Zobrist decision not an easy one for Rays | MLB.com

The Rays can afford to wait on dealing Zobrist.

Tigers look to keep window of contention open | tigers.com

A lot of good questions about the Tigers.

4. Is Scherzer going to return?
Tigers officials have said repeatedly that they haven’t spoken with Scherzer’s agent, Scott Boras, about a return, and that their best shot to re-sign him was last spring before he hit free agency. And yet, none of the parties involved have ruled out a reunion. They know better after all the deals Boras has done with owner Mike Ilitch and all the times Ilitch has rewarded players who win for him.

Tigers GM Dave ...

general - Closing Time: 5 things I learned while working for WEEI.com - WEEI | Alex Speier

I’ve enjoyed Alex Speier’s coverage of the Red Sox and look forward to what’s next for him. I find his view of the changing nature of baseball coverage interesting.

Asdrubal Cabrera to join Rays

Its a shame about the Rays.

The Tampa Bay Rays have agreed to a one-year deal with infielder Asdrubal Cabrera, a source told ESPN’s Buster Olney, confirming multiple reports….

The shortstop played second base for the Washington Nationals at the end of last season after he was acquired in a trade deadline deal from the Cleveland Indians.

A two-time All-Star, Cabrera batted .229 with five home runs and 21 RBIs for the Nationals in 49 games after the trade. In total, between both teams, he ...

Nick Hundley signs two-year deal with the Rockies

Must be the Denver schools.

Free agent catcher Nick Hundley and the Rockies have agreed to a two-year contract worth around $6 million, according to Dan Connolly of the Baltimore Sun.

Connolly reports that the Orioles made Hundley a two-year offer to remain in Baltimore after acquiring him from the Padres in May, but he opted for more money and the promise of more playing time in Colorado.

Hundley hit .243 with six homers and a .631 OPS in 83 games overall and has a .680 OPS for his career.

Reds have deal in place for Marlon Byrd

Looks like the Reds have their new left fielder. Marlon Byrd is going to be traded to the Reds from the Phillies, reports Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com. In return, the Phillies will get at least minor-league pitcher Ben Lively while also sending some cash to the Reds, per Ken Rosenthal of Fox.

Byrd, 37, will make $8 million this coming season and has a vesting option—that will trigger if he gets 550 plate appearances in 2015—for $8 million in 2016.

Grantland: Lindbergh: Why John Smoltz Is on the Verge of Cutting the Line to Cooperstown

With the Gizmo, there’s no need to wait around for the official announcement to start trying to figure out what the writers are thinking.

The simplest way to figure out which factor has helped Smoltz the most is to examine his backers’ stated reasons for supporting him. Of the 78 “yes” votes for Smoltz linked from Thibs’s tracker, only 18 include an explanation that goes beyond “he’s a no-brainer.” While some writers might be unaware of or unwilling to reveal the biases governing ...

Brett Myers is a singer now. His single is called “Kegerator”

If you thought that league average pitching and overlooked domestic violence was all that Brett Myers was about, you couldn’t be more wrong. He’s also a singer.

He has a single out. It’s called “Kegerator.” It’s the touching tale of a guy who drank so much beer that his wife kept hassling him so he bought a kegerator and now all his wife sees is one glass instead of a bunch of empty cans. And now he and his friends are “as happy as can be” because their wives are fooled. I wish ...

Which Active Players Are Hall of Famers (ESPN/Schoenfield)

In any given season, there are more future Hall of Famers than you probably realize at first glance. Take 1994. Eighteen current Hall of Famers played that season…

Dodger Sims: 2015 Angels Best Lineup (vs RHP)

Although interesting to look at, most lineup studies leave out enough relevant factors to make the results pretty much useless. I haven’t read up on this particular project, so I’m not sure what factors the sim uses. Nevertheless, the work looks interesting.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 12-31-2014

Spokane Spokesman-Review, December 31, 1914:

A coroner’s jury acquitted Walter F. (“Poll”) Perritt, pitcher of the Los Angeles baseball team, [yesterday] of blame for the death of Herbert Lathrop, whom Perritt shot and killed in the Mountains on Monday when he mistook him for a mountain lion. The foreman said it was an accident, pure and simple. Lathrop, who was a well-known guide, was wearing a gray sweater at the time of his death. Perritt saw him moving in the underbrush and opened fire.

KATOH: Forecasting Major League Hitting with Minor League Stats – The Hardball Times

Interesting stuff.

Number-crunching: Four 20-somethings help Angels make sense of all that data - The Orange County Register

Meet the Angels number chunchers.

Padres, Mariners To Swap Seth Smith, Brandon Maurer

Brandon Maurer is the kind of name you’d expect in the movie “Rural Juror.”

The Padres and Mariners have agreed to a trade that will send outfielder Seth Smith from San Diego to Seattle in exchange for right-hander Brandon Maurer, ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick reports (on Twitter). Shannon Drayer of 710 ESPN in Seattle was the first to report earlier today that a trade of Smith to the Mariners was close.

Dodgers To Sign Taiwanese Pitcher Who Was Banned For Game-Fixing

Is that Tsao?

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Dodgers are close to signing 33-year-old pitcher Chin-Hui Tsao to a minor league contract. You may remember Tsao from his days as a top prospect in the Rockies’ organization (lol, sure), but what he’s most famous for is getting banned from baseball in Taiwan amidst allegations of throwing games.

Tsao was banned by the CPBL following the 2009 season, when an investigation into rampant game-fixing in the league revealed that he had accepted ...

