Contemporary Minor League Stars, Part II

Continuing on with my list of contemporary minor league stars, who I define as players with at least 4,000 plate appearances in the high minors (AA and AAA) on the theory that they had to be pretty good ballplayers to last that long.  Part I of this series can be found here.

3.  Scott McClain (5,160 AAA plate appearances, 800 AA and 88 MLB).  Before wrapping up his professional career at age 37 at the end of the 2009 season, McClain played a whopping 20 seasons of pro ball.  His 5,160 plate appearances at the AAA level was the most of any contemporary player I could find.

McClain hit 292 home runs in the minor leagues and another 89 in Japan’s NPB.  However, he only hit two HRs in the major leagues during cups of the coffee with the Rays in 1998, the Cubs in 2005 and the Giants in 2oo7 and 2008.

McClain played mostly 1B and 3B and didn’t become a great AAA hitter until he was age 26.  He was at least able to make some money in his professional career by playing five season in Japan’s NPB, where American players generally earn at least the major league minimum.

4.  Andy Tracy (4,519 AAA, 1,247 AA, 314 MLB).  Another great minor league thumper, Tracy has hit 296 minor league home runs but only 13 in the show.

Tracy wasn’t highly regarded as a prospect out of college (Bowling Green in Ohio) and thus played four years in college before signing with a major league franchise.  He had a huge year in the Eastern League at age 25, which got him substantial playing time the next year for the 2000 Montreal Expos.  He got into 83 games that year and hit .260 with 11 HRs and an .824 OPS, excellent for a rookie.

However, Tracy got off to a dreadful start in 2001, hitting only .109 with a .427 OPS in 38 games before being sent down the minors, except for the briefest cups of coffee in 2004, 2008 and 2009 (a total of only 33 plate appearances), for good.  Like McClain, Tracy played mostly 1B and 3B, and was a great AAA hitter for years.

Tracy’s last season was 2011, when he hit .288 with a .987 OPS in 85 games for the Reno Aces of the AAA Pacific Coast League.  Reno is a great place to hit, but Tracy’s numbers are so impressive that I have to think that it was accumulated injuries (Tracy was 37 that year) that ended his professional career.  For what it’s worth, I saw Tracy take Carlos Marmol deep in a game in New Orleans between the Zephyrs and the Iowa Cubs in May 2007.

5.  Mike Cervenak.  (3,785 AAA, 2,091 AA, 13 MLB).  One of my favorite contemporary minor league stars, I’ve written about Cervenak before here and here.  He’s playing in Taiwan this year, most likely finishing out his pro career at 36.  He’s hit 192 minor league home runs.

6.  Cody Ransom (4,455 AAA, 554 AA, 687+ MLB).  Another one of my favorite contemporary minor league stars, almost certainly because, like Cervenak, Ransom’s a former Giants prospect.  However, unlike Cervenak, who never really got a fair shot with the Gints, Ransom was once a highly regarded prospect even though he was 9th round draft pick.  The Giants like toolsy prospects, and Cody had tools.

As I’ve written before a number of times, Cody is one of those rare players who developed significantly as a professional hitter after age 27, and he got his first significant major league playing time last year at the ripe old age of 37 (282 plate appearances for the Brewers and Diamondbacks after never getting more than 86 in any of his nine prior major league part-seasons).

Cody, or “Babe” as I like to call him, started the 2013 campaign with the San Diego Padres, but they designated him for assignment after he started the year 0-for-11.  The Cubs claimed him off waivers and in three games he’s off to a 4-for-9 start with home run, two doubles and a walk.  Given his red hot start as a Cubbie, and the fact that Wrigley Field is a great place for a guy with power like Ransom, there’s a good chance he’ll stick around in Chicago for a while.  It doesn’t hurt that the 2013 Cubs look to be a bad team in need of players who can hit a little.

7.  Kevin Barker (5,140 AAA, 1,320 AA, 323 MLB).  Another minor league bomber, Barker hit 271 minor league home runs (but only six in the Show), finishing his professional career in 2011 for the Oaxaco Guerreros (“Warriors”) of the Mexican League.

Barker got into 78 games for the Brewers in 1999 and 2000 at ages 23 and 24, but he didn’t hit the second year, and got only a few cups of coffee after that.  His best minor league season was probably 2009 when he hit 22 HRs and had a .927 OPS in 101 games for the AAA Louisville Bats.

8.  Michael Restovich (3,503 AAA, 565 AA, 297 MLB).  A former Twins prospect, Restovich hit 214 minor league home runs, but only six in the majors.  He was a fine minor league hitter who just didn’t hit in the limited major league opportunities he got.  His professional career ended in 2011.

