2012 Season in Review: Kansas City Royals
72-90, 3rd in the AL Central
For the last several years the Royals farm system was much talked about as about ready to pay dividends and this year was no different in that people talked about it and it did not deliver. It was another tough year for the Royals.
Alex Gordon is on the cusp of becoming a star (5.9 WAR) and Mike Moustakas (3.5) and Billy Butler (3.2) were none too shabby. Salvador Perez (2.6 in 76 games) was excellent as well, while Alcides Escobar was quite useful (2.6) himself. Unfortunately, the offense stopped there. No one else cracked the 2.0 threshold and Eric Hosmer and Jeff Francoeur combined to post a -2.3 WAR. That was a minus sign. So while five everyday players were very good, two were very bad. Think about it this way, Hosmer and Frenchie combined to erase Escobar’s production.
That wasn’t nice of them.
Kidding aside, it wasn’t the offense that tanked the Royals. It was the pitching. Was it ever the pitching?
Their two best pitchers by WAR, Greg Holland (2.2) and Kevin Herrara (1.9), were both relievers. If you see that on a team’s leaderboard, they were a bad team. Case closed. Their four best starting pitchers combined for a WAR (6.1) lower than Justin Verlander’s. The pitching in Kansas City was a colossal mess.
So that might mean that improving their pitching staff would be a good idea for 2013, and it is. They, however, did it in a silly manner. They sign Guthrie to a 3 year deal who was worth 1.5 wins over 91 innings in 2012, so if you bank on him repeating that (which is not a good bet), he’s a solid addition. They traded for the terrible in 2012, but somewhat good before that Ervin Santana. They also made the big Wil Myers plus for Shields and Davis trade.
Don’t get me wrong, their pitching got better for 2013, but they did so at the cost of the future, and at the cost of not having Wil Myers to improve their offense by 3ish wins. Basically, the Royals pitching staff should add 5-7 wins in 2013, but their offense would have gotten at least 2-3 of those from simply having Myers instead of Francoeur.
They will be better in 2013, but not enough so that we should expect them to be true contenders. If you’re a Royals fan, enjoy yourself because baseball is wonderful, but don’t expect your team to be anything but average.
2012 Grade: D
Early 2013 Projection: 76-86
2012 Season in Review: Cleveland Indians
68-94, 4th in the AL Central
After a better than expected 2011, the Indians fell back to Earth and struggled to avoid the cellar of one of baseball’s worst divisions. They’re making improvements this winter, but they’re still struggling to forget the last year at Progressive Field.
The 2012 Indians features a really nice group of complimentary players on offense, but they had no one to compliment. The star power was missing. Carlos Santana (3.4 WAR), Jason Kipnis (3.1), Asdrubal Cabrera (2.9), Michael Brantley (2.7), and Shin Soo Choo (2.6) all had good seasons, but five solid players isn’t usually enough to make noise. No one else was worth even 1.0 WAR in 2012.
Justin Masterson (2.3) regressed in 2012, which wouldn’t be such a big deal if he wasn’t the Indians’ best pitcher. No one else hit 2.0 WAR. Only Zach McAllister and Vinnie Pestano even topped 1.0 WAR. The pitching was just bad.
But the club had made some moves this winter to change that. They added Nick Swisher on a 4/56 deal and traded the last year of Choo for Trevor Bauer plus others. They signed Brett Myers (who is a solid pitcher when he isn’t committing crimes) and Mark Reynolds to one year deals.
The Indians made good moves this winter, but they only added complimentary pieces. The team is still short on star power. I like what they can do in the back half of the lineup, but they just don’t have the firepower to match the Tigers in the top half. And they definitely don’t have the pitching.
It’s hard to imagine the Tribe contending in 2013 with the roster looking the way it does, but I do think they are one of those teams who are just good enough that if they have Baltimore style luck, they have a shot to at least make it interesting.
2012 Grade: F
Early 2013 Projection: 72-90
2012 Season in Review: Minnesota Twins
66-96, 5th in the AL Central
It was another dark year for the Minnesota Twins after spending much of the 2000s as the cost effective kings of the AL Central. They nearly missed losing 100 games and could easily be considered the worst team in the American League.
Joe Mauer did his part (5.0 WAR) and players like Josh Willingham (3.9), Denard Span (3.9), Ben Revere (3.4), and Jamey Carroll (2.4) helped along the way. The rest of the lineup was uninspiring, but serviceable for a non-contender.
