The pitchers and catchers, they have reported
Looking into the first week of Spring Training, as well as a couple of late-offseason signings.
Happy Wednesday, fellow rich people.
Spring has sprung. Not only was it over 45 degrees in Milwaukee today, but the baseball players are officially doing the baseball things at the facilities of their baseball teams. Spring Training is underway and, no doubt, it looks different this year with limited access for those with their feet on the Arizona and Florida ground as well as the lack of minor league camp, but it’s here nonetheless.
And that’s good news.
Let’s converse.
Shaw shanked; redemption?
~Curt
Ding dong, the mayor is back.
Travis Shaw signed a minor league deal with the Brewers last week, bringing about a reunion of what was a blossoming partnership between player and team just a couple years back.
Aside from the fact that Shaw will almost certainly be bumped onto the active roster before the opt-out date in March, as well as it being a low-cost, solid depth signing, I’m not too sure my reaction to the move one way or the other.
Since I can’t decide whether it will turn out to be a good move or if Shaw is headed straight back to his poor 2019 levels of production, let’s just lay some facts out on the table and let you, the rational consumer at home, decide for yourself!
Get those sunflowers out and start pulling petals.
I love this signing: One of the many reasons Shaw struggled in 2019 (.157/.281/.270) was his launch angle was too high. There were simply too many harmless fly balls and pop ups. In 2020 with Toronto, Shaw dipped his average launch angle back down from 24.9 degrees to 19.8. That’s still not where it was for his first two years in Milwaukee, but it’s closer.
I love this signing not: Launch angle by itself isn’t all that telling of a stat.
I love this signing: What is more telling, though, is launch angle combined with exit velocity. That is essentially what makes up a batted ball. And Shaw’s batted ball profile has shown a consistent quality of contact. His exit velocity went up from 2018 to ‘19 and then increased again last year with the Blue Jays.
I love this signing not: Hitting the ball hard over time, obviously, is better than not hitting the ball hard. That said, exit velocity isn’t very predictive of year-to-year batting performance when not paired with other data.
I love this signing: Speaking of batted balls, generally speaking, pulled fly balls = good. Pulled ground balls = bad. Batting numbers on ground balls aren’t very good as a whole, but they get even worse when the grounders are pulled. Shaw also gets shifted severely, so his pulled grounders have a tendency to result in even fewer hits. The good news is Shaw spread out his grounders more evenly to all fields in 2020 while also tapping back into his power numbers when hit in the air.
I love this signing not: Shaw is never going to be a high average guy on batted balls in play. He’s a slow runner and has a tendency to get pull-happy. That’s not a great combo. His career .281 BABIP is notably below league average. With nearly 2,500 career plate appearances, it’s a large enough sample size to indicate that it isn’t purely bad luck driving that number down. If a hitter is going to be below league average by a sizable chunk in both strikeouts and BABIP, as Shaw has been prone to be, it significantly limits the upside.
I love this signing: Shaw plays a solid third base and also provides the Brewers with a late-game defensive replacement option at first base. The defense won’t get actively worse with him in the lineup.
I love this signing not: One of the other concerns during Shaw’s 2019 season was his swinging strike rates. Those didn’t improve with Toronto. His swinging strike percentage remained poor, going from 12.9% in ‘19 to 12.1% last year. Perhaps most concerning were his struggles against fastballs from right-handers. He whiffed on 38% of righties’ four-seams, an alarmingly-high rate considering he is predominantly going to be a platoon bat for the Brewers.
I love this signing: Shaw hasn’t always been bad at hitting heat, though. In fact, his ability to drive fastballs was a critical factor in his breakout with Milwaukee. Shaw showed enough signs with Toronto that he still can be a good hitter in the majors, so perhaps a return to his previous form against velocity is the next step.
I love this signing not: While Shaw has always been lethal against cutters, he hasn’t fared well against changeups and cutters, batting .104 and .186 against those pitches, respectively, since 2019. If you have a weakness that glaring, odds are big league pitchers are going to continue to attack it until you give them a reason to stop.
The Brewers made a run at Justin Turner before ultimately pivoting to Shaw as a solution at the hot corner. Turner would undoubtedly have pushed the Brewers firmly into the conversation for best team in the National League, if not to the top of it. Despite playing at a similar level from 2017-18 Shaw is clearly not the player Turner is at this point, but it could wind up being a bargain move that raises the lineup floor of an offense that greatly struggled to score runs for a good pitching staff in 2020. It could also lead to the Brewers getting 200 plate appearances from the 2019 version of Shaw and that would be actively harmful.
