In “Hardball Retrospective: Evaluating Scouting and Development Outcomes for the Modern-Era Franchises”, I placed every ballplayer in the modern era (from 1901-present) on their original team. Therefore, Nolan Ryan is listed on the Mets roster for the duration of his career while the Expos / Nationals declare Gary Carter and the Marlins claim Josh Beckett. I calculated revised standings for every season based entirely on the performance of each team’s “original” players. I discuss every team’s “original” players and seasons at length along with organizational performance with respect to the Amateur Draft (or First-Year Player Draft), amateur free agent signings and other methods of player acquisition.  Season standings, WAR and Win Shares totals for the “original” teams are compared against the “actual” team results to assess each franchise’s scouting, development and general management skills.

Expanding on my research for the book, the following series of articles will reveal the finest single-season rosters for every Major League organization based on overall rankings in OWAR and OWS along with the general managers and scouting directors that constructed the teams. “Hardball Retrospective” is available in digital format on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, GooglePlay, iTunes and KoboBooks. The paperback edition is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and CreateSpace. Additional information and a discussion forum are offered at TuataraSoftware.com.

Don Daglow (Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball, Earl Weaver Baseball, Tony LaRussa Baseball) contributed the foreword for Hardball Retrospective. The foreword and preview of my book are accessible here.

Terminology

OWAR – Wins Above Replacement for players on “original” teams

OWS – Win Shares for players on “original” teams

OPW% – Pythagorean Won-Loss record for the “original” teams

Assessment

The 1983 St. Louis Cardinals     OWAR: 54.8     OWS: 310     OPW%: .517

GM Bing Devine acquired 73.1% (30/41) of the ballplayers on the 1983 Cardinals roster. Based on the revised standings the “Original” 1983 Cardinals edged the Expos by a single contest while pacing the National League in OWAR and OWS for the second consecutive season.

Jose Cruz (.318/14/92) topped the Senior Circuit with 189 base knocks and registered 30 Win Shares. Terry Kennedy (.284/17/98) and Ted “Simba” Simmons (.308/13/108) shared responsibilities behind the dish. First baseman Keith “Mex” Hernandez earned his sixth straight Gold Glove Award. Larry Herndon (.302/20/92) posted career-bests in batting average, hits, doubles and RBI.

Simmons ranked tenth among catchers according to Bill James in “The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.” In total, eight ballplayers from the 1983 Cardinals roster registered in the “NBJHBA” top 100 rankings including Steve Carlton (15^th-P), Keith Hernandez (16^th-1B), Jose Cruz (29^th-LF), Andy Van Slyke (32^nd-CF), Tom Herr (40^th-2B), Garry Templeton (42^nd-SS) and Terry Kennedy (52^nd-C).

The Redbirds’ rotation featured John Denny (19-6, 2.37), the league-leader in victories and 1983 NL Cy Young Award winner. Steve “Lefty” Carlton tallied 15 wins while striking out a League-leading 275 batsmen. Jerry Reuss contributed a 2.94 ERA along with a 12-11 record. Luis DeLeon saved 13 contests and furnished an ERA of 2.68 with a 1.045 WHIP.

The “Original” 1983 St. Louis Cardinals roster

Honorable Mention

The “Original” 1982 Cardinals           OWAR: 54.7     OWS: 318     OPW%: .552

The majority of the Cardinals teams from 1977-1985 consistently achieved OWAR scores above 40 and/or OWS scores above 300. Due to the roster similarities I have selected the 1992 roster for additional comment.

The “Original” 1992 Cardinals           OWAR: 47.8     OWS: 286     OPW%: .563

Andy Van Slyke (.324/14/89) led the National League with 45 doubles and 199 base knocks while accruing a team-high 35 Win Shares. Van Slyke collected his fifth consecutive Gold Glove Award and placed fourth in the NL MVP balloting. In his second full season Ray Lankford (.293/20/86) nabbed 42 bags and established a career-high with 40 doubles. Terry Pendleton replicated the output from his MVP campaign in ’91, posting a .311 BA with 21 blasts and 105 ribbies. He delivered a League-leading 199 safeties, made his lone All-Star appearance and earned runner-up status in the MVP vote. Lance “One Dog” Johnson swiped 41 bases and topped the circuit with 12 triples. Mike Perez (9-3, 1.84) and Todd Worrell (5-3, 2.11) anchored the bullpen corps.

On Deck

The “Original” 1992 Padres

References and Resources

Baseball America – Executive Database

Baseball-Reference

James, Bill. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. New York, NY.: The Free Press, 2001. Print.

James, Bill, with Jim Henzler. Win Shares. Morton Grove, Ill.: STATS, 2002. Print.

Retrosheet – Transactions Database

Seamheads – Baseball Gauge

Sean Lahman Baseball Archive

Here’s Part 4 of my look at Dave Cameron’s past Trade Value lists. Over the last three write-ups, we’ve gone from Dave’s 2007 rankings way back on USSMariner.com and examined what kind of return teams were getting for their players listed among the top trade assets in the game. We’ve seen young superstars in their prime get dealt, pitchers coming off recent Cy Young seasons shown the door, teams waiting too long to trade their top assets, and even a young stud outfielder shipped off because of makeup concerns. Now it’s time to finish our journey down memory lane with three more trades, all fascinating in their own unique ways.

All trade information was taken from Baseball-Reference.com. For each player, I’ve included next to his name, his age at the time of trade, along with his final year of team control and the amount due for that player including all team options.

2012

23. Justin Upton, 25, controlled through 2015, $38.5 million

• January 24, 2013: Traded by the Arizona Diamondbacks with Chris Johnson to the Atlanta Braves for Brandon Drury (minors), Nick Ahmed, Randall Delgado, Martin Prado and Zeke Spruill.

For Justin Upton, we can do much better in evaluating his trade value than just looking at what Arizona actually received in return. Seattle had made an offer that the Diamondbacks accepted about two weeks before this actual deal went down, and that would’ve been the package, done and done, until Upton himself stepped in and vetoed the whole thing, forcing Kevin Towers to look in a different direction.

The trade that fell through with Seattle would’ve sent prospects Nick Franklin, Charlie Furbush, Stephen Pryor, and Taijuan Walker to Arizona. Let’s look at the pedigree of these guys first.

Furbush was a 26-year-old lefty reliever who had a solid first season out of the bullpen in 2012 after having a disastrous 2011 in the rotation. He wasn’t nothing, as the southpaw struck out 29.1% of hitters he faced in 46.1 innings that year while accumulating 0.9 WAR. In fact, he’s still doing his thing in Seattle even now in 2015, having carved out a niche for himself in the Pacific Northwest.

For the 23rd best trade chip, Jack Zduriencik and his staff were willing to part with a consensus top-20 prospect, another top 100 guy, a solid organizational piece and a decent lefty arm. If this trade had gone through, Walker would have been the highest ranked prospect moved in this exercise (until the very next trade we look at, that is) since the 2007 trade that sent Miguel Cabrera to Detroit and top-10 prospects Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller to Miami. Had Upton not flexed his veto muscles and shot this deal down, Arizona would indeed have done very well for their outfielder, acquiring both quality and quantity.

Be that is it may, Upton did indeed say no, so the Braves swooped in to match the Upton in Arizona with the new shiny free agent acquisition they signed. With three prospects, a young major-league pitcher, and a wily utility veteran, Atlanta acquired Upton and Johnson. Shall we have a look at the minor-leaguers?

Along with these three organizational pieces, Arizona acquired Delgado, who was a top 50 overall prospect two years in a row before 2013, and Prado, the keystone of the package and the National League equivalent to Ben Zobrist. For his rookie season in 2012, Delgado held his own the first time around the league, putting up a 4.09 FIP and 0.9 WAR in 92.2 innings and 17 starts. The control was a bit lacking as his K-BB% was only a mediocre 8.5%, but still, the 22-year-old performed well enough to keep that prospect shine on and be a valuable trade chip for Atlanta.

As a 28-year-old who never had any sort of pedigree in his career, Prado exploded onto the season in 2012, racking up 5.4 WAR as the super utility player that the Braves could plug in anywhere at any time. Unfortunately, he only came with one year of control at the time of the trade, which is in stark contrast to Upton’s three years. It’s this lack of team control that makes me think Arizona’s better deal would’ve been from Seattle, with Walker and Franklin being two strong prospects that the Diamondbacks could’ve really used to get back to their 2011 levels of success.

