IP (Innings Pitched), H (Hits), HR, BB, SO, BB9, SO9—are the actual, unadjusted cumulative stats compiled by the pitcher during each season.

Next is GB%, which is the percentage of all batted balls that were hit on the ground including both outs and hits. The average GB% for a major league pitcher in 2007 was about 45%; a pitcher with a GB% anywhere north of 50% can be considered a good groundball pitcher. As mentioned above, this is based upon the observation of human stringers and can be skewed based upon a number of factors. We've included the number as a guide, but please approach it skeptically.

BABIP is the same statistic as for batters, but often tells you more in the case of pitchers, since most pitchers have very little control over their batting average on balls in play. A high BABIP is most likely due to a poor defense or bad luck rather than a pitcher's own abilities, and may be a good indicator of a potential rebound. A typical league-average BABIP is around .295–.300.

Robinson Cano 2B

Born: 10/22/1982 Age: 31

Bats: L Throws: R Height: 6’ 0’’ Weight: 210

Breakout: 0% Improve: 42% Collapse: 1%

Attrition: 1% MLB: 99%

Comparables:

Chase Utley, Aramis Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero

WHIP and ERA are common to most fans, with the former measuring the number of walks and hits allowed on a per-inning basis while the latter prorates runs allowed on a nine innings basis. Neither is translated or adjusted in any way.

Fair RA (FRA) has been gone into in some depth above, and is the basis of WARP for pitchers. Incorporating play-by-play data allows us to set different replacement levels for starting pitchers and relievers. Relief pitchers have several advantages over starters: they can give their best effort on every pitch, and hitters have fewer chances to pick up on what they're doing. That means that it's significantly easier to find decent replacements for relief pitchers than it is for starting pitchers, and that's reflected in the replacement level for each.

We also credit starters for pitching deeper into games and saving the pen—a starting pitcher who's able to go deep in to a game (while pitching effectively) allows a manager to keep his worst relievers in the pen and bring his best relievers out to preserve a lead.

All of this means that WARP values for relief pitchers (especially closers) will seem lower than what we've seen in the past—and may conflict with how we feel about relief aces coming in and saving the game. Saves give extra credit to the closer for what his teammates did to put him in a save spot to begin with; WARP is incapable of feeling excitement over a successful save, and judges them dispassionately.

PECOTA

Both pitchers and hitters have PECOTA projections for next season, as well as a set of biographical details that describe the performance of that player's comparable players according to PECOTA.

The 2014 line is the PECOTA projection for the player at the date we went to press. Note that the player is projected into the league and park context as indicated by his team abbreviation. All PECOTAs represent a player's projected major league performance. The numbers beneath the player's name—Breakout, Improve, Collapse, and Attrition—are also a part of PECOTA. These estimate the likelihood of changes in performance relative to a player's previously established level of production, based upon the performance of the comparable players:

• Breakout Rate is the percent chance that a player's production will improve by at least 20 percent relative to the weighted average of his performance over his most recent seasons.

• Improve Rate is the percent chance that a player's production will improve at all relative to his baseline performance. A player who is expected to perform just the same as he has in the recent past will have an Improve Rate of 50 percent.

• Collapse Rate is the percent chance that a position player's equivalent runs produced per PA will decline by at least 25 percent relative to his baseline performance over his past three seasons.

• Attrition Rate operates on playing time rather than performance. Specifically, it measures the likelihood that a player's playing time will decrease by at least 50 percent relative to his established level.

Breakout Rate and Collapse Rate can sometimes be counterintuitive for players who have already experienced a radical change in their performance levels. It's also worth noting that the projected decline in a given player's rate performances might not be indicative of an expected decline in underlying ability or skill, but rather something of an anticipated correction following a breakout season. MLB% is the percentage of similar players who played at the major league level in the relevant season.

The final pieces of information, are his three highest scoring comparable players as determined by PECOTA. Occasionally, a player's top comparables will not be representative of the larger sample that PECOTA uses. All comparables represent a snapshot of how the listed player was performing at the same age as the current player, so if a 23-year-old hitter is compared to Sammy Sosa, he's actually being compared to a 23-year-old Sammy Sosa, not the decrepit Orioles version of Sosa, nor to Sosa's career as a whole.

