You already know what I’m going to say — this early in the year, we don’t really care about results so much as we care about what goes into those results. Maybe that’s a new pitch, or a new batting stance, or our first look at a guy trying to come back from an injury. Sometimes, though, you can’t help but start with the results. In Mat Latos‘ Miami debut, there were certainly results:

So that’s pretty bad, and generally you’d let it go by as just one of those things, in the same way that no one really thinks that Cole Hamels‘ lousy first start means anything more than a very good pitcher having a very bad day. But like with the interest in seeing what kind of pitcher Masahiro Tanaka would be, there’s interest in Latos. After several good seasons, his 2014 was ruined by left knee surgery and right elbow soreness, after which the Reds flipped him to to a Miami team that plans on contending for a decent enough pitching prospect in Anthony DeSclafani and minor league catcher Chad Wallach’s intriguing offensive profile. Read the rest of this entry »

Hanley Ramirez is a good case study for Xander Bogaerts. The early-career personalities differ – Hanley was aloof and Xander is humble – but their profiles have a lot in common. Each came up through the Red Sox system with “Wunderkind” stamped on his forehead and nascent hitting knowledge under his helmet.

A notable difference is their rookie results. Ramirez captured NL rookie-of-the-year honors after being dealt to the Marlins. Bogaerts struggled to find his stroke and, relative to expectations, bombed in Boston. Before drawing too many conclusions, consider that Hanley was 22 at the time, a full year older than his counterpart was last season.

Contextually, Bogaerts was better as a 21-year-old than Ramirez. The youngster’s 2014 numbers weren’t enthusiastic — .240/.297/.362 with 12 home runs – but they came against big-league competition. At the same age, Hanley hit .271/.335/.385 with six home runs in the Double-A Eastern League.

Back when he was a Portland Sea Dog, the 31-year-old slugger had a rudimentary approach. “I like to stay through the middle and hit the ball at the pitcher’s head,” Ramirez told me in 2004. “I like to see what they throw and then react to their pitches.”

A few weeks ago in Fort Myers, I asked him what has changed since our decade old conversation. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about Doug Melvin’s extension talks and then answer listener emails about run differential, the players’ portion of revenue, Kris Bryant, and more.

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Episode 548
Nick Gordon is the Minnesota shortstop prospect selected fifth overall in the most recent draft. Jeff Hoffman is a right-hander, also among the top-10 selections of the 2014 draft, who’s currently at the end of his recovery from a Tommy John procedure. This edition of FanGraphs Audio features both of them, in conversation with lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel. (Note: Gordon’s interview begins at about the 9:45 mark; Hoffman’s, around the 17:40 mark.)

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 33 min play time.)

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Yesterday, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the champion San Francisco Giants. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not San Francisco’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Giants system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the San Francisco system by projected WAR. To in this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

t4. Clayton Blackburn, RHP (Profile)

Blackburn is projected as a reliever here. That’s not the capacity in which he’s made the vast majority of his minor-league starts, nor is it the role he’s likely to assume this year at either Double- or Triple-A. It is the role in which he made all six of his Arizona Fall League appearances, however, and that might be what’s influencing Steamer here. It matters with regard to the projection because it renders the rate stats more attractive but the overall WAR figure less so. It matters less, however, because Blackburn’s promotion to the majors isn’t imminent. In either case, he’s something slightly better than replacement level.

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Let’s play a game. I’ll show you brief excerpts from Baseball Prospectus annual Jamie Moyer summaries, and you match them with the year. This is nothing against BP, of course. Everybody was always saying the same stuff. BP just happens to put everything in one convenient place, on Jamie Moyer’s player page. Off we go.

• “There may be no coming back from this.”
• “The end is near.”
• “He lives and dies with his control, and I expect him to be on life support by the end of his contract.”
• “As long as he keeps his control, he could pitch another three or four years at this level.”

The years, scrambled:

• 2000
• 2005
• 2001
• 1999

Go nuts! And then, when you’re finished, we can have a conversation about Jered Weaver.

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Following a stupid .451/.491/.804 performance in the Grapefruit League, the hype surrounding Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts is through the roof. Scouts are all but penciling him into July’s All-Star lineup, and some of Betts’s peers have even gone as far as to compare him to Andrew McCutchen. And wouldn’t you know it, Betts opened the 2015 season by going 2-4 with a homer and a walk on opening day. Mookie-mania is upon us.

Here at FanGraphs, we’ve been on the Betts bandwagon for a while. Carson Cistulli’s been tracking Betts since July 2013, when he made his first appearance on one of his fringe five lists. An undersized 5th round draft pick with excellent stats, Betts was exactly the type of prospect who endears himself to prospect enthusiasts whose heads are buried in spreadsheets. At that point, Betts was merely a little-known A-Baller with an unusual name.

But last year, Betts took his act to Double-A, and kept right on hitting. He put up a 177 wRC+ in two months in Double-A, and followed it up with a 158 mark in Triple-A. The 5-9 second baseman with the funny name was starting to look like a bona fide prospect, and it was happening in a hurry.

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Beating the rest of the league to the punch with a large contract extension for Rick Porcello when much better players await in free agency is not going to garner excitement or plaudits, but the Red Sox are anticipating an expensive free agent market in 2016 and providing themselves a safety net. Boston resorted to Plan B before they knew if Plan A would work, but the Red Sox can still implement Plan A and sign a big-name free agent while simultaneously providing depth for their rotation. Five years and $95 million is a lot of money for a player without a world-beating track record, but Porcello has been good and reliable and he is still just 26 years old. This contract is not all that surprising as Mike Petriello predicted a similar contract in February.

Last year, three pitchers signed extensions just a year away from free agency and one of them is apt for Porcello. Clayton Kershaw’s seven-year, $215 million contract is way too big, Charlie Morton’s three-year, $21 million contract is too light, but Homer Bailey’s six-year, $105 million contract (with an option for a seventh year) is right in the same range as Porcello. Bailey was two years older and only twice pitched over 150 innings while Porcello has exceeded that mark in six straight seasons. Bailey was coming off the better season, with around four wins in 2013, but he also received more money with greater risk of injury. According to Jeff Zimmerman’s disabled list projections, Porcello is the second most likely starter to make it through the season without a stint on the disabled list.

Even if we treat Bailey as an outlier for an extension, last year’s free agent class has a pretty close contract to Porcello’s: James Shields, who signed for four years and $72 million with the Padres. Shields has the better track record, but he’s headed into his decline years while Porcello is headed into his mid-20s. While Shields’ deal ends when he’s 36, the Red Sox have only committed to Porcello up to age-30.
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Ben and Sam banter about pace and time of game and then discuss why the structures of player extensions haven’t evolved.

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