Didi Gregorius signed by PHI (1 year/$14 million dollars)

Just like last offseason, the Phillies aren’t playing around. They’ve already addressed their pitching issues with a big five-year deal for Zack Wheeler and now they’ve got the last piece for their offense in place with the signing of Didi Gregorius. After César Hernández was non-tendered, we started to see rumors ramp up that they were interested in Gregorius. The one-year, $14 million dollar deal will install Gregorius at shortstop while moving Jean Segura to spot that Hernández’s departure opened up at 2B.

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Gred Gigerenzer (yes that’s his real name) has been a leading advocate on how to correctly measure and articulate risk. I’d highly recommend his book Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions, but today, I’m going to focus on some passages from another book of his, Calculated Risk, which focuses on risks in the medical profession. Some of the passages seem to resonate with me about the fantasy expert community, especially this question: what should be the intent and expectations of touts?

One point Gigerenzer hopes to get across is the difference between Risk and Uncertainty. For him, Risk is measurable such as pitcher X as a 40% chance of going on the IL based on his age and past injury history. Uncertainty involves values that can’t be (or aren’t) measured like player Y is going through a divorce so his production is down.
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… probably not, but anyone probably already guessed that considering Stephen Strasburg’s injury history. The answer isn’t that far off after digging through some historic comps. Only once in his 10-year career has he topped 200 innings (215 in 2014) and only over 180 one other time. He’s thrown under 160 innings six times in ten seasons. Another issue besides the limited innings is that he’s going to be on the wrong side of 30 where pitcher breakdown faster. It’s time to look a little deeper and see what innings total should be expected.

I need to start with some guidelines. First, I’m only going to examine pitchers who throw the 200 innings between their ages 28 and 32 seasons. Also, the pitcher needs to be considered a starter with at least half of their games as a starter (GS/G >= 0.5). Finally, I rode the fine line of using recent data and having enough samples. With pitchers recently throwing fewer innings, I only used pitchers from the past 10 seasons.
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Historically, I’ve “corrected” hitter projections to my own liking and every time I’ve backtested them to the actual results, my adjustments have failed miserably. So why create more work when the end results make my final product worse? Am I a glutton for punishment? In all fairness, I’m sure a heavy dose of Dunning-Kruger is going on but I also believe there may be a sweet spot where personal scouting can come into play. Today, I’m going back to the well one more time to see if some injured hitters should have more encouraging projections because they may have played hurt.

First, I’ve always thought playing through an injury meant that the team and the player were accepting suboptimal production. Then the player could come back healthy and full productive the next season.
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It’s so nice to have a winter that actually includes substantial movement before the new year. After a painfully slow last two years, we’ve been running a toasty hot stove this year and the Winter Meetings haven’t even kicked off yet (they start Sunday!).

Zack Wheeler signed by Philadelphia (5 years/$118 million dollars)

This is one of those interesting moves that causes a big splash on the national landscape, especially being a high-profile arm joining a new team in the same division, but it’s not quite as impactful in the fantasy realm. It’s a big deal for sure, but Wheeler’s fantasy outlook for 2020 isn’t greatly altered by the move. He moves to a worse park but gets a markedly better defense supporting him. Neither bullpen was particularly good in 2019 and I actually expect both to improve in 2020, so let’s call that neutral.

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12/5/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer
• @pitcherlist – Co-Host

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Zack Wheeler to PHI (1:45)
• Cole Hamels to ATL (7:38)
• Dylan Bundy to LAA (13:23)
• Mike Moustakas to CIN (22:22)
• Jurickson Profar to SD via trade (28:45)
• Jonathan Villar/Jesús Aguilar to MIA (36:03)
• Omar Narváez to MIL (44:35)

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Cole Hamels could have signed with several different teams and help clarify the team’s rotation. Instead, he went to Atlanta and made a murky situation worse.

While Hamels has not been competing for a Cy Young for several seasons, he has been a production pitcher. Over the last 10 years, he has never posted an ERA over 4.20 (3.42 on his career) or threw fewer than 141 innings. The innings low point was this past season when he lost a month due to a strained oblique.

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12/4/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host

THE NON-TENDER TEAM

• C: Josh Phegley (3:03)
• 1B: C.J. Cron (4:55)
• 2B: César Hernández (14:55)
• 3B: Maikel Franco (23:12), Travis Shaw (31:40)
• SS: José Peraza (39:11)
• OF: Domingo Santana (45:08), Kevin Pillar (50:36), Steven Souza Jr. (59:33)
• P: Blake Treinen (1:06:22), Taijuan Walker (1:07:00)
• Ranking the Hitters (1:08:00)

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I was originally going to cover all of these moves (sans the Miami ones because they hadn’t happened yet) yesterday when I wrote up San Diego’s busy offseason, but that might’ve been pushing 2500 words so I broke it up into two pieces. Let’s get caught up on the latest offseason deals:

Mike Moustakas to Cincinnati

While the terms of deals aren’t a major concern for us in the fantasy realm (at least until they start to play a role in dictating playing time), it feels like Moose is finally getting the money he deserved the last few years. After making $12.5 million the last two seasons for production worth at least three times that, he’ll be paid $64 million over the next four seasons to play in Cincinnati and make a more permanent move to the keystone. With Eugenio Suárez locked in at 3B, Moose will now be an everyday 2B and also cement Nick Senzel’s future in CF.

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