The New York Yankees haven’t been to the playoffs since 2012. In itself that’s not all that noteworthy: a two-year playoff drought when the team won 84 and 85 games over the previous two years seems more like bad luck than fundamental organizational error. Over the last two seasons, however, more teams have made the playoffs than haven’t, and the Yankees are in the minority despite their $200 million payrolls. After first planning to cut salaries and then abandoning that plan following a disappointing 2013 season, the Yankees’ spending spree couldn’t quite push them to the playoffs last year. Surprisingly, though, it’s the same collection of injury-prone, aging players from last year who have led to the club’s success over the first two months of the 2015 season.

In 2014, newcomer Jacoby Ellsbury played well, but Brian McCann disappointed on offense, and Carlos Beltran never got things going. Injuries to Michael Pineda, CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka — plus the complete absence of Alex Rodriguez, a compromised Mark Teixeira, and a disappointing farewell for Derek Jeter — meant a second straight season without the playoffs. Hiroki Kuroda played well, but he didn’t return for 2015. During the offseason, the Yankees did more tinkering than make wholesale changes. They brought in Didi Gregorius to play shortstop, retained trade-acquisition Chase Headley, and signed Andrew Miller to replace the departed David Robertson. The Yankees current record of 28-25 is only one game better than their expected winning percentage at the start of the season, but their playoff odds have increased immensely, as the following graph illustrates.

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When Adam Dunn posted his 190th strikeout in 2004, he broke a record originally set by Bobby Bonds over 30 years earlier, in 1970. While it took some time for Bonds’ mark to be surpassed, it’s become a common occurrence in the meantime. Indeed, including that one produced by Dunn, there have now been 18 player seasons that have met or exceeded Bonds’ previous high.

While Bonds’ strikeout distinction has been exceeded on a number of occasions, there’s another one that remains untouched. Since Pete Incaviglia’s 1986 season, his mark of 185 strikeouts has endured as the record for rookies. Not a single rookie has come within even 10 strikeouts of Incaviglia’s record. Tampa Bay outfielder Steven Souza looks poised to make a run at the record this season, however.

Souza has followed an interesting track to the majors, spending eight years in the Washington Nationals’ minor-league system before getting a shot as a full-time starter with the Rays this season. Souza, a part of the trade that sent Wil Myers to the San Diego Padres, hit very well in the minor leagues over the last few years. As Carson Cistulli noted after the trade, through no fault of his own, Souza found himself behind Jayson Werth, Bryce Harper, and Denard Span making it difficult to receive a promotion to the big leagues. In Chris Mitchell’s profile of Souza, he reinforced the same point, writing:

Yes, Souza has been old for his level for years now, but the “old for his league” caveat means less and less the closer a hitter gets to the majors. And when a hitter performs like Souza did in Triple-A, you absolutely have to take notice. More often than not, hitters who rake in Triple-A turn into serviceable big leaguers, regardless of how old they are.

The Rays saw this logjam and pounced, providing the team with a player to replace the departed Myers while also securing other players in the deal as well. Despite Souza’s age relative to other prospects, Kiley McDaniel rated him the 52nd best prospect in Major League Baseball heading into the season. For the Rays, the move seems to have worked out in the early going. Read the rest of this entry »

The first-place Minnesota Twins have 30 wins on the season and sit 11 games above .500 as we enter June. Questioning Minnesota’s sustainability as a first-place team is going to be a topic of discussion for as long as Minnesota remains in the race. Jeff Sullivan detailed the Twins’ performance a few weeks ago and not much has changed since then aside from more Twins’ wins. Dave Cameron warned this morning about being mindful of the future when considering potential mid-season moves. Even mainstream statistics makes it easy to see why there are questions about the Twins. The team is 13th in batting average (excluding pitchers), 24th in on-base percentage, 23rd in slugging percentage, and their ERA for both starters (14th) and relievers (17th) are merely average. While there are questions about the Twins sustainability as a winner, there are fewer questions about the short-term sustainability of the performance of leadoff man Brian Dozier, who has played excellently in May and should have another good year after a five-win 2014 season.

While Paul Goldschmidt and Matt Carpenter are the poster boys for non-prospect players who have excelled at the major-league level, Brian Dozier is cut from the same mold. An eighth-round pick out of Southern Mississippi in 2009, Dozier was a senior sign who received just a $30,000 signing bonus. Dozier played well in the minors, but starting his professional career made him older than most of his competition. Dozier performed poorly when called up to the majors in 2012, hitting .234/.271/.332 in 340 plate appearances. That performance carried over into the first two months of 2013, but Dozier rebounded to post a wRC+ of 117 from June through the end of the season.

