It’s too early in the offseason to put together an updated grid as there are too many open spaces due to both Free Agency and unassigned roles. However, we won’t let the Bullpen Report be forgotten this winter and once a week we will check in with updates around the league that will affect your yearly chase for saves and holds.

• With relief aces Aroldis Chapman, Kenley Jansen and in some respects, Mark Melancon still on the market, the Cardinals went straight for Brett Cecil locking him up for four years and $30.5M. Dave Cameron listed Cecil has a potential 2017 bargain and Cecil signed a more team-friendly deal than Cameron even projected. Seung Hwan Oh is entrenched in the closer’s chair in St. Louis but with Trevor Rosenthal working to become a starter, Cecil should find his way to some high leverage innings along with fellow lefty Kevin Siegrist. The Cardinals have a lot of starting pitching depth, so Rosenthal isn’t assured a rotation spot by any means but it does mean his days of pitching high leverage spots in St. Louis might be coming to an end. Relief roles are changing rapidly, especially during the playoffs and while it’s impossible to carry over Andrew Miller’s October usage to April, it is possible that more teams will have relievers for multiple innings and that’s what I would guess the Cardinals are doing here.

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About a week ago, I went over the stats I use when examining hitters during the offseason. Today pitchers take center stage. With Pitchf/x and now Trackman publicly available, I find it quite a bit easier to evaluate pitchers and the changes they make. For pitchers, I have one sparkling new main source and one old standby.

Pitchers are so much easier to evaluate compared to hitters. If a pitcher gains a couple ticks on his fastball, we know right away within a couple of pitches. If a hitter can no longer catch up with a 96 mph fastball, it may take a few months to know for sure and even then, we may not be sure why. Here are the tools I use to help find pitchers who have changed for the good or the bad.

Pitch Type Metrics

Ever since helping Eno dive into pitch-type metrics, I’ve determined that I will evaluate pitchers using this type of data. Even though it took a while to hammer everything out, the final results have been extremely promising. We can now determine what each small pitch change will mean for each pitcher and how pitchers can improve their results. The complete write up of the process is available, but here is a quick summary.

• The key change is to give each pitch an ERA value (pERA) based on the pitch’s swinging strike and groundball rate. All the values are based off the average values for starting pitcher. Closers will have higher grades because their stuff plays better coming out of the bullpen.
• The pitcher’s control is determined from their walk rate which is separate from the pitch grades.
• I’ve put each pitch on the 20-80 scale with 50 being average, 80 great, and 20 horrible. For starters, target pitchers with three average or better pitches. For relievers, they just need two pitches.

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There is no denying that this year’s free agent class is weak, especially compared to recent years that all had multiple big-ticket stars. Yoenis Cespedes moves the needle as do Edwin Encarnacion and closers Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen, but that’s about it in the top tier. The weakness of the free agent market offers hope at a robust trade market this winter. The league tilted toward a have/have-nots setup this past year with 11 teams finishing at least 20 games out of first in their division, up from seven each of the last two seasons.

The contenders will be looking to buy from the pretenders while the pretenders will be get a chance to stockpile young talent for their next big run. The turnaround time in baseball has shortened as teams are open trusting young players much more these days. There are many huge names who could feasibly be moved and while most of them won’t be, I think we will see some superstars change teams via trade. I’ve plucked three interesting pitchers and mapped out a trade path for each. I’ll have a trio of hitters soon, too.

Chris Sale

• To StL: Sale

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A few days ago, I made my first attempt at trying to determine a pitcher’s value knowing their pitch grades. Since it was published, I have made some adjustments to the pitch grading scale. With the new scale in place, I have been working on comparing grades a pitcher previously received to their actual performance. The results have been extremely disappointing.

In the original article, created a framework to grade individual pitches with an ERA equivalent value (pERA) and a scouting grade on each pitch. While I liked the overall framework, one part really bothered me and I will address the issue first.

The change was to put some consistency in pitch grades, especially with fastballs. The problem was that a pitcher’s fastball is getting graded because of its velocity, but that velocity changes depending on if the pitcher was a starter or reliever. Relievers can really ramp up their velocity when moving to the bullpen.

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Relievers are having a moment. It’s been slowly building for a while, but this year might be the crescendo. Zach Britton foolishly being left out of the wildcard game paired with Cleveland’s excellent deployment of Andrew Miller seems to have ignited something of a reliever revolution. Their importance – especially in the playoffs – has never been questioned, but the prevalence of lockdown relievers throughout many bullpens has changed their value in fantasy leagues, too.

