Archive for 2017

Last week, when discussing the Dodgers second base options, I talked about Logan Forsythe as a reasonable alternative to Brian Dozier, a similar player on a similar contract, but finished the section with this reason why I thought maybe they should look elsewhere.

I could potentially see a Forsythe deal working if the Dodgers were floating some pieces that could help Tampa Bay maintain the status quo and give them some long-term value, but Forsythe isn’t good enough to extract Jose De Leon, and I’m not sure the Rays really need more pitching depth.

Well, yesterday, the Dodgers traded De Leon for Forsythe in a one for one swap, so the Dodgers decided I was wrong about that whole “not good enough” part. While they deemed the Twins asking price of De Leon and something else of substantial value too high for Dozier, they were willing to part with one of the game’s best young pitchers in order to land Dozier-Lite. And as you probably guessed based on my write-up last week, that decision surprised me a bit.

Jeff did a good job of showing why the Dodgers viewed Forsythe and Dozier as similar enough to go with door #2 when they found the Twins asking price too high, but in all of the recent talk we’ve done about how comparable some of their rate stats are, there’s something that we should make sure doesn’t get lost: Dozier is better than Forsythe.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Milwaukee Brewers farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

60 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .382/.387/.618 at Triple-A Colorado Springs after trade.

Scouting Report
A physical freak who has undergone a half-decade of physical growth and mechanical adjustments to reach the doorstep of the majors, Brinson headlined the package sent to Milwaukee for Jonathan Lucroy ahead of the trade deadline. He had been struggling through the first few months of the season and missed several weeks with a shoulder injury. Injuries have been a prevalent aspect of Brinson’s pro career and he’s missed substantial playing time during each of the last three years with various ailments, including quad and hamstring issues.

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Jeff Bridich looks beyond baseball when he brainstorms how to better build the Rockies. The Colorado general manager — a diehard Packers fan — pays attention to how NFL teams go about their business. He’s been especially impressed with how the Atlanta Falcons — the team that vanquished Green Bay on Sunday — went from sub-.500 also-rans to Super Bowl bound in two years.

The Rockies have been chasing a winning record for the past six seasons. Fortunately for their fanbase, hope is on the horizon. Since assuming his current role 27 months ago, the forward-thinking Bridich has helped grow the analytics department, while maintaining the scouting-and-development philosophy that has been the club’s backbone. The result is a promising, young core on the verge of contention in the NL West.

Bridich shared his thoughts on team-building — with one eye on the NFL— over the weekend.

———

On admiring the Falcons: “We try to draw information and glean what we can from [other sports]. I read an article the other day praising the Falcons’ ability to build their roster from where it was two years ago. There are elements of team, and elements of winning in professional athletics, that cross over from sport to sport.

“We try to combine that with honest evaluations of who we are, right now, in the moment. That sort of thing goes on in all professional sports. You have to combine evaluation — who you are, and what you have — with what your needs are, and what you want to do.

“It would be tough for me to speak intelligently on [the Falcons’ philosophies and schemes], because we don’t live in their walls. But in terms of their personnel — how they’ve gone about that — the article I read was very complimentary of how they targeted specific things, and specific people, in free agency. They’ve also focused a lot on defense, and on getting faster and more athletic defensively, through the draft.

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The Chicago Cubs are almost perfect.

Coming off a World Series title, FanGraphs’ expected wins totals placed the Cubs at 99 victories back in November.

The young, enviable core remains. The top four starters return from the most effective rotation in baseball last season. While Aroldis Chapman departed, Wade Davis entered. Even David Ross is still around, though he’s moving upstairs to the front office. OK, not everything has gone the Cubs’ way in recent times. Quipped Cubs president Theo Epstein in regard to Tyson Ross‘ decision to sign with the Rangers: “We went 1-for-2 in Ross signings.”

Ross’ choice didn’t seem like a big deal, but maybe it will be a big deal.

As dominant as they were a year ago, the Cubs also benefited from a tremendous amount of good fortune in 2016: their starting rotation remained remarkably healthy.

Consider that, en route to a 103 wins in the regular season, five Cubs starting pitchers – Jake Arrieta, Jason Hammel, Kyle Hendricks, John Lackey, and Jon Lester – made at least 29 starts. It’s an extremely rare feat.

The Cubs are unlikely to be as fortunate this season, and the their rotation depth appeared thin entering the fourth week of January. Regression to the injury-fortune mean, combined with a lack of quality rotation depth, appeared to be the one glaring weakness facing the Cubs. (There are perhaps some bullpen issues, too.)

A Jeff Sullivan study in 2014 found teams can expect to cobble together 32 starts by pitchers outside their top-five rotation options in a given season.

A Jeff Zimmerman study found all pitchers have at least a 40% chance of landing on the disabled list in a season, risk that increases with age.

Andrew Simon of MLB.com wrote last spring that, since 1998, teams have averaged 10.3 starting pitchers used per season. Wrote Simon:

“Just 14 teams — or not even one per year — needed six starters or fewer. The last to do so was the 2013 Tigers.”

Lackey is 38. Lester is 33. Hendricks is coming off a career-high workload. There’s also Arrieta’s second half, including only a 10.6-point differential between his strikeout and walk rates (K-BB%), that has some in Cubs Nation uneasy. Beyond those four reside questionable depth and the unknown.

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Sometimes there are trade rumors that aren’t really true. We tend not to know about those until after the fact, but the false rumors tend to be the fleeting ones. Then there are the rumors that just don’t go away. That’s when you know there’s smoke. And there was all kinds of smoke billowing out of the rumors that linked the Dodgers to Brian Dozier.