Dozier’s mini-breakout carried over to 2014 with a five-win season, as he hit 23 home runs with a 13% walk rate that was fifth in the American League. That performance earned him a contract extension for four years and $20 million, buying out his arbitration years but keeping his time to free agency intact. Dozier got off to a slow start this season, hitting just one home run in his first 90 plate appearances despite decent walk and strikeout numbers. Since that time, Dozier has had a run of good play coinciding with the Twins good fortune. He’s hit eight home runs since his slow start and his 170 wRC+ in May is seventh among AL batters.

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On Wednesday, Noah Syndergaard had a day he is likely to hold onto for quite some time. The 22-year-old Mets rookie pitched into the eighth inning, struck out six players, didn’t walk a single batter, allow an extra base hit, or allow a single run to cross the plate while he was on the mound. It was an impressive outing, and Syndergaard’s first four starts have gone well, also. To wit: the right-hander has averaged just over six innings per outing with 22 strikeouts against five walks, and is currently sporting a 2.55 ERA and equally impressive 2.60 FIP. Big things are expected of Syndergaard as the Mets try to make the most out of potential contention this year while simultaneously limiting the number of innings he pitches to save his arm both for October and also the years to come. Determining how to keep pitchers healthy can be challenging, especially when Syndergaard has outings like he did against the Phillies.

Syndgergaard’s last start against the Phillies was impressive because of fastballs like this:

Curves like this:

The start will be most memorable, however, because of this:
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Projecting Yasmany Tomas coming out of Cuba was a difficult proposition. As with other players who’ve made that move, the availability of video, scouting reports, and statistics was limited. Accounting for any adjustments he might make while moving from Cuba to the United States also posed its share of problems. Moreover, attempting to turn Tomas into a major-league third baseman was always likely to produce a tough learning curve for the 24-year-old. When the Diamondbacks called up their $68.5 million investment with the $14 million signing bonus a little over a week into the season, the move seemed puzzling as he didn’t even have a starting spot waiting for him. He rode the bench for a week or so before Jake Lamb went down with a foot injury, opening up an everyday role. Tomas has hit very well so far with a .345/.379/.436 line, but has eschewed his raw power in games in favor of taking the ball the other way.

As a prospect, Tomas was known for his incredible raw power. Kiley McDaniel wrote up Tomas back in September, and noted Tomas’ power as his best tool.

The carrying tool here is raw power, which draws anywhere from 60 to 70 grades on the 20-80 scale from scouts, but the question mark is how much he will hit. Tomas has a short bat path for a power hitter and quick hands that move through the zone quickly. The tools are here for at least an average hitter, but Tomas’ plate discipline has been questioned and he can sometimes sell out for pull power in games (here’svideo of a particularly long homer in the WBC). Some scouts think it’s more of a 40-45 bat (.240 to .250 average) that may keep Tomas from getting to all of his raw power in games, while others see a soon-to-be-24-year-old with the tools to hit and think the hot streak of Cuban hitters in the big leagues will continue with him.

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For hitters, luck can sometimes explain a poor batting average on balls in play (BABIP), especially in short time frames. Players generally reach the majors with an apparent skill at hitting the ball hard enough and far enough so that hits drop around 30% of the time. If a hitter coming up through the minors lacks this ability, it’s very difficult for him to receive the promotions necessary to reach the majors. There are 126 active players in the majors with at least 3,000 plate appearances and every single one has gotten a hit on at least 27% of the balls that were hit in play. Since the beginning of 2011, however, Mark Teixeira has nearly 2000 plate appearances and he’s a hit on just 23% of balls hit in play, the lowest figure among MLB hitters with at least 1500 plate appearances. He’s the rare hitter who can survive without a decent BABIP.

The bottom of this season’s leaderboard in BABIP is littered with players getting off to rough starts, hitters who have lost their ability to hit major-league pitching, and Mark Teixeira.

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Breakout candidates are often identified on the pitching side either on the strength of peripheral stats which portend improvement over more conventional numbers, a strong second half, or some demonstrative change in a pitch. Sometimes, the candidates fulfill expectations and make those who stumped for them look like geniuses. Most of the time, however, the players meet their reasonable expectations and everyone moves on to another slew of potential breakouts. Poor seasons by breakout candidates tend not to get noticed, however, but rather ignored. Drew Hutchison spent the first month of the season looking like a breakout candidate that would soon be forgotten. He has spent the last few weeks attempting to turn around a rough start, culminating in a shutout of the White Sox during which he struck out eight without giving up a walk. Hutchison’s fastball has gained some life on it the second month of the season, providing some confidence that a breakout could still be in store.

