Christin Stewart is the top power-hitting prospect in the Detroit Tigers system. He aspires to be the best overall hitter.

The 22-year-old outfielder got off on the right foot after being drafted 34th-overall last summer out of the University of Tennessee. Swinging from the left side, the muscular slugger slashed ..285/.372/.508 and bashed 10 home runs in half a season. He did the bulk of his damage in West Michigan, where he helped lead the Whitecaps to a Midwest League championship.

Stewart is highly touted, although the accolades come with cautions. Baseball America has lauded his plus bat speed and raw power, but also opined that he’s “an aggressive hitter whose swing gets long.”

This past summer, I asked the first-year pro about the latter assessment.

“There’s not a lot of movement in my swing,” Stewart told me. “I think I have a short swing to the ball. My extension through the ball can get a little long at times, and maybe that’s what they mean.”

Phil Clark, West Michigan’s hitting coach last year, had a different take. He concurred with his charge on length, but then to pointed to the start, as opposed to the finish. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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It wasn’t that long ago that the Pittsburgh Pirates were a laughingstock. They experienced two decades of losing seasons from 1993 to 2012, but getting that proverbial monkey off their backs in 2013 didn’t exactly free them from the pain baseball can inflict.

In fact, the Pirates found a way to be simultaneously great and depressing. They’ve hosted three consecutive wild-card games, winning the first one and losing the last two. Not only have they failed to advance past the Division Series despite averaging over 93 wins a year, they have had to endure the madness of the coin-flip game three times in a row. Needless to say, the Pirates and their fans desperately crave a longer October stay in 2016.

To do that, they’ll either have to be better than the powerhouse Cubs or they will have to secure a wild-card spot and win a one-game playoff. The Pirates are perhaps the team at the steepest spot on the win curve because the best team in baseball is in their division, they’re projected to be competing among a tightly bunched group of contenders, and the indignity of another wild-card defeat might be too much to handle. 

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Ben and Sam talk to the new Director of Baseball Research and Development for MLB Advanced Media, Daren Willman, about what’s in store for Statcast in 2016 and beyond.

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New York Mets ownership has come under increased scrutiny over the past few years. Lowering payroll in a gigantic media market and getting entwined in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme will bring that kind of attention. Back at the trading deadline, there were many, including myself, wondering why the Mets were acting like a small-market team in New York. The team quieted many doubters by bringing Yoenis Cespedes at the trade deadline and making the World Series, but due to insurance for David Wright’s injury and the PED suspension for Jenrry Mejia, the payroll increase was not significant. As a result, calls for the Mets to spend were heard again during the offseason, and again, the Mets have silenced their critics with Yoenis Cespedes.

The Mets’ revenues are driven by many factors, including the massive New York market that affords them a fantastic television deal that nets them around $100 million per year. However, nothing drives revenue like success, and the Mets, despite significant ownership debts and upcoming payments totaling over $60 million related to the Madoff scandal, the Mets were able to raise payroll due to their on-field success in 2015 and the fan response to that success. Team sources have pegged the revenue due to the Mets World Series run at around $45 million, per the New York Post. Fortunately for Mets fans, it appears almost all of that amount is being invested back on the field.

Let’s break it down.

Regular Season Revenue from 2015

Additional revenue from the regular season was not included in the $45 million estimate, but it is helpful to note that, due to the increased number of fans, the Mets did substantially better at the gate in their competitive 2015 season than they did the prior year. In 2014, the Mets drew 2.15 million fans and had an Opening Day payroll below $85 million — both figures down more than 30% from when Citi Field opened in 2009, but within a few-hundred thousand fans of the previous three seasons as the payrolls dropped beginning in 2011.

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I don’t much care for the move the Rockies made Thursday. I like Jake McGee just fine — he’s an excellent late-inning reliever — and maybe I could understand the trade under different circumstances. But the Rockies don’t actually project to be good, so it seems strange for them to add a reliever at the cost of an affordable, long-term outfielder. Not only that, but of the two prospects exchanged, I like Kevin Padlo more than German Marquez, and Padlo is joining Corey Dickerson in going from Colorado to Tampa Bay.

The trade won’t be the end of the world, and the Rockies could just decide to flip McGee in a matter of months, but for now, it’s an odd decision. This is a move you might expect from a competitive team with a thin bullpen, not a mediocre team with a thin bullpen.

So the Rays add value to the roster and to the farm, and the Rockies add late-inning impact. That’s essentially the summary, with one interesting offshoot being that this seems to set the Rays up for another outfielder trade. There’s another interesting offshoot, though, and it has to do with the Rockies, and with where they play. Sometimes it can be an easy thing to forget about, but the Rockies play baseball literally a mile above sea level, and that makes the team something of an ongoing experiment. It’s always fun to have an opportunity to investigate a new Coors Field question, and the McGee acquisition opens the door.

Read the rest on Fox Sports.

Other clubs: Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Orioles, Red Sox, White Sox.

I share the view of many fans in wondering if the return from the Todd Frazier deal was justified, even though I do think Jose Peraza and Scott Schebler are valuable prospects. Even if all three (Brandon Dixon being the third) were busts, the Reds have amassed quite an assortment of high-upside and -floor prospects who could the club competitive in a short time frame. And that’s without including Nick Howard and Jonathon Crawford as promising assets, both of whom were highly thought of as recently as last offseason before their lost 2015 years.

