https://i.imgur.com/7coCyh.jpg

Ventura + Herrera and Lawrie + Sale? If only Sardgeiejizijizma could have stayed an extra year.

On that note, I wonder if the Sox could talk Carlos Quentin out of retirement?

So if he ends up opting out then the deal is 2 years for $21 mil.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Ian Kennedy breakdown: 7.5M in &#39;16, 13.5M in &#39;17, 16M in &#39;18, 16.5M in &#39;19, 16.5M in &#39;20. $70M guarantee. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/royals?src=hash">#royals</a></p>&mdash; Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonHeyman/status/692324925693124608">January 27, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Thought this was interesting.


The Royals, the Pirates and projections that go wrong
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Jan 25, 2016
David Schoenfield
ESPN Senior Writer
You may be aware that before the 2015 season, the various projection systems didn't predict good things for the Kansas City Royals. In fact, at the media session before Game 1 of the World Series, Mike Moustakas was still grumbling about the preseason predictions.

Well ... the Royals may enter 2016 with the same chip on their shoulders. According to the projected WAR totals at FanGraphs, the Royals are the 20th-best team in baseball, below the Indians, White Sox and Tigers in the AL Central and projected as about a .500 team, give or take.

FanGraphs is well aware of this. As Jeff Sullivan wrote in an article last week, "No team has more conspicuously made us look silly than the Royals. ... For some, 'projection' is a dirty word, and for others there's just a certain skepticism. The Royals are the 'face' of this feeling, if that makes any sense, because after all, they're the defending champs, and they were projected to not be very good."


According to the projected WAR totals at FanGraphs, the Royals are the 20th-best team in baseball despite being the defending champs. Jeff Curry/USA TODAY Sports
While FanGraphs has missed on the Royals to the tune of 30 wins over the last three seasons, they've missed on another by even more: The Pittsburgh Pirates have won 33 more games than projected. Two others have won 20 more games than projected: the Cardinals and Orioles. As Jeff writes, "It's not a coincidence that, the last three years, the Pirates rank first in baseball in bullpen WPA, and the Royals rank second. That doesn't explain everything, but it's amazing how many games you can win if you don't let late leads slip away."

WPA is Win Probability Added, which in the case of bullpens translates to pitching really well in clutch moments in close games. Since 2013, the Cardinals are fourth in bullpen WPA and the Orioles are sixth. So strong bullpens seems to have a correlation to exceeding a team's projected record, but bullpens can be volatile and difficult to project. You wouldn't predict Wade Davis to have an ERA under 1.00 because that's insane, but he's done it two years in a row. The Royals had great bullpens in 2013 and 2014 and were thus projected to regress in 2015; instead, the pen was even better.

Bullpens don't always explain everything, however The Yankees are No. 3 in bullpen WPA since 2013 and they've more or less matched their projected totals; the Padres have had good bullpens and performed worse than expected.

Anyway, I thought there might be something else that Jeff didn't mention in his article: Health.

Look at the Royals. In 2015, six of the nine regulars played at least 140 games. The only major injury in the lineup was to Alex Gordon. Omar Infante got hurt, but he was terrible and they brought in an upgrade in Ben Zobrist. They did have to shuffle around the rotation a bit but the rotation wasn't the strength of the team. In 2014, however, four starters made 30-plus starts and a fifth made 25. All nine regular position players played at least 130 games. In 2013, they had less stability but four regulars played at least 156 games and their top three starters all made at least 32 starts. The Royals haven't had much depth on the position-player side but they haven't needed it.

The Pirates have had more platoons and moving parts than the Royals, but in 2015, five regulars played at least 150 games; no other team had more than four. Like the Royals with Salvador Perez, they had a durable catcher in Francisco Cervelli, who played 130 games. Their top six starters, including trade acquisition J.A Happ, started 153 of 162 games.

As for the Orioles, they had five regulars play 156-plus games in 2013, plus catcher Matt Wieters (148 games) and another 146-gamer. In 2014, they won 96 games despite the injuries to Manny Machado (82 games) and Matt Wieters (26 games) and PED suspension for Chris Davis (127 games). Certainly a remarkable managing job by Buck Showalter, but six starting pitchers did start 161 of 162 games, so the rotation remained healthy, and it's amazing what can happen when you don't have dig into your seventh, eighth and ninth starting pitchers. Last year, the Orioles battled more injuries and even though the bullpen was terrific, they finished 81-81.

This isn't to suggest that the health records of these teams have been all that unusual (I don't know without a deeper examination). But health is a really another tool alongside hitting, defense, arm and speed.

