The Angels bullpen power outage

They only throw in the low 90’s. Pfft!

Guillermo Heredia Leaves Cuba - BaseballAmerica.com

The trickle is turning into a flood.

Marco Scutaro designated for assignment by San Francisco Giants - ESPN

Second baseman Marco Scutaro was designated for assignment by the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday as he recovers from back surgery.

The Giants said they plan to retain Scutaro and continue working with him through his rehabilitation following back surgery that could end his career. Dr. Michael Wang performed a fusion last month in Miami to alleviate the troublesome area at level L-2/L-3 of Scutaro’s spine. It will be four to six months before doctors determine whether Scutaro can play ...

Pitchfork: Jack White Gets His Own Baseball Card

Rick Auerbach will now form a band and rip him off.

Jack White is getting his own baseball card, and guess what? He smiles in it! The Detroit Free Press reports (via Radio.com) that White’s card will appear in the 2015 Topps Series 1 set.

It’s unclear just how rare White’s First Pitch insert card will be. As you can see above, he wears a vintage Tigers jersey on it.

How is it that free-agent right-hander James Shields is still unemployed? - ESPN

Has he overpriced himself? How much did he postseason performance impact his market?

MLB and Umpires Reach 5 Year Agreement

Major League Baseball owners and the World Umpires Association, the exclusive bargaining representative of all full-time Major League Umpires, have both officially ratified a five-year labor agreement, the parties announced today.  The pact covers the 2015-2019 seasons.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 1-21-2015

Pittsburgh Press, January 21, 1915:

H.A. Jennings, a lawyer at the Lackawanna county bar in the winter time and manager of the Detroit American league baseball team in the spring and summer, has been elected a director of the Traders’ National bank, of Scranton. Hughey, as he is familiarly known throughout the baseball world, has been a stockholder in the Traders bank for several years.

Jennings appears to have done just about everything in Scranton, other than catching the Scranton Strangler. ...Read More...

The Most Pitcher & Hitter Friendly Umpires

As a quantifiable skill, pitch framing has been garnering a lot of attention in the past few years. While most research on that front has focused on a catcher’s ability to get extra strikes called, at Baseball Info Solutions we have developed a methodology for dividing the credit among the catcher, the pitcher, the batter, and the umpire. We call our system Strike Zone Plus/Minus, and the details of the methodology will be explained in The Fielding Bible—Volume IV coming out this spring.

...Read More...

Jim Furtado Posted: January 21, 2015 at 06:46 AM | 10 comment(s)
  Beats: sabermetrics, umpires

Prospect Watch: Top 10 right-handed pitchers | MLB.com

There are always a ton of right-handed pitchers on our Top 100 list. The 2015 version is no different. All 10 on the list below are in the Top 100, and then some.
Some of the names are familiar. Five right-handers—the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard, the Rockies’ Jon Gray, Archie Bradley of the D-backs, the Orioles’ Dylan Bundy, Robert Stephenson of the Reds—were on this list a year ago. Bradley and Bundy have made the list four years running, while this marks the third straight Top 10 for Syndergaard.

...Read More...

Jim Furtado Posted: January 21, 2015 at 06:38 AM | 8 comment(s)
  Beats: prospects

Yankees Held Private Workout For Yoan Moncada - BaseballAmerica.com

I hope they used the proper mood lighting.

New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez training with Barry Bonds, per report - MLB - SI.com

That will fix things.

Colby Rasmus to Astros - 1/$4MM

@jonmorosi

Colby Rasmus’ deal with #Astros will be worth more than $4 million, source says.

Calcaterra: Given all the advantages he’s had, is Brian Cashman the 21st best GM of all time?

The Yankees were already good — heck, they had already won a World Series — when Brian Cashman took over. They had Jeter and Mo and all of those guys and more money than God. It’d be harder, under those circumstances, to lose than it would be to win, right?

On a related note, is Luis Sojo the 21st-greatest Yankee player of all time?

Counting Down the 25 Best GMs in History - #21 - Brian Cashman

As promised, here’s Cashman.  A very fair assessment of his tenure IMO.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 1-20-2015

Pittsburgh Press, January 20, 1915:

The Cleveland Naps are to be called Indians hereafter. Unless all signs fail, the Indians are in for a scalping next summer.

Washington Herald, January 20, 1915:

Possibly the owners of the Cleveland club, by changing the name of the Sixth City club from “Naps” to “Indians” had in mind the Boston Braves.

This makes so much more sense than the strained explanation about honoring Louis Sockalexis.

Brewers committed to Jimmy Nelson, so scratch Jordan Zimmermann | FOX Sports

As Melvin told me: “Jimmy Nelson is in the rotation.”

OK, then.

So, it appears the Brewers will enter the 2015 season with Kyle Lohse, Matt Garza, Wily Peralta, Mike Fiers and Nelson.

No Zimmermann. No James Shields, either.

Sources: Rangers acquire RHP Gallardo in trade with Brewers | FOX Sports

The deal sends Gallardo to Texas in exchange for infielder Luis Sardinas, right-hander Corey Knebel, and right-hander Marcos Diplan.