Managers

Each team chapter ends with a manager's comment and data breaking down his tactical tendencies. Though it's often difficult to isolate a manager's contribution to a team, comparing specific data modeled after well-documented plays and styles to the league average helps determine what a manager likes to do, even if we are still unable to translate that information into actual wins and losses.

Max Scherzer

Born: 7/27/1984 Age: 29

Bats: R Throws: R Height: 6’ 3’’ Weight: 220

Breakout: 16% Improve: 42% Collapse: 30%

Attrition: 3% MLB: 97%

Comparables:

Jake Peavy, Josh Beckett, Tim Lincecum

Following the year, team and the actual record, Pythag +/- lets us know by how many games the team under- or overperformed its Pythagenpat record. That isn't necessarily a reflection of the manager, but it does tell us how well a team performed compared to a somewhat less noisy assessment of the underlying talent.

Pitching staff usage follows, first with AVG PC reporting the average pitch count of his starting pitchers; 100+P and 120+P track the number of games in which the starters exceeded certain pitch thresholds. QS is the number of quality starts —a start of at least six innings and with no more than three runs allowed —that a manager received from his starting pitchers. BQS is Blown Quality Starts, a Baseball Prospectus stat that measures games in which the starter delivered a quality start through six innings before losing it in the seventh inning or later. That said, a Blown Quality Start is not necessarily an indictment of a manager's abilities or tactics —a number of factors, ranging from excellent offensive support to extremely poor bullpen support, can lead a manager to leave his starter in a game after he's thrown six quality innings. Conversely, the decision by a manager to bank quality starts by restricting his starters to only six innings can have downsides as well, as it increases the bullpen's workload and gives it more opportunities to blow games in which the starter was cruising.

The next stats in the manager table tally how many pitching changes a manager made over the course of the season (REL) and how many times the reliever called upon didn't allow any runners, his own or inherited, to score (REL w Zero R).

Bequeathed runners also count against REL w Zero R, meaning that relievers who exit with runners on that subsequently score prevent a manager from padding his tally here. Concluding the pitching section, IBB is simply the number of intentional walks the manager ordered during the given season, which can be a mark of managerial strategy so long as outlying intentional-walk recipients such as Miguel Cabrera are accounted for.

Managers do more than manage pitchers, however; their usage of a bench can lead to added or lost performance. Subs lets us know the number of defensive replacements the manager employed throughout the regular season, while PH, PH avg, and PH HR report the offensive statistics of pinch-hitters called upon. We then turn to the so-called small-ball tactics, starting with the running game. The manger's aggressiveness on the bases is broken down by successful steals of second and third base (SB2, SB3) and times caught (CS2, CS3). We also provide the number of sacrifices a team attempted (SAC Att) and their success rate (SAC %). Be sure to keep in mind the differences between leagues as NL sacrifice attempts are greatly inflated by the fact that pitchers bat. To correct for this, we list the number of times a manager got a successful sacrifice from a position paler (POS SAC), which allows for comparisons between the two leagues. We finish up with Squeeze, which counts the number of successful squeeze plays the team executed over the season. Finally, we have a couple of statistics that attempt to measure the manager's hit-and-run tactics. Swing is the number of times a hitter swung at a pitch while the runners were in motion, while In Play reflects how many times hitters swung and made contact while those runners were off to the races. Granted, swings on steal attempts do not always translate to hit-and-run attempts, but managers who greatly deviate from the average can be assumed to be staunch proponents or opponents of the strategy.

PECOTA Leaderboards

As a result of the way it weights previous seasons, PECOTA can tend to appear bullish on players coming off a bad year and bearish on players coming off a great year. And because we list the 50% percentile projections–the middle of the range the system thinks this player is capable of producing–it rarely predicts any player will hit 40 home runs or strike out 200 batters. At the end of this book, though, we’ve ranked the top players according to their projections. It’s often as helpful to know who the system thinks will be the top second baseman as what his actual stats are likely to be.

