Ben and Sam preview the Padres’ season with Miles Wray, and Sahadev talks to MLB.com Padres writer Corey Brock (at 20:33).
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| 9:05 |
: Hello friends, welcome to the newly regularly scheduled Friday live baseball chat
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| 9:06 |
: For anyone who missed it, I’ve swapped places with Kiley, Tuesday < — > Friday, because Kiley is going to be doing a lot of Friday scouting
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| 9:07 |
: Also, a note: this is the last you’ll see of me for a few weeks. After this chat, I won’t be back on the FG pages until Tuesday, 3/31. Or never, in the event of a plane crash! Who’s to say
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| 9:07 |
you enjoy ferrells antics? |
| 9:08 |
: I wonder what the experience would’ve been in a world without Twitter. Twitter made me roll my eyes a lot sooner than I probably would’ve if I were just catching clips and live look-ins. See, Twitter has a way of beating anything into the ground within just the first handful of minutes
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| 9:09 |
: I didn’t stay tuned all day long, but I think overall it was well executed, and I’m not even that much of a Ferrell fan. Really captured the spirit of spring training. I was hoping for more opportunities for him to play defense
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Jered Weaver is already having his spring velocity scrutinized. Weaver himself doesn’t want to answer questions about it, and he’s issued frequent reminders that there are more important things than fastball speed, and he’s right. Weaver has never lit up the radar gun, and he’s still toward the front of a big-league rotation, even though he’s dropping into the mid-80s. Location trumps everything, and Weaver is a location pitcher. If he can locate, he’ll be fine.
But there’s no denying the bigger truth here. Weaver has been progressively losing strength, and he no longer seems like the ace he used to be. With his max velocity dropping, he’s working with a reduced margin of error, and the result is that Weaver’s become more vulnerable. Earlier in his career, he worked to conquer his vulnerabilities. Now he’s got new ones, and at 32, it’s not like he’s still ascending toward his peak. At this point, Weaver is still a perfectly fine starter on a contending team, but it’s worth thinking about how he’s used. He isn’t a guy you can expect to be successful in any situation. He isn’t a Clayton Kershaw. He isn’t a Corey Kluber. He isn’t the old Jered Weaver.
The Angels’ intention is to get back to the playoffs. They’re plenty good enough, and some of their division rivals have taken a step back. Odds are, the Angels and Mariners will be going neck and neck in the AL West, and so any little advantage might end up mattering. Weaver is going to be one of the Angels’ five starters. One thing they could do is just run him out there every five days, no matter what. But what if Weaver were more carefully managed? What if we were to try to optimize a Jered Weaver pitching schedule?
If Weaver were just any old guy, I don’t think it would be that big a deal. But there are things about him, things worth keeping in mind. See, Weaver, historically, has loved pitching in Anaheim. That’s not unusual — the ballpark plays pitcher-friendly. But Weaver’s been somewhat extreme. Over his career, he’s allowed 2.9 runs per nine innings at home, against 4.0 runs per nine innings on the road. Over just the last five years, the gap is 2.5 against 3.8. Weaver gives up a lot of fly balls, and when he’s pitching at home, the overwhelming majority of those fly balls just die. On the road, they’ve been a lot more likely to get over a fence.
With Weaver, then, you want him pitching at home. Beyond that, if at all possible, you want him pitching at home in sunny matinees. It seems like his delivery makes the ball difficult for lefties to pick up. And speaking of lefties — Weaver’s seen a lot more of them over time. Some of this is just the context of his opponents, but some is also the perception of increased vulnerability. Weaver has been most vulnerable against lefties on the road. His home/road splits are predominantly due to his performances against left-handed hitters.
The art and science of swing mechanics is largely opaque even to those among us who watch the game regularly and/or played competitively as amateurs. Augmenting the confusion is the surfeit of coaches who, though well-intentioned, provide instruction that is sometimes in direct contradiction of those properties which physics itself suggests ought to appear within the optimal swing.
Dan Farnsworth is a swing instructor currently based in Los Angeles (although relocating to New York soon). He’s written a number of posts for FanGraphs on swing mechanics — including, most notably, a thorough documentation of the improvements J.D. Martinez had made to his swing a few months before he was signed by Detroit and proceeded to produce a nearly four-win season in 480 plate appearances.
What follows is series of three brief conversations with Farnsworth regarding swings by Cubs prospects Jorge Soler, Javier Baez, and Kris Bryant — which threesome recorded consecutive home runs, in that order, during Tuesday’s Cactus League game against Cleveland (box). In each case, the author has allowed his unbridled naivete to guide the course of conversation and relied on Farnsworth to provide clarity.
Joey Gallo is one of baseball’s most promising prospects, but he’s also one of its most polarizing. On the plus side, he’s got major power. He sported an isolated power of .344 between High-A and Double-A last year, which was the highest mark of any minor leaguer with at least 300 plate appearances. But he’s also hindered by chronic contact problems. He strikes out more than almost any prospect we’ve seen before — or at least anyone who’s gone on to be a successful big-leaguer. According to Minor League Central, Gallo’s 64% Zone-Contact% was the lowest of any minor-league hitter with data available from last year.
Despite his high strikeout totals, Gallo’s received no shortage of praise within prospect circles. Kiley McDaniel ranked him 16th overall in his top 200 ranking, and just about every other prospect analyst agrees that Gallo’s among baseball’s top 15 or 20 prospects. KATOH’s all in on Gallo, as well. It pegs him for 11 WAR through age-28 — the seventh-highest projection among players with at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced.