Saves still run the show, but many leagues have incorporated holds as a way of adding value to studly middle relievers and some are just so good that it doesn’t matter if they’re getting saves. Eight relievers logged 100+ strikeouts and only Kenley Jansen was a full-time closer. Seung Hwan Oh had 19, Ken Giles had 15, both Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller had 12, while Kyle Barraclough and Brad Hand combined for one (it was Hand’s).

Today, I have five high upside relievers who could be closing in 2017 or be so good that they’re useful enough without saves. They are listed in order of likeliness to close:

Adam Ottavino

OK, we’re cheating right out of the gate a little bit. Ottavino was just starting to close for Colorado when he was felled by Tommy John surgery in 2015 and he reassumed the role in September of this season after a couple months in a setup role. He finished with the role and will likely start with it again in 2017 while the others on this list will likely need to leapfrog a guy or three to get there.

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When I started this series which attempts to determine the projected fantasy value for prospects, I knew today’s step would be the hardest. The issue was converting various pitch grades (and control) into a workable framework for a pitcher’s overall production value. I thought I may not end up with a workable answer, but the following results have promise beyond just grading pitches.

I was able to piece together work from various articles and gave each pitch a grade based on the ERA scale. Combining per-pitch-ERA’s with a control value, it looks like we can estimate a pitcher’s overall value.

A pitching prospect is usually given a value on each of their pitches and a command and/or control grade. For example, the MLB.com’s grades for their top rated pitcher, Lucas Giolito, are:

Pitch: Grade
Fastball: 80
Curveball: 70
Changeup: 55
Control: 55

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This season I had an idea for a recurring column called The Chacon Zone that never materialized (tip of the hat to @sporer for the name). The column would have been aimed at avoiding a common pitfall that I’ve succumbed to many times myself, improperly valuing saves and subsequently chasing them at my own peril. At what point does a closer’s poor performance negate the value of an occasional save?

I hoped to identify relief pitchers whose contributions in non-save categories would outweigh the Tony Cingranis and Brad Zieglers of the world. For a variety of reasons, most notably a lack of time and unusually low bullpen volatility early in the season, I never followed through. I’m hoping to rectify that with this end-of-season yet inaugural (?) edition of The Chacon Zone.

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Well, the season is over! This is the second full season of xStats, and they have undergone numerous upgrades over that span. I some of you found them interesting! Perhaps even useful. With this second season under the belt, it feels fitting to throw out a few xStats awards: Best Starting Pitcher, Best Relief Pitcher, and Best Batter. So, without further ado, here we go:

Best Starting Pitcher: Clayton Kershaw.

Not a terribly big surprise. He has the best curve ball in MLB by xOBA, registering only .126 (min 200 thrown). His slider has the 7th highest swinging strike rate, 23.5% (min 200 thrown). You can see all of the pitch stats here.  It will come as no surprise when I say Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball, he’s just about the best in every individual category xStats measures. No other pitcher really got anywhere close to his dominance. While Noah Syndergaard and Jose Fernandez got somewhat close to Kershaw scFIP and xOBA respectively, the gap between Kershaw and the second best picture is still impressively wide. There is little more I can say about Kershaw, he needs to get called up to a higher league to face better opponents, MLB is too easy for him. Read the rest of this entry »

I usually get three or four of these Bold Predictions right every year, and I’ve grown comfortable with that level of success. Any more and they aren’t bold enough, any less, and they’re useless. That said, wait till you see number one. It’s a doozy. It’s *so* wrong that it should probably invalidate all my hits. It’s *so* wrong that I’m questioning why any of you are here right now. It’s *so* wrong I want to throw crap.

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First, a few words about my offseason writing at Rotographs. Besides reporting any possible relevant fantasy news, I plan on systematically going through two groups of players and work on their 2017 values. I will start at the top of the 2017 rankings and also somewhere in the middle and work my way down each list. I may be able to do a handful of players each article or I might by limited to just the two players. Either way, I will start putting together a 2017 draft ranking.

Additionally, I will try to follow Eno’s schedule for the other writers (e.g. players on playoff teams for the next couple of weeks). If they are looking at outfielders for that specific week, I will also look at outfielders.

The other project I will work through is being able to put a better evaluation on prospects for fantasy purposes. I will use the evaluations of various prospect writers and publications and put their evaluations into something which can be used in fantasy circles. I have some ideas of what I want to accomplish, but I am sure there will be some roadblocks and detours on the way. I will start this series Friday.

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