Good morning afternoon.
Here are several links from the past week that will make your first Monday of 2015 at the office a bit more bearable:
- Three years ago, Joe Guzzardi of Baseball: Past and Present profiled a “promising young outfielder toiling in the low minor leagues” in 1952 whose dreams of becoming a big-league star were dashed after just one professional season, thanks to a concussion. The man in question would later become a political star, serving three teams as the chief executive of the Empire State. Rest in peace, Governor Cuomo.
- Ben Buchanan of Over the Monster points out that piercing the $189 million luxury cap for 2015 won’t severely hamstring the Red Sox going forward, as the impending free agency of six players after the season is scheduled to free up $55 million.
- While an intern for MLB International, Ben Weigel of Beyond the Boxscore was assigned to assist the MLB Ambassador’s Tour of Australia, featuring Sydney native Grant Balfour, and explains what transpired over the nine days of activities and the impact the tour may have on the sport Down Under.
- One saber-friendly writer who is bullish on the Royals for the coming season is Christina Kahrl at ESPN’s SweetSpot:. For example, she approves of Kansas City general manager Dayton Moore’s signing of players with power potential:
Moore’s solutions might put the Royals in better shape than if he’d simply tried to maintain the status quo. Credit him for being like a latter-day Whitey Herzog and using last year’s wins to help purchase multiple big improvements. Rather than get carried away with Lorenzo Cain’s postseason heroics or Jarrod Dyson’s speed, he didn’t leave full-time slots open for both guys in the lineup, with Nori Aoki leaving. Instead, he addressed the Royals’ power outage by signing Alex Rios (.166 career ISO) to man right field and Kendrys Morales (.189 career) to DH. Adding power in traditional power slots might be the oldest formula in the transactions playbook, but who said there’s anything wrong with the classics? Add in Rios’ value on defense, and the Royals didn’t sacrifice much more than Glass cash to help keep a good thing going.
- At a time when batters are getting on base less frequently than in prior years, the Hardball Times’ Jonathan Judge looks to see what qualities make for a hitter to post a superior walk rate.
- Writing at Bill James Online, Baseball Info Solutions proprietor John Dewan claims to have evidence showing that “Defensive Runs Saved based on as small a sample size as 350 innings in the field (about a quarter of the season) produces reliable results.” Furthermore, he says, DRS appears to be a “better predictor than many other statistical measures in baseball even over limited samples.”
- Is John Smoltz about to leapfrog more-deserving or, at minimum, equally deserving candidates, such as fellow pitchers Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling, who are awaiting entry into Cooperstown? Ben Lindbergh of Grantland contends that Smoltz, whose name appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this year, seems pretty certain it will happen and offers reasons why. The voting results will be announced tomorrow at 2 p.m. on MLB Network.
That’s it. Have a walk-off week!