It all added up, and there was no point in anyone issuing any denials. The Dodgers needed a second baseman, and Dozier is a good one. The Twins could stand to flip some quality assets, and Dozier is a good one. We got to know more than we usually do — the Dodgers put Jose De Leon on the table. That’s where the teams got stuck. The Dodgers liked what they’d be getting, and the Twins felt the same. They just couldn’t reach an agreement on a second prospect to go to Minnesota. The Twins held out, and the Dodgers wouldn’t budge.

And so, in the end, the Dodgers haven’t added Brian Dozier. Instead, they called up the Rays, and added basically Brian Dozier. The cost was De Leon, and nothing else.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan discuss the brisk sales of tickets to their August “EclipseFest” outing and the strange saga of former major league reliever Jeff Manship. Then, on a much more somber note, they remember the late Yordano Ventura and Andy Marte and talk to Vice Sports editor-in-chief Jorge Arangure about the dangers many foreign players face when they spend their offseasons at home.

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By way of Baseball-Reference’s invaluable Play Index, one learns that there are 39 active pitchers who have started precisely one game in the majors. Most of them have very little big-league experience. Most of them, in addition to their lone start, have recorded a few innings out of the pen during over the course of their one or two years in the bigs. Of the 39 total, 17 have made fewer than 10 appearances in the show.

There’s second group of pitchers whose major-league resumes are slightly more impressive. The members of this group have made the one start but have also worked as a full-time reliever for a season or two. This group of 15 pitchers has recorded more than 30, but fewer than 100, major-league innings.

Finally, there’s a more interesting group of seven pitchers who’ve made a lone big-league start and yet thrown more than 100 innings in their careers. This is their story.

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Gonzalez Germen (144.0 career innings)

Rockies’ reliever Gonzalez Germen has recorded 144 innings over the course of 129 games from 2013 to 2016. The righty spent two uninspiring seasons with the Mets before a brief stint with the Cubs in early 2015. During the 2015 season, he joined the Rockies, allowing fewer runs since the move. No one would argue he’s been particularly good in Colorado, but in roughly the same number of innings and batters before Colorado and since joining the Rockies, he’s cut his ERA- from 128 to 97 (even as his FIP has gone in the opposite direction).

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The truth about a Hall of Fame career is that there’s no single magic moment that makes it happen. There’s no way you can put together the sort of resume that ends in Cooperstown unless you make many changes along the way. Baseball is that demanding.

When it’s all over, though, there’s time for looking back and for giving thanks. Because in order to make all those adjustments, the players had to receive advice from truth-peddling coaches and players along the way. For every adjustment, there was a trusted source that helped at just the right time.

So, along with the help of Alyson Footer of MLB.com, Bill Ladson of MLB.com, and others, I asked our newest Hall of Fame trio about their path to the big leagues.

*****

Jeff Bagwell

On Power: “I think my hitting coach, Rudy Jaramillo and I – you know, when I was in the minor leagues and all that kind of stuff, I used to hit a lot of balls with back, excuse me, topspin. And then I kind of learned how to change my hands a little bit and get a little bit of backspin and all that kind of stuff, and that carried the ball…

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Last week, the Marlins rounded out their starting rotation by acquiring Dan Straily from the Reds. Straily will join Edinson Volquez, Wei-Yin Chen, Tom Koehler, and Adam Conley in likely making up the Marlins five-man rotation to start the year, and let’s be honest, that’s a pretty uninspiring group. Our projections currently rate Miami’s group of starters as the 27th best in baseball, just ahead of the Reds, Twins, and Padres, none of whom are expected to compete in 2017. But what the Marlins lack in quality, they may make up for in quantity, and that could make their pitching experiment worth watching this year.

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That’s a heck of a title for a FanGraphs article in 2017, isn’t it? Modern sabermetric discourse doesn’t give much credit to the traditional ninth-inning closer’s role. It focuses, rather, on deploying the right man at the right time, about Andrew Miller parachuting into the game at Terry Francona’s leisure to throw multiple innings of comedy. Closers? Who needs a set closer?

Well, most teams do, if for no other reason than a lot of players and managers aren’t quite ready to do away with the closer’s role just yet. One of those teams would be the Washington Nationals, who don’t need a closer as much as they need at least one more good relief pitcher. Mark Melancon did an admirable job finishing out games for the club following a trade-deadline deal that sent him to Washington, but he’s now employed by the Giants. The Nats haven’t replaced him just yet. In fact, they haven’t added any relievers to the big-league roster. Mike Rizzo has acquired some spare arms in Austin Adams and Jimmy Cordero, but they’ll likely be opening the season in Triple-A. One has to imagine that the current incarnation of the bullpen won’t be the one in place on Opening Day, right?

They’ve certainly made an effort to change the relief corps so far. They were in on Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen before the former returned to New York and the latter went back to Los Angeles. Free agency is a fickle thing. So here we are, at the tail end of January, and the Nats have yet to make a significant upgrade to their bullpen. With a team that’s looking to win a World Series before their last two years of Bryce Harper are up, that’s something that needs to be addressed.

But who? Who’s going to close for the Nationals?

Shawn Kelley

He’s the man who currently has the job. Kelley’s been a fine reliever for years now, and in theory, there’s nothing wrong with him being the guy who closes out games. He’s as good a candidate as anyone left at this stage. However, it also wouldn’t be bad if Kelley and his excellent strikeout tendencies were free to be used in the eighth or earlier. Of course, if Kelley does end up closing, it could behoove Rizzo to sign…

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