9.  Chris Richard (3,192 AAA, 1,065 AA, 1,006).  Originally drafted by the Cardinals, at age 27 Richard played 136 games for the 2001 Orioles in which he hit .265 with 15 HRs and a .770 OPS, while playing RF, CF, 1B and DH (a very unusual combination).  He didn’t hit well in 2002, however, and that was the end of his major league career except for cups of coffee with the 2003 Rockies and the 2009 Rays.  Richard slugged 198 minor league HRs in addition to his 34 major league jacks.  His professional career ended in 2010.

10.  Jeff Bailey (2,995 AAA, 1,826 AA, 159 MLB).  Yet another minor league slugger, he hit 191 minor league dingers but only six in the Show.  Bailey spent parts of six seasons with the Pawtucket Red Sox from 2004 through 2009 and got three cups of coffee from the true Red Sox the last three of those seasons.  He finished his professional career with the Rochester Red Wings in 2011.

11.  Tike Redman (3,549 AAA, 724 AA, 1,461 MLB).  Just in case you were thinking all contemporary minor league stars were sluggers, Redman was a center fielder who just wasn’t quite good enough on either side of the ball to have a long major league career.  However, the Pirates certainly gave him opportunities, as his 1,461 career major league plate appearances attest.

12.  Luis Figueroa (4,682 AAA, 1,602 AA, 16 MLB).  A shortstop who apparently hit just well enough to be a AAA starter for years and whose glove, I presume, wasn’t quite good enough to make him a major league late inning defensive replacement, Figueroa’s North American career appears to have ended last year with the Oaxaca Guerreros.  He got three major league cups of coffee in 2001, 2006, 2007, but appeared in a total of only 18 major league games.

13-16.  Joe Thurston (4,868 AAA, 633 AA, 384 MLB), Esteban German (3,720, 511, 1,170), Ray Olmedo (3,381, 734, 484) and Bobby Scales (3,342, 708, 158).  A quartet of middle infielders/jacks-of-all-trades.

Thurston got into 124 games for the 2009 Cardinals but didn’t hit.  German was a briefly hot prospect who played semi-regularly for the Royals from 2006 through 2008 but hit worse each successive year — he’s now playing in Japan.  Olmedo looks like a classic glove-tree shortstop who didn’t hit much even at AAA, but stuck around because of his defensive acrobatics.

Bobby Scales was a fine minor league hitter who played a lot of different positions but probably not well enough at 2B or 3B to keep him in the majors.  He had a .373 on-base percentage last year for Japan’s Orix Buffaloes, but the team didn’t bring him back in 2013, probably because he didn’t hit for power and his defense wasn’t very good.

I strongly suspect there are other contemporary minor league stars I have failed to identify, and I invite you to send in comments identifying them.  However, I think I’ve made a point: there are still a large number of minor league stars in today’s game playing great ball at the AAA level, who either through bad luck, late development or by virtue of being just a hair below the talent level of major leaguers have spent most of their long professional careers in the minor leagues.

Baseball Brawls

Because of the big brawl yesterday between the Padres and the Dodgers in which Zack Greinke broke his collar bone, apparently when he and Carlos Quentin traded shoulder blocks, Sports Illustrated is running an on-line article it advertizes as “the most notorious brawls in baseball history”.  It then lists 13 relatively recent brawls, only three of which occurred before 1993 and none before 1965.

At least the article included Juan Marichal hitting catcher John Roseboro over the head with his bat after Marichal claimed that Roseboro buzzed his head with a throw back to pitcher Sandy Koufax, because Koufax wouldn’t throw at Marichal after Marichal had plunked at least one Dodger (Koufax reputedly refused to throw at hitters because he was afraid his 98 mph fast ball, the fastest of his day, might kill someone).

You see, before 1965 baseball was a game of peace and love where no one ever mixed it up.

What a load of BS.  Baseball was a rough, rough game in its early professional days and has gotten more and more tame as players have become better paid and MLB has worked to make the games family entertainment.

In the 1880′s and 1890′s the game was hard fought in a literal sense.  Umpires were routinely threatened by players and fans, and it was not uncommon for both to back up their tough talk with physical violence.  The best teams of the era, the St. Louis Browns of the 1880′s American Association and the Baltimore Orioles of the 1890′s National League regularly abused umpires and opposing players forcing/inspiring other teams to follow suit.

During this era, there was generally only one umpire monitoring the action, and when his eyes were following the ball, fielders tried to impede base runners by getting in the way, tripping them, throwing knees or elbows and even body blocks, or grabbing their belts.  Baserunners responded in kind, and one base runner famously defeated the belt-grabbing strategy by unhooking his belt so that when an opposing fielder grabbed it, the fielder was left holding the belt as the runner continued round the bases.

Fans threw glass bottles and rotten eggs at opposing players and umpires, and on-field fist fights were common.  Most professional baseball players came from poor or working class backgrounds, life was hard for working class men in the late 19th century when the national economy was notoriously boom or bust, and a major league ball player’s salary was something worth fighting for.

The game got so rough that baseball and ballplayers got unsavory reputations, which kept many potential fans away from the ballparks.  This only changed when the American League announced itself as a major league before the 1901 season and quickly began moving teams into the biggest cities.

The AL’s driving force and strong man Ban Johnson felt the “rowdyism” of the 1890′s was bad for the game, and he wouldn’t allow it in his league.  The NL eventually followed suit.

Further, as major league revenues and salaries, more former college players entered the game and brought with them the ethics of elite and more upper class amateurism.  Most notable of these players was New York Giants ace Christy Mathewson, probably the player most mythologized during his own day of any player in baseball history.  [Matthewson had attended Bucknell University, was exceptionally handsome and was far and away the best player on the dominant club of his day -- there is a certain irony in the fact this All-American icon died prematurely as a long-term result of being gassed by his own government in a training exercise during World War I.]

However, the cleaning up of major league baseball wasn’t something that happened over night.  It was a long and slow process, and with the exception of the famous Marichal/Roseboro bat incident, the game has gotten more and more tame as high salaries and professionalism have reduced the incentives for violence.

Here is a post from espn.com which at least goes back beyond 1965 in referencing famous baseball brawls/fights.  I particularly like the quote from Yankees’ catcher and Hall of Famer Bill Dickey after he famously broke Washington Senators’ outfielder Carl Reynolds’ jaw with a single punch following a home plate collision on July 4. 1932: “It was hot, and the games had been close, and I had been banged around for days,” Dickey said. “When Reynolds came at me high, I just had to hit somebody.”  [Dickey received a month-long suspension and was fined $1,000, probably a sixth of his 1932 salary.]

Even if Sports Illustrated’s memory doesn’t extend back any further than incidents for which it can provide pretty pictures, don’t for a minute think that human nature has changed much since the American pastime turned pro in the late 1860′s.

April Is Good (and Big Catchers)

April is a good time.  After the month-long tease of Spring Training, we finally have major league baseball games again that count toward the championship season.

Only three or four games into the 2013 season, we’ve seen Bryce Harper become the youngest player to hit two home runs on Opening Day and the fourth youngest player to hit a home run on Opening Day, Clayton Kershaw become only the second pitcher since at least 1916 to pitch a shut out and hit a home run on opening day (Hall of Famer Bob Lemon did it in 1953), and Yu Darvish come within one out of a perfect game.  That’s what we’ve been waiting for since the 2012 World Series ended five months ago!

One start into his major league career, Hyun-Jin Ryu, the 2012 off-season’s most exciting foreign signing, looks like the real deal.  While he took a hard-luck loss against the Giants, he allowed only one earned run in 6.1 innings pitched and struck out five while walking none.  However, he also allowed 10 hits and two unearned, suggesting he’s still got some things to learn about pitching to major league hitters compared to those in the Korean Baseball Organization.

I read somewhere during Spring Training that Ryu was probably only a fourth or fifth starter in MLB.  However, his spring training numbers didn’t show it.  In six starts and seven appearances this spring, he had a 3.29 ERA with a pitching line of 27.1 IP, 17 hits, one HR, eight BBs and 27 Ks.  You couldn’t ask for much more than that from a pitcher pitching against major league (and high minors) hitters for the first time.

I’m sure Ryu still has some things to learn, he could blow out his pitching arm before the 2013 season’s over, and I still think he needs to lose a few pounds, but so far he hasn’t done anything to suggest he isn’t worth the big contract the Dodgers gave him.

I read yesterday on mlbtraderumors.com that the Orioles tried, but were unable, to sign catcher Matt Wieters to a long-term contract extension this Spring.  This may be the best contract the Orioles never signed.

Catchers Matt Wieters’ size (he’s listed by baseball reference as 6’5″ and 240 lbs) very rarely have long major league careers.  Of the top 20 catchers all-time in terms of games played at the position, the largest to date was Lance Parrish, who baseball reference lists as 6’2″ and 210 lbs (fangraphs says he weighed 220 lbs).

Players at all positions are steadily getting bigger, and A. J. Pierzynski (who is listed as 6’3″ and 235 lbs, is currently 27th all-time in games played at catcher, and has averaged 124 games caught per season for the last three years) is only 75 more games played away from jumping up to 19th all-time in games caught.  However, the only other catcher of that size in the top 30 is Ernie Lombardi (6’3″ and 230 lbs) who is currently 28th all-time.

Matt Wieters has played 126, 132 and 134 games at catcher the last three seasons, and, so long as he doesn’t get hurt, is likely to play roughly that many each of the next three seasons before he becomes eligible for free agency.

I’ve written many times over the last few years about how the Twins should stop running Joe Mauer (6’5″, 230 lbs) out at catcher 120+ games a year at catcher, and Brian McCann (6’3″, 230 lbs), who had his best two offensive seasons at ages 22 and 24 and has seen his OPS drop each of the last four seasons, is pretty much the poster-boy for the problems with playing a man that size at catcher 120+ games a season year after year.

Wieters is represented by Scott Boras, which usually means that it will take the absolute maximum to get Wieters signed long term.  If the O’s plan to play Wieters 130+ games a year at catcher for the next three seasons, they’d almost certainly be better off letting some other team give him the ginormous contract he’ll get as a free agent.

What Are the Chances Johan Santana Makes the Hall of Fame?

At this moment, probably not good.  Johan Santana had shoulder surgery today and, according to espn.com, will miss the entire season for the second time in three years.  He is vowing to pitch again in the major leagues, but whether he actually does remains to be seen.

Santana’s claim to be a Hall of Famer rests on the fact that he was indisputably the best pitcher in major league baseball for the five year period from 2004 through 2008.  During that span he led his league in wins, ERA, innings pitched or strike outs eight times, won two Cy Young Awards and could have, with a little more luck, won four Cy Young Awards.  Santana was clearly a better pitcher than Bartolo Colon in 2005, and there was very little daylight between his and Tim Lincecum‘s numbers in 2008.

However, Santana’s career wins total is presently 139, and that’s awfully few for a Hall of Fame candidate.

The (relatively) recent pitcher whom Santana most closely resembles among the All-Time Greats is Sandy Koufax.  Koufax finished his career with a record of 165-87 (.655 winning percentage), not a whole lot different from Santana’s 139-78 (.641 winning percentage).  Both were left-handed strike out pitchers with excellent command.

Koufax was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972, his first year of eligibility.  The problem for Santana, of course, is that Koufax’s last five seasons were clearly better than Santana’s best five.  Koufax led the league in wins, winning percentage, ERA, IP and Ks 13 times his last five seasons.  Using the newer metric, wins above replacement, which should take into account the facts Koufax’s days were a much better time to be a pitcher than Santana’s and the Dodgers of Koufax’s era were better than Santana’s Twins/Mets, Koufax’s last five lead Santana’s best five 40.8 t0 35.4 according to baseball reference’s formula and an even larger 43.3 to 31.6 using fangraphs’ formula.

The Dodgers won three pennants and two World Series in Koufax’s last five seasons, and Koufax also threw four no-hitters (compared to one for Santana) and a perfect game in his career and set what was at the time the single season strike out record and is still only one behind the all-time record.

Something else that will hurt Santana’s future Hall of Fame chances is that unlike Koufax, who walked away from the game at his peak, we’ve had to watch Santana battle arm problems for the last four years, which has made it easier for people to forget just how good Santana was when he was at the top of his game.

In my mind, the biggest knock on Santana as an all-time great is that he was never a pitcher who finished what he started.  In his career, he has thrown only 15 complete games.  In comparison, Koufax completed 27 games in each of his last two seasons.

The game has changed a lot, of course, since Koufax’s day, and it’s highly unlikely that any major league pitcher will ever again complete as many as 27 games over the course of two consecutive major league seasons, let alone one.  Even so, Santana hasn’t completed a lot of games even by the standards of the current era.  Santana is tied with the much younger Matt Cain for 14th place among active pitchers and is miles behind Roy Halladay (66) and CC Sabathia (35) the active leaders.

Although complete games are much rarer than they once were, they are still awfully important since bullpen fatigue is a much bigger problem now than it was in the days when starters regularly finished games and the last couple of guys in the bullpen didn’t pitch a whole lot.  Aside from the fact that Roy Halladay’s wins total is much higher than Santana’s, his record of throwing complete games is going to make him a much more attractive candidate to Hall of Fame voters even if Halladay doesn’t do anything more in his career.

A number of Hall of Fame starting pitchers failed to win 200 games in their major league careers: Dizzy Dean (150-83; famously hurt his arm while pitching with a broken toe he suffered in the 1937 All Star Game), Addie Joss (160-97; he died two days after his 31st birthday of tubercular meningitis), Lefty Gomez (189-102; pitched on six Yankees’ teams that won the World Series), Dazzy Vance (197-140; established himself as a major league pitcher at age 31), Rube Waddell (193-143; led the AL in Ks six years in a row between 1902 and 1907), Big Ed Walsh (195-126; the last pitcher to win 40 games or throw 450+ innings in a season) and Happy Jack Chesbro (198-132; his 41 wins in 1904 is the most by any pitcher since the mound was moved back to 60 feet six inches in 1893).

What I take from this list is that Johan Santana will need to come back and match Dizzy Dean’s 150 career wins to have  a serious shot at making the Hall of Fame.

Buster Posey’s Contract Extension

As you certainly know by now, the Giants just signed Buster Posey to an eight-year contract extension that guarantees he will be a Giant (unless the team trades him) through 2021 and that he will make at least $167 million during that period, including the $8 million he had previously agreed to be paid for 2013.

Cliff Corcoran of Sports Illustrated writes that this signing is bad for free agency in the sense that teams will find it hard to get better through free agency, because the current trend is for teams to extend their best free agents through the peak seasons long before they reach free agency.  That’s sort of true, except that most teams don’t really benefit a whole lot by signing expensive free agents unless (1) they’re the New York Yankees and can buy the best available free agents every off-season, or (2) they are only one or two players away from reaching or advancing in the post-season.

The current trend is that teams in the middle of the revenue pack have decided that it is better to extend their best players as soon as possible in the hopes that these players will be able to stay healthy.  If said young star stays healthy, the team has effectively locked the player in at reasonable annual rates and usually for the best years of the young star’s career without as many of the old-age garbage years that usually come at the end of a true free agent contract.  The young star gets a guarantee of future riches no matter what happens to him in the future.

This may be the hot trend right now, but we’ll see how long it lasts.  Some of these contracts are going to blow up spectacularly on the teams signing them.

The two signings Corcoran discusses at greatest length, Posey and Joe Mauer, are cases in point.

Corcoran describes Posey’s 2011 injury as a “fluke” that won’t happen again because the Giants have instructed Posey not to block the plate any more.  That’s nonsense.  Catchers get hurt a lot regardless of whether or not they block the plate.  They take all kinds of foul tips off their bodies, and the simple act of crouching behind the plate for 120+ games a season by a man who weighs more than 200 pounds is not something that can be sustained year after year after year.

Joe Mauer proves this point.  The Twins gave Mauer an even bigger contract than the Giants just gave Posey and it’s already looking highly suspect.  I’ve been writing for years that Mauer is too big a man to be the Twins’ primary catcher, and the evidence is bearing me out.

Mauer missed half of 2011 to injuries, and while he was healthy last year and hit fairly well, his best two offensive seasons were years ago at ages 26 and 23, a clear sign that playing a lot of games at catcher has affected his offensive performance negatively.

The Twins made the mistake of locking in 1Bman Justin Morneau to a long term contract long before he reached free agency.  Morneau got hurt in 2010 at age 29 and hasn’t been the same player since.  That allowed Mauer to play fewer games at catcher last season, which is good.  However, it may already be too late, since Mauer no longer looks like the kind of hitter who could be a major star playing most of his games at 1B.

At any rate, with back-to-back 95+ loss seasons the last two years, locking in Mauer and Morneau to long extensions sure don’t look like good moves by the Twins.

The Giants are facing something of a similar situation with Posey, although they presently still have flexibility.  Given Buster Posey’s offensive potential, the Giants should be looking for every opportunity to play Posey at 1B.

However, current Giants 1Bman Brandon Belt looks on the verge of breaking out as a major star. Last year at age 24, Belt helped the Giants a lot more than some people may realize with his .360 on-base percentage and his Gold Glove caliber defense at 1B.  This spring, Belt hit .410 with a 1.265 OPS.

If Belt’s 2013 spring training numbers aren’t a total fluke, Buster Posey isn’t going to be playing much at 1B in 2013 or for the next few seasons.  Additionally, if Belt continues to develop, don’t be surprised if the Giants then lock in Belt long term and the Giants end up getting burned much in the same way the Twins got burned by locking in Mauer and Morneau.

 

The Arbitration Process

Here’s a terrific short blurb about the salary arbitration process in baseball from mlbtraderumors.com.  It talks about how baseball’s salary arbitrators tend to value back-of-the-baseball-card stats like wins, ERA, batting average, RBI’s, saves and holds, rather than more recently developed metrics such as Wins Above Replacement which more accurately value a player’s total contribution toward winning major league baseball games.  As a result, arbitrators may value a player’s contributions higher or lower than his own team does.

This is not terribly surprising.  Many institutional factors in the arbitration process contribute to this over- or under-valuing.  The main reason is that arbitration is a legalistic process which relies very, very heavily on precedent — i.e., what other players with similar levels of experience and performance have been paid prior to the salary arbitration case to be decided.

The Major League Baseball Players’ Association negotiated the right to binding salary arbitration for players with two years of major league service time in the early 1970′s (most likely starting after the 1973 season, according to Marvin Miller’s book A Whole Different Ball Game – his book is a little unclear on this point).  At that time, none of the new-fangled statistics existed, teams thought that .300 hitters who didn’t have power or walk much were a lot more valuable than we now know they are, and RBIs were seen as the be-all and end-all of offensive production.

As such, the old-line stats became the basis for all salary arbitration awards and got locked in for the future through precedent.  Further, I suspect that most of baseball’s salary arbitrators are older and very experienced, making them both loath to deviate from precedent and suspicious of the new, more accurate statistical analysis.

Very quickly after the players negotiated the right to binding salary arbitration, which prevented tight-wad teams like Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s and Calvin Griffith’s Minnesota Twins from wildly underpaying their stars, owners discovered that binding salary arbitration guaranteed huge raises for most players eligible for arbitration even if their cases were litigated and lost by the players.  As a result, one of the big bones of contention between owners and players  has been the owners’ desire for give-backs on, if not complete elimination of, salary arbitration.

In the early 1980′s, the Players Association agreed to raise the service time requirement for arbitration eligibility from two years of service to three years of service. Despite much hard bargaining subsequently, the players have only been able to negotiate a reduction to include the 17% of players with the most major league service between two and three seasons.

Today, it appears that the owners have finally come to terms with binding salary arbitration, both because it has now been around for almost 40 years and also because in the last ten years, teams have begun to non-tender large numbers of arbitration-eligible players who would otherwise be virtually guaranteed substantial raises through the arbitration process.

At the time that the Players’ Association won the right to free agency through grievance arbitration in 1976, A’s owner Charlie Finley was the only owner with the foresight to see that if arbitrator Peter Seitz’s decision was actually carried out (all players could become free agents after roughly two years of major league service), there would be a huge glut of players on the open market every off-season, which would push down salaries for all but the best few players at each position.

While the other owners didn’t see this because they were too locked in to their collective mind set of controlling players totally for their entire careers, Players’ Association director Marvin Miller did.  He agreed to a six-year service requirement for free agency, because he saw that this would mean relatively few free agents each off-season and those players who reached free agency at all would generally be star players.  As a result, free agent contract amounts would go through the roof based on simple supply and demand principles.  Once that happened, players with less experience but sufficiently high past performance could boot-strap on the huge free agent contracts through binding salary arbitration.  Modern player salaries are the consequence of this system and the Players’ Association’s foresight.

Now that all of the teams are non-tendering significant numbers of arbitration-eligible players, it has created a glut of middle relievers and utility players on the open market, which has held salaries down for these players.  If a solid but unspectacular middle reliever stands to get a huge raise through salary arbitration, his team can non-tender him and find a similar player on the open market for substantially less money.

The upshot is that binding salary arbitration has matured to point where players will never, ever agree to its elimination and owners at least live with its consequences given their ability to non-tender players they consider undeserving of huge raises.  At this point, all I can see is minor tweeks to this system — for example, raising salary arbitration eligibility back to three full years of major league service in exchange for eliminating any deterrents to signing free agents (i.e., signing teams would no longer lose a draft pick when signing a top free agent).

The Best and Worst Hitters’ Parks in MLB 2013

Last summer I discovered that espn.com provides stats for what it calls “park factor”, which for purposes of this post means the ratio between the number of runs scored at a ballpark in any given season divided by the number of runs scored by said ballpark’s occupant (and its opponents) in away games that same season.  I wrote a post last June which evaluates each park’s park factor for the five years ending with the 2011 season.

As we approach the 2013 season (and the 2012 stats have long been in), it seems like a good time to update my earlier post incorporating the 2012 season.  Without further ado, here are the average park factors for all major league ballparks over the last six season (or less for the five ball parks that have opened more recently).