The Reds have an uphill road to climb this season to contend, with the Cardinals, Cubs and Pirates all looking like present contenders. Depending on how their young players respond at the major league level, we could see an influx of talented players turn them into a contender akin to the way the Cubs did last season. Most likely they still have a year or two to expect the results to resemble their collective potential, but this crop is an exciting group to monitor this year.

They may lack a sure thing top-of-the-rotation starter or cornerstone shortstop, but you can’t help but be interested in seeing where pitchers like Robert Stephenson, Cody Reed and Amir Garrett settle in. And between Blandino, Peraza and Blake Trahan, at least one of them should be able to supplant Zack Cozart at short, allowing Eugenio Suarez‘ likely move to third base.

This was a hard organization to cover, due to the endless amount of legitimate bench and bullpen pieces behind a sizable list of 50+ future value players. The system boast a ton of mid-level talent to go along with their solid top talent, and is a team I’ll be following closely this year to see how everyone’s stock improves.

As usual, there are a few rankings here that differ from popular opinion. I have Winker ranked number one, since I maintain confidence in his hitting ability while also expecting his power to come on strong. Ian Kahaloa and Gavin LaValley are too newer additions to the organization whose futures I am higher on than what I have heard elsewhere. I am not as bullish about Eric Jagielo’s bat progressing, and am also lower on Antonio Santillan, Yorman Rodriguez and Aristides Aquino. Admittedly, Santillan and Kahaloa are so early in their development that you could make a case for either of them moving up or down ten spots, and I wouldn’t argue with you.

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So, what did everyone think of the Justin Upton deal? Took a long time to sign. Got a lot of money. Good player. Gonna hit a bunch — probably something like 25% better than league average. Might not be great in the field, but, hey, it’s certainly an upgrade over what they already had. Deal mostly makes sense. It’s just so weird that the Rays were the team that signed him.

You didn’t hear? Yeah, it was the Rays that got him. The Tigers? No, no no no no no. The Rays landed Upton. Big-time move for them.

OK, fine, they didn’t technically get Upton. Technically, Upton signed with the Tigers, sure. I’ll admit that. They didn’t get Upton, but what they did get was Corey Dickerson and Steve Pearce, and — hey, stop laughing! Hear me out, here. Dickerson, for his career, has mashed right-handed pitching. Problem’s been the lefties. He’s got a career 139 wRC+ against righties. Pearce, for his career, and especially lately, since he turned his career around, has crushed left-handed pitching. Problem’s been the righties. He’s got a career 123 wRC+ against lefties.

When the Tigers went out and signed Upton to a six-year, $132 million contract, they signed up for something like a 127 wRC+ in 2016, according to the Steamer projections we host here on the site. Makes sense. That’s the exact midway point between last year’s production in San Diego, and the previous year’s production in Atlanta. The Rays? The Rays got Dickerson from Colorado yesterday for Jake McGee, an injury-prone, yet very effective, left-handed reliever. As for Pearce, he was signed for one year and $4.75 million. And if Dickerson only batted against righties, getting two-thirds of the season’s plate appearances, and Pearce got the other one-third by only batting against lefties, Steamer projects that the duo would combine for something like a 124 wRC+ — just a shade below Upton’s performance and at a fraction of the cost.

Of course, it never works that way. Dickerson’s going to be forced into some playing time against lefties, and it’s inevitable that Pearce is going to face his share of righties. Neither one is as adept in the outfield as Upton, and because the Tigers have an everyday player in left field, rather than a platoon, they’ve got an “extra” roster spot, relative to the Rays. You’d rather have Upton than Dickerson and Pearce. At the same time, you’ve got to applaud the Rays for spending so little to acquire a pair of corner outfielders whose production, so as long as the players are used optimally, could rival that of Upton’s.

This is one of the ways in which small-market teams can keep up with their big-market brothers, and one of the reasons why clubs like the Indians, A’s and Rays are so often found near the top of the platoon advantage leaderboard. There’s something very compelling about the cost-effective nature of a productive platoon, as well as the brutal honesty. A platoon is an organization’s way of telling a player, “We know you’re severely flawed, but we’re fine with who you are, and don’t need you to be anything more,” which sort of flies in the face of the traditional macho, “strive for greatness” athlete persona.

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Back in November, I published a top-100 prospect list that was generated by my KATOH projection system. Since that time, I’ve done some tinkering to improve the model. So even though we just did this, like, barely even two months ago, I’m back with another list for you. In addition to yielding lower AICs and R^2s and whatnot, this version also feels better in terms of the projections themselves. There aren’t as many head-scratchers as before, which suggests I’m moving in the right direction. There are still players who feel too high to me and others who feel too low to me, though I’d argue that’s not always necessarily a bad thing.

There’s still room for improvement. That will always be the case. But I think I’ve reached a point where I’ve gotten most of the low hanging fruit. This isn’t to say I’ll stop trying to make improvements, but don’t expect anything drastic anytime soon. This is the version I’m prepared to go to war with in 2016 (for now, at least). It’s not perfect, but I think it’s a sizable step in the right direction. Below, you’ll find a brief writeup of the changes, followed by a brand new top 100.

Moving Beyond WAR Through Age-28

In the past, a few commenters rightly pointed out that projecting a WAR total through age-28 wasn’t all that informative for some prospects. For a guy who’s already 25, his WAR through age-28 captures at most three years of team control, while it might capture all of a 21-year-old’s control years. In this iteration, I made my output a bit more flexible. For players 22 and younger, I still forecast WAR through age-28. But I expanded my horizons for players 23 and older, and now project the next six years. So 23-year-olds get a WAR thru 29, 24-year-olds get a WAR through 30, etc.

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