Instead of what the Mariners offered, the Diamondbacks took on three (much) lesser prospects, a recently graduated pitching prospect, and a breakout player that they could only hold onto for one more year. While they did sign Prado to an extension immediately following the deal, it still doesn’t change the fact that Arizona could’ve done better for Upton, but was unable to because of the outfielder himself.

37. Wil Myers, 21, controlled for six full years after call-up, PreArb – Arb3

• December 9, 2012: Traded by the Kansas City Royals with Patrick Leonard (minors), Mike Montgomery and Jake Odorizzi to the Tampa Bay Rays for a player to be named later, Wade Davis and James Shields. The Tampa Bay Rays sent Elliot Johnson (February 12, 2013) to the Kansas City Royals to complete the trade.

Ah, this was a trade to remember. I still remember it like it was yesterday, with almost every analyst in shock that Dayton Moore would do something this incredulously stupid. You had Royals fans frantically trying to defend the move while Rays fans were jumping for joy that a consensus top 10 minor league talent was headed their way. In a twist of how these trades usually work, I’ve created the same prospect ranking graphic for the Royals players, which is the side for the ranked player. For the first time, the asset that Dave ranked was in the package, not being dealt for one.

My first impression when I examine this trade is that someone messed up. Either Dave was out of his mind ranking Myers in the top 40 and he shouldn’t have sniffed the list, or Kansas City got absolutely fleeced and could’ve received much more than Shields, Davis, and Johnson for this boatload of prospects. Yes, the current San Diego Padres right-hander was ranked on the last four lists, but he had fallen off by 2012 probably because he only had two years left on the insanely team-friendly contract the Rays got him to sign. Let’s compare the Royals’ return on Myers with the Blue Jays’ return on Halladay four years ago, as both players were ranked 37th at the All-Star Break and traded just months later in the offseason.

Toronto acquired three top 100 prospects in Kyle Drabek, Travis d’Arnaud, and Michael Taylor (not the current Washington Nationals outfielder), and both Drabek and d’Arnaud were ranked in the top 30 at the time of the trade. On the other hand, Kansas City acquired a 30-year-old starting pitcher with only two years of team control left, a failed starter turned useful reliever, and a piece in Johnson that really had no value at all. And keep in mind, it’s not like the Royals got that deal for just Myers. Rather, Myers was joined by fellow top 100 prospect Odorizzi along with two other useful pieces. I have to imagine that if Toronto somehow had prospects at the same level as Odorizzi, Montgomery, and Leonard and packaged them along with the identically ranked Halladay, they would’ve seen their return explode way past the level of Shields, Davis, and Johnson.

Maybe Dave was wrong and ranked Myers much too high, and major league front offices just don’t value unproven minor league talent that much, no matter the pedigree. For example, last year Addison Russell, who BA ranked 14th in the 2013-14 offseason, was dealt along with a couple solid top 10 organizational guys in Billy McKinney and Dan Straily for half a season of Jason Hammel and one and half seasons of Jeff Samardzija. Yes, prices go up during the season, but perhaps we’re overvaluing the top minor league talent in terms of trade value. Or maybe Dayton Moore and Billy Beane messed up in a big way and sold their prospects at laughable prices. I’m not sure.

The 2013 list saw no players get dealt within the year, but thanks to Billy Beane, we got one more off the 2014 list that stunned the baseball world and still confuses us months later.

2014

17. Josh Donaldson, 28, controlled through 2018, Arb1 – Arb4

• November 28, 2014: Traded by the Oakland Athletics to the Toronto Blue Jays for Franklin Barreto (minors), Kendall Graveman, Brett Lawrie and Sean Nolin.

One year after Dave ranked Donaldson 17th and the star third baseman lost one year of team control, he slipped all of… zero spots. Since Oakland dealt him away, Donaldson has only gotten better, hitting for more power than ever before while maintaining the elite defense at the hot corner that allowed him to rack up 14 WAR in 2013 and 2014. The A’s received a former hype machine in Lawrie and these three prospects.

Lawrie’s best seasonal output in WAR still remains his 2011 cup of coffee when he lit the world on fire with 2.6 wins in a mere 171 PA. Since then, injuries and poor performance have allowed the 25-year-old to only accumulate 6.2 WAR in 1660 mostly mediocre trips to the plate. Right before the trade during his injury-plagued 2014 season, Lawrie did earn 1.8 WAR in only 282 PA, which is approximately a 3.5 pace over 550 PA. If the Oakland front office was hoping for that kind of performance and health from him, that would be understandable and make this trade easier to swallow. Unfortunately, 2015 has been his worst year yet, with not much offense or defense to speak of.

As for the prospects that Beane acquired to restock the system, again, we see how if Donaldson really was the 17th most valuable trade chip, Toronto robbed Oakland blind. Zack Greinke, ranked 20th on the 2010 list, was worth a true blue-chip prospect in Alcides Escobar, another top 100 prospect rated better than Barreto in Jake Odorizzi, a major-league ready center fielder in Lorenzo Cain, and a solid organizational piece in Jeremy Jeffress. With all of Lawrie’s shine long gone after three hugely disappointing seasons, I would say he was not a significantly better trade piece than Cain was. Odorizzi was a better prospect than Barreto, and that leaves the shiny former top 20 prospect Escobar and Jeffress against Nolin and Graveman. No one knows what the Blue Jays could get if they traded Donaldson right now, and we will probably never find out, but you’d have to think they could do better than the package that sent to the Bay Area.

That’s it then. Sixteen players and fifteen deals across seven years of Trade Value lists. Thanks to anyone who stuck around and joined me on this journey through the past. As for the 2015 list, who could we see change teams between now and next year’s break? Could it be Yasiel Puig at 28, with rumors that the Dodgers have been shopping their 24-year-old outfielder? Maybe the 39th name on the list, Carlos Carrasco, gets moved as Cleveland decides to see what they can get for one of their stud pitchers. Or perhaps someone out of nowhere gets sent packing. Christian Yelich? Sonny Gray? Corey Seager? The possibilities are endless.

In our look through Dave’s past Trade Value lists, we’ve only found trades that were completed in the offseason following the completion of the lists. However, we have something different with our four players dealt off the 2011 list. Two of the four were traded within a few weeks of Dave publishing his articles, and one more was dealt almost a year later in June 2012, which allowed his value to drop considerably before his old team decided to cut bait. It’s time for the 2011 Major League Baseball Trade Value List.

All trade information was taken from Baseball-Reference.com. For each player, I’ve included next to his name, his age at the time of trade, along with his final year of team control and the amount due for that player including all team options.

2011

25. Ubaldo Jimenez, 27, controlled through 2014, $17.95 million

• July 30, 2011: Traded by the Colorado Rockies to the Cleveland Indians for a player to be named later, Joe Gardner (minors), Matt McBride and Alex White. The Cleveland Indians sent Drew Pomeranz (August 16, 2011) to the Colorado Rockies to complete the trade.

The contract status above for the ever-mercurial Jimenez is actually rather deceiving, as his original 4-year deal with Colorado signed in 2009 came with team options for 2013 and 2014, but with a catch. If he’s traded at any time during the years of  the contract, he can void the latter option and go directly to free agency, and after a blistering second half of 2013 that helped propel Cleveland to a wild card berth, that’s exactly what the right-hander did. But we’re not so much concerned with his free agency as we are with the trade that went down just after Dave ranked Jimenez so generously. Desperate for a frontline ace and sitting only 1.5 games back of the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central, the Indians sent a package of Gardner, Pomeranz, White, and McBride to Denver. Instead of having a lot of text to read, I decided to include more of a graphic look at the quality of the prospects sent over. I think you’ll figure it out for yourself.

As the 25th ranked trade piece, Jimenez was worth two top-100 prospects, a solid top-10 organizational guy, and then just a guy in McBride, who peaked as the 13th-best prospect for Cleveland after the 2007 season. Comparing this Colorado haul to the Kansas City package for the similarly ranked Greinke, I’d say the deal that the Royals got was slightly better, with a true blue-chipper in Escobar and a major-league ready piece in Cain. Unfortunately for the Rockies, nothing worked out for them in this trade. Pitching prospects at Coors, eh?

29. Kevin Youkilis, 33, controlled through 2013, $14 million (team option)

• June 24, 2012: Traded by the Boston Red Sox with cash to the Chicago White Sox for Brent Lillibridge and Zach Stewart.

So this is the only trade out of all the lists that took place during the following season after the list in which the player was ranked. We can see how much Youkilis’s value tanked, as Boston only got a couple organizational guys that peaked a long while ago and not ranked on anything at the time of the trade. Stewart was a 25-year-old RHP that peaked as the top prospect in the Toronto system after the 2009 season, but still didn’t rank in BA’s Top 100 even then. Lillibridge had a breakout 2011 season as a 28-year-old when he accumulated 1.3 WAR in 216 PA, mostly on the back of a .247 ISO. However, all the shine had worn off by 2012, when he only managed an awful 70 PA for the White Sox before being dealt.

The curious case of Kevin Youkilis is a reminder that as much as we fans are aware of how volatile pitchers can be in terms of performance and health, hitters can also experience similarly rapid, sudden, and unpredictable declines. When Dave put together his 2011 Trade Value list, Youkilis was a healthy 32-year-old in the middle of yet another dominant offensive season, raking to a tune of a 147 wRC+. After a disastrous second half for him (79 wRC+) and his teammates in one of the most memorable collapses in recent years, and an even worse start to 2012, all the value had been sucked out of him faster than anyone could’ve ever imagined. Boston got basically nothing for him less than a year after he was the 29th most valuable trade asset in baseball and less than two years after he was ranked 17th.

35. Trevor Cahill, 23, controlled through 2017, $55.2 million

• December 9, 2011: Traded by the Oakland Athletics with Craig Breslow and cash to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Ryan Cook, Collin Cowgill and Jarrod Parker.

If Jarrod Parker didn’t have such terribly awful luck staying healthy, this trade would look like one of the steals of the decade. As it is, this deal still looks like yet another robbery for Billy Beane’s front office, as Cahill has just not been able to find that 2010 magic that allowed him to put up a 2.97 ERA with 18 wins. Just like in 2007, when the A’s turned Dan Haren into a stockpile of quality prospects, Cahill also became more building blocks for the franchise’s future. As the second piece headed to the desert, Breslow was a useful reliever for the past couple years for Oakland, but hardly a player that should have swung the deal significantly.

However, if we compare the returns that Cahill and Halladay (ranked 35th and 37th respectively on their lists), we can see how Toronto clearly got the better package. The Jays received three high-end prospects all ranked in the top 100, while Oakland acquired a gem in Parker but then two more lower-end organizational players. While the two pitchers were ranked very closely during the All-Star breaks of their years, I suspect what happened the rest of the year greatly affected their respective values. While Halladay continued to dominate in the second half of 2009, Cahill struggled mightily with his results in 2011, coming into the break with a 3.12 ERA but getting pounded to the tune of a 5.80 after. So by the time the offseason rolled around, Toronto was able to sell their ace at a much higher price than Oakland could for theirs.

41. Colby Rasmus, 24, controlled through 2014, Arb1 – Arb3

• July 27, 2011: Traded by the St. Louis Cardinals with Trever Miller, Brian Tallet and P.J. Walters to the Toronto Blue Jays for Octavio Dotel, Edwin Jackson, Corey Patterson and Marc Rzepczynski.

Welcome back, Edwin Jackson! After being involved in the three-team trade that saw Curtis Granderson and Max Scherzer change teams, he makes a comeback in this trade that was more about Rasmus being out of favor in St. Louis than anything, especially when we consider what the Cardinals got in return for their young outfielder.

The pieces sent to Toronto along with Rasmus don’t have much significance, as Miller and Tallet were mediocre relief pitchers in their 30’s, and while Walters was ranked in the top 20 of St. Louis’s system after 2010, he was not having a good season at Triple-A at age 26 and had shown no signs of sticking in the big leagues in his few innings.

In the return headed to Busch Stadium, the main piece was 27-year-old Jackson, who was having yet another solid season, this year for the Chicago White Sox. As a somewhat irrelevant note, Jackson had already been traded that same day from the White Sox to the Blue Jays, and Alex Anthopoulos quickly sent him back to the Midwest. As a very relevant note, Jackson was due to be a free agent right after the 2011 season; he was a rental.

At age 37, Dotel was having a mediocre relief season, putting up a 4.63 FIP in his 29.1 innings with the Jays before really turning it on in the second half for the Redbirds. Patterson was a 31-year-old outfielder who hadn’t provided any value for a major league club since 2007. The lefty reliever Rzepczynski was a 25-year-old who was taken out of the rotation and plugged into the relief corps in 2011.

For the pitching-hungry Cardinals who were in a tight three-team NL Central race at the time (remember when the Brewers were good?), this was a trade to get some depth in the rotation and the bullpen. However, for a young 24-year-old outfielder with three more relatively cheap years under team control, only getting a decent rental starting pitcher and an average lefty reliever seems like the most underwhelming return in this entire exercise. There’s a reason fans and executives were down on this trade for the Cardinals to begin with, and it still looks bizarrely underwhelming four years later. But then again, Tony La Russa and company won the franchise’s 11th title that year, so what do we know?

The 2011 Trade Value list would end up involving some of the most unusual trades we’ve seen, whether it was the shocking depreciation of Youkilis’s value or the only slightly less shocking lack of return the Cardinals were able to acquire for Rasmus. Overall, it seems that Dave had Jimenez about right, Rasmus much too high, and couldn’t foresee the declines that Youkilis and Cahill would have that lowered their values.

Next time, we’ll wrap this whole thing up with three more trades, all polarizing and fascinating in their own way. One outfielder was almost traded to the Pacific Northwest for a strong package before vetoing the deal himself and joining his brother farther east. Then we had one of the most talked-about and discussed trades in recent years, with a mid-market franchise deciding to go all-in and acquiring a frontline starter for multiple top prospects, getting widely slammed across baseball for doing so. And lastly, off the 2014 rankings, we were all caught off guard when a rising superstar 3rd baseman got dealt for a haul seemingly headlined by… no one.

Prince Fielder has an interesting new look compared to the rest of his career.  He built a profile for himself as a patient powerful left-handed batter and with his swing and tendencies there was no reason to expect a shift.  After 10 seasons in the MLB, Prince Fielder has re-invented himself after undergoing a spinal fusion surgery after the 2014 season.

The Raw Data

First, let’s take a look at Fielder’s batting trends over the past four years, excluding 2014 due to injury.

View post on imgur.com

The first thing we can see from this is that he’s completely changed the way he approaches his at-bats.  His walk rate is down from his career average of 12.7% to a pedestrian 8.8%.

View post on imgur.com

View post on imgur.com

Comparing his swing% charts, it’s easy to see why his walk rate is down.  Fielder is swinging at more pitches in almost every part of the zone.  Usually this would also correlate with an increased strikeout rate, but Fielder is throwing that out as well.  Fielder has a career low 11% strikeout rate.  He’s making consistent contact and putting the ball in play.

The final piece to figuring out the difference with Fielder is the kind of contact that he’s making and where he his making it to.  Prince’s .343 BABIP is extremely high compared to his career average of .306, but after 400 at bats, small sample size problems are decreasing.  However, the inflated BABIP cannot be explained by his batted ball data, as his LD%, GB%, FB%, and Hard Hit% are all around his career averages.

The only other places to look are his spray charts.

View post on imgur.com

View post on imgur.com

The main difference here seems to be that Prince has not been hitting into the teeth of the over-shift near as much when compared to years before.  This could explain why his batting average is up from his career average of .288 to .329.

Analysis

Prince Fielder’s largest shift is in his approach.  He’s significantly more aggressive at the plate, all while keeping his strikeout rate low and his batted ball rates in line with career averages.  To put it into perspective, his current 8.8% walk and 11.0% strike out rates are closer to Juan Pierre’s career averages than his own.

Fielder is also significantly more adept at hitting ground balls to the left side, decreasing the effect of the over-shift that is usually employed against him.  Both his and his low strikeout rate support his increased batting average.

The largest worrying trend is his HR/FB rate, which is 12.7% this season.  It is significantly lower than his career average of 18.4%.  However, seeing as though he just had a spinal fusion surgery, it is not surprising that he has lost a bit of power.

