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Candelario had an up-and-down season Miguel Andujar Jersey , but still looks like a big piece of the Tigers’ future."WhiteFanposts Fanshots Sections Detroit Tigers AnalysisDetroit Tigers Prospect NotebookDetroit Tigers Game ThreadsDetroit Tigers NewsDetroit Tigers PodcastsTigers 2018 Season RecapTigers’ Jeimer Candelario showed progress despite a bumpy 2018New,6commentsCandelario had an up-and-down season, but still looks like a big piece of the Tigers’ future.ByZane HardingNov 19, 2018,1:15pm ESTShareTweetShareShareTigers’ Jeimer Candelario showed progress despite a bumpy 2018Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY SportsOn July 31, 2017, the Detroit Tigers, in the midst of a fire sale, shipped closer Justin Wilson and catcher Alex Avila to the win-now Chicago Cubs for two of their top prospects: Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes. Spoiler Alert: The Tigers won the trade. Isaac Paredes was one of four teenagers to play in the Eastern League in 2018 (two of the others being breakout star Juan Soto and uber-prospect Vladimir Guerrero Jr.), while Jeimer Candelario played 144 games en route to a respectable 2.5 fWAR season. Not bad for his first full campaign in the big leagues.Jeimer Candelario, meanwhile, deserves praise for posting a 2.5 fWAR campaign as a 24-year-old third baseman stuck at the beginning of a rebuild. That said, Candelario’s season is a two-sided tale. In 2018, Candelario excelled in the field, but took a step back at the plate.Jeimer Candelario posted a very respectable 5.2 runs above average defensively per Fangraphs this season. This places him as the seventh-best fielding third baseman in MLB this past season, and the fourth-best in the American League. Only Matt Chapman (13.1!!!), Kyle Seager (8.8), and Yolmer Sanchez (5.3, but in 11 more games than Candelario) were better. This is a great sign for Candelario moving forward. Candelario was a 45-grade fielder as a prospect and was worth -1.4 runs in the field in limited action in 2017. Because of this, he was expected to be slightly below average as a fielder. With this impressive showing in 2018, however, Candelario has the potential to be an asset at the plate and in the field moving forward. This is great news as the Tigers continue to build their future around high-end pitching prospects. Unfortunately, the brave souls who watched most of the Tigers’ 2018 campaign know that Candelario’s defensive progress was not what defined his 2018 season. Candelario slowed down as the season went on, and the Tigers better hope that he is more fully prepared for the marathon that is a 162-game schedule.One big stat: .293 on-base percentage from June to OctoberWhile Jeimer Candelario exceeded expectations in the field this past season, he faltered at the plate. In 2017 Tim Tebow Jersey , Candelario posted all-around impressive numbers: a .359 on-base percentage, a nice 112 wRC+ mark, and 36 total hits in 38 games. 2018 was not as kind to him. He went from being an above-average hitter to a slightly below-average hitter, as his wRC+ fell to 95 and his on-base percentage fell to .317. Additionally, he only amassed 121 hits in 144 games. Perhaps the most concerning thing about Candelario’s season, however, was his regression as the season moved on. Jeimer Candelario Offense by MonthMonthAVGOBPABMonthAVGOBPABCandelario had an impressive two months to start the seaspn, finishing with a .368 on-base percentage in 171 at-bats, eclipsing his .359 mark from 2017. After missing time with a left wrist injury, the wheels seemed to come off. He struggled through June to the tune of a .172 batting average, and while he was able to draw 16 walks throughout the month, opposing pitchers adjusted the rest of the season. As a result, Candelario posted an abysmal .217 on-base percentage in July, and from June to October posted a very disappointing .293.Some of Candelario’s other splits are equally worrisome. He hit .199 against righties this past season after hitting .269 against them in 2017. The shift caught up to him in 2018, as well, as he hit .237 in 156 AB against the shift after hitting .313 in a small sample size of 16 AB against the shift in 2017.So, is Candelario capable of bouncing back from this offensive regression to become the 4 fWAR player he is capable of being? Sure. He posted a 131 wRC+ against lefties, had a decently low .279 BABIP (implying he is due for a bounce-back 2019 campaign), and he walked 10.7% of the time in 2018 (it’s always nice to have a player with a walk percentage over 10 percent in your lineup). He also hit 19 home runs in a pitcher-friendly ballpark and was a beneficiary of the Ron Gardenhire