Orioles have list of high-profile ex-GMs in case Duquette leaves

... the Orioles have compiled a list of Plan B options in case Duquette departs.

According to an industry source, that list—compiled in the past month—includes four high-profile former general managers: Ned Colletti, Kevin Towers, Omar Minaya and Kevin Malone, who spent a few years in the mid-1990s as an Orioles assistant general manager…

NattyBoh Posted: January 19, 2015 at 04:46 PM | 45 comment(s)
  Beats: baltimore orioles, dan duquette, general managers, toronto blue jays

Cubs, Astros Close To Dexter Fowler Trade

I like Fowler because he’s, like, the last leadoff hitter left.

The Cubs are close to acquiring outfielder Dexter Fowler from the Astros, Bruce Levine of 670thescore.com tweets. The Astros will receive big-league players in return, Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports tweets, and one of those is pitcher Dan Straily, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle notes (on Twitter)...

Fowler, 28, hit .276/.375/.399 in 505 plate appearances in his first season in Houston in 2014, though he posted poor ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 1-19-2015

Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, January 19, 1915:

“Will you please deny for me the stories printed in several New York papers that I was a candidate for the position of secretary or business manager of the Yankees,” writes Ed Barrow, president of the International League. “These stories were copied by the papers of our circuit and have caused some unpleasant and unfavorable comment on the part of several sporting writers.”

Barrow stayed with the International League until the end of the 1917 ...

Making small sample defensive metrics less volatile - Beyond the Box Score

What do I see? Well, raw IERP (and also raw DRS, not shown) has the same volatility as BABIP. Annual BABIP is mostly a crapshoot, so that confirms my expectation. ISO, wRC+ (and also wOBA, SLG, OBP, though not shown) are a fair bit better than BABIP. I don’t know about you, but when I see a one-year jump in ISO or wRC+, that’s a cause for interest. A one year blip may be a “breakout”, or the change might not last. We need to look deeper. Self-regression of IERP achieves that level of ...

Max Scherzer agrees to Nats deal, making great rotation even better - CBSSports.com

Jon Heyman says it’s a done deal.

op right-handed starter Max Scherzer and the Nationals are in agreement on a seven-year deal, CBSSports.com has learned.

Details of the deal beyond the seven years are not known.

Texas Rangers close to acquiring Yovani Gallardo - ESPN Dallas

No speculation on the Brewer return.

Madden: Beane’s A’s good to go, Hart’s Braves gone for year - NY Daily News

Comparing and contrasting John Hart’s and Billy Beane’s off-seasons.

Nationals Build Potential Super-Team, Add Max Scherzer | FanGraphs Baseball

Jeff Sullivan looks into the crystal ball to see Max Scherzer’s possible future. (Keep in mind that 2 of the 10 comps he used didn’t do particularly well.)

Sunday Notes: Spiritual Hamburger, New Boog, Banny in Boston, Clint Frazier, more | FanGraphs Baseball

David Lauria’s Sunday notes.

Max Scherzer closing in on new multiyear contract - ESPN

According to the Washington Post, the Nationals are the favorite to land Scherzer and are “very close” to a deal.

A source told ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark that the Nationals won’t have the financial flexibility to sign Scherzer unless they have a trade in place to move starter Jordan Zimmermann and possibly shortstop Ian Desmond. As of Saturday, Stark reports, the Nationals did not have trades in place for either Zimmermann or Desmond.

YAHOO: Tim Brown - Max Scherzer appears to be nearing deal with Nationals

Max Scherzer, the ace of a free-agent class that included Jon Lester and still features James Shields, on Sunday appeared to be nearing an agreement on a seven-year contract with the Washington Nationals.

“It’s heating up,” a source familiar with the negotiations told Yahoo Sports.

The contract could be worth in the neighborhood of $200 million.

Lester, in December, signed with the Chicago Cubs for $155 million over six years. Boras believed Scherzer was worth more than that, and indeed ...

Mets Merized Online: Fred Wilpon Named Chairman of MLB Finance Committee

...

Bill Madden of the Daily News reports there was a lot more happening at last week’s owners meeting in Arizona than just a farewell party for Bud Selig.

New head honcho Rob Manfred announced a complete overhaul of major league baseball’s hierarchy and among the new restructuring he named Mets owner Fred Wilpon the new chairman and head of the MLB Finance Committee… Wilpon, who allegedly lost about $700 million in the largest Ponzi scheme in American History – the second time he was ...

Mercer welcomes confident Kang in position battle

I think we missed this one…?

[Jordy] Mercer… might be the player most directly affected by the Pirates’ impending signing of Korean shortstop Jung-ho Kang, who took things a step further by essentially stating his intent to be the Pirates’ regular shortstop…

“It’s nice to see [Kang’s] confidence, for sure. I’m not going to come back at him. There’s no reason for that,” Mercer said. “I think we can settle on the field. All that will take care of itself, really. There’s no reason for me to come ...