1.  Coors Field (Rockies) 1.301

2.  The Ballpark at Arlington (Rangers) 1.148

3.  Chase Field (Diamondbacks) 1.134

4.  Fenway Park (Red Sox) 1.131

5.  U.S. Cellular Field (White Sox) 1.111

6.  Wrigley Field (Cubs) 1.086

7.  Camden Yards (Orioles) 1.080

8.  New Yankee Stadium (2009-2012) 1.066 [Old Yankee Stadium, 2004-2008, 1.002]

9.  Great American Ball Park (Reds) 1.057.

10.  Comerica Park (Tigers) 1.044.

11.  Kauffman Stadium (Royals) 1.018

12.  Rogers Center (Blue Jays) 1.010

12.  Miller Park (Brewers) 1.010

14.  Citizens Bank Ballpark (Phillies) 1.008

15.  Marlins Park (2012) 1.005  [Sun Life Stadium, 2007-2011, 1.038]

16.  Nationals Park (2008-2012) 0.998 [RFK Stadium, 2005-2007, 0.892]

17.  Minute Maid Park (Astros) 0.986

18.  Target Field (Twins, 2010-2012) 0.983 [Mall of America Field (the Metrodome), 2005-2009, 0.966]

19.  Turner Field (Braves) 0.978

20.  Progressive Field (Indians) 0.960

21.  Angels Stadium 0.939

22.  PNC Park (Pirates) 0.936

22.  Busch Stadium (Cardinals) 0.936

24.  Oakland Coliseum (A’s) 0.919

25.  AT&T Park (Giants) 0.917

26.  Dodger Stadium 0.915

27.  Citi Field (Mets, 2009-2012) 0.904 [Shea Stadium, 2004-2008, 0.886]

28.  Tropicana Field (Rays) 0.889

29.  Safeco Field (Mariners) 0.864

30.  Petco Park (Padres) 0.808

The rankings didn’t change much from last year.  Among last year’s ten best hitters’ parks, U.S. Cellular Park, where the White Sox play, was apparently a great place to hit in 2012, moving it up two slots.  New Yankee Stadium was apparently not a great place to hit, moving it down two slots. Coors Field improved on its status as far and away the best hitters’ park in MLB.

The Marlins’ new park, which looked like a great place to hit in late June of last year, turned out to be only a little better than average for the full season — we’ll have to see how it plays over the next few seasons.

The Royals’ Kauffman Stadium moved up two slots, and the Phillies’ Citizens’ Bank Park fell two slots.  The Astros’ Minute Maid Park also fell two slots.  The Twins’ Target Field was a hitters’ park for the first time in its three year history, jumping it up four slots.  The Pirates and Giants and their respective opponents scored a lot more runs on the road in 2012, causing both PNC Park and AT&T Park to drop three slots.

With another year in the books, the Mets’ Citi Field is developing into as much of a pitchers’ park as the old Shea Stadium.  San Diego’s Petco Park remains the worst place to ply one’s trade as a major league hitter, but Seattle’s Safeco Field narrowed the gap considerably.

San Francisco Giants to Sign Japanese 2Bman Kensuke Tanaka; Eric Hacker Likely Going to South Korea

The San Francisco Chronicle today reports that the Giants intend to sign soon-to-be 32 year old second baseman Kensuke Tanaka to a minor league contract with an invitation to Spring Training.  Tanaka will be competing for a utility role with the Giants after spending the last seven seasons as a starter for NPB’s Nippon Ham Fighters.

I wish I could say I was more excited about the signing.  Given Tanaka’s age, he should be on the down-slope of his career, and I don’t really think he was major league material to begin with.

Tanaka didn’t hit for power in Japan, so he will have no power playing in MLB.  His career NPB .286 batting average is good, but his career NPB .342 OBP probably translates to between .310 and .320 in MLB.  He was a base-stealing threat as recently as 2010, but stole only 13 bases in 22 attempts in 2012.

The best thing to be said for the deal is that it’s a minor league deal which probably only pays Tanaka about $1 million if he makes the major league club, so it’s extremely low risk.

Meanwhile, Eric Hacker, the ace of the 2012 AAA Fresno Grizzlies, reportedly in the final stages of signing with the expansion NC Dinos of South Korea’s KBO.  The soon-to-be 30 year old right-hander went 12-6 with a 4.01 ERA for the Grizzlies last year and 0-1 with a 5.59 ERA in four appearances with the Giants.  Hacker also had cups of coffee with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2009 and the Minnesota Twins in 2011.

Hacker should pitch well in the KBO, but I am a little surprised by the signing since the NC Dinos had already signed Americans Adam Wilk and Charles Shirek this off-season.  My understanding was that KBO teams can only have two foreign players on their respective rosters.