MANAGER: John Gibbons

Arizona Diamondbacks

By Nick Piecoro

For at least the past decade, baseball has been moving toward an age of uniformity. Front offices have gotten smarter, they’ve gotten smarter in a lot of the same ways and they all seem to be using those smarts in ways that are readily apparent. Every year, fewer teams make crazy decisions. Both sides of most trades seem defensible to the reasonable onlooker. Prospects are more properly valued, perhaps to the point of being overvalued. Managers’ in-game styles are becoming harder to differentiate.

This is all true for the vast majority of baseball’s 30 teams. The Arizona Diamondbacks do not appear to reside within the vast majority. This makes them a fascinating team to follow. It also can make them a confusing team to follow. It’s not that the Diamondbacks aren’t as smart as everybody else—that may or may not be the case, the same as with any of the other 29 clubs—it’s that they seem to give exactly zero effs about whether everyone thinks they are.

They often seem to trade players when their values are at the lowest, and they don’t seem to care if they get back pennies on the dollar so long as they land the guys they want. They did it with Justin Upton and Trevor Bauer and Chris Young two offseasons ago and with Ian Kennedy during last season and then with Tyler Skaggs and Adam Eaton in December. They’ve become known as the team that values character over talent. Their in-game management can be unusual, too, evidenced by their atrocious stolen-base success rate; while the rest of baseball has become more calculating on the bases, the Diamondbacks have become more reckless.

diamondbacks.eps

They enter 2014 at something of an organizational crossroads. They have finished exactly .500 each of the past two seasons—one more and they’ll officially be threediocre—leading club ownership to decline 2015 and 2016 contract options for General Manager Kevin Towers and manager Kirk Gibson. Owner Ken Kendrick told MLB.com that it’s important for them to go out and prove themselves once again.

Their leadership’s potential lame-duck status will frame everything that happens with the Diamondbacks in 2014. And that means things could get even more interesting than normal. Already, the Diamondbacks can be sort of emo as an organization, starting at the top with Kendrick, an outspoken owner who sounds like a fan when he goes on local radio shows and complains about his team. Then there’s Towers, who proudly embraces his nickname of Gunslinger, which former Padres owner Jeff Moorad bestowed upon him pejoratively for his lack of a strategic approach. The Diamondbacks tend to act swiftly and decisively in most respects, but particularly when it comes to jettisoning an underperforming player they’re tired of watching struggle.

It can, in fact, be hard to find strategy in some of the Gunslinger’s moves. One day, he pulled the trigger on an Upton trade that would have netted him a package of prospects had Upton not exercised his no-trade clause. Two weeks later, instead of getting a younger, cheaper collection of players, Towers dealt Upton for a package fronted by a 29-year-old infielder one year away from free agency. In June 2011, the Diamondbacks drafted Bauer and gushed about him, eccentricities and all, saying they wouldn’t ask him to change a thing. Eighteen months later, the club dealt Bauer, who was pretty much exactly the guy he made himself out to be. That brings us to Didi Gregorius, the shortstop the Diamondbacks acquired for Bauer whom Towers said reminded him of a young Derek Jeter. A year later, Gregorius’ name was popping up in trade rumors. One year they’re talking about wanting to get a more contact-oriented lineup that’s less dependent on power and the next they’re looking to land a power bat.

"They’re like Sybil, you know, the story about the schizophrenic lady, a rival executive said. You don’t know what they’re going to do. What exactly is the thought process there? There’s areas where they have interesting players and have a surplus, but what’s the plan to bring it into balance?"

Executives with other teams often are surprised by the moves the Diamondbacks make, many of which seem based on the whole character-over-talent thing. To be clear, it’s not that the Diamondbacks don’t have talented players. They do. And character doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s that they want guys who play the game a certain way. They want gritty dirtballs. They want guys that are more Lenny Dykstra than Garret Anderson. They want guys who play more like the way their manager played. It’s what prompted Towers, during a radio interview in October, to say he wanted his pitchers to own the inner half of the plate, adding that he wanted them to operate with an eye for an eye mentality. Like we said, they’re a little emo.