Conclusion

While Fielder is having a very solid comeback year, there are some concerning trends going forward.  Usually an aging player with decreased walk and power rates precedes a rapid decline.  However, with Princes other encouraging trends like his strikeout rate and getting his hard-hit rate back to career averages, it is hard to predict how the rest of his career will go.  Projection models will not have a very easy time projecting him over the next few seasons, but if I were to guess, I would say that Prince will either age more like a low-strikeout line-drive hitter over an aging power hitter.

Unless of course, he decides to change his style again.

A few days ago, I wrote a piece that evaluated the returns that teams got in trades involving players ranked on FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron’s Top 50 Trade Value lists. I started with his 2007 list, which had five different players get dealt within the following year, including three of the top ten. Now we continue our look at trade value by stepping back into the past once again.

2008 was the first year Dave published his list on FanGraphs, and he must’ve been feeling excited for this change of scenery as he decided to extend his list to the top 50 assets in baseball. Unfortunately, none of the players on this list were traded before the 2009 version of the Trade Value Series was released. But before we move on to the following year, I’d like to point out Dave’s number 14 ranking of Brandon Webb. What a sad, stunningly rapid descent into irrelevance for the former Cy Young winner. Hope he’s doing well wherever he is, and God bless that once magical right arm of his.

On the 2009 list, we have three players dealt, but only two trades to examine. This is the only time ever where a single trade involved multiple players ranked among Dave’s top 50 trade pieces.

All trade information was taken from Baseball-Reference.com. For each player, I’ve included next to his name, their age at the time of trade, along with their final year of team control and the amount due for that player including all team options.

2009

22. Curtis Granderson, 28, controlled through 2013, $36.75 million

• December 8, 2009: Traded as part of a 3-team trade by the Detroit Tigers to the New York Yankees. The Detroit Tigers sent Edwin Jackson to the Arizona Diamondbacks. The New York Yankees sent Phil Coke and Austin Jackson to the Detroit Tigers. The New York Yankees sent Ian Kennedy to the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Arizona Diamondbacks sent Max Scherzer and Daniel Schlereth to the Detroit Tigers.

44. Max Scherzer, 25, controlled through 2014, PreArb – Arb3

• December 8, 2009: Traded as part of a 3-team trade by the Arizona Diamondbacks with Daniel Schlereth to the Detroit Tigers. The Detroit Tigers sent Curtis Granderson to the New York Yankees. The Detroit Tigers sent Edwin Jackson to the Arizona Diamondbacks. The New York Yankees sent Phil Coke and Austin Jackson to the Detroit Tigers. The New York Yankees sent Ian Kennedy to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

One of the most loaded three-team deals in recent memory, none of the parties involved can say they were too upset about the returns they received. Arizona would probably have the most to complain about, and even they acquired two solid starters, one who would win 21 games in a season while anchoring a division-winning rotation, and one who would throw a no-hitter for them. Let’s start with those Snakes.

For the 44th most valuable trade chip and future 200 million dollar man along with the 3rd ranked prospect in the system following the 2008 season, Josh Byrnes acquired Kennedy, who was the 45th overall prospect (Baseball America) following the 2007 season and Jackson, a former top prospect who climbed to as high as 4th following the 2003 season. At the major league level, Kennedy struggled in his nine starts for the Yankees in 2008 and had a lost 2009 season due to surgery on an aneurysm. Jackson had a career year in 2009 at age 26, throwing 214 innings and making the AL All-Star team for Detroit. So the 44th best trade chip got back an injured former top prospect and an All-Star pitcher with two years of control left.

Detroit had Dave’s 22nd most valuable trade chip and by trading him along with an All-Star pitcher in his prime, acquired the 44th player on the list, the third best prospect in Arizona’s system (Schlereth), Coke, and Jackson. Coke was a former 26th round pick who had risen his stock all the way to the 8th best prospect in the Yankees system after the 2008 season. After an okay 2009 season out of the bullpen where he posted a 4.68 FIP and accumulated 0.2 WAR in 70 innings, Coke was sent packing as a 27-year-old still with five full years of control left. Jackson was ranked the 36th overall prospect by Baseball America after 2008, but had slipped to 76th when the 2009 list was released (after the trade was completed).

We all know how great the Tigers haul ended up being, and even looking at it from the 2009 point of view, it’s still solid. The price was a tad high considering they also traded away an All-Star, but to acquire another player on the Trade Value list, a top 100 prospect, a borderline top 100 prospect, and a decent reliever is not bad. The five years combined they had left with Granderson and Jackson turned into 21 years of control with the four players they got back.

For the Diamondbacks, seeing Scherzer turn into the brilliant pitcher he is today can’t be fun, and even at the time, the return still seems underwhelming. Kennedy was coming off a major surgery less than a year ago, and even though Jackson had just made the AL All-Star team, he only came with two years of team control left. Then consider that Arizona also had to part with their 3rd best prospect for this deal to happen, and you wonder if they could’ve done better. Because Dave created his 2007 list in April, it didn’t really account for Bedard and Haren’s breakout 2007 campaigns, so their rankings are likely lower than they would’ve been had Dave compiled the list midseason. Still, Scherzer, Haren, and Bedard were all similarly ranked, and you can’t help but feel that Arizona’s return was significantly weaker than Baltimore’s or Oakland’s.

37. Roy Halladay, 32, controlled through 2010, $15.75 million (signed 3-year, $60 million extension immediately following trade, with vesting option for 2014)

• December 16, 2009: Traded by the Toronto Blue Jays with cash to the Philadelphia Phillies for Travis d’Arnaud, Kyle Drabek and Michael Taylor.

First of all, we can immediately see how differently Dave ranks players now compared to back in the day. Halladay was ranked 37th despite being 32 and having only one year of team control after 2009, the year he was ranked. Yes, the Blue Jays ace was in the middle of a 7.0 WAR season, but can you imagine Dave ranking that kind of pitcher that generously now?

The package sent north of the border can be summarized pretty quickly. All three were top-tier prospects ranked on Baseball America’s top 100 list after the 2009 season. Respectively, Drabek, d’Arnaud, and Taylor were ranked 25th, 29th, and 81st. That’s quite an impressive haul, one the Phillies probably would not have given up if Halladay did not immediately sign an extension. This package seems much stronger than the one Arizona received for Scherzer, but unfortunately, with hindsight, we can see that the Jays traded away the one piece that became a useful major league player.

Those are the three players (but two trades) that took place with the 2009 list. Let’s go one more and examine the one player from the 2010 trade that was traded, whose deal to Milwaukee is still causing ripple effects in baseball today.

2010

20. Zack Greinke, 27, controlled through 2012, $27 million

• December 19, 2010: Traded by the Kansas City Royals with Yuniesky Betancourt and cash to the Milwaukee Brewers for Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress and Jake Odorizzi.

Coming off a solid, but unspectacular year compared to his brilliant 2009 Cy Young campaign, Greinke was promptly dealt to the Brewers for a package that looks absolutely astounding today. Cain and Escobar are anchoring the 2015 AL-best Royals team at up-the-middle positions, and Odorizzi was used to bring James Shields and Wade Davis to Missouri. Plus, Dayton Moore got to dump Betancourt on the Brewers so that’s bonus points in itself.

Cain’s unusual baseball path is well-documented, as most of us have heard how the All-Star center fielder didn’t play baseball until late in high school. However, despite being drafted 496th overall in 2004, he (24 at the time) climbed as high as 6th in the Milwaukee system and was coming off a solid 2010 rookie season with 1.2 WAR in only 153 plate appearances.

On the other hand, Escobar, also 24 when the trade was made, was the blue-chip prospect, ranked in the top 20 by Baseball America after 2008 and 2009. He struggled with the bat in his first full season in 2010, running a 62 wRC+, but displayed solid defense at shortstop en route to 0.5 WAR in 552 PA.

Jeffress was a 23-year-old right-handed pitcher who peaked as the 100th prospect after 2008, but had become solely a relief pitcher after a catastrophic 2009 season as a starter when he walked 33 hitters in 27.1 innings in Double-AA. However, he was still the 3rd ranked prospect in the Brewers system when the trade was made.

