Archive for 2017

Intro
We’re cutting the ribbon on the 2017 MLB Draft Sortable Board. The board will evolve and expand as we approach the draft, and Future Value grades will be added as the cement dries on player evaluations. For info on the 20-80 scale, by which the players are evaluated and, ultimately, the board is governed, bang it here. For info on Future Value, it’s strengths and flaws as a shorthand measurement, read this.

Thoughts on the Class Quality
The 2017 class is about average on overall talent and perhaps a bit below average as far as depth is concerned. The strength atop the class, despite Florida RHP Alex Faedo’s slightly diluted stuff, remains the terrific group of college pitchers who all have a chance to go in the top half of the first round. Faedo, Oregon LHP David Peterson, Louisville LHP Brendan McKay, Vanderbilt RHP Kyle Wright, and North Carolina RHP J.B. Bukauskas are all fairly easy to project as starters and have a chance to make up 33% of the top 15 picks. UCLA righty Griffin Canning also has consensus starter projection but lacks the stuff of those ahead of him and has been used heavily, at times throwing 120-140 pitches in a single start.

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While the save statistic and closer role are slowly being de-valued at the major league level, it’s still a significant statistic in your roto league. And of all the early-season turnover at the position, Brewers reliever is Corey Knebel is one of the more interesting arms to occupy the ninth inning. Regardless of role, in real-life baseball, he’s become one of the more interesting relief arms in the game. A FanGraphs reader in yesterday’s chat suggested Knebel might worthy of a post, and I am here to serve. Read the rest of this entry »

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Previously
Changeups: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveballs: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Cutters and Splitters: MLB Starters.
Four-Seamers: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Two-Seamers: MLB Starters.

With May running out of days, it’s about time we laid to rest our series evaluating the individual pitches of 2016 ERA-qualifying starting pitchers. By the end of the week, we’ll be done. I’m splitting up the final two articles in a slightly unorthodox manner in order to make them run about the same length. There were so many good sliders in the NL last season that they deserve their own article later this week. Today, it’s the sinkers in both leagues, plus the AL sliders.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather 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.

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.

Most Highly Rated Game
Cleveland at Cincinnati | 19:10 ET
Carrasco (52.0 IP, 71 xFIP-) vs. Garrett (40.0 IP, 110 xFIP-)
Rookie Amir Garrett isn’t the reason this game has received today’s highest rating according to the author’s haphazardly constructed algorithm. A combination of Cleveland starter Carlos Carrasco and a surprisingly strong Reds club — one which has produced the league’s most defensive runs, for example — is largely responsible for that. A recent exploit of Garrett’s deserves attention, however, and this isn’t the least reasonable place to supply that attention.

At the beginning of May, Garrett was demoted briefly to Triple-A. While there, he made a single appearance, just two innings against White Sox affiliate Charlotte. He faced six total batters over those two innings. What the video here documents is the last pitch of all six plate appearances.

What did Amir Garrett do? Struck out everyone he faced, is what. Now, his deed has been recorded here — if not for posterity, then at least for 20 minutes or an hour.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

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The first time I met Dodgers slugger Cody Bellinger, we didn’t have a lot of time, so I just shook his hand and said that I’d seen him enough to think “you swing really hard, every time, don’t you?” He smiled. “Always been this way.” And that part remained true when we reconnected. But he also opened my eyes to the parts of his game that were molded along the way.

The first coach that Bellinger had was his father. Clay Bellinger got some time with the Yankees earlier this century and coached his son early on. But once the son signed with the Dodgers, the father’s advice receded to “little tips and pointers.” His dad’s a firefighter now, in Gilbert, Arizona, and so he’s a little busy with his day job.

And the son had professional coaches. When he first arrived in pro ball, though, the focus was on staying afloat. “When I first signed in [2013] and Rookie ball in ’14, I wanted to learn how to hit first,” Bellinger said before a game against the Giants. “I was so young — I was 17, 18 — I didn’t worry about power at all.” You can see that there was something different about Bellinger back then.

Those professional coaches largely left him alone that first year, but going into High-A Rancho Cucamonga, they saw an opportunity. “Going into Rancho, they told me it was hitter friendly, so they made some adjustments to my swing. Damon Mashore helped me out,” Bellinger remembers. “I created a little bit more of a consistent path to the ball, just to backspin the ball. I never knew how to backspin balls before.”

