The Tampa Bay Rays and outfielder Kevin Kiermaier reportedly agreed to a six-year, $53.5 million extension on Tuesday. With the deal, the Rays are able to lock up one of their most promising young players, while Kiermaier gets some financial (and likely team) security over the next six seasons.
Kiermaier has been featured a lot here at Beyond The Box Score, often for his outstanding defense. I’ll sum his career up quickly before going into the extensive details of what his contract means in context. Click here to read more on Beyond The Box Score.
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Phillies second baseman Cesar Hernandez had a solid season last year. For the first time in his career, he posted a wRC+ over 100 (108), making him an above-average hitter. Adding in reliable defense on the right side of the infield, Hernandez was worth a cool 4.4 fWAR, a real asset to the Phillies’ squad.
Here at Beyond The Box Score, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an article that focuses on batting average, but I’m about to embark into the depths of the stat that is frowned upon by many in the sabermetric community, who are far more in favor of on-base percentage at the very least. Hernandez’s batting average last season was .294. This is quite good, although it’s not above the completely arbitrary .300 mark that has always signaled a “good” hitter. But, how about this? While Hernandez did bat .294, he would have dropped to .274 if not for 15 bunt hits, good for the most in the major leagues. Click here to read more on Beyond The Box Score. Spring training means nothing, and that depresses me. It feels like baseball is back, but then I realize it’s not really back, and I have to fill out March Madness brackets that never come true to waste my time until early April.
Well, hardcore baseball fans do have something to look forward to every four years (even though it was three between the 2006 and 2009 games). This is the World Baseball Classic, and the 2017 installment begins this Monday. The United States, which has never placed higher than fourth, has its best roster to date, despite the fact that it’s missing some of the country’s best stars. Regardless, a strong showing from the U.S. squad in the games could help the WBC’s ratings in the states, something that has been a concern to Major League Baseball for the past three games. The first pitch of the tournament will be thrown on Mar. 6, and many big-leaguers are representing their countries for the next few weeks. Yes, these Major League Baseball players are giving up a couple of weeks of their Spring Training time in order to participate in higher-stakes play in different parts of the world. This leads some observers to argue the WBC can harm players who participate. One such observer, Orioles manager Buck Showalter, told the Baltimore Sun this past week that he believes the WBC disrupts an internal clock players have... Click here to read more on Beyond The Box Score. Looking at and charting every single Major League guaranteed signing over the past five offseasons is not easy. In fact, it makes you exhausted. I speak from experience.
I just built a spreadsheet that has all that data. Lucky for me, it was pretty easy to find, thanks to MLBTradeRumors.com’s transaction tracker. But now, I have to put it to use. Since I began to cover baseball seriously a few years ago, free agency has always interested me more than just about anything else. In no other sport (perhaps excluding the NBA, but even still, the max contract hinders that) do the best players get to truly choose their destination. Money flies everywhere. Teams open their pocketbooks to extraordinary heights. Over the past five offseasons, teams have spent almost a combined $10 billion on Major League free agents. That could buy the New York Yankees three times over, according to Forbes. And it could buy the Tampa Bay Rays 15 times over. I have always wondered, though, what the best time is for a free agent to sign. Read more on Beyond The Box Score by clicking here.
Hi everyone,
As many of you may already know (and some of you may not), I have recently began writing at BeyondTheBoxScore.com, a sabermetrically inclined website that is among the most well-respected analytic sources on the web. I have written a few articles for Beyond The Box Score, and I have enjoyed everything about it. However, this is not the end of Cover Those Bases. Merely, this is just a change. While my website has always featured the latest news on the homepage, the blog section will now appear first. Here, I will post all the links to my articles for Beyond The Box Score, and anything else that I find interesting or have written. I still plan on doing original reporting, and if I am lucky enough to break any stories, I will definitely still write about those under my news section. Still, though, the news tab is going to be updated a lot less frequently. I'm focusing on writing longer, more analysis-type articles, and I will do a lot of that over at Beyond The Box Score. But, if there is any news that I also want to cover from an information-only standpoint, I'll still blog about it. Again, I just want to reiterate that this is not the end of Cover Those Bases. Merely, it's just a change that reflects my new work in the baseball circuit, but I could never leave my own personal blog that has already gotten me so far. And, I also want to take a quick moment thank all of you for reading my website for the past four-and-a-half years. Yes, it is not over, but it is a significant change, and I just want to express my gratitude to all of you. I would have never imagined that I could start this website from scratch and get the thousands of views per week that I achieve. Thank you all for all your support, and I plan to begin updating my website with my Beyond The Box Score articles in the following posts. Devan Fink |