Of course, projection systems account for the durability of players and the FanGraphs projection has Eric Hosmer, Moustakes, Alcides Escobar, Gordon and Kendrys Morales all batting at least 600 times, with Lorenzo Cain at 574 and Perez with 531 PAs. So in the Royals' case, the projection for 2016 isn't so much about health as ... well, the projections. Here:

Position players: 20.5 WAR (24.9 in 2015)
Starters: 9.6 WAR (8.4 in 2015)
Bullpen: 2.7 WAR (5.0 in 2015)

For the position players, FanGraphs has the Royals hitting .265/.318/.399 compared to .269/.322/.412 in 2015. Basically, it's not buying into the increased offense from Moustakas and Cain in 2015 and projecting both to regress somewhat in 2016. The Royals' bullpen WPA was even higher than its WAR, so I suspect this: If the bullpen is dominant again and Moustakas and Cain hold their gains from 2015, the Royals will be just fine ... assuming good health.

I'd feel a lot better with one more OF Bat.

Going into the season with a Dyson / Paulando platoon in RF makes me nervous.

Why? In 476 PA they combined for 2.8 WAR. Rios in 411 produced 0.2. They should've played over Rios last year (yes, Rios was good in the playoffs)


Put in perspective: they provided the identical WAR Alex Gordon did in 422 PA. Why worry?

I'm not worried about the platoon. Second base scares me, though.

I hadn't heard that about his trade away from the A's.

He'd had a clash with an umpire in the minors when he was with the Brewers but I didn't think he'd gotten the lockerroom cancer tag with them either. Then again, when you look at the fact that he was essentially traded straight across for Shaun Marcum, I guess there's some smoke there as well.

I suppose I can reluctantly include him in that group given that it does appear there were three teams that ran him. I still don't think he's a dirty player and if he's disliked it's because he's a bit of a 'try hard'.

But there's no escaping being run out of three organizations so as much as I like the way the guy plays the game, I guess I have to admit he's a douche.

So we'll just go with the Unholy Trinity for those 3...

Shhhhh.

The adults are speaking...

I don't know why the As traded him away, but there was never any talk that Lawrie was a cancer in Toronto. AA didn't want to trade him away either. Beane requested him, though, and you do what you have to do when he's offering up the the MVP.

I can certainly see how his personality would rub some the wrong way, but baseball culture is full of guys like him.

When the Cardinals added Eduard Mujica a few years back, a guy I was talking with mentioned his WPA with the Marlins and gave me a pretty good rundown on it.

I was sold from that point forward. It's really an ideal way to analyze reliever value, IMO. It's still somewhat situation dependent but it also gives you a much better big-picture view than things like WAR and even peripheral performance stats like WHIP and K%.

Guys that consistently go out there and leave with there team more likely to win than they were when the pitcher came into the game are, by their definition, valuable relief pitchers. Ryan Madson is a perfect example - there's nothing sexy about Madson's arsenal. He's not a super high strikeout guy, he doesn't blow you away with heat or the snapdragon breaking balls. He just goes out there and gets the job done to the tune of the 10th best WPA in the AL and 23rd best overall. The Cardinals have one of those of their own in Seth Maness - he's nothing but a sinkerballer who throws strikes but he put up the 13th best WPA in baseball last year.

The one thing I can't figure out if it's a predictive stat at all. Does a good WPA one year suggest a good WPA the next? I haven't seen any research on it but if you look at the guys that are leading the league one year, they're usually there the next (with exceptions given to basic reliever volatility). At this point I'm still not convinced if it tells you that guys have done well (evaluative stat; not terribly useful going forward) or that they will continue to do well (predictive stat and much more useful).

Its interesting that fangraphs seems to have finally come on board a bit there; WPA is an amazing stat for evaluating bullpen effectiveness in a rearview, though it remains to be seen how useful it is for projections.

Good perspective.

Thanks!

Don't see why he'd opt out

It'd be tougher with that structure.

Pretty good deal by Moore to backload it sufficiently to protect the team from an effective Kennedy deciding to dump the last 3 years.

Now the only problem would be if he gets hurt, but that's a problem for any long-term deal.

Cool story about the final ball from the World Series win and what Drew Butera is going to do with it.

Atta boy, Drew!

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/k...rez-mvp-012716

That would be tough turning down 25 grand, nice story though.

I'm looking forward this year to checking out the Royals hall of fame and checking out 2015 WS run. And seeing the ultimate trophy in all its glory, I remember going through there several times wondering if it would ever happen again.