However, MyKBO.net reported last June that the Dinos will be allowed to have three foreign players on their 2013 and 2014 rosters while other KBO teams will still be limited to two.  If nothing else, the Dinos should have better pitching than most expansion teams with the signings of Hacker, Wilk and Shirek.

Cubs Sign Scott Baker

The Cubs just signed Scott Baker, the Out Maker (at least that’s what my Twins fan friend Chris called him when he was pitching good), to a one-year deal for $5.5 million with a potential $1.5 million in performance bonuses.  $5.5 million guaranteed is a lot of money for a 31 year old pitcher coming off Tommy John surgery, but that seems to be the current market.

Actually, I think Baker is a fairly good sign for the Cubs.  Baker knows how to pitch, he throws strikes, and pitchers now come back from TJ surgery, particularly if they aren’t too old.

The biggest knock on Baker pitching half is games at Wrigley is that he’s always given up his share of gopher balls — 1.16 per nine innings over the course of his career.  That comes out to about 26 home runs for every 200 innings pitched, which is lot, and is likely to be even more pitching half his games at Wrigley.  Good thing Baker doesn’t hand out a lot of free passes — which should be a requirement for every Cubs starter.

The second biggest knock on Baker is his inability to stay healthy.  Even before the elbow surgery, he managed to pitch 200 innings in a season only once (exactly 200 in  2009).

mlbtraderumors.com also relays ESPN’s Buster Olney’s opinion that essentially every free agent is trending upward “as the market begins to take shape.”  In other words, teams have paid through the nose for every free agent signed so far, which is pretty terrific for almost every free agent who has yet to sign (there may be a few at the end who lose out on the game of musical chairs).

One player I agree with trending upwards is reliever Jonathan Broxton.  After his 2011 elbow and shoulder problems, he was back in 2012 with the lowest ERA (2.48) of his career.

Broxton’s strike out rate was way down compared his career norms (7.0 per nine IP, compared to his career through 2011 rate of 11.5 per nine IP).  However, his walks rate also improved substantially.

One would think, based on his 2012 season, that Broxton’s 2011 arm problems permanently took something out of his arm, but that it forced him to finally learn how to pitch, instead of just trying to blow it by every hitter he faced.  This is particularly the case when you consider that his 2012 teams (Royals and Reds) play in much better hitters’ parks than his old team the Dodgers (although he pitched much better at home in 2012 than did on the road, as was the case when he was a Dodger).

Broxton’s 2012 could just be an aberration, although his reduced strike out rate suggests something has changed.  Even so, Broxton has clearly re-established himself as at least a top-level set-up man of the Brandon League/Jeremy Affeldt class, and he’s still only 29 in 2013.  As such, and based on League’s and Affeldt’s recent signings, a three-year, $18 million contract seems entirely likely.

Tim Wood and September Call-Ups

I saw on mlbtraderumors.com today that the Twins had signed RHP Tim Wood to a minor league deal for next season with an invitation to Spring Training.

Wood was the top closer in the AAA International Association in 2012, at least among those pitchers who spent most of the season in that league.  He saved 21 games, which was one off the league lead and had a 2.19 ERA and 67 Ks in 70 innings pitched with great ratios for the Indianapolis Indians.

Apparently the Pirates, a team that almost always needs more pitching, felt that Wood’s performance didn’t deserve a September call-up, at least insofar as I was unable to find anything on the internet to suggest that Wood wasn’t healthy come the end of the International League season.

Apparently Wood was not on the Pirates’ 40-man roster, which means they would have had to drop someone and potentially expose that player to waivers in order to promote Wood.  Needless to say, the Pirates also saved a few dollars (probably around $50,000) by not promoting Wood.  To the low-rent Pirates, even such a slight savings may feel significant.

In my mind, failing to call up a player for the last few weeks of the major league season after a AAA season as good as Wood’s did  is counterproductive.  Promoting these kinds of players sends a message to everyone in the minor league system that performance will be rewarded by the parent club.  It also gives the parent club a much better chance at re-signing a valuable veteran player for the next season.  Even if Wood’s promotion meant dropping someone else from the 40-man roster, it’s hard to believe the Pirates didn’t have even one player less deserving than Wood.

Wood is a small right-hander who will be 30 next season, so it’s entirely likely the Pirates just didn’t see him in their future plans no matter how great a season he had.  However, he’s always had fairly good stuff (at least based on his strikeout rates), but lacked major league command, at least until the last year and half at Indianapolis.

If his command has genuinely improved, he could still be an effective relief pitcher at the major league level for at least a couple of seasons.  As such, his signing is a great low-risk, low-cost move for the Twins.