The top gem in the Milwaukee farm at the time the trade was made and the 69th overall prospect, Odorizzi had a strong showing in 2010 in A-ball at the ripe age of 20, running a 18.8 K-BB% in 120.2 innings. Of course, his stay in Kansas City would not last, as he was shipped off to Tampa two years later in a trade that we will see down the line in this exercise.

Two years of Greinke (and Betancourt) landed a package that is at least comparable to the deal that Detroit got for the similarly ranked Granderson. Although Detroit did acquire another player on the Trade Value list, it required that they trade away an All-Star, while Kansas City got a boatload of highly touted cost-controlled talent. Again, we can see how Dave’s methodology has changed. In his 2015 list, there were only two players that had only two years of control left ranked, and none higher than Todd Frazier at 46th. Dave would probably have Greinke unranked had he redone the list with his current attitude towards years of control.

Next time, we have the 2011 list, and lots of trade fun there with four deals to analyze, including two that were consummated just a couple weeks after that year’s list was released.

Abstract

It has been suggested that Latino players participating in Major League Baseball swing wildly at pitches outside the defined strike zone, that is, they are considered undisciplined batters, especially when compared to their trained American counterparts in the MLB. This paper examines that assumption and also the effectiveness of this possible lack of discipline, that is, if the Latino players hit more pitches outside the strike zone, hit for a higher batting average than American players, and walk or strike out at different rates. Based upon common beliefs in the baseball community that Latino players are less disciplined, and that they are generally superior players to Americans, the initial hypothesis of the observational study is that Latinos will swing at more pitches outside the zone, hit more of those pitches, walk less, strike out more, and hit for a higher batting average than their American counterparts.

The observational study focused on two populations: American Major League players and Major League players from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Venezuela. Further, the population consisted only of players who are currently on a Major League roster, whether active or on the Disabled List, and who have had at least 500 career at-bats, the equivalent of approximately one full MLB season of at-bats.

The initial hypothesis was nearly completely correct: Latino players did swing at a significantly higher percentage of pitches outside the strike zone than did American players, hit more of those pitches, and hit for a higher batting average. However, there was no evidence as to whether Latinos or Americans walked more, but there was evidence that American players strike out at a higher rate than their Latino counterparts.

The Study

Research Question

There is a Major League Baseball adage which references non-Mexican Latino baseball players who aspire to leave their homelands to become part of American baseball. The vernacular maxim is “You never walk off the island,” that is, batters are encouraged to swing at pitches outside the defined baseball strike zone in the hope that they can become more successful hitters. The central question which will be answered in this analysis is, “Are Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Venezuela less disciplined at the plate than their American counterparts?” An undisciplined batter is defined as one who swings at pitches outside the strike zone. A secondary significant corollary question to be investigated is, “Is this undisciplined approach actually successful or unsuccessful, that is, does an undisciplined approach work successfully for those Latino players?”

Data Collection

This experimenter utilized all 30 MLB team rosters courtesy of the 30 team pages on http://espn.go.com/mlb/players to find that there are 217 Major League players from the United States who are currently on a roster, whether active or on the Disabled List, who have had at least 500 career at-bats. There are additionally 82 players from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela who also are on an MLB roster and have had at least 500 career at-bats. The 217 American players were assigned a number between 1 and 217, and a random number generator was utilized to produce 21 unique numbers which correspond to the 21 American players used in the sample. The 82 Latino players were assigned a number between 1 and 82, and a random number generator was utilized to determine eight unique numbers which correspond to the eight players used in the sample. This random sample was taken from the entire population of Latino and American players with at least 500 career at-bats, and each sample, following research guidelines, is necessarily less than 10% of the population. Once the two samples had been assembled, the search feature on fangraphs.com provided all five statistics in its Standard and Plate Discipline charts for each player. The statistics will be referred to as OS for O-Swing%, that is, percent of swings at pitches outside the strike zone, OC for O-Contact%, that is, contact made on those swings at pitches outside the strike zone, K for strikeout percentage, BB for walk percentage, and BA for batting average.

Data Charts

Brief Discussion of Summary Statistics

There is much less variability in the sample statistics for the Latino players than for the American players. The interquartile ranges for four of the five statistics are smaller for Latino players, and the ranges of the sample data are smaller for all five statistics among the Latino players. These two range differences suggest higher homogeneity among the Latino players participating in American baseball and higher heterogeneity among their American counterparts.

Inference Procedures

µ₁ = Mean O-Swing%, O-Contact%, K%, BB%, or BA for Latino players

µ₂ = Mean O-Swing%, O-Contact%, K%, BB%, or BA for American players

Conditions: 1) Random samples (stated)

2) The samples are at most 10% of the population (stated)

3) n < 30, but the normal probability plots for all five statistics for both Latinos and

Americans appear linear, so normality of the statistics is

assumed

H_O: µ₁ – µ₂ = 0

H_A: µ₁ – µ₂ > 0 (In walks and strikeouts, two t-tests were used; H_A: µ₁ – µ₂ < 0 in the second tests)

α = .05

Discussion and Conclusions for Each Statistic

1) O-Swing, OS: There is not sufficient evidence at α = .01 that Latino players are less disciplined than US players, that is, that they swing at more pitches thrown outside of the strike zone per 100 pitches than do American players. However, at the proposed α = .05, there would be evidence that Latinos are less disciplined hitters, that is, they swing at significantly more outside pitches than do their American counterparts.

2) O-Contact, OC: There is not sufficient evidence at α = .01 that Latino players are more adept at making contact with pitches outside of the strike zone, that is, that the mean O-Contact for Latino players is higher than American players. However, at the proposed α = .05, there would be evidence that Latinos make contact with a higher percentage of pitches outside of the strike zone.

3) Batting Average, BA: There is not sufficient evidence at α = .01 that Latino players hit for a higher average than Americans. However, at the proposed α = .05 level of significance, there would be evidence that Latino players do hit for a higher batting average than American players.

4) Base on Balls, BB: There is not sufficient evidence that American players have a higher walk rate than Latino players. This indicates that, despite being more disciplined hitters, Americans still do not walk more often than Latinos.

5) Strikeout, K: There is not sufficient evidence that Latino players strike out more than American players. In fact, there is evidence that Americans strike out more than Latinos.

Final Conclusion

Utilizing the five two-sample t-tests, there is evidence at the proposed α = .05 significance level, but not at α = .01, that Latino players are less disciplined hitters than are American players and swing at a higher percentage of pitches outside the strike zone. However, this undisciplined approach works for players from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, as they more often successfully make contact with those outside pitches. The term ‘less disciplined’ denotes that a hitter would be less effective and not make contact, but this is not true based upon the sample. The analysis indicates Latino players actually hit a higher percentage of the pitches they swing at outside of the strike zone than American players. Further, they statistically hit for a higher batting average than their American counterparts, which is not unexpected since they hit more pitches outside the zone than do trained American hitters. Similarly, they statistically strike out less frequently than American players since they are better ‘outside the zone’ hitters. Lastly, despite American players’ more disciplined approach at the plate, that is, they swing at fewer outside pitches, there is statistically no evidence that Americans have a higher walk rate than Latinos.

As noted above, all conditions for inference were met. The selection of players was completely randomized, but an interesting trend occurred within the selected players: more ‘star players’ were randomly selected in the Latino group than in the American group, again suggesting a higher level of homogeneity in the Latino players. The eight randomly chosen Latino players have appeared in 15 All-Star games, while the 21 American players account for only 19 All-Star appearances. Based upon the analyses, it appears that Non-Mexican Latino baseball players do indeed “swing their way off the island.”

As regular FanGraphs readers know, during the All-Star Break every baseball season, managing editor Dave Cameron meticulously assembles what he believes to be the 50 most valuable trade assets in all of Major League Baseball at the given moment. These posts are almost always the most highly viewed, anticipated, and commented on articles that FanGraphs publishes, and are guaranteed to stir up lively debate over the superstars of today’s game. As fans, we love to break down contracts and skillsets, evaluating players to the most minute of details in order to argue Kris Bryant versus Carlos Correa or Mookie Betts versus Joc Pederson.

I asked David Schoenfield, MLB blogger at ESPN, on one of his chats, what he’d like to know if he had complete and easy access to all of Dave’s past trade value lists, with all the relevant information for each player such as age, contract status, and years controlled. I’m not saying I tediously compiled all that for each list, but I’m not saying I didn’t.

