The Athletics announced that they have acquired left-hander T.J. McFarland from the Dodgers for cash considerations and selected him to the 40-man roster.
McFarland, 35 in June, is a veteran ground ball guy who has bounced around the league, including pitching for the A’s in 2020. He has also suited up for the Orioles, Diamondbacks, Cardinals and Mets in a career that dates back to 2013 and includes 354 major league appearances.
Last year, he was only in the majors for about two weeks with the Mets, making three appearances. He spent the majority of the year in Triple-A for the Mets and Orioles, pitching very well at that level. He posted a 2.30 earned run average in 62 2/3 innings, walking 10.2% of opponents but also striking out 25.2% of batters faced. His ground ball rate was over 62% for both Triple-A clubs he pitched for.
Those grounders have been his M.O. throughout his career, with 62.2% of the balls in play during his major league career having been pounded into the dirt. That has made him particularly vulnerable to the baseball gods, as shown in time with the Cardinals. In 2021, he had a batting average on balls in play of .261 and a strand rate of 81.5%, leading to a 2.56 ERA. The year after, he had a .333 BABIP and 60.4% strand rate, which bumped his ERA all the way to 6.61.
He signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers this winter and posted a 1.35 ERA over seven spring appearances, but that club has a fairly stacked bullpen without a clear opening for McFarland. The A’s, on the other hand, are much more able to employ him.
Oakland is deep into a rebuild and came into camp with a group of relievers fairly light on experience. That issue was compounded when three of the most veteran guys went down with injuries. Trevor Gott required Tommy John surgery, putting him out of action for the whole year. Sean Newcomb is going to start the season on the injured list due to irritation in his surgically-repaired left knee while Scott Alexander has a stress reaction in his left ribs.
The A’s have been trying to quickly to make up for those losses, recently acquiring Austin Adams from the Mets and now McFarland. He’ll provide the A’s with a veteran southpaw arm to hopefully stabilize a pitching staff in flux while also perhaps serving as a guiding force for the many young arms on the team.
Yay, he did well while with the A’s so welcome back…
Dodgers were definitely waiting till they fired ohtani’s interpreter before receiving wire transfers from other ball clubs.
Never know who’s got access to your accounts these days.
I like it
A’s send cash to the Dodgers, what’s the under/over on that?
Should’ve just signed Dallas Braden. All he’d have to do is walk from the broadcast booth to the field. Sure, his ERA would be 15.98, but so will McFarland’s. We like Braden out here
Wrong chat – I know – but Twins have a RP named Scott Blewett, who got the save for them today.
How can you not love baseball?
Either way he’s playing for a minor league team.
Sorry A’s fans, I feel for you.
Man, I wish I took the under 103.5 wins on the dodgers. Highly overrated
All best to TJ!
Been a fan ever since we picked him up in the rule five.
A Dan Duquette find. True, he didn’t lay down the foundation for the Orioles run (look up Andy McPhail bio) from 2012 to 2016 but Dan didn’t tear it down either. A low ego type GM that was pretty creative when tweaking a roster.
Imagine posting all this
“He posted a 2.30 earned run average in 62 2/3 innings, walking 10.2% of opponents but also striking out 25.2% of batters faced. His ground ball rate was over 62% for both Triple-A clubs he pitched for.”
When you could just post this: He had a 3.92 xFIP in 62 2/3 innings in AAA.
ZiPS projects TJ for a 5.06 FIP and -.2 WAR
Imagine posting era, ground ball, and strike out rates? Metrics commonly used to judge pitchers?
You didn’t improve what they said.
HDC
Would you say a hitter had a 10% walk rate and 25% K rate but leave out their wRC+?
Give the most important info THEN the details of how they got there
For minor league player stats? They probably dont cause minor league stats are often skewed as AAA is known as very hitter friendly so while walk % and k% have value batting estimators wouldn’t have as much.
For mlb players they include wrc+
And for mlb pitchers they often include peripherals such as FIP xFIP SIERA to give a better picture of how a pitcher is doing at mlb level. It wouldn’t tell as much in hitter friendly AAA stadiums when everyone has an era and peripherals north of 4.
You had a similar complaint on the Touki Toussaint article. Seems like a weird thing to obsess over. The article conveys the necessary information. I suspect this site probably has more readers who are less familiar with some of these metrics than a site like Fangraphs would have,
sb
It does not convey the necessary information – is the point. It conveys incomplete information.
You are just annoying. All you do is complain about things and tell people you are muting them. Do your wife and kids even like you?
Disagree. The information provided tells me what he actually did. FIP would also tell me what he actually did. xFIP helps contexualize that, but I don’t think it’s essential.. ZiPs projections are interesting, but hardly essential.
LS
Muted
scbb
“The information provided tells me what he actually did. ”
No. Not really
ERA CERTAINLY doesn’t.
And context IS essential
A .320 wOBA in Coors is much different than a .320 wOBA on Seattle, for example
Dude you are so right. He is a total tool box who is in love with Scott Boras,rewritting other people’s work, and the mute button. He never contributes anything worthwhile. If he mutes you it’s only because you make too much sense.
HDC
“For minor league player stats? They probably dont cause minor league stats are often skewed as AAA is known as very hitter friendly so while walk % and k% have value batting estimators wouldn’t have as much.”
Yes. For minor league stats. Minor league BB and K rates are also minor league stats.
But, sure, they should post
Projections first – that’s what we really want to know usually – how good a player is expected to be
Adjusted “results” stats like FIP-, wRC+ second. So we can see how they were overall
Adjusted “process” stats like BB%-, K%-, OBP-, ISO-. So we can see how they got to their overall performances
Bb is a bb whether minor or major
K is a k whether minor or major
The strike zone is the same both in the minor leagues and major leagues.
Ball park factors that affect things like era FIP xFIP in an entire league (AAA) is a little bit different and not as comparable to MLB era FIP xFIP where you have both hitter friendly and pitcher friendly parks.
Same goes for wrc wrc+ ops+ whatever hitter stat.
Projections mean little. They’re guesses at end of day.
If you wanna start your own blog and do your own write ups for it including those stats go for it.
HDC
“Projections mean little. They’re guesses at end of day.”
No.
Statements like this are how you know you’re talking to someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about.
Why does anyone care what a player did in the past? In many instances, including this specific one, it’s because they want to know what to expect in the future.
Projections are definitively better at that than nearly everyone.
So, given the choice between looking at sometimes past performance and guessing how they will perform in the future and looking at a projection – you should, except in very rare circumstances, take the projection.
Ballpark factors can definitely effect BB and K rates. See the K% at Coor’s Field for example.
But the bigger point is that K and BB rates in the minors come against minor league pitchers and hitters who are, you know, much worse on average then major league pitchers and batters. So, no a BB is not a bb whether major or minor.
Projection
an estimate or forecast of a future situation or trend based on a study of present ones.
Aka a guess. An educated guess. But still a guess at how they will do.
Projections don’t always match reality.
Again if you want to start your own blog and include those go for it. Be more useful than critiquing what others choose to include in their content.
Here’s an idea for your first write up. The percentage of projections that were actually accurate within a 5% error allowance.
For example projections said they were ops+ 100, 5% error would be 95 to 105
Unless of course you’re refusing to write your own blog cause majority of people don’t care about that extra stuff, which just validates Mlbtrs choice to not include it unless discussing mlb players not minor league.
HDC
“The percentage of projections that were actually accurate within a 5% error allowance.”
You don’t think that projection systems already do that? Of course they do.
You know who doesn’t do that? Idiot fans who think they can out perform projection systems. Maybe that’s you?
“majority of people don’t care about that extra stuff, ”
The majority of people (including you, based off this interaction) don’t understand “that stuff”. Which is why it should be written about be sites with large followings. To make more educated people.
Understanding projections in regards to baseball isn’t THAT important. But it is super important in life. So, if sneaking it into people’s brains through something they enjoy is the way to get the to learn, that should be done
You’re such a waste of oxygen. Spend less time commenting and more time apologizing to trees for wasting their efforts.
“majority of people don’t care about that extra stuff, ”
The majority of people (including you, based off this interaction) don’t understand “that stuff”.
False. Wrong as always. not caring =/= not understanding.
Weighing down an article with useless information readers can look up on their own if they want is how you turn people off to content.
It’s pretty impressive to rack up nearly 500 innings as a reliever in MLB while putting up a 0.0 WAR. I’m not being sarcastic. He’s hanging in there and managing to get time in the bigs.
But but but what’s his xFIP?!?!?!?!