The recent promotions of Kris Bryant, Addison Russell and Carlos Rodon have created a good deal of buzz these past couple of weeks. Deservingly so. Kiley McDaniel ranked the trio first, third and eighth respectively in his pre-season rankings. Any time a prospect of that caliber gets called up to the big leagues, it’s certainly newsworthy.

But there was another promising, young prospect who recently got the call. But his debut was somewhat overshadowed — at least outside of the New York region — by Russell and Rodon, who both debuted on the same day. As you probably guessed by the title of this piece, that player is 24-year-old Mets catcher, Kevin Plawecki.

Plawecki got the call to replace Travis d’Arnaud, who broke his finger after taking a pitch on the hand. d’Arnaud’s expected to miss at least the next month, but that timeline could easily grow longer given the unpredictable nature of hand injuries. Plawecki — and not the objectively handsome, yet offensively challenged, Anthony Recker — will pick up the lion’s share of playing time in d’Arnaud’s absence, meaning Plawecki will play a crucial role for the surprisingly-competitive Mets.

Plawecki may not have the cachet of the other guys who got called up over the last couple of weeks, but he’s a pretty well-regarded prospect in his own right. A supplemental first round pick in 2012, Plawecki placed 40th on Kiley McDaniel’s top 200 list last winter, and landed in the middle of just about every top 100 list out there. Read the rest of this entry »

With Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke anchoring the Los Angeles Dodgers’ rotation, it will be nearly impossible for the Dodgers to have a bad rotation, but the Dodgers had depth problems entering the spring with Brett Anderson penciled in as the number five starter and little behind him in case a starter should falter. The lack of depth gained some early exposure, with Hyun-Jin Ryu unable to start the year with the team as he continues to work his way back from shoulder problems. The Dodgers received another blow last night, with news that Brandon McCarthy would miss the rest of the season as he joins the Tommy John Surgery waiting list.

The Dodgers have gotten by in the early going without relying on a single fifth starter, instead giving one start each to Mike Bolsinger, David Huff, and Scott Baker. David Huff is no longer on the 40-man roster, although the Dodgers will have an opening if they choose to put Brandon McCarthy on the 60-day disabled list. Scott Baker is currently scheduled to make this Friday’s start against Arizona, making him the de facto fourth starter behind Kershaw, Greinke, and Anderson. The Dodgers have an off day on Thursday which means they can pitch their top three starters on normal rest Saturday through Monday before needing their fifth starter again on Tuesday.

Prior to McCarthy’s injury, the Dodgers pitching Depth Chart for the rest of the season looked like this.
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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Toronto at Boston | 18:10 ET
Drew Hutchison (23.0 IP, 94 xFIP-, 0.2 WAR) faces Clay Buchholz (22.1 IP, 67 xFIP-, 0.5 WAR). Entering the 2015 season, the latter had recorded a career strikeout- and walk-rate differential of roughly 9.5 points, with 2013’s 14.4 points representing his career-high mark. Over four starts and 22.1 innings, Buchholz has produced a differential of 21.8 points (28.7% K, 6.9% BB) while also posting what would represent his career-best ground-ball rate (55.6%). What else this game represents is an opportunity to regard the eighth-best player by WAR in the majors: rookie second baseman Devon Travis. Travis has produced 1.2 wins over the first 74 plate appearances of his career.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Player decline is a varied and interesting topic. Hitters become less effective and eventually go away for a multitude of reasons, from injury to an increasing inability to make contact, or the right types of contact. The increasing availability of batted-ball data makes it possible to analyze decline in new ways. Declining authority levels, increasing pull tendencies; these are only a couple of the variables that can hasten a hitter’s descent. Today, let’s take a look at Aramis Ramirez, focusing on his 2014 batted-ball data to uncover some information that could have foretold his ongoing rapid decline in this, his final MLB season. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about Salvador Perez, Erik Kratz, and emergency catchers and then discuss Josh Hamilton’s return to Texas.

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Episode 556
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses the Alex Guerrero Situation, the Josh Hamilton Situation, and various other situations.

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 53 min play time.)

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A fun question from last Friday’s chat:

Comment From Zob Lerblaw
How many games do the Mets have to get ahead of the Nationals and by what date to believe they may win the east? 15 games by June 1?

Since the question was asked, the Mets lost two of three over the weekend against the Yankees. So, if you’re a believer in momentum, the Mets have a little less than they used to. On the other hand, since the question was asked, the Nationals lost three of three against the Marlins. So while the Mets lost ground to Miami, they gained on Washington, which is the team they’d be most concerned about. At this writing, with the season almost 12% over, the Mets lead the Nationals by a full seven games.

The Mets are a worse baseball team than the Nationals are. I’m not 100% certain that’s true, but I’m definitely more than half certain that’s true. There is some point at which the season record becomes more meaningful than the projected numbers, but that point comes nowhere close to as early as April, and just last year the Nationals won almost 100 games. Any system that overreacts to the early start is a bad system; from this point forward, the Nationals should realistically be expected to be terrific.

Yet, the season still feels new. It feels like just yesterday that the Nationals seemed to have the biggest division edge in baseball. Already, that edge is almost all gone. The NL East is on the verge of becoming a coin flip.

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In the moment, it’s easy to focus only on the things that annoy you, on the things that you wish would be better. The greatest challenge in the world is to appreciate the moments that you get before you stop getting them, and it becomes all the more difficult when things aren’t going like you imagined. After the moment, everything shifts. The irritating bits fade into nothing, and what remains are images of the good times. In large part these are the principles driving the Angels’ sale of Josh Hamilton to the Rangers, and perhaps here more than anywhere else, it’s evident that the same thing can always be viewed in contrasting ways. The Angels see Hamilton in one way, the Rangers see him in another, and the great question concerns which side is closer to the truth. Josh Hamilton’s truth isn’t changing; it just happens to be somewhat unknown.

At its core, this really is just a baseball move. The Angels wouldn’t be paying for Josh Hamilton to go away if they thought he could still be a productive member of a contending team. And the Rangers are taking a shot because their financial risk will be laughably small, and they’re a team that could use a helpful left fielder. The Angels think they’ll be better for this, and the Rangers think they’ll be better for this. Obviously, it’s a little more complicated. It just always tends to come down to performance.

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Over the last two weeks, my insatiable desire to rank everything manifested itself in a three–part roundup of the buzz, rumors and scouting reports of this year’s top international amateur prospects and an excessively long ranking of the top prospects for this summer’s domestic draft. Earlier this year, I mentioned the top two names already making buzz in the 2016 July 2nd class, so it only seemed reasonable to also dive into the next two draft classes as well.

For obvious reasons, there’s a lot more information available for future draft classes than for future July 2 classes, but there are still limitations to what we can know at this point.

– It’s easier now to scout non-draft eligible high school players because of the showcase circuit, but scouts aren’t focusing on them so many don’t have strong opinions, much less rankings of these players. An average scout’s knowledge about guys on this list is limited to a handful of guys that are on loaded high school teams they see regularly, a guy that really stood out at one summer event they went to, collegiates that play at major programs or that were known prospects out of high school. We have video of most of these players and will start adding it to the FG YouTube page in the coming weeks.

That means making this list is combining what I’ve seen, what scouts tell me, notes from various other sources and which underclassmen are attracting interest from advisors, which is a surprisingly good indicator.

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