Gallo’s ridiculous power numbers drive his rosy forecast, but it also helps that he does a little more than just crank homers. He posted a healthy 16% BB% last year, and walked more often than his league at both minor league stops. His projection also gets a boost from his strong BABIP, which shows he hits the ball hard, even when it doesn’t clear the fence. Both of these characteristics have enabled him maintain respectable on-base numbers — in lieu of his strikeouts — and could mean good things for his future as a major-leaguer.
Ian Desmond is a success story. There isn’t another way to spin it. He spent his first two seasons as a big league regular playing below big league regular levels. He was fortunate to be young enough and on a team that wasn’t quite ready to compete, otherwise he might not have gotten another real opportunity. After two plus years at the major league level, he was sitting on 1,302 plate appearances and 2.5 WAR.
That’s a fine number for most of the world’s population, but with Nationals gearing up to become real contenders in 2012 Desmond was entering a sink or swim kind of season. He was 26, a good base runner, an average defensive player, and he only looked average at the plate if you compared him to other shortstops. Something had to change or the Nationals would have had to look elsewhere.
Obviously, something changed. Desmond’s defense got better and he started to hit for power. While he wasn’t known for Vottoian command of the strike zone, he held his own while also connecting for extra bases. His glove started to come along and over the last three years he’s at 14 WAR in 1,850 PA. A terrific success story and reason enough to pump the breaks after any down season early in a player’s career.
I think you could say 2014 was the year Garrett Richards started making sense. He was supposed to strike a bunch of guys out. He was supposed to pitch like a staff No. 1. He was supposed to be awesome, and last year, he finally became awesome, taking over an Angels rotation with the more established arms in decline. Richards hasn’t answered all the questions, and his significant injury last August raised a new one, but at this point, it feels like Richards is what he was supposed to be. And he’s maybe even more remarkable than you thought.
It’s easy to see the big gain in strikeouts. It’s easy to see the drop in FIP and xFIP. It’s easy to see the increase in whiffs. Here now are last year’s top five qualified pitchers in slugging percentage against:
The belief is that Kershaw had the most insane season. And Kershaw did have the most insane season, overall. This is looking at just one thing. But Richards had a big edge in slugging, and he had that edge while pitching in the more hitter-friendly league. The likely reason? It’s the intuitive reason.
Bryce Harper was in the news a couple weeks ago. It had nothing to do with his performance — in 2015, he hadn’t yet performed. It had nothing to do with his health — in 2015, he hadn’t yet gotten injured. It had everything to do with his words. Harper generates three kinds of stories, and this was another one about him not hiding his confidence. Harper spoke openly about how much he believes in his current cast of teammates, and while every player would claim to believe in his cast of teammates, Harper has a way of drawing extra attention, and he didn’t beat around any bushes. Harper went so far as to talk about the disadvantage of facing the Nationals’ starting staff in the playoffs.
Of course, while we like our players to be humble, it’s not like Harper was talking about anything we hadn’t already thought and said ourselves. The Nationals do seem like a juggernaut. The Nationals do seem like they should take the NL East running away. The Nationals do have a rotation that would be terrifying to face in October. Say what you will about Harper’s personality, but he just said what most people already believe. There’s no such thing as a playoff shoo-in this early in the year, but the Nationals are about as close as it gets.
February has passed and so too has the feverish sprint of college baseball here in Arizona. While the rest of the country remains numb and depressing, the Valley of the Sun has been teeming with activity. During February’s twenty-eight days, seventeen Division 1 programs with draft-worthy players (not counting Grand Canyon and Arizona State) ventured to the Phoenix Metro area for tournaments and the like. It made for a whirlwind month of scouting.
Below are reports on 2015 draft eligible players I felt were worth discussing in descending order of their Future Value grades. A Pref List, if you will. I’ve excluded most players from schools who will be back down my way again this spring (like Oregon State, New Mexico and UNLV) for obvious reasons as well as notable underclassmen who aren’t draft eligible this year, like Nebraska CF Ryan Boldt and Oregon State C K.J. Harrison; I’ll write them up in a separate post.
I actually wrote a good bit more about the lower level guys in this post but due to concerns about length and your attention spans, this post was cut down considerably. For the unabridged version, you can go here to my poorly maintained personal blog.
The Hector Olivera situation is just really strange. As Kiley broke down over the weekend, the market has been saturated with questionable information, and Olivera ended up hiring new representation after the early offers apparently didn’t match the lofty thresholds that were being floated publicly. Toss in his unusual health track record and the fact that this has dragged into mid-March, and the entire situation remains particularly odd.
And that’s before we even get to the teams involved (or not) in the bidding. Olivera is projected as a second baseman or a third baseman, depending on the acquiring team’s need on the infield, but the teams with the most glaring needs at those positions seem mostly uninterested. No contenders need a second baseman more than the White Sox, Blue Jays, or Angels, but none of them have been reported to be particularly interested in signing him as a middle infield upgrade. On the other hand, the Braves have been strongly connected to Olivera, despite the fact that they’re likely to be one of the league’s worst teams in 2015, and at age-30, Olivera isn’t exactly a long-term upside play.
But perhaps no team linked to Olivera makes less sense than the Dodgers. With Howie Kendrick at second base and Juan Uribe at third base, the team doesn’t really have an open spot for a player who is likely going to command $10 million or more per season, and it seems unlikely that Olivera would want to spend a year on the bench waiting for a position to open up. Of course, injuries do happen, and the Dodgers have enough money to stockpile depth, so the presence of Kendrick and Uribe shouldn’t automatically eliminate LA from signing a talented player.
However, when reading scouting reports about Olivera’s expected performance, I can’t shake the idea that the Dodgers already have this player; he just goes by the name of Justin Turner.
