Toronto Blue Jays General Manager Alex Anthopolous, in a bid to get people to start calling him “Double Down,” has re-signed back-up catcher and Angels legend Jeff Mathis for a guaranteed two years and $3 million with a club option for 2015. I just went back and checked — this does not seem to be an Onion article. Seriously, though, teams have their reasons for doing things like this, even if they are not always apparent (or good). Let’s try and think it through.
Last week, we took a look at the 14 American League sleeper prospects I identified during the pre-season FanGraphs Top 15 prospects series. Today, we’re reviewing the 15 National League sleeper prospects.
I apologize for the lateness of the second part of this series, which was intended to run one day after the AL portion. However, my wife went into labor two weeks early with our second child. The good news, though, is that the world has a new baseball fan.
Navery Moore, RHP, Atlanta Braves: Moore showcased a good arm in college but suffered from inconsistent performances. Now 22, the right-hander has spent the entire season in low-A ball. He made 11 starts to begin the year and then moved into the bullpen and he’s probably more suited to relieving.
Aaron Hill hit 62 home runs between the 2009 and 2010 seasons. It took him just two years to over triple the home run output of more than 1800 prior plate appearances.
Hill is just one beneficiary of Rogers Centre’s kind left field, a list that now includes Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and apparently Jeff Mathis. The main difference between pre-2009 Hill and post-2009 Hill was a change in fly ball rates — an increase of about seven percentage points. By lofting the ball and utilizing that left field, Hill turned from an unremarkable contact-hitting second basemen into an elite power force at the position — for reference, Robinson Cano has 61 home runs over the past two calendar years (covering 320 games).
According to excellent journalist Andy McCullough at the New Jersey Star-Ledger, the Mets are going to keep working on an extension with their newfound elder statesman ace, R.A. Dickey. The team elected to wait and see what the season would bring before putting pen to paper, which was a smart move considering that the organization owns an affordable $5 million option for the 2013 season. But now that he’s put up a Cy-worthy season, the discussion has changed. Making the conversation difficult is the lack of comparable players.
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. Three Notable Prospects Promoted to Double-A
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule
Three Notable Prospects Promoted to Double-A
Player: Dylan Bundy, RHP, Baltimore
Promotion: High-A Frederick to Double-A Bowie
Notes: Bundy’s 11 starts at High-A (54.1 IP, 63 K, 17 BB) were decidedly not as dominant as the eight he’d made before that at South Atlantic League affiliate Delmarva (during which he posted a 40:2 K:BB in 30.0 innings and conceded just five hits), but they were still excellent. Bundy made his Double-A debut Tuesday night. Here’s his line from that game (box): 5.0 IP, 3 K, 3 BB, 8:3 GO:FO. And here, courtesy David Driver at MiLB.com, is a brief note on what he (i.e. Bundy) threw: “Bundy relied on a fastball in the mid-90s but had trouble finding the zone with his curve[,] as two breaking pitches stayed high in the first two innings.”
Ben and Sam reach a milestone (the 20-minute mark) as they tackle the topics of clubhouse chemistry and whether there’s more to Jeff Mathis than meets the eye.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Other Lists
Cape Cod League
Coastal Plain League
New England Collegiate League
With August very much here, the nation’s collegiate summer leagues — many of which have probably hosted at least one future major leaguer — are coming to an end.
Below are the players to have performed most ably in this year’s edition of the Northwoods League. Offensive production (represented as the totally made-up SCOUT+, where 100 is league average and above 100 is above average) is essentially a version of wRC+, except using the three main defense-independent inputs (home-run, walk, and strikeout rate), all regressed duly*. Pitching performance (represented by the also entirely made-up SCOUT-, where 100 is league average and below 100 represents above-average run prevention) is calculated using a version of kwERA, with regressed strikeout and walk rates as the relevant inputs.
*By the method outlined here.
The idea here is not to suggest that the following players are/were the actual best prospects from the Northwoods League this summer. Outlets like Baseball America and Perfect Game will certainly do a much better job of that. Rather, it’s to (a) represent as accurately and responsibly as possible the best performances of the Northwoods League season and to (b) acquaint ourselves with those top performers.
On Sunday, Jon Lester took the hill as a pitcher who had been beaten up over the last month. In his previous six starts, Jon Lester had an 0-5 record with a 8.73 ERA, allowing a .321/.385/.588 slash line to opposing hitters. He had given up 42 hits in these six starts and almost half of them were for extra bases. The vultures were swarming above Fenway, and many observers were simply waiting for the inevitable announcement that he was hurt. After establishing himself as one of the best pitchers in the American League, Lester was having his worst season as a major league pitcher, and it was only getting uglier as the season wore on.
And then on Sunday, Lester went and struck out 12 Cleveland Indians over six innings pitched. He gave up just three hits, all singles. He likely could have gone deeper in this one, but the Red Sox were already up 14-1 at that point. After weeks of getting beaten around like a Triple-A reject, he was nearly unhittable. Did Lester do anything fundamentally different in this outing, or was this just the old adage of sun on a dogs backside?