But good gracious, the pitching was awful. Scott Diamond’s 2.6 was the only WAR above 1.3 for the entire staff. He was also the only pitcher to throw more than 110 innings. By WAR and FIP they were the worst collective staff in all of baseball. Starters and relievers alike were simply terrible.
The Twins are working on a makeover as they traded Span and Revere for prospects and have signed just about every scrap heap innings eater they can find to serve as stopgaps for 2013. They have some interesting position players coming through the system, but the pitching isn’t terribly exciting.
They should have a bit more reliability in the rotation in 2013 with Worley and his compatriots, but I can’t say they’ll be much better. This is a long road for the Twins to travel back to contention.
With the Tigers improving this offseason and the Royals and Indians making modest upgrades in the short term, it seems unlikely that the Twins will improve upon their 2012 showing.
2012 Grade: F
Early 2013 Projection: 65-97
The Nine Best Baseball Websites
Since this is 1) a website and 2) a website about baseball, it makes sense to consider the rest of the online baseball world. Below is a list of what I believe are The Nine Best Baseball websites going right now. There are more than nine good baseball sites, but these are the best in my book for a variety of reasons.
This list was originally crafted in January of 2013, but it’s been updated several times and you’re reading the version as of March 2017. Please don’t be offended if I didn’t mention a site you really like or work for, I’m not trying to throw shade.
9. MLB Trade Rumors
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/
This is the site you need to bookmark if you care about transactions. Trades and signings. The staff at MLBTR does a great job synthesizing the news of the day and they do it quickly. I happen to follow a million baseball writers on Twitter and keep tabs on almost everything, but if you don’t have quite that much time, MLB TR does it for you. When roster moves happen, they’re always there for you.
8. MLB.com/Team Website
Not much to explain here except to say that MLB and most teams have done a great job taking their product online with products like Gameday, At-Bat, MLB.TV, the team stores, etc. Having access to video, audio, and box score archives is a huge plus.
7. Cot’s Baseball Contracts
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/
They’re so great that BP bought them. Every contract for every play erand spreadsheets of team payroll data. Want to know how long a contract is and how much it’s worth in each year? They have that. It’s incredible. A one-stop shop.
6. Baseball Savant
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/
Savant is Daren Willman’s creation and houses all of the public Statcast data, as well as PITCHf/x data previous years. If you’re into that type of thing, it’s an excellent resource to go deep into the weeds. But it’s more than that considering the amount of work Daren has put in over the last year. Graphics, comparisons, catcher data, you name it. Plus, he is willing to add features on request. Hugely vital for the baseball researcher.
5. Baseball Prospectus
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/
There are two hesitations on BP, the firs being that most of their content is behind a paywall. That’s certainly their right, but one should judge a site based on its quality to cost ratio. The other hesitations is user interface. They have lots of statistics, but the quality of presentation trails Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs (even if they do keep some good esoteric ones), and the overall visual appeal of the site is lacking. That said, I’m telling you why they’re 5th instead of 2nd. They have a huge range of content, great set of podcasts, and overall excellent product that mixes MLB, fantasy, and prospect level coverage.
4. Brooks Baseball
http://www.brooksbaseball.net/
Brooks Baseball is a top nine website for its Pitch F/X tool. You can select a date, game, and pitcher and within minutes, be looking at everything he threw that day, where it went, and how much it broke. Those graphics you see on MLB Gameday and MLB At-Bat with all of this data are compiled here and stored in a very accessible way. They’ve also added data on hitters and have dramatically improved the functionality of the site since this list was originally published. If you want to study PITCHf/x data without doing a lot of work yourself, Brooks is the place to do it.
3. Twitter
This may seem like a cop out, and it kind of is, but Twitter is an extraordinarily useful tool for following baseball. Breaking news, live analysis, and other content is at your fingertips no matter where you are and the speed and brevity make a good match. You can follow along on the couch or in the stands if you’re just looking for some commentary, or stay up to date if you aren’t able to follow the game. Plus, it’s a great way to connect with other fans and talk about the game as it happens.
2. Baseball-Reference
http://www.baseball-reference.com/
The amount of information on this site is staggering. Statistics, draft info, random trivia. It’s a clearinghouse for everything you need to know and the exceptionally cool Play Index allows you to go looking for quirky events on top of the regular things you find on any given page. Serious, get the Play Index.
1. Fangraphs
By far my favorite baseball site. They have a ton of statistical data and sabermetric information, but they also have excellent analysis from a group of very good writers. They do daily live chats and podcasts and are great about giving the people what they want. You can find a section that explains every sabermetric statistic and they do a fantastic job improving the functionality of the site and provide readers with much more user friendly leaderboards than B-Ref. If you want stats, this is the best place to get them. If you want smart analysis, this is also the best place to get it. (Full disclosure: I am employed by FanGraphs, although the site has been ranked #1 on this list since before that. Also, if you think I could financially benefit from this ranking you might not understand how blogging on the internet works).
2012 Season in Review: National League West
It was a big year for the National League West as the the World Series champion and the newest baseball juggernaut called the left coast home. The Dodgers spent a lot of the season as a surprise contender and then big time spender while the steady as she goes Giants took home the ultimate prize.
Here’s how the division finished up:
And for those of you tracking how it played out, here are the playoff odds from April to October
My early projection for next season looks like this:
And finally, I look back at my 2012 grades for each club.
The NL West Cy Young is Clayton Kershaw’s in a runaway, and Buster Posey takes the NL West MVP over Chase Headley.
2012 Season in Review: San Francisco Giants
94-68, 1st in the NL West
Won World Series
The Giants won the World Series in 2012, so this is a pretty academic review. They won 94 games in the regular season and had two great series comebacks in the playoffs before stomping on the Tigers on their way to the second title in three years.
Buster Posey’s MVP season (8.0 WAR) led the way for Angel Pagan (4.8), Melky Cabrera (4.6 in 113 games), Pablo Sandoval (2.8), Gregor Blanco (2.4), Brandon Crawford (2.0), and Marco Scutaro (1.8 in 61 games). AT&T Park suppresses offense, so some of the traditional numbers might not look great, but I assure you the Giants position players were good.
When you think Giants, you think pitching. Cain (3.8), Bumgarner (3.4), and Vogelsong (2.6) did their jobs despite a terrible season from Tim Lincecum (1.5). The bullpen was great again and it helped carry them through the postseason.
Cain tossed a perfect game and the team came back from big deficits in the NLDS and NLCS to set up their sweep over the Tigers.
The Giants will keep most of the 2012 crew together going into next season and will likely get a better performance out of Lincecum. They’ll lose the wins from Melky but should get a little more from Scutaro and Sandoval.
2013 will likely look a lot like 2012 for them in regular season and they’re set up for another deep playoff run. The Dodgers look stronger out west, but they’re not a lock for anything.
The Giants won the World Series in 2012 for the second time in three seasons and the party will continue until Opening Day.
2012 Grade: A
Early 2013 Projection: 92-70
No One Gets Elected to the Hall of Fame
The BBWAA elected no one to the Hall of Fame today despite a rather deep ballot in light of steroid era concerns. You can read my views on electing suspected users from last year, here.
If I had a vote for the Hall of Fame and was limited, like the voters, to ten votes per ballot, my list would look like this:
Bagwell
Raines
Martinez
Bonds
Clemens
Piazza
Schilling
Biggio
McGwire
Sosa
2012 Season in Review: Los Angeles Dodgers
86-76, 2nd in the NL West
It was a big year for the Dodgers. They had a strong first half and were in contention for a wild card birth deep into September, but the big stuff happened off the field. They were sold by the McCourts to Stan Kasten, Magic Johnson, and co for $2 billion. They’re finalizing a deal with FOX for TV rights worth around $6 billion. And they also took on every bad contract they could find. This was a year of changes for the Dodgers.
Looking at WAR for position players won’t tell much of the story here because only two of them played more than 130 games, and one of those was a catcher! Injuries and trades limited playing time so the accumulative nature of WAR won’t tell the whole story. Kemp, Either, the Ellises, and Cruz led the way, but Adrian Gonzalez, Shane Victorino, and Hanley Ramirez were among those who contributed over a couple of months.
Clayton Kershaw had another phenomenal season (5.5 WAR) in front of Chad Billingsly (2.7) and Chris Capuano (2.1). Aaron Harang (1.5) did nicely for a fifth starter, but if you’ve been counting, we’re only at four. The rest of the starts were scattered around. The bullpen had some nice pieces, but nothing otherworldly.