These are the games you play with one-year, bounceback deals. May the dice roll.
The footware will be crafted.
~Jake
The Twins continued to show their willingness to dumpster dive for starting pitchers recently, fishing out Matt Shoemaker and signing him to a one-year, $2 million deal.
Shoemaker, a right-hander who is somehow already 34 years old, is the definition of oft-injured, and his price tag reflects that. His first significant injury was one of the scariest ones imaginable, when he took a comebacker to his head in 2016 while with the Los Angeles Angels, fracturing his skull. In 2017, he missed time with forearm tightness, which required surgery, and he missed most of 2018 with another surgery, this time on an elbow tendon. Then, while with Toronto, he tore his ACL in 2019, and he missed a month last year with a shoulder injury.
It’s been a rough go.
On the plus side, he brings a top-10 baseball beard to Minnesota; he’ll fit right in with the brewery scene. Out goes Sergio Romo’s kempt wilderness, in comes Shoemaker’s sexy villain beard.
When he’s been on the field, he’s had mixed results.
Everyone is quick to jump to his 2014 season, his rookie season, when he went 16-4 with a 3.04 ERA (2.1 fWAR) or 2016, when he was worth 3.5 fWAR while logging a 3.88 ERA despite a 9-13 record. Outside of those years, though, he’s been far more pedestrian with a 4.30 ERA. Still perfectly acceptable, but it’s not likely that injuries were the only thing getting the way of Matt Shoemaker receiving a Cy Young award.
Nevertheless, he’s an intriguing depth piece for a rotation like Minnesota’s. Despite the injuries, he’s never been a guy to completely fall apart on the field; his worst year was probably 2017, where he posted a 4.52 ERA and 5.13 FIP with just 8 strikeouts per nine in 77.2 innings. Not good, of course, but that’s not going to drop the Twins from contention to also-rans. In recent years, Shoemaker has started to become something of a ground ball pitcher by using a strong splitter. That ought to work quite well with Andrelton Simmons manning shortstop, Josh Donaldson at third and Jorge Polanco or Luis Arraez at second base.
Ben Clemens of FanGraphs notes that the velocity is up on his four-seamer and two-seamer by about a tick. Maybe that’s noteworthy. I’m skeptical, given that the uptick is really only relative to his 2019 numbers and are actually closer to his 2016 peak. Regardless, it’s not bad that his velocity is up a tick, even if it’s just minor.
The nice part about this is the Twins don’t need it to work out. If by some miracle they get 2016 Shoemaker, who’s worth 3.5 WAR and posts a sub-4 ERA, that’s awesome. But there’s very little pressure on him, as he doesn’t even have a guaranteed spot in the starting rotation. Jose Berrios, Kenta Maeda and Michael Pineda are locked in the rotation, JA Happ is likely set in there, as is Randy Dobnak. Like Homer Bailey or Rich Hill last year, Shoemaker is here as insurance. With COVID-19 still very much a reality, it’s especially important now to have a stable of professional pitchers.
Camp tidbits
Games have not yet begun so there isn’t a ton to take away from camp that isn’t one of the few tidbits that are spoon-fed zia Zoom interviews with the media, but if you’re like me, you will accept any and all morsels from said spoon.
#BSOHL Tracker: Apparently Avisail Garcia lost, like, 30 pounds this offseason, according to the Brewers. That would drop him down to a lean 210 pounds. Will it matter? Who knows. Will we always acknowledge someone being in the Best Shape Of His Life? Yes.
Apparently Tyrone Taylor was all about the #gains. We will see how this holds up when the Brewers outfield glut forces the team to use one of his options and start him in Triple-A.
Jake also astutely noted Luis Arraez was looking very #good in an interview and we won’t pass up a chance to talk about a man being in the best shape of his life. The best part: the patented round face is still round.
Speaking out outfield glut: The Brewers are reportedly in on the Jackie Bradley Jr. discussions??? While they currently have plenty of outfielders, this doesn’t surprise me because David Stearns never does the thing you think he will do. But also I wouldn’t put too much stock in Milwaukee actually throwing the best offer out there and acquiring the center fielder’s services.
The owner’s address: Always one of the silliest storylines in camp is the owner addressing the team. “Hello, I am very rich and pay for all of your contracts, now let me say something to all of you and then deuce out for the rest of the year but also we’re gonna turn this little speech into a story.” Mark Attanasio gave his annual spring address to the team Tuesday. There was this:
The owner is committed “to deliver content,” huh? If only there was a newsletter full of #content he could sent out…