I’d like to thank David for answering, and not just answering, but giving me a two-part response. The first part reads, “How many actually got traded and what did they get in return?” He begins with a direct answer, telling me exactly the kind of analysis he would conduct using Dave’s lists. The ESPN Sweetspot blogger then follows with “I think we’d learn that the returns for these types of players is less than pre-trade speculation. With Tulo, the Jays didn’t have to give up their top prospects, for example.” David offers his own hypothesis based on observations from recent events, a solid well-founded theory. Not only was former Colorado Rockies superstar Troy Tulowtizki just traded for a package some have deemed a little light, David was likely also considering the trade involving former Oakland A’s superstar Josh Donaldson as well, which surprised many people by the seemingly inadequate return Billy Beane acquired for his third baseman.

Let’s take a look. What are Dave’s top 50 players being traded for?

For this exercise, I only looked at players traded while being listed for the most recent trade value list released by Dave, up to 2007. In other words, if a player was ranked, then at any time was dealt before the next list was released, he’s fair game. That provides us nine lists to look at, but unfortunately for the AJ Preller in all of us, there haven’t been any trades involving the players in this year’s top-50 just listed a couple weeks ago. So in other words, sorry David. The Tulowitzki trade won’t count here because Dave did not consider him a top-50 trade asset, despite the shortstop qualifying for every single list before this year’s since 2008 and only dropping out of the top 15 once in those seven years.

All trade information was taken from Baseball-Reference.com. For each player, I’ve included next to their name, their age at the time of trade, along with their final year of team control and the amount due for that player including all team options.

Starting with 2007: http://www.ussmariner.com/2007/04/12/mlb-trade-value-for-2007/

2007

3. Miguel Cabrera: 24 years old, controlled through 2009, Arb2 – Arb3

• December 4, 2007: Traded by the Florida Marlins with Dontrelle Willis to the Detroit Tigers for Dallas Trahern (minors), Burke Badenhop, Frankie De La Cruz, Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller and Mike Rabelo.

For the best hitter of this generation, the Florida Marlins received two top 10 overall prospects in Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller along with two more organizational top 10 players in Eulogio de la Cruz and Dallas Trahern. Burke Badenhop and Mike Rabelo, two lesser pieces, rounded out the haul sent to South Florida. Maybin and Miller are both thriving in different places right now, but unfortunately, nothing the Marlins got in return for Miguel Cabrera ended up working out for them. However, at the time, to acquire two consensus top 10 overall prospects in all of baseball is not a bad coup at all. On the other hand, rumor has it the Dodgers were willing to trade prospects Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw for Cabrera. Yeesh.

7. Johan Santana, 28 years old, controlled through 2008, $13.25 million (signed 6-year, $137.5 million extension immediately following trade)

• February 2, 2008: Traded by the Minnesota Twins to the New York Mets for Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, Philip Humber and Kevin Mulvey.

Arguably the best pitcher in the game at the time, Santana was traded to the Mets for the 35th and 52nd best prospect in the game in Guerra and Gomez. Humber was also ranked in the top 100 just a year ago, and Mulvey was a 23-year-old former second-round pick. This haul isn’t quite on par with the Marlins’ for Cabrera, but Gomez did blossom into a true superstar, which can’t be said for anyone that Florida received. Boston apparently had packages involving prospects Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester on the table for Minnesota, but the fact that Johan needed a contract extension to be traded was not appealing for the Red Sox.

9. Delmon Young, 22, controlled through 2012, PreArb – Arb3

• November 28, 2007: Traded by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays with Brendan Harris and Jason Pridie to the Minnesota Twins for Eddie Morlan (minors), Jason Bartlett and Matt Garza.

For their former number one overall draft pick and two other rather significant pieces, the Rays received Garza, the 21st overall prospect the year before, Morlan, the 4th ranked prospect in the Minnesota system according to Kevin Goldstein, and Bartlett, a serviceable major league shortstop at the time. Not the best package in the world, especially considering Tampa also sent a solid major league SS in Harris the other way. However, the Rays would go on to win the AL Pennant less than a year later with Garza as the ALCS MVP.

39. Erik Bedard, 28, controlled through 2009, Arb2 – Arb3

• February 8, 2008: Traded by the Baltimore Orioles to the Seattle Mariners for Tony Butler (minors), Adam Jones, Kam Mickolio, George Sherrill and Chris Tillman.

One of the most infamous packages ever dealt for a star, this is one for the ages in both Seattle and Baltimore history. Future Orioles superstar Jones was the number 28 prospect on the 2007 Baseball America Top 100 list, and future ALCS Game 1 starter Tillman would be ranked third on Baseball America’s Top 10 rankings for the Mariners just weeks before the trade. Butler was highly ranked in the Mariners system before the 2007 season before falling off the list the next year, while Sherrill was a veteran reliever coming off his best year. For a pitcher who was coming off a 221-strikeout campaign but only had two years left on his contract, this seems like a massive haul almost disproportionate to the amount that the Rays got for Young.

40. Dan Haren, 27, controlled through 2010, $16.25 million

• December 14, 2007: Traded by the Oakland Athletics with Connor Robertson to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Brett Anderson, Chris Carter, Aaron Cunningham, Dana Eveland, Carlos Gonzalez and Greg Smith.

Dave only ranked 40 players in his 2007 list, but the last player who snuck on was worth the 22nd (future Colorado Rockies superstar Gonzalez) and 36th (Anderson) overall prospects, and the 7th and 8th prospect (Cunningham and Carter) in Arizona’s system. Sweeten this package with two more pieces in Smith and Eveland, and it looks like Oakland’s return was at least on par with Minnesota’s, if not even better. It seems here that Dave may have seriously underestimated the value that Haren’s cost-controlled years had in other teams’ eyes. On a sidenote, this Arizona system was absolutely loaded, with Jarrod Parker, Gerardo Parra, Max Scherzer, and Emilio Bonifacio also in the top 10 of that year’s list.

Interestingly, we have three top-10 rankings traded from the 2007 list, but no other player from here on out with a ranking higher than 17 got dealt. We could analyze these trades from hindsight, and hindsight would tell us Baltimore and Tampa Bay did extremely well in selling their trade chip, receiving valuable pieces that would propel them into the postseason down the line and in the case of the Rays, to an American League championship the very next season. But looking at the deals at the time, Young was perhaps ranked too well, as Tampa only received one elite prospect back while sending two pieces along with their young star. Haren on the other hand was definitely ranked too low, as he was able to return two top 50 talents.

I’ll be back with more deals for players ranked in Dave’s top 50.

With the trade deadline approaching (ed. note: so long!), we have players donning their current affiliation’s uniforms for a final game.  Aside from a few tears shed by baseball’s infantile devotees (ages 3 and up), these will be business-like transactions; it’s the buying and selling of goods.

For this article, we’ll be looking at pitcher performances in their final game before being traded.   The last game a pitcher pitches for a team is a relatively inconsequential event.  What I mean is that teams searching for that piece to propel their momentum in the efforts of a playoff push know what Cole Hamels is worth.  His value did not take a significant ding after two abysmal starts when he totaled 6.1 IP, 20 H, 14 ER, and 5 K (July 10th and 19th), and neither did it skyrocket after his performance on Saturday.  You know what happened, but let me recap: In his last outing for the Philadelphia Phillies, Hamels threw a no-hitter against the Cubs – the very team who he could have ended up with.  That’s probably already a better idea for an article – pitchers that were traded to the team they just faced – but I’ve started the research for the article I’m currently writing, an article that, much like my night, is, for lack of a better word, aimless.  My one year old son is asleep, my wife went to a birthday dinner, I’m in my underwear watching X-Men 2: X-Men United (for the umpteenth time), drinking Diet Hansen’s Tangerine Lime, and thinking about Hamels’ almost 100-point game score in what was his last game as a Phillie.

