Below are brief writeups on the other relevant prospects from this year’s July 2 class of International Free Agents, many of whom have complete tool grades on the Sortable Board which can be found here. For complete scouting reports on my top 25, bang it here (1-10) and here (11-25). If you’re an obsessive autodidact, I wrote about the implications of the penalties levied upon Boston for their improprieties as well as two of the best young prospects left in Cuba.

Pitchers

Luis Noguera, LHP, Venezuela (Colorado Rockies, $600,000)

Noguera has a projectable body and solid repertoire that projects to average on all fronts. His fastball only sits in the mid-80s and will touch 91 but we’re talking about a well-framed teenager here so it’s likely the velo takes a step forward in the next few years. The changeup, curveball and command should all be of major-league quality but nothing projects to plus, which makes Noguera a likely back-end starter at maturity.

Read the rest of this entry »

There aren’t many knuckleball pitchers in baseball, but there are a lot of would-be knuckleball pitchers. Most everyone has tinkered with the butterfly. It’s common for players — particularly position players — to mix in knucklers when playing catch before games. A handful of them can really make it dance.

Who are the best among the wannabe Wakefields and Niekros? To answer the question most accurately that would require extensive polling throughout both leagues. I considered tackling the task, but ultimately decided that such an exercise was a bit too frivolous.

Querying a cross-section of players was far more practical. I talked to a dozen, most of whom have experience either throwing or catching the game’s most enigmatic and entertaining pitch. Along with asking who has the best they’ve seen, I had several of them to assess the quality of their own knuckleball.

———

Alex Avila, White Sox catcher: “It would have to be Danny Worth. He’s actually pitched in a game with it. We were with the Tigers, it was a blowout game, and he came in. He’s got a great arm — he’s an infielder — and he’d always throw a knuckleball warming up, just messing around. He threw a bunch of them, and it was dancing pretty good.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Alright, now that we’ve gotten the introduction and the honorable mentions out of the way, let’s get to the actual list. I strongly encourage you to read both of the linked articles for an explanation of the question we’re trying to answer and a bunch of names who could easily have ended up in this post, but despite a crowded field, these 10 guys were able to nail down spots in the Trade Value series.

It’s a risk-filled group, with some serious upside and downside throughout, but these guys are all young enough to turn into franchise players, and most of them could help a team win right now as well.

Also, thanks to Sean Dolinar, we’ve significantly upgraded the way we’re presenting the information here. On the individual player tables, the Guaranteed Dollars and Team Control WAR — which are provided by Dan Szymborski’s ZIPS projections — rows give you an idea of what kind of production and costs a team could expect going forward, though to be clear, we’re not counting the rest of 2016 in those numbers; they’re just included for reference of what a player’s future status looks like. And as a reminder, we’re not ranking players based on those projections, as teams aren’t going to just make trades based on the ZIPS forecasts. That said, they’re a useful tool to provide some context about what a player might do for the next few years.

And with those logistics out of the way, let’s get to the list itself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

You’ll hear some hitters say that you can’t cover both the inside and the outside parts of the plate at the same time. We heard Marcus Semien talk about the difficulty both of being able to pull for power and also take the outside pitches to the opposite field just last week. And, to some extent, the high and low fastballs require different swings that suit different players. Brandon Moss told us about his problems with high fastballs, and Brian Dozier admitted that his swing was better against the high cheese.

It stands to reason — at least for the benefit of our exploration today — that a balanced hitter would be one who could handle pitches in all four quadrants. They would produce good results against high fastballs, low fastballs, inside fastballs, and outside fastballs. Conveniently, that sounds like something we can measure.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s important to note, considering the title of this post, that Jake Lamb is presently not a member of the National League All-Star team. It’s certainly not for lack of production. Lamb’s played enough to qualify for the batting title, and his 3.5 Wins Above Replacement rank 13th among all position players, right alongside All-Star third basemen Nolan Arenado and Matt Carpenter, the latter of whom recently switched back to second base. Of the 12 players above Lamb on the WAR leaderboard, 11 are All-Stars. (Sorry, Brandon Crawford.) So are the next eight after him. Chalk it up to a deep third-base pool in the National League, and a lack of name recognition for Lamb.

As long as he continues hitting the way he’s been, Lamb’s name will become known. Entering the All-Star break, he’s been one of baseball’s 10 best hitters. With 20 homers, 19 doubles and a league-leading seven triples, he’s been the best power hitter in the National League, and the best non-David Ortiz-division power hitter in all of baseball. Yep — Lamb’s .325 isolated slugging percentage easily topples the first-half marks set by prolific sluggers like Mark Trumbo, Kris Bryant and Josh Donaldson. This coming from a guy who last year was known for his defense.

