We all know Pedro Alvarez had a pretty rough year in 2014, as he hit just 18 home runs, half of his total of 36 in 2013. That was almost the whole story, as hitting home runs (usually impressive, towering ones) is what Pedro Alvarez does well. Unfortunately, he happened to time the failure of the thing he does well with the continued failure of the thing he has never done well — making ignominious throwing errors at third base — thereby forcing the playoff-bound Pirates to take his glove out of the infield (and bat out of the lineup) by platooning him toward the end of the year.

What is less publicized is that Alvarez made some plate discipline strides last year, posting career-best walk and strikeout rates (10.1% and 25.4%, respectively), so 2014 wasn’t all bad. In fact, if you were an extremely optimistic person, you might say that 2014 was an important year for El Toro, as he seemed to make adjustments to improve the glaring holes in his plate approach. However, entering his age-28 season in 2015, a realist would say Alvarez is now facing a crucial test: given his defensive shortcomings and struggles against left-handed pitching, the prospects of a bounce-back campaign at the plate aren’t just a nice expectation, they’re now more of a necessity.

With Ike Davis out of the picture, the Pirates’ plan is to have Alvarez play first base, getting his bat back in the lineup and allowing him to almost never have to throw the ball – though you get the sense his leash as a starter might not be all that long. Let’s look into what was behind Alvarez’ power decline in 2014, and if his plate discipline improvements will help drive a return to form.

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It’s a fascinating and volatile starting rotation in New York. CC Sabathia’s been awesome before, but he’s got injury questions. Same goes for Masahiro Tanaka. Same goes for Michael Pineda. Same, to some extent, goes for Ivan Nova. Nathan Eovaldi has fewer of the injury questions. Just last year he was an out shy of 200 innings. But Eovaldi’s still trying to get close to his ceiling. The upside for the other guys comes from their health. Eovaldi’s upside is somewhere in his arm.

And the Yankees, and Larry Rothschild, are committed to bringing that upside out into daylight. The current mission: polish Eovaldi’s third strikeout pitch. Before I get any deeper, I’d like to acknowledge Matt Tobin, who got me back thinking about Eovaldi in the first place. I want to talk some about the stuff we know he has, and I want to talk some about the pitch he might soon have. It’s the pitch that, very sincerely, might make all the difference.

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With the Red Sox recently adding Yoan Moncada to the fold last week (details and audio interview), the biggest international domino has fallen and now there’s more certainty for teams and agents going forward about what teams can spend on July 2nd. In an early draft of this article, I was going to point out that MLB still hadn’t told teams what their international bonus pools were, in an effort to discourage teams from agreeing to verbal deals since they wouldn’t know the exact figure of what they could spend. MLB sent out those figures this week, and they fell in line with what teams expected: last year’s slots with a 5-7% bump.

I reported back in December that up to 12 teams were rumored to be considering or had already put enough agreements in place to exceed their bonus pool. I conceded that nowhere near that many would do it and that looks to be true, with closer to five teams looking likely to go over, but many more looking to spend their full pool and maybe trade for a little more, along with rumors of teams considering going over in 2016. Part of the reason for the uncertainty about which teams are going over is the uncertainty surround young Cuban players.

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Contract extensions for younger players have been on the rise in recent years. Over the past three springs, 38 players with under six years of service have signed extensions buying out free agent years. Twenty-four of those 38 contract extensions were signed by players who had yet to reach arbitration. Eight contract extensions have gone to starting pitchers and seven out of those eight pitchers had not reached arbitration, with Homer Bailey as the lone exception.

Here are the extensions given to pre-arbitration eligible pitchers over the last three springs, with Julio Teheran’s Valentine’s Day deal included as well, from MLB Trade Rumors.
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Over the weekend, the ninth annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference took place in Boston, and I was lucky enough to be invited to be part of the baseball panel — along with Sandy Alderson, Ben Lindbergh, Dan Brooks, and Jonah Keri — on Saturday morning. I enjoyed our conversation, but I’ll mostly leave it up to others to recap that conversation, since I’m likely a bit biased by being part of the panel. There were some other parts of the conference that I thought were worth discussing, however.

For instance, on Friday afternoon, Commissioner Manfred took the stage for an hour long interview with Brian Kenny. While the commissioner has been making the media rounds since taking over, and has established some talking points that he repeated during this conversation, there were also some interesting points made during the conversation. Among the things that stood out to me from Manfred’s comments, which I’m going to paraphrase below:

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves, Athletics, Angels, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Cardinals, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, Pirates, Royals & Giants

Top 200 Prospects Content Index

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Draft Rankings: 2015, 2016 & 2017

International Coverage: 2015 July 2nd Parts One, Two & Three, 2016 July 2nd

The Angels system is on the rebound, adding Andrew Heaney in a trade for Howie Kendrick this offseason and getting arguably the top value in the the 1st round of the 2014 draft with Sean Newcomb (though Royals LHP Brandon Finnegan is another solid option). The previous regime under Tony Reagins was focused on upside at all costs in the draft, which gets you some guys like Mike Trout, but also a boom-or-bust system with lots of holes and minor league free agents added to fill those holes.  That starts to show up on the big league team when the inventory starts to get thin, but that necessary depth is now developing via trades and better amateur talent acquisition. The system is still in the bottom third of the league, but they’ve likely pulled out of the bottom five once I rank all 30 systems, with things looking to be trending up.

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You’re 11 years old. You toss your flattened “Piña Mango” Capri Sun pouch to the floor of your mother’s dog hair riddled Honda Odyssey and pull the door handle that activates the painfully slow automatic sliding door. As the door creeps along and the heat of the mid-July sun begins to fill the smelly minivan, you grab your sweet airbrushed helmet and -7 Easton Stealth aluminum bat from the backseat and race towards the dusty fields.

As you begin warming up with your teammates by playing a bit of catch (see: chase balls thrown over your head and down that stupid hill into the woods), you can’t help but begin scouting the other team. “Those kids are huge,” you think to your prepubescent self. Your attention is drawn to one child in particular, due in part to his hulking stature but also to the audible POP! of his partner’s glove. With each subsequent throw and POP! of the glove, you and your entire team begin to quiver in your size-7 Mizuno youth baseball cleats, questioning your own talent, self-worth, and ultimate place in this world. POP! Without doing anything, he’s already gotten in your head.

That child is Giancarlo Stanton.
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Don’t screw this up, Marco Estrada. Just don’t.

That’s not how you’d expect an article about a team that’s clearly trying to contend in 2015 would start, and you’ll understand why it does a little later on. There’s only ever been one article focusing on Estrada on the front page of FanGraphs, and that came back in 2012. This isn’t going to be another. I promise. This is maybe going to be about the fun mark the Blue Jays could potentially set if Estrada never makes a start for them this season, and what that might mean for the playoff dreams. Read the rest of this entry »