For the purpose of this article, but mainly to eventually get some sleep tonight, we’re going to limit the research to this current decade (2010 being the starting point), and for pitchers that went to teams that made the playoffs only.  Cole Hamels’ no-hitter scored a 98 on Bill James’ game score calculation, with the only two blemishes keeping it from being a nice even 100, being the two walks he issued over the 9 IP.  There have been two pitchers traded already, Scott Kazmir and Johnny Cueto, and they each posted game scores north of 70 (73 and 78 respectively).  The starting pitcher talent level that could swap hands this year is pretty special.  It’s hard to remember the last time there was a talent pool this deep or when there were this many teams in viable contention to make playoff pushes, so it’s no surprise that we’ve seen a couple of really, really well-pitched games.  But in terms of single-game performances, how good is a game score of even Kazmir’s 73 in the final game before a player gets swapped?  You’d have to go back to 2010 to find a game score as high as 70, which was what Cliff Lee scored for the Mariners after dominating the Tigers over 8 IP.  (Zack Greinke had a 72 before he was traded to the Angels in 2012, but they didn’t make the playoffs.)

Below you’ll find a table with players that were traded close to the deadline to teams that made the playoffs from 2010 – 2014.  Next to their name you’ll find the game score of their last game pitched with the team that traded them (organized by game score) compared to the average game scores they posted with the team that traded them and the team they were traded to.  It’s highly likely that, with so much going on tonight – X-Men just ended – I missed one or two or three starting pitchers.  ((Also spoiler alert (Not about X-Men which I’ve seen close to 100 times now): There are no correlations between that one game score and their value for the rest of the season because a pitcher is the pitcher they’ve been for the body of their work)).

(Game Score Equation courtesy of Bill James: 50 + (outs recorded) + (2*IP after 4th inning) + (1*K) – (2*H) – (4*ER) – (2*Unearned Runs) – (1*BB) = Game Score)

**GmScA = Game Score Average

I know that 18 games is a small sample size, but 47.2 is a pretty sizable drop from averages of 54.6 and 54.5.  Perhaps it’s the uncertainty that these players are facing with the looming trade deadline that causes a dip in performance, or perhaps this is a silly, SILLY thing to look into and it means absolutely nothing!!!

But back to this year’s impressive pool of starting pitchers that were rumored to be available.  Let’s say all the top pitchers that are thought to be moving have thrown their last game for their respective teams.  Here’s a look at a table just like the one above but for the pitchers thought to be moving this year.  (This is assuming the caveats that all the players have pitched their final game for their respective teams and that they will all be traded to or have been traded to teams that will make the playoffs).

That’s a lot of 70s.  There are also three pitchers in this group with average game scores of over 60, which is one more than the number of pitchers that went to playoff bound teams from 2010 – 2014.  After all this, I wish there was a way to make this post more interesting, or show some correlation between any of these numbers, but there’s simply not!  It was a thought and I ran with it.  One game does not make a player, but I think in some TINY way, it is another example of what we know to be true:  there is some serious talent that’s about to switch hands – get excited.

I play a lot of fantasy baseball and am always looking for an edge. When scouting possible waiver and trade pitching targets, I normally compare players’ ERA with his FIP and xFIP in order to find pitchers underperforming their peripherals, and are thus undervalued. This is a very common process among fantasy owners. But, when are the peripherals not indicative of future performance? Take, for example, Clay Buchholz, who had a 3.26 ERA but a far better 2.62 FIP through 113.1 innings before the All-Star break. Classic buy low candidate (which I did, and he has a 2.02 ERA in 75.2 IP since I added him on May 15th). However, Steamer has him as a 3.76 ERA/3.54 FIP pitcher, with far different walk and strikeout numbers than those he is currently putting up.

What numbers do I trust? What is the best predictor of second half performance? To answer, I went back and pulled first and second half splits for pitchers from 2010-2014, and kept only those who had the qualifying innings pitched in both halves, leaving 349 pitcher seasons. This methodology was inspired in large part by Jeff Sullivan’s research on team records. I found ERA, FIP, and xFIP for each half, and a Steamer projection for the entire season. Using this data, I found what correlated most with second half ERA. The results are below:

• 1^st Half ERA, 2^nd Half ERA: .212
• 1^st Half FIP, 2^nd Half ERA: .254
• 1^st Half xFIP, 2^nd Half ERA: .307
• Projected ERA, 2^nd Half ERA: .315

This is about what I expected. First and second half ERA had a correlation of .21. As we know, no matter how variable ERA can be, an entire half of ERA can still tell us something about future performance, but it is by no means the best.

FIP had a correlation of .25, while xFIP had one of .30. FIP was always thought of as a retrospective statistic, which is why it is used in the calculation of WAR for pitchers, while xFIP is better for predictions. Both of these statistics perform better than first half ERA, which is a good sanity check for advanced metrics in general: they better out perform basic statistics.

The preseason projection, denoted by ERAp, performs the best, with a correlation of .31. The fact that 3 years of prior data is still better than half a year of present data shouldn’t be surprising, but it sort of is. I went into this exercise thinking xFIP would be the best predictor of the second half, but the preseason projections perform better. This result suggests in season improvements on K% and BB% should be taken with a grain of salt and regressed.

We would expect that some combination of the preseason projection and the updated numbers would perform really well. Fortunately, Steamer is constantly updating their projections and release Rest-of-Season numbers daily. Unfortunately, accessing ROS projections from the All-Star break since 2010 is beyond my coding know-how, so those numbers are unavailable.

We can estimate what those updated ROS projections might look like with a linear regression model. Regressing xFIP1 and ERAp on ERA2 provides the best correlation of .35 (this is the square root of the adjusted R-squared number the model spits out).

It’s amazing just how little we can predict. Our best guess only can account for about 30% of the variation in second half ERA. That’s nothing. This stuff is still really hard to predict.  Half a season of data just isn’t enough to go off of. But these are just the public stats. I always wonder what kind of numbers front offices use, and how much better (if at all) they perform. From a fantasy perspective, if you use this methodology enough, you should end up better off than the alternative. When it comes down to it, the updated rest of season projections should be better than just a single season xFIP number.

Last night, I was lying in bed with my arms crossed behind my head, staring at my ceiling, and thinking of what a fantastic season Paul Goldschmidt is having.  “He’s so locked in; I wonder how pitchers have pitched him differently over the course of this season; I bet he’s super cool; I bet we’d hit it off; I wonder what kind of dogs he likes”.   The sheets rustled and my wife turned over and asked, sleepily, “Who are you talking about?”  I looked for her face in the dark.  I was surprised that I had been saying that out loud, but I just whispered to her, “I wasn’t saying anything, you were dreaming”.  She turned over and I said quietly to myself – “Of course it’s Golden Retrievers”.

Goldy is 3 stolen bases away from a 20/20 season which is a rare feat for a first baseman.  Todd Frazier technically did do it last year, but he only started 43 games at 1B, so I would only count him as achieving it as a 3B.  For the remainder of this exercise I’m going to only use players who reached particular milestones while playing the primary position they’re listed for instead of what positions they were eligible for – I’ll apologize to Ben Zobrist in advance.

Let’s go around the diamond and find some completely arbitrary statistical rarities that may be reached this season!  Yay!  Pointless fun!!!

Catchers: A Catcher’s Triple Crown

Buster Posey is so good.  He currently ranks, among catchers, 2^nd in HR (14), 1^st in RBI (67), and 1^st in AVG (.325).  As a side note, he’s also thrown out 48.4% of attempted runners this year and leads all catchers in WAR by a wide margin (4.3 compared to Vogt’s second place 3.0).  But those offensive numbers I listed are clearly the triple-crown categories, aren’t they?  That’s rhetorical.  He’s second in HR right now, trailing Brian McCann and Salvador Perez each by one HR.  Posey has finished second in HR among catchers in 2014 and 2012, and comes up 3^rd overall during that span with 75, trailing only Carlos Santana (76) and Brian McCann (78).

We have to travel back in time to the turn of the century to find a catcher who actually posted numbers worthy of a triple-crown among catchers and you’ve probably already guessed that it was the fabulous, Mike Piazza.  He led all catchers in HR (38), RBI (113), and AVG (.324) in the year 2000; absolutely gaudy numbers for any position nowadays.  Think about it, when Miguel Cabrera won the triple-crown in 2012, amassing 44 bombs and 139 RBIs while hitting .330, Piazza’s performance in the NL would’ve put him 2^nd overall in HR, 2^nd overall in RBI, and 3^rd overall in average.  In the year 2000, his numbers ranked 10^th, 13^th, and 10^th, respectively – this point of dramatic difference in his rankings falls into the “different eras” conversation.  Of course this is only about offense, and Piazza is arguably the greatest offensive catcher of all time, but I have to throw in (no pun intended) that Piazza only succeeded in apprehending 22.5% of would be base stealers that year.  Ooph!