Joe Macko, Rangers “Ambassador,” dies at 86

Joe Macko, a 306-home-run hitter in the minors and the Texas Rangers’ longtime “goodwill ambassador,” died today at the age of 86, according to team spokesman John Blake. Says Blake via Twitter on this day after Christmas, “The club extends its deepest sympathies to Joe’s family.”

Macko was part of the Rangers family for a long time, having served as the home equipment manager from 1973 through ’94, when he moved over to running the visiting team’s clubhouse. He did that ...

Noah: Trying to Improve fWAR Part 1

fWAR, specifically for pitchers, is riddled with minor problems that together make the metric less valuable.  In Part 1 of the series, we’re going to look at a hotly debated issue regarding fWAR that has been brought up by other readers before: the fWAR park factors.

According to the FanGraphs glossary, a basic runs park factor is used when calculating fWAR.  Because FIP models ERA, using runs park factors for FIP shouldn’t be a problem.

Unfortunately, this idea simply isn’t true. ...

...Read More...

JE (Jason) Posted: December 30, 2014 at 01:03 PM | 43 comment(s)
  Beats: fangraphs, statistics, wins above replacement

Guest post: Bill Deane’s third annual Hall of Fame forecast | Baseball: Past and Present

Bill Deane’s predictions.

Top Teams For Cuban Infielder Hector Olivera - BaseballAmerica.com

Some good info from Baseball America’s Ben Badler.

Who are the teams most likely to sign Olivera? The ones that will be after him the most should have these things in common (aside from the obvious, which is money to sign him):

• A need at second base, or possibly third
• Scouts who have history watching Olivera going back to 2008-10
• Comfort with risk and uncertainty on a player with medical red flags
• Quantitative analysts that have favorable translations of Olivera’s Cuban ...

Guillen ready to get back in the game of baseball | MLB.com

Ozzie wants back in.

Detroit Tigers’ Jose Iglesias makes progress toward return to field

“The only thing he hasn’t really done full bore is a sprint on a regular basis on hard ground,” Dombrowski said.

School of Roch: Orioles have real interest in Rasmus

I’m still hearing that the Orioles don’t have serious interest in free agent Ichiro Suzuki. However, they do hold legitimate interest in another left-handed hitting outfielder, Colby Rasmus, and have maintained a dialogue with agent Casey Close since the Winter Meetings in San Diego.

How Royals’ magical roster nearly got a July shakeup | New York Post

You have to love the brass on Boras. How much more money is he willing to cost Stephen Drew, though?

A few teams involved with Drew say his asking price of $9 million-$10 million for 2015 is not in their price range. Drew’s agent, Scott Boras, has emphasized the career .764 OPS the lefty swinger took into last season as representative of his client and not the .536 he posted in a disjointed 2014 campaign.
But executives from a few of the interested clubs have expressed concern that 2014 was so ...

Toronto Blue Jays Top 20 Prospects for 2015 - Minor League Ball

The John Sickels Top 20.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 12-30-2014

Milwaukee Sentinel, December 30, 1914:

A Federal league official stated on Tuesday that the reason the new organization did not persist in its efforts to sign Eddie Collins, formerly of the Athletics and now of the White Sox, was because his demands were so great that the officials were dumfounded.
...
To their great astonishment Collins demanded $80,000 for a three year contract. Not only that, but he wanted $20,000 in cash and demanded that the other $60,000 be deposited in the bank for him.

...

Starlin Castro’s agent says he could move to the USA

Good idea.

Nine possible spots for Max Scherzer: Star FA without a team, or a rumor - CBSSports.com

Will Boras really be able to convince a team to go $200 million on Scherzer?

9. Yankees: Hal Steinbrenner has been weighing Scherzer for weeks, but in recent days indications are Steinbrenner still isn’t ready to dive in, and they’ve said as much. Many rotation question questions carry over from last season, and it appears that for now at least, talented youngster Nate Eovaldi is the answer to McCarthy’s departure. Their starting group could be very good, but there’s a lot of uncertainty, from ...

Top 10 Game-Changing MLB Moments

WHAT ABOUT JETER’S WALK OFF?

Among all the moments on this list, none has a higher WPA than Davis’ June 30 grand slam against Oakland. The Tigers had a win expectancy of 20 percent entering the at-bat. (And that presumes each moment occurs in a vacuum. It didn’t take into account that the light-hitting Davis has never hit more than eight home runs in a season and that Davis had never hit a walk-off shot.)

With one smooth swing, Davis crushed a hanging curveball over the left-field wall, one ...

Vice Sports: The Radical Case for Cities Buying Sports Teams, not Sports Stadiums

Okay, so there is one small holdup with the public owning sports teams in the U.S., which is that the major pro sports leagues here have dedicated themselves to blocking it at every turn. McDonald’s heiress Joan Kroc once tried to give the Padres to the city of San Diego as a charitable donation, but was overruled by MLB; a similar league edict later prevented the city of Pittsburgh from getting a share of the Pirates in exchange for a $20 million “loan” that was never repaid. The NFL was so ...

Marlon Byrd Trade Between Phillies, Reds Fell Through

Will the Byrd fly the coop?

The Phillies are in clear rebuild mode, having dealt Jimmy Rollins and Antonio Bastardo this offseason, and they appear to have had a third trade in the works before it fell through. Jon Morosi of FOX Sports reports that the Phillies and Reds were close to a trade that would’ve sent Marlon Byrd to Cincinnati before talks broke down (Twitter link). The other players in the trade are unclear at this point, though Morosi notes that the Reds and Phils could still ...