Hutchison earned the breakout label by meeting many of the characteristics mentioned above. His ERA for Toronto in his first year of starting last year was 4.48, 10th worst in the majors among qualified pitchers, but his peripherals showed something a little better as his FIP was a middle-of-the-pack 3.85 and the difference between his ERA and FIP in 2014 was eighth-highest among qualified pitchers. His 23% strikeout rate was in the top 20, and his walk rate was decent. Hutchison’s peripherals made him look average instead of bad, although that alone is not what made Hutchison a potential breakout candidate.

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Over the last six months, Lucas Duda has probably heard a lot about last season’s .180 batting average against left-handers. A quick search reveals more than half a million hits for “Lucas Duda .180” and all the results in the first five pages were relevant. Fortunately for Duda, that unsightly .180 batting average in just 125 plate appearances is not relevant when it comes to evaluating him as a hitter. Duda had an excellent season in 2014 that saw him record 30 home runs and establish himself as one of the better hitters in the league, despite questions persisting about his ability to handle left-handed pitching. With two home runs yesterday off left-handed pitchers, Duda equaled his total from all of 2014 in one day. With four of his five home runs on the season coming off of southpaws complementing his power surge against righties from last season, Duda has helped cement his status as an everyday player and removed the prospect of a platoon from the equation.

After Duda’s poor results against left-handers last season, the New York Mets could have placed Duda in a platoon, benching him against lefties. Duda never had particularly good minor-league numbers against lefties, either, reinforcing the logic of such a move. After the signing of Michael Cuddyer, there was some talk of letting Cuddyer take plate appearances at first base against lefties and making Duda a straight platoon player. After the signing, Duda said all of the right things but maintained confidence that he could still hit lefties. Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Rodon is attempting a very rare transition. Less than a year removed from starting at North Carolina State, Rodon is attempting to navigate major-league lineups at just 22 years old. Only Jose Fernandez, Shelby Miller, Michael Pineda, and Julio Teheran have pitched 150 innings in rookie seasons at Rodon’s age or younger in the past five years. Rodon has now made six appearances in the majors after making only nine in the minors. His 22.1 major-league innings have already surpassed the 22.0 innings he pitched in Triple-A since signing with the White Sox last summer for over $6 million after the team made him the number three pick in the draft. Rodon’s slider and fastball are major-league ready, but he has yet to challenge hitters consistently or rely on an offspeed pitch, leading to almost a walk per inning. Rodon is already the White Sox’ fourth-best starter behind Chris Sale, Jeff Samardzija, and Jose Quintana, but he is not yet a finished product and still has some development ahead of him in the majors.

Rodon has the potential to accomplish a feat even more rare than the one performed by Fernandez, Miller, et al. No pitcher in the last 15 years has been drafted from college, made their debut within a year of signing and pitched at least 150 innings at 22 years of age or younger. The last player to achieve what Rodon is attempting was Jeff Weaver in 1999 for the Detroit Tigers. Weaver made 29 starts, had a 5.55 ERA and 5.22 FIP on the way to a 1.6 WAR season. In the last 30 years, the only other pitchers to do the same were Jim Abbott in 1989, Bobby Witt in 1986, and someone White Sox fans should remember, Jack McDowell, who made his debut shortly after the draft in 1987 and made 26 starts in 1988 for the White Sox before winning the Cy Young four years later.

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The San Francisco Giants’ offense should be better than we have seen thus far. On the other hand, the Giants’ offense should be a lot worse than we’ve seen thus far. But then again, maybe the Giants’ offense is about what we expected it to be. Below is an attempt to determine how much water is currently in the San Francisco Giants’ glass.

The Optimist’s View

The Giants have been unlucky and they are bound to turn things around. Since the beginning of the season, the Giants’ offense has been one of the best in the league, but has failed to score runs. The defending World Series champions carry a solid .268/.332/.398 line after 39 games. Their .319 wOBA ranks eighth in Major League Baseball and their wRC+ of 105 is sixth. Removing pitcher statistics makes their numbers even better, as the wRC+ of 113 is fourth in all of baseball and just one point away from second place (if also a mile behind the 134 wRC+ of the Dodgers). Despite their solid hitting numbers, the Giants have scored just 3.8 runs per game, ahead of only the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Angels, and the woeful Philadelphia Phillies, who have scored just 3.2 runs per game this season.

There is a disconnect between the Giants’ hitting performance and their runs scored. Here’s a graph depicting MLB teams’ runs scored versus wOBA so far this season, with the Giants denoted as the orange dot.

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