For Lamb, this was all part of the plan. Of course, “be one of the best players in the sport” would be an ideal plan for anyone, but Lamb specifically entered the season looking to add more power. Inspired by Jose Bautista and teammate A.J. Pollock, Lamb re-tooled his swing in the offseason in an effort to create more authority on contact.

Read the rest of this entry »

Playing shortstop is a young man’s game. The list of top-tier shortstops age 25 and under in the game right now is so extensive that it’s impossible to pare down to a quick three- or four-name list without leaving off a potential future MVP. If you’re interested in fawning over those names and debating who among them is the most valuable, I’d recommend keeping an eye on Dave Cameron’s trade-value series this week. But right now, I want to talk about a guy who suddenly looks like a grizzled veteran next to the new wave of shortstop talent: 26-year-old Didi Gregorius.

Over the past month, Gregorius has been the most productive shortstop at the plate. Go back a bit further and you’ll find that, after struggling in the first month of the season, he’s posted an impressive 131 wRC+ since May 8th. On the season as a whole, though, his 109 wRC+ ranks a respectable, if uninspiring, 11th among shortstops behind eight (!) members of that 25-and-under age bracket. There’s no argument to be made that Gregorius is anything like the best shortstop in the game right now, but he is in the midst both of a remarkable stretch and also his finest overall season at the plate. He also has three more years of team control remaining, which makes it worth investigating to what extent this Gregorius breakout is for real.

The most obvious and, perhaps, the most fun part of Gregorius’ breakout has been his power surge. He’s recorded five home runs in his last 11 games, which has helped boost his ISO to a career high .169. He’s hardly the only shortstop to grow into power after a few seasons in the majors: Brandon Crawford and Zack Cozart followed a similar trajectory. Gregorius’ power is aided by the fact that he’s a left-handed hitter who gets to play half his games in Yankee Stadium. Unsurprisingly, his home/road power split is rather stark:.210 ISO at home, .132 on the road. If I were a team interested in acquiring Gregorius, this would be a concern, but unless the Yankees are planning to move anytime soon, they should feel comfortable accepting that Gregorius possesses the ability to make the most of his home ball park.

There is something about Gergorius’ newfound power, however, which necessitates pouring a bit of cold water on the idea that he’s tapped into a new ability which will help elevate him to a new level. Check out his season-by-season ISO:

Yes, Gregorius is hitting for more power and that’s a great thing, but he’s not alone. Power is up across the league and, rather than pulling ahead of the pack, Gregorius is merely keeping pace with league average. (Gregorius recorded only 21 plate appearances in that 2012 season, so the relevant start date for his ISO comparisons begins in 2013.) The power increase among shortstops is even more stark than the league-wide trend. Since 2014, the average ISO for shortstops across the league has risen from .113 to .151 — nearly forty points! So, yes, the new power is fun to watch, but it’s not going to alter substantially Gregorius’ standing in the league.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we kicked off Trade Value Week with the introduction, which you should go read if you haven’t already. Along with a brief description of the concept and what we’re trying to accomplish — besides just having some fun during the All-Star break anyway — we also talked about the 20 players who failed to return from last year’s rankings.

Today, we’re going to kick off the list in earnest, with the 10 players who fill spots #41 to #50 coming in a few hours. But before we get to the guys who just made the cut, I want to dedicate some time talking about the guys who just missed, because in all honesty, there’s something like 75 to 100 guys in baseball that have a pretty strong case for a spot in the Top 50. With players this good, we really are splitting hairs, and which good player you prefer will depend heavily on your own preferences.

I know rankings always bring out division, and I am aware of the fact that there will be some people upset with the idea that Player X ranks #46 while Player Y didn’t make the Top 50, but I do want to emphasize that we’re dealing with very small margins here, and there are no objectively correct answers to the questions this exercise poses. I showed this list to a bunch of friends in the game, and their feedback was even more diverse than I expected.

Some thought there were too many pitchers; others thought there weren’t enough arms. It’s an impossible task to create a list that everyone will agree upon, and I expect many of you will make passionate cases for players who didn’t quite make the cut, but know that I probably won’t disagree with you much; there are a lot of very good players who teams would love to have, and the gaps between guys at the end of the list are quite small indeed.

So, below, we present the Honorable Mentions, the guys who just barely missed out on ending up on the list, and easily could fit on your personal Top 50. For the record, I’m not going to re-list the guys we covered that fell off last year’s list, since we already discussed them, but many of them were still close to making the list this year as well, so you can see that post and this one as a tandem of guys who were in the mix for one of the final few spots but just didn’t quite make it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about Sam’s move, the Waxahachie Swap, and Ryan Webb and Matt Albers, then discuss how much several contenders should be willing to trade to improve their playoff odds.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS