For the sixth year, ZiPS returns to crank out its top 100 prospects for the upcoming season. If you’re unaware of what the ZiPS projections are or the purpose they serve, please consult this article as well as this one while I reconsider my public relations strategy.

I like to think that I’ve developed a pretty useful tool over the years, but don’t get me wrong: a projection system is not even remotely a substitute for proper scouting. While ZiPS and other systems like it can see patterns in the data that are hard for humans to extract, humans have their own special tricks. Projecting prospects is hard, as you’re mostly dealing with very young players, some of whom aren’t even done physically developing. They play baseball against inconsistent competition and have much shorter resumés than established major leaguers.

That last bit is an especially tricky puzzle for 2021. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, we didn’t have a minor league season. Some prospects were left to train at home, while others saw time at their team’s alternate site or in Fall Instructional League. But those environments can’t replace live opponents who are trying to crush your hopes and dreams, and they didn’t generate much in the way of useful statistics.

You will also notice, as usual, that there are a few players who appeared on Eric Longenhagen’s Top 100 who are missing here, simply because they have only played in high school and no professional games. It’s not that ZiPS dislikes them or doubts their future, it’s just that the system doesn’t have anything useful to say. ZiPS has the capability to use college stats when it has little choice — which is why you’ll see Spencer Torkelson and Austin Martin appear — but there’s just nothing for ZiPS to work with when we’re talking about someone like Jasson Dominguez. Read the rest of this entry »

This week may be Prospects Week here at FanGraphs, but for MLB, this has been Minor Signings Week. The long offseason dance is just about over, and everyone’s now at risk of going to homecoming alone. So rather than a long spiel that sees me reference a historical battle or obscure 18th-century literature, let’s get straight to the moves.

Read the rest of this entry »

The A’s continued to stockpile relievers over the weekend, signing free agents Yusmeiro Petit and Sergio Romo to one-year contracts, both for a little over $2 million for the 2021 season.

Petit is a familiar face in Oakland and will likely play a similar role as he has since 2018: pitching mostly mid-leverage innings, mainly in the sixth through eighth innings. He was rarely used for longer than an inning in 2020; the odd shape of the season and the more expansive roster made this less desirable and less necessary. Still, in the past, he’s been one of the closest players to the old long reliever archetype that has largely faded out of baseball.

Among active pitchers, only Stammen has made more two-inning relief appearances. Compared to history, though, 106 appearances only gets Petit into a tie for 323rd all-time, behind the relief stars primarily from the 1960s, 70s and 80s who dominated this usage.

Read the rest of this entry »

As we near the opening of spring training, two more players have found new homes, as utility players Brad Miller and Marwin Gonzalez signed major league contracts for the 2021 season. Gonzalez’s deal is a one-year contract with the Red Sox worth $3 million; Miller signed with the Phillies for similar compensation.

Utility players have always been a part of baseball, but they got a special showcase in the 2020 World Series, as the Dodgers and Rays are two teams that highly value defensively flexibility. Role players of this type tend to live a fairly anonymous existence, though there have always been special cases such as Tony Phillips. For Los Angeles, Enrique Hernández (now with Boston) and Chris Taylor were both key members of the team in recent years, and even in big seasons, the team’s been willing to have star players like Cody Bellinger and Max Muncy play extensively at multiple positions. Tampa Bay, on a self-imposed shoestring budget, has utilized Joey Wendle, Mike Brosseau, Yandy Díaz, and Yoshi Tsutsugo (among others) at multiple positions. The Padres appear to be showing few qualms about using last year’s NL Rookie of the Year runner-up, Jake Cronenworth, at multiple positions, as well as the recently re-signed Jurickson Profar.

To look at how this has changed historically, I went back to 1950 (when we started getting dependable outfield positional breakdowns every year) and tried to make a definition of a “supersub” season. I used seasons in which a player played at least four positions for at least 10 games apiece, not including DH, with those limits reduced proportionally for seasons with fewer than 162 games. In 2019, 17 players fit this description, more than the entire 1950s combined; as recently as 1990, there were only three supersub seasons total (Lance Blankenship, Casey Candaele, Eric Yelding). Both Miller and Gonzalez are among this group.

There was a bit of a downtick in 2020, but it was also an odd year, and teams had fewer roster constraints that necessitated supersubs. The trend towards teams valuing versatility is real, though, and in some ways, it comes full-circle to early baseball history, when positions were considered more fluid, even for Hall of Famers like Honus Wagner.

Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: And welcome to the chat!

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Should Fantographs be a FG skin option? Let us know!

12:02

Dan Szymborski:

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Can’t see him as a viable starter at this point. His cups of coffee are good, but small sample as you say and his minor league performances are fairly bleak

Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals acquired outfielder Andrew Benintendi from the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night as part of a three-way trade that also saw the New York Mets get involved. Heading to the Mets is outfield prospect Khalil Lee, while going back to Fenway is outfielder Franchy Cordero and pitcher Josh Winckowski. Also going to the Red Sox are three players to be named later, two from the Royals and one from the Mets.

It’s easy to see why the Royals would be highly interested in Benintendi. Most of the team’s additions this winter have been veterans in smaller deals, seemingly for the purpose of prioritizing short-term wins in 2021 and perhaps snag a Wild Card spot. While I’m unconvinced that the strategy will actually bear fruit this year, this is another move consistent with that plan. Adding Benintendi to Mike Minor, Carlos Santana, Michael A. Taylor, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland makes the Royals more entertaining than they were last season. Of course, Benintendi was a much hotter property back in 2018, hitting .290/.366/.465, enough for 4.4 WAR, before slumping to a .266/.343/.431, 2.0 WAR line in 2019. 2020 was an entirely forgettable four-for-52 campaign that lasted just 14 games due to a rib cage strain. Read the rest of this entry »

Even against the backdrop of a slow offseason, watching the NL Central this winter has been an exercise in hot stove drudgery. Until the mini-flurry of activity that saw Adam Wainwright and Joc Pederson join the Cardinals and Cubs, respectively, the division’s top signed free agents, at least by ZiPS’s reckoning, were Daniel Robertson and Jace Peterson. Figuring out which team has been the most disappointing has been like an Agatha Christie novel: Bar the doors, everyone’s a suspect!

St. Louis has largely presented a convincing alibi with the Nolan Arenado trade and bringing Wainwright and Yadier Molina back for one last caper. So, whodunit? Was it the Pirates, a team that has become the baseball equivalent of a farm that is paid not to grow crops? Is it the Cubs, a team burdened by the apparent transformation of Chicago from a large-market megalopolis to a tiny town (or so they would have us believe)? Is it the Brewers, who, with Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain at their core, ought to be in full win-now mode? My pick, though, is the Inspector Cincinnati Reds — the division’s hero in the previous two mysteries — going rogue.

The Reds of the last two winters were among the few teams that made an effort to push forward to a division title, acquiring Sonny Gray, Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, Matt Kemp, and José Iglesias. Not all of these players were good additions, but this initial flurry represented a genuine desire to compete. And when this group wasn’t enough, the organization doubled-down instead of folding, picking up Trevor Bauer from Cleveland and signing Mike Moustakas, Nick Castellanos, Wade Miley, and Shogo Akiyama. The result wasn’t an overwhelming success, but it was enough to get the team over the .500 mark and sneak into the playoffs, both things Cincinnati hadn’t done since 2013.

Last year’s playoff run ended ignominiously, with the Reds failing to score a single run in 22 innings against the Braves. It seemed inevitable that Bauer was headed to another city for an enormous raise (and he did), but free agency left the rest of the team’s core intact. With nobody in the division apparently possessing any burning desire to actually win the division — or so it appeared back in November — surely Cincinnati would find other options than Bauer to fix team holes!

Read the rest of this entry »

A familiar face is staying in St. Louis, as veteran starter Adam Wainwright, a Cardinal for 18 years now, came to an agreement Thursday on returning to the team for the 2021 season. The deal is believed to be worth $8 million — a bump in guaranteed money from his $5 million going into 2020 and $2 million in ’19.

This one-year deal isn’t, however, one of those last-gasp contracts agreed to with a franchise stalwart brought back in a wave of nostalgia. With Jack Flaherty slumping in 2020, Wainwright was the team’s most valuable pitcher and one of the primary reasons the Cardinals were able to sneak into the playoffs toward the back of the inflated 16-team field. In 10 starts, his 3.15 ERA was his best figure in a full season since 2014. Not only did he pitch well, but he also pitched deep into games, with his 6.6 innings per game being practically Old Hoss Radbourn-esque by modern standards. That was enough for third among qualifying pitchers behind only Kyle Hendricks and Trevor Bauer.

In a sense, 2020 was the completion of a comeback from Wainwright’s most recent season ruined by injury — a 2018 campaign in which he was shut down for most of the year due to a sore elbow. It was the fourth season he lost to injury as a pro, following 2015 (a ruptured Achilles tendon), ’11 (Tommy John surgery), and most of ’04 (a partial UCL tear).

You could make the argument, however, that Wainwright was never struggling as much as his ERA suggested. We use a stat like FIP because it’s less volatile than ERA and tends to have more predictive value. Since 2016, Wainwright’s FIPs have been in a fairly tight band, with less than a half-run per game separating the worst year (4.36) from the best (3.93). He didn’t actually lose any velocity at this time, either — Waino was never a traditional power pitcher — and people were a bit too quick to give the eulogy for his career.

Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Dan Szymborski: And hello!

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Welcome to a so-far uneventful Thursday!

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Call me crazy, but I still like Odorizzi

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Yes. It’s a bit annoying since it’s a decade out of date too; it’s literally before I worked for ESPN!@

Read the rest of this entry »

Everybody Signs an Infielder Tuesday concluded with the Twins reaching agreement with Andrelton Simmons on a one-year contract worth $10.5 million. Originally a Brave until a 2015 trade for Erick Aybar and prospects sent him to the West Coast, Simmons hit .297/.346/.356 over 30 games for the Angels in 2020. Unless something incredibly bizarre happens, he will become Minnesota’s starting shortstop, prevent a bunch of runs, and assist the Twins in their quest to win their first playoff game in forever.

Let’s start with the least fun part of this article: the grumpy caveat. Back in May of 2019, Simmons injured his left ankle trying to beat out a grounder and, after a misstep, was unable to put weight on it. It landed him on the injured list for a month, and he missed another month later in the season with an injury to the other side of the same ankle. In the first week of 2020, he did it again, spraining his ankle in a July game against the Athletics, costing him nearly half of the abbreviated 2020 season. Leg and foot injuries are no laughing matter for a middle infielder: There have been plenty of aging second basemen and shortstops who had their careers dramatically waylaid by such injuries. Jose Offerman is the first example that comes to mind; when his legs started being an issue, he went from a .391 OBP second baseman to out of baseball in a blink of an eye.

Simmons hasn’t been fully healthy in two years, and a player with his skill set is more reliant on having healthy feet and legs than a plodding slugger at first base or DH. But $10.5 million is practically peanuts, and the Angels are getting even more of a discount than the associated risk entails. Over 2017 and ’18, he hit .285/.333/.419 to go with his typical sterling defense, enough to combine for over 10 WAR. The Twins may not get that player, but they’re also not paying for that player; if you pay 2018 Andrelton Simmons on merit, $10.5 million would be long gone before you even get to the All-Star break.

Read the rest of this entry »