The big story of the season was the changing of the guard. Kemp and Either have new deals and a ton of other players have come on board. Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, Hanley Ramierard. Kemp and Either have new deals and a ton of other players have come on board. Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, Hanlrez, Josh Beckett, and Zach Greinke are among the new faces who will be with the Dodgers in 2013 who weren’t there on Opening Day of 2012.
Certainly the Dodgers ability to spend lots of money instead of no money will make them better, but there is some debate about how much better they’ve really gotten as a result of these moves. I’m of the opinion that they’re still not a lock for the playoffs because they have a lot of question marks.
They won 86 games in 2012, but some of that was good fortune in the early days of the season. Their true ability was probably closer to 81-81 in my book. They’ll add five wins from Greinke and three or four from Gonzalez and Ramirez over what they got in 2012, but I think most of the other moves are probably a wash. They’ll be better in 2013, but I don’t think their massive payroll will guarantee them anything.
2012 Grade: C
Early 2013 Projection: 89-73
2012 Season in Review: Arizona Diamondbacks
81-81, 3rd in the NL West
After a somewhat surprising and excellent 2011, the Diamondbacks took a step back in 2012 due to some regression to the mean and regression to the disabled list. The club won half its games, so it wasn’t a disaster, but expectations were moderately high, so it feels like a step back.
Four Dbacks outfielders played 100 games or more and posted starter or better WARs. Chris Young (2.8), Justin Upton (2.5), Gerado Parra (2.0), and Jason Kubel (1.8 so almost) made up a good outfielder, but it looks disappointing because Upton played so far below his ability. Second basemen Aaron Hill (6.2) had a monster year and hit two cycles, so you can’t complain about that. Paul Goldschmidt (3.7) played a good first base and Miguel Montero (5.0) had another great year behind the dish. Really, the left side of the infield is the only really area in need of upgrade on offense.
The starting pitching wasn’t bad either, even if Ian Kennedy (3.1) wasn’t a top line guy again and Daniel Hudson got hurt. Wade Miley (4.6) stepped in nicely and Trevor Cahill (3.4) fit in well. The other two spots in the rotation were trouble as the Snakes mixed and matched with some veterans and youngsters. The bullpen did well enough to keep them relevant.
A .500 team isn’t a great team, but this one has the makings of one. They traded Chris Young and signed Cody Ross. They have Adam Eaton waiting for an outfield spot too. They added some middle infield depth and bullpen reclamation projects this offseason. They dealt top prospect Trevor Bauer in the process, but added fragile yet very good Brandon McCarthy to fill the void not to mention a lot of good starting pitching working its way up the farm system.
The Dbacks didn’t turn heads in 2012, but with some retooling and a couple bounce back seasons, they have a shot to improve in 2013. Unfortunately, there are a number of NL teams on the rise, so that might not be so easy.
2012 Grade: C
Early 2013 Projection: 80-82
2012 Season in Review: San Diego Padres
76-86, 4th in the NL West
You might not believe this, but the Padres had a pretty respectable season in 2012. 76 wins isn’t something to pop bubbly over, but the team was far from the pushover farce that they have been in years past and were quite formidable down the stretch.
Chase Headley led the way with an MVP caliber season (7.5 WAR) and he had help from his friends, Cameron Maybin (2.7), Will Venable (2.7), Yasmani Grandal (2.6), Carlos Quentin (2.0), and Yonder Alonso (2.0). A couple other players posted near 2.0 win seasons, so when you look at the Padres offense as a whole; it’s actually not that bad. If you don’t like homeruns (which no one can hit at PETCO), the Padres were a downright…good offense.
The bullpen was pretty good, but the starters struggled to stay on the field. Only two made a full season of starts. Lots of the typical rate statistics put the Padres in the middle of the pack as a pitching staff, but WAR hates them because they get such a boost from their home ballpark.
Your view of their staff depends on how much you want to remove context from the equation, but you can’t call them good by any standard.
The farm is deep in San Diego and with new ownership and TV money, the franchise should be on the way up. They have a nice core of young players to build around and a few impact upgrades could put them right in the thick of contention.
I doubt 2013 will be a playoff year for the Padres, but they could push .500 and take a step toward being a legitimate contender in the near future.
2012 Grade: D
Early 2013 Projection: 77-85
New English D 