First Basemen: 20/20 Campaign

This was the catalyst for this article and I talked about it earlier.  Goldy should be able to get to 20/20 this year and it’s been over a decade since a 1B primary player achieved this elite mark.  A few players have come close, but the man who did it was Derrek Lee.  The year was 2003 and the big, Marlins’ first baseman smacked 31 HR and stole 21 bases.  I didn’t peg Goldschmidt for a 20/20 season this year and I still think that his speed will erode over the next couple seasons, but looking back at Lee, who is not technically a good comparison for Paul Goldschmidt, except that he too was 27 years old in 2003 and had the ability to swipe a bag, he averaged 13 SB over the next 2 years.  Goldy, you may have a few years left of some good wheels, you god…I mean dog.

*Anthony Rizzo may very well get to 20/20 this season, too.

Second Basemen: 150 wRC+

Did you know that Robinson Cano never achieved a wRC+ of 150 in his prime?  That was a kind of shocking revelation for me when I picked this number to single out.  He posted a 149 in 2012 and averaged 142 from 2010 – 2013, which is a shiny number, but it’s not what we’re looking for.  New member of the Kansas City Royals, Ben Zobrist achieved a wRC+ of 152 in 2009 for the Rays, but kind of like Frazier’s 20/20 season last year, Zobrist is ineligible to be considered here because he only accrued a 124 wRC+ as a second baseman in 2009, where he played just over half of his games.  So let’s keep looking.  The last true second baseman to achieve a 150wRC+ was Chase Utley in 2007.  Yeah, Utley was fantastic, and the conversations I have with myself about Goldschmidt are reminiscent of Mac’s conversations with himself about Chase Utley (Always Sunny In Philadelphia).  So who is hitting the mark this year?  It’s not Altuve if that’s what you were thinking.  In fact, this hitter was well below average in 2014, posting a wRC+ of 86.  But he’s increased his BB rate, cut down on Ks, matched his HR output in 32 less games, and has 10 more XBH this year compared to last.  He’s known for his 2^nd half slumps, as he has a career 130 wRC+ before the break and a 96 after it, but if he can continue his torrid pace, Jason Kipnis would be the next second baseman to reach 150 wRC+ over a full season.

Third Basemen: Ranking 1^st in OFF and DEF (per FanGraphs)

Josh Donaldson currently ranks 1^st among 3^rd Basemen with a 23.4 Off number and 2^nd with a 9.3 Def number.  These numbers are rarely mentioned, but they’re still worth using as measurements since Off is batting and base running combined above average, and Def is Fielding and Positional Adjustment combined above average (again, per fangraphs).  In Defense, he only trails leather-wizard, Nolan Arenado’s 10.9 mark.  It’s not impossible for him to make up that ground this year and if he does, he’d be in some elite company.  Starting from the year 2000, Donaldson would join Troy Glaus (2000), Adrian Beltre (2004), and Evan Longoria (2011) as the only players in this century to lead 3^rd basemen in both categories.

Shortstops: Playing in at least 160 G and accruing less than 1.0 WAR

This isn’t a list you want to find your name on, but there’s Marcus Semien, sitting at 0.4 WAR while having played in all but 1 of the Athletics’ games this season (100 out of 101).  Steamer has him projected to play 52 more games and accrue 0.6 more WAR which would give him 152 G and a WAR of 1.0, therefore making him ineligible for this list but let’s extrapolate that pace and say he does play in 160 games.  Semien started the season like a man on fire, swatting 6 HR and heisting 7 bags through the end of May to go along with a nice .283 AVG and a .770 OPS.  Of course his glove has been a cast iron skillet, absorbing some of that heat that he started with, and his offense has taken a nose dive as well.  Since the beginning of June, he’s hit 2 HR and stolen 2 bases (all of these stats came in July – so 0 HR and SB in June) and he’s hit a paltry .206 to go with a .550 OPS.

There are a few other cases of every day shortstops being as valuable (or as lacking in value) as Semien has been this year.  Most recently, in 2013 over 161 G, Starlin Castro was actually worth negative value, and logged a -0.1 WAR.  Orlando Cabrera’s name appears twice since the year 2000, posting a WAR of 0.7 in 2009 over 161 G, and a symmetric looking 0.0 WAR over 161 G in 2004.   The one other name on this list is Neifi Perez, who in 2000 was worth a whopping 0.3 WAR and played every single game for the Rockies.  While the Rockies have had more productive shortstops since then, they have had a tough time keeping one on the field for that many games (unless you span 3 seasons or so) – that was a really mean sentence.

Outfielders: 5 players 25 years or younger with 30 HR

The talent pool of young players in 2015 is well documented.  Mike Trout is Mike Trout and he already has eclipsed 30 HR.  Bryce Harper and Manny Machado are stepping up their games to join baseball’s elite.  Giancarlo Stanton is injured now, but should be a lock for 30 if he comes back this year.  And Joc Pederson has arrived in the bigs swinging some thunderous lumber.  Each of these players (using Steamer’s ROS projections) are on pace to hit 30 HR or more.

Going back to my arbitrary year cutoff, 2000, I can only find 2 other accounts of this phenomenon.

2012: (2 of the same players are on the 2015 list!!!)

And the year 2000

Again, the year 2000 was a completely different era.

Starting Pitchers: K-BB% above 30%

This one is a little less likely, but the player in the hunt is Clayton Kershaw, so, yeah.  Kershaw led all of baseball last year with a 27.8 K-BB%.  He’s at it again this year, pushing the needle to 28.9%.  His SwStr% is trending up yet again and it’s up to 16.1%.  It’s gone up every year since 2012 when it was 11.1%.  You know I love tables, so here’s one for Kershaw

*Whatever percentage points are missing from his pitch usage in that chart are allocated to change-ups.  **I think the table is self explanatory and therefore, won’t waste any time explaining it.

Kershaw’s 27.8 K-BB% was the highest mark since Curt Schilling’s 27.9% in 2002.  If Kershaw can push it above 29% he’d leap over 2002 and he’d be the first pitcher since Randy Johnson in 2001 to be at 29% or higher.  Kershaw’s “rebounded” from his early season “struggles” with the long ball and has been as sharp as ever dating back to June 6^th.  From the beginning of the season through his start on June 1^st, his K-BB% sat at 24.8%.  Starting on June 6^th and including his start on July 23^rd, his K-BB% has been an absurd 33.9%.  If he can keep that up over his next 6 or 7 starts, depending on how many he has left, he could push that number to 30% and be the first pitcher since Pedro Freaking Martinez in 2000 to do so.  The insane thing about Pedro is that, in 2000, the league average K-BB% for starters was 6.7%; his was 30.8%, or 4.6 times the league average.  This particular category saw the leader’s rate drop every season until Cliff Lee led the category in 2010 with a 19.8 K-BB%.  Meanwhile the league’s starting pitcher average rate has gone up and is 12.2% this year.  Clayton currently sits at 2.4 times the league average, which is still phenomenal for a starting pitcher, but if you think about how inhuman he’s seemed over the course of the last couple of years, that just makes Pedro even more amazing, superlative, superlative, and superlative.

Relief Pitchers: AVG Velocity at 100 mph.

We’ll keep this one brief.  Pitch f/x data goes back to 2007 on FanGraphs, so that’s as far back as I can go, too.  Before 2011, Aroldis Chapman’s first full season in the pros, no one had averaged a 98 mph fastball before.  He did in 2011, and it sat at 98.1.  That number actually increased and kept increasing until it reached 100.2 mph in 2014.  That was his average fastball.  This year it’s a measly 99.5, but if anyone can do it, it would be the only man to do it.

Baseball is selfless in its ability to give us never-ending fun facts that the initiated will appreciate (I feel like there was some redundancy in that sentence).  This selflessness also serves as the primary reason why I’m sleep deprived and why my personal relationships are stunted.  So the next time your wife or husband or whoever, wakes up from their slumber to ask who you’re talking about, think of me, and if they’re statistically inclined, too, just say something like, “Oh hey, sorry to wake you, sweetie, it’s just that Paul Goldschmidt’s BB/K rate has been over 1 the last two months”, and then maybe, you two can lie awake and wonder about the wonders of Paul Goldschmidt’s approach at the plate this year.