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Episode 742
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod. In this episode, recorded on the eve of his trip to the ACC tournament, he discusses a number of top collegiate prospects for the approaching amateur draft — top prospects, for example, like Louisville two-way star Brendan McKay. He also examines a couple former first-rounders — Detroit right-hander Beau Burrows and Pittsburgh shortstop Cole Tucker — who’ve begun to translate their tools into on-field success.

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

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 6 min play time.)

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My first memory of Chris Taylor is of him serving as the third part of the illustrious Nick Franklin – Brad Miller – Taylor line in Seattle. He was the third to come up and the third to stumble. There were some who were of a mind that Franklin and Miller would turn into long-term assets for the Mariners, and that Taylor could be the sort of everyday regular who doesn’t make headlines but steadfastly contributes.

Now, a few years later, none of them play for Seattle. Franklin is struggling for the Brewers, and Miller is on the DL after an unexpected 30-homer campaign in Tampa. Taylor is a Dodger following a midseason trade last year.

He’s amassed 1.4 WAR in 29 games so far this year, and he’s slugging .583. Just as precisely nobody expected.

Some of the old reports on Taylor said that he would be a decent enough hitter, but that he’d make his money with his glove. Nobody ever looked at Taylor and saw a serious power threat, or a player who would prove to offer real value on both sides of the ball like this year. It’s just 29 games, and indeed, just 101 plate appearances. And when you go to his stats page, that .411 BABIP stands out like a sore thumb that just suffered a paper cut and was doused in lemon juice. But there’s so much more than dumb luck going on here.

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I’m sorry to have to tell you that you’re never going to hit in the major leagues. As far as how well you’d do if you got the opportunity — it’s fun to think about the lowest possible limits, but random fans never get the chance. It’s an experiment that will never be run, but the closest we can get to an understanding is by examining American League pitchers. Every last one of them is a professional athlete worth millions of dollars, but they’re not supposed to have to hit. The fact that they do hit sometimes is more or less an accident of scheduling. They practice hitting just about never, and that’s reflected in their results. In this table, there are two lines. One shows how American League pitchers have hit so far in 2017. The other shows how all the regular players have hit so far against Craig Kimbrel.

I kept it a mystery because it’s a popular writer technique. Look, they’re almost indistinguishably bad! Point made! But just for the hell of it, I’ll tell you now, the AL pitcher line is the first one. The Kimbrel line is the second one. The second one is the worse one.

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This is Alex Stumpf’s fifth piece as part of his May residency at FanGraphs. Stumpf covers the Pirates and also Duquesne basketball for The Point of Pittsburgh. You can find him on Twitter, as well. Read the work of previous residents here.

On the whole, the Phillies’ offense appears to be taking a big step forward in 2017. Entering play Sunday, their combined wRC+ was 14 points higher than it was the previous year and the highest it’s been since 2011. The team’s batting average, slugging, and on-base percentages are all up, putting them on pace to score 113 more runs than last season.

But they’ve been doing it without much help from Maikel Franco.

After a strong rookie campaign and then slump in his sophomore season, Franco has taken another step back in 2017. His wRC+ has dropped from 129 two years ago to 74 today — the second lowest out of Philadelphia’s regulars and 25th out of 27 qualified third basemen.

The results he’s had don’t reflect the positive steps he’s taken this season, however. He vowed at the end of last year to be more patient at the plate. So far he says he’s done that, which is why his walk rate has crept up and his strikeout rate is going down. He is able to get those better numbers because is he is chasing out of the zone a lot less, dropping his chase percentage 7.2 points from a year ago. According to PITCHf/x, he was swinging at 26.5% out of the zone entering play Sunday. And while his output is down, his average exit velocity is holding steady with last year, which is still up from 2015.

Getting a couple breaks to raise his .222 BABIP average would help, too, but he isn’t worried about that at the moment. “I have to not think about that stuff,” Franco said. “…I have to do everything that I can control.”

But the good has been outweighed by one major problem. If you’ve seen the title of this post, you probably know what that problem is: he’s struggling against the slider.

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