regime, as he was worth 2.8 runs above average as a base runner throughout 2018.For Candelario, 2018 was two steps forward and one big step back. His peripherals look good, his fielding looks great, and he will only be 25 entering next season. In a 2019 season that will be filled with anticipation for prospect debuts, remember to keep a close eye on the young third baseman. They keep talking about it, but what is it really?"There has been a lot of discussion over the past few months about the mythical “window of contention” in connection to the Twins. Fans say it’s open Jay Bruce Jersey , Falvine says it’s shut, and everyone says the Pohlads are cheap. But what if the front office is actually right to take this wait-and-see approach?In order to determine whether our “window” is open or not (and what constitutes an open window), I researched the past five World Series champions. For our purposes, we’re going to assume it is World Series-or-bust (losing in the Wild Card game isn’t good enough). I looked at six criteria: payroll, average age of roster, previous year’s result, strength of division, number of players above 5.0 and 3.0 WAR, and five-player “core”. In this article I’ll discuss my findings and conclude what makes an “open window”, and in a second article I’ll use those findings to speculate whether the Twins’ “window” is open, or if the front office is right to wait and see. First, I looked at the estimated payroll of each World Series champion in their championship season. World Series PayrollsYearTeamPayrollRankingYearTeamPayrollRankingDrawing from this, it appears that it isn’t too important to be in the top 5 of spending, but it is a must to be in the top half of the league. Next up is the average age of the complete roster.World Series Average AgeYearTeamAverage AgeYearTeamAverage AgeThis is interesting in the light of the free agent situation these days. The league has shifted from valuing pricey free agent veterans to cheaper, team-controlled talent in the past few years, and the trend of average age getting younger on these teams illustrates that. However, I would expect that trend to reach a limit sometime soon, as I cannot imagine teams with average ages in the pre-”prime” years having this level of success. Looking at how these teams fared in the years prior to reaching the mountaintop, it was amixed bag. The Red Sox lost in the ALDS in 2017 (to the Astros), the Cubs lost in the NLCS in 2015, and the Royals were downed in the World Series in 2014. However, the Astros and Giants both missed the playoffs in the year prior to their championships. All of these teams did have vets with playoff experience, whether with that team or another. I’d conclude that it isn’t necessarily important for a team as a whole to be experienced in the playoffs, but it is important to have some veterans who have been there before. The next criteria we’ll look at in this article is the strength of division. The Red Sox compete in the AL East, the Astros in the AL West http://www.metsfanproshop.com/authentic-tim-tebow-jersey , the Cubs in the NL Central, the Royals in the AL Central, and the Giants in the NL West. To determine strength of division, I calculated the average wins of the teams excluding the World Series champion in the division, and then found the difference between that average and the amount of wins the World Series winner had. World Series Division StrengthYearDivisionAvg. WinsWS Champ WinsDiffYearDivisionAvg. WinsWS Champ WinsDiffThis particular category has driven the thinking behind the Twins’ window being open probably more than any other single criteria, so let’s see what we can learn from it. For reference, the strongest division in 2018 (excluding division champion), was the AL West, with an 83.25 win average. The league-wide average is always 81 wins. So while it appears that the teams in each of these divisions were below-average (on average), you kind of get into a chicken-or-the-egg paradox. There’s a limited amount of wins to go around, so if one team (such as the World Series champion) is winning a well-above average amount of those games, then it stands to reason that their are less wins to go around for the rest of the teams in its division. So is a low divisional win average a product of a dominant team being present, or is a team with lots of wins a product of a weak division? However, it is interesting that the difference seems to be trending upward. This would seem to be due to the roster-building trends these days, as competing teams trade and sign players to build “super-teams”, while other teams are happy enough to lose games and tank for high draft picks. For example, the AL East had 2nd & 3rd place teams that cleared 100 and 90 wins, respectively, but the abysmal Orioles brought the average way down. Now we’ll get more into roster makeup and what kind of stats players put up in order to reach these win totals. In order to determine what kind of depth these teams had to have to make it to the top, I started by counting how many players above 5.0 WAR (considered All-Star level) and how many above 3.0 were on the team. I also focused on pitching depth by counting how many pitchers they had over 2.0 WAR. Note that, for pitchers acquired mid-season, I took their WAR in the limited innings they had with their new teams and projected what their full-season WAR would’ve looked like had they pitched at that level for 180 innings (starters) and 55 innings (relievers).WS War DepthYearTeamPlayers w/ 5+ WARPlayers w/ 3+ WARPitchers w/ 2+ WARYearTeamPlayers w/ 5+ WARPlayers w/ 3+ WARPitchers w/ 2+ WARAfter seeing these results, it is definitely evident that the power of the league has shifted in the past few years to mega-deep “super-teams”. It is also telling to see the amount of good pitchers each of these teams boasted. The Astros and Giants appear to be rather thin, but the Astros had three pitchers with 1.8-1.9 WAR, and the Giants had one with 1.9. Houston also had another pitcher with a lower WAR (Lance McCullers) get unreasonably hot in the playoffs (as well as David Wright Jersey , notably, one of the best offenses in league history). All of these teams had at least three starting pitchers clear 2.0 WAR and at least one ace reliever at 1.9 or above. It is also interesting to note that four of the five recent champions all made mid-season trades for key pitchers (Eovaldi, Verlander, Chapman, and Peavy). Narrowing the focus on roster construction from depth to the core, I picked the top five players by WAR on each team and explored their WAR from that season and from the season prior. Again, pitchers acquired mid-season have projections across 180 or 55 innings. WS Core WarYearTeamPlayer 1 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredPlayer 2 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredPlayer 3 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredPlayer 4 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredPlayer 5 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredYearTeamPlayer 1 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredPlayer 2 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredPlayer 3 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredPlayer 4 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredPlayer 5 (Age)WARPrevious Year WARAcquiredI think that this is probably the most telling criteria I looked at. First, let’s break down how these core players were acquired. We find that 17 of the 25 players were acquired as prospects (1 following his rookie season). Five players were acquired as established major leaguers in trades, and only three were acquired via free agency. So it seems that it is actually more key to success to have prospects pan out in a big way than to sign big free agents. Looking at the ages of the cores, we have a range from 22 to 34. However, a majority of the players are grouped around the expected “peak” age. The average age comes out to 27.56 years. The really interesting part of this, to me, is the “Previous Year” WAR values. We find that only 6 of the 25 players performed to a tune that was less than 2.0 WAR the year before. Among these six players, two were veteran pitchers who were just coming off of down years (Peavy and Price). So regardless of age, we find that 84% of these core players had already established themselves as above-average MLB ball-players. So in conclusion, here’s how I’d define an open championship window. We’re looking at teams that have a payroll in the top half of the league. The teams should have an average age that is in the midst of a player’s “prime”. The teams do not need to have made the playoffs in the years prior, but they do need to have some playoff experience on the roster. Division strength (or lack thereof) is not a huge factor, but the teams should be able to reach 95 wins and win the division (no wild card teams have won since the play-in game was instituted). In this super-team era, the teams should have at least two above-average starting pitchers, a dominant starting pitcher, and a dominant relief ace. They will need to have an MVP-caliber position player, a couple more All-Star-level players, and a handful of above-average guys as well. Finally, the teams should not be counting on their key players to have breakout seasons. All data and information is courtesy of baseball-reference.com. Check back later this week for an analysis of what this means for the Twins!