Of course, the Diamondbacks aren’t the only club that occasionally makes people scratch their heads. The Philadelphia Phillies do this often. So do the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals. But some of the Diamondbacks’ moves make folks wonder about the way they reach their decisions. Take their acquisition of reliever Heath Bell in October 2012. The Diamondbacks agreed to take on $13 million of the remaining $21 million on Bell’s contract. Were Bell a free agent coming off his ugly year with the Marlins, does he get anywhere near $13 million? Of course not. And yet somehow the Diamondbacks thought this was a fair deal, making you wonder about the process being employed. Was there a person in the room banging on the table, wondering why they’re about to do that deal? Do they have too many like-minded executives? Are people afraid to speak up in the room? Do they even have a room?

In fairness, many of the moves that are widely panned in the moment by the baseball twitterati are actually more than defensible after the fact. A year later, the Upton trade doesn’t look like the disaster many had predicted—although they did go into the offseason looking for more power—and Gregorius probably has more value than Bauer. Just because the Diamondbacks appear to change directions like a pinball doesn’t mean they’re always going in the wrong direction. Everyone knows how unpredictable and fast-changing baseball can be. Maybe Towers, with his Blink-like ability to make spur-of-the-moment decisions, actually benefits from his lack of sticktoitiveness. Instead of stubbornly waiting around for a player he had believed in to perform, Towers isn’t afraid to go straight to Plan B.

He can put a deal together very, very quickly, said a scout with an American League team. He’s far more flexible than our guy is. We move very slowly. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong. Andrew Friedman is the same way. He’s slow with everything. That’s why they make all their deals in the offseason.

Towers’ time in Arizona includes some definite high points. His bullpen makeover was a big reason the Diamondbacks won the division in 2011. His acquisition of Aaron Hill looks like a stroke of genius; Hill’s .862 OPS with the Diamondbacks is the 19th-best in the majors since the trade, better than Carlos Beltran, Shin-Soo Choo, Billy Butler. Towers acquired highly effective groundball machine Brad Ziegler for next to nothing. And last spring Towers smartly extended Paul Goldschmidt, giving the slugging first baseman a deal that would have cost perhaps $100 million more had he waited another year.

But some of his quickly conceived deals haven’t worked out great for the Diamondbacks. They went from pursuing Hiroki Kuroda to signing Jason Kubel seemingly overnight, the Kubel deal being finalized while Towers was vacationing with his wife in Bruges. A year later, they signed outfielder Cody Ross, getting a deal in place literally the day after the team first made contact with him. Kubel was designated for assignment in the second year of his deal. After a slow start offensively, Ross had begun to turn his season around when he went down with a scary hip injury in August. With no recent injury comps in baseball, people were left wondering if he’ll return to anything close to the player he was before.

Kubel and Ross were just two of several Diamondbacks players to see their value take a significant hit in 2013. Catcher Miguel Montero regressed both offensively and defensively. Starting pitchers Trevor Cahill and Brandon McCarthy battled injuries and ineffectiveness. Kennedy pitched his way out of town. Skaggs’ velocity remained AWOL.

And yet the Diamondbacks were still kind of/sort of in the hunt for the playoffs. Granted, their version of contention only existed thanks to the dual wild card era, but still. Goldschmidt nearly won the MVP. Patrick Corbin pitched like an ace for most of the year. Wade Miley had another solid year. And they could argue that the Great Grit Experiment might have been a success had everyone stayed healthy, namely Adam Eaton and Hill, two of their projected top-of-the-order hitters who missed big chunks of the season.

So, yeah, it wasn’t all bad. And if a few things go their way next season—Mark Trumbo rakes, the bullpen and rotation improve, etc.—the Diamondbacks might be able to get on the right side of the .500 mark again. For years, the Diamondbacks survived in the National League West with a mid-range payroll in part because their competition was too broke to do anything but dumpster dive. But with the Dodgers nouveau riche, the Diamondbacks’ task has become tougher, particularly this year, with their budget tighter and their need to win more immediate. It raises questions, such as: Will that desperation to win—and thus preserve Towers and Gibson’s jobs—lead to deals with long-term value inequality? Or did we already see examples of that when Skaggs and Eaton were dealt for Trumbo or when third base prospect Matt Davidson was unloaded for reliever Addison Reed?

