Thursday is Valentine's Day, a pseudo-holiday designed to celebrate relationships -- specifically, the parasitic ones maintained and enjoyed by marketing executives. Genuine, healthy connections should be appreciated daily, we say, not just when the suits deem it appropriate.
Nonetheless, we decided to play along with our corporate overlords by highlighting five new player-team relationships that ought to prove enjoyable for both parties. Do note that we chose our couples based on reasons beyond the obvious "so and so is a good player" reasoning.
Over the past two seasons, Marco Estrada has yielded the fifth most home runs in baseball. Fewer than a quarter of his batted balls last year were of the grounder variety, per FanGraphs. Add those facts together and it becomes clear why Estrada wanted to join the Athletics, who play their home games in a cavernous park complete with ample foul territory. The A's interest in Estrada makes sense, too. He can still throw strikes and miss bats with a four-pitch mix that's heavy on high-spin fastballs and changeups. Bet on Estrada being better than last year.
Cleveland's miserable winter has exposed even savvy deals to snark. The Matt Joyce signing is a good example. Though he's coming off a bad year (87 OPS+), his ball-tracking data suggests he made harder-than-average contact while maintaining his strong eye at the dish. Cleveland is, presumably, assuming he'll hit right-handers at a clip closer to the .884 and .855 OPS levels he had produced the previous two seasons. If so, he could help fill the void left behind by departing free agent Michael Brantley (or, at least, Lonnie Chisenhall). Joyce is a poor hitter against lefties, but that's OK -- Terry Francona is a prudent micromanager and Cleveland's batters led the majors in platoon advantage in 2018 (albeit due in part to its switch-hitters).
The Phillies acquired J.T. Realmuto only last week, meaning everyone is tired of reading about him. Still, we wanted to point out that Marlins Park was the worst for right-handed home runs last season, while Citizens Bank Park was the second-best. Realmuto has set a new career-high for home runs in each of four full big-league seasons. Don't be shocked if the change in venues helps him run that streak to five, topping last season's 21. On a related note, no catcher homered more than 27 times last season.
From one catcher to another, we're putting Yasmani Grandal because we think he's going to be a hit with Brewers pitchers. Milwaukee's rotation figures to include a lot of command-and-control types -- Zach Davies, Chase Anderson, Jhoulys Chacin -- who are more prone to pitching to the edges of the strike zone than the average bear. Grandal is on a per-pitch basis one of the best framers in the business, and his above-average stick makes him a massive upgrade over incumbent options Erik Kratz and Manny Pina, each quality framers themselves.
Adam Ottavino is a native New Yorker with stated interest in analytics. He's now with a New York-based club whose front office is one of the best at using data. Call it destiny or kismet, but we call it a good match. Honestly, we're not sure if the Yankees will enhance Ottavino's game -- he's already really good and has a strong sense of what he wants to do on the mound. We're just a sucker for easy copy and will take any excuse to post clips of his slider in action:
Who needs candy or jewelry when you have a pitch like that?