It sure seems as though Gibson is on thin ice. The team remade his coaching staff—to what extent he was on board with the changes is unclear—and there’s a sense that a sluggish start could mean trouble for him. His players don’t seem crazy about him, but that could just be the sort of hot/cold treatment that runs parallel to a team’s win/loss record. Some say he doesn’t communicate well enough and that he juggles his lineup too frequently. But when it comes to the latter charge, a manager who constantly changes his lineup is a mad genius when he’s winning or a micromanaging tinkerer when he’s losing.

Gibson’s insistence on aggressive baserunning despite continued failure from his players has been strange. Even stranger have been the comments from the front office about him. In August, Kendrick said Gibson was relatively new as a big-league manager. Gibson has 3 1/2 years experience as a manager—more time on the job than John Farrell—plus another six as a bench coach, not to mention his 17-year playing career. In their own estimation, the Diamondbacks have underachieved relative to expectations for two consecutive seasons. They’ve already swapped out the majority of Gibson’s original 2011 coaching staff, meaning that if things go awry again there aren’t many places left to assign blame—or at least argue that a new voice is needed—other than the manager himself.

But in the end, it’s not the worst time to be a Diamondbacks fan. You can dream. Maybe Goldschmidt repeats. Maybe Archie Bradley becomes the next Jose Fernandez, maybe Matt Stites and Jake Barrett the next Carlos Martinez and Trevor Rosenthal. Maybe everyone stays healthy and the lineup grits and grinds its way to the postseason. But if these things don’t happen, change might be afoot. Either way, they’ll be an interesting team to follow. They always are. Even if they don’t always make sense—or, rather, especially if they don’t make sense.

Nick Piecoro has been the Diamondbacks beat writer for The Arizona Republic since 2007.

HITTERS

Jamie Quirk. Jim Dwyer. Val Picinich. These are the names Blanco, the forever backup catcher, is chasing. The accomplishment? Each of the trio appeared in a record 18 major-league seasons without ever accruing more than 360 plate appearances. Blanco achieved his 16th such season with reserve duty in Seattle and Toronto in 2013. He was awful with the lumber for a second consecutive season, but he offered a competent mitt behind the plate and threw out six of 19 attempted basestealers. Blanco signed up for another year of emergency duty, this time in Arizona, and Quirk and Dwyer (but not Picinich, RIP) will undoubtedly be watching nervously.

During one April at-bat in Triple-A, Campana stole second, third and home. That was the moment baseball reached its Tony Campanian nexus. After briefly poking his head into the Diamondbacks’ outfield in July, he returned for good in late August to backfill Cody Ross’ roster spot; wisely, his manager used him infrequently. A small sample did reveal a better walk rate, and if he can get on base by any means—including asking the pitcher nicely—then that speed can finally be put to good use. Otherwise, he’s limited to full-time pinch-runner, still a cool thing because speed is neat.

One theory for Chavez’s late-career resurgence as a productive part-timer: The real Eric Chavez had a career-ending injury whilst a rogue Eric Chavez impersonator slipped in to fill the void. He had the impression down so well he almost perfectly mimicked his career batting lines, and even went to the disabled list twice like the real Chavez would. That is dedication. This theory breaks down when you factor in that Chavez broke up Yusmeiro Petit’s perfect game bid with two outs in the ninth—a real Eric Chavez impersonator would want to lay low.

The last time the league’s home run leader hit 36 or fewer—as Goldy did—was 1992, when Fred McGriff smacked 35. Goldschmidt is a little beefier than McGriff, with more speed, a better glove, and ... okay forget that comparison. While not a defensive wizard, Goldschmidt stayed wildly active, with 150 more putouts than the next closest first baseman. Factor in his RBI and total base crowns and Goldschmidt emerged as a reliable Big Bat. The big difference in his offense, besides improved patience, was doing righties as mercilessly as he has always done lefties. A shrewd extension will keep him under team control until 2019 when, at just 31 years old, he should still be providing valuable middle-of-the-order muscle.