The trade deadline is nearly here and once again, team behavior will be driven, at least in part, by 40-man roster dynamics. Teams with an especially high number of both rostered players under contract for 2022 and prospects who would need to be added to the 40-man in the offseason have what is often called a “40-man crunch,” “spillover,” or “churn,” meaning that the team has incentive to clear their overflow of players by trading for something they can keep — pool space, comp picks, or, more typically, younger players whose 40-man clocks are further from midnight — rather than do nothing, and later lose players to waivers or in the Rule 5 draft. In an effort to see whose depth might augment trade behavior, I enjoy assessing clubs’ 40-man futures every year. This exercise is done by using the RosterResource Depth Chart pages to examine current 40-man occupancy, subtracting pending free agents (on the Team Payroll tab), and then weighing the December 2021 Rule 5 eligible prospects to see who has the biggest crunch coming and might behave differently in the trade market because of it.

Some quick rules about 40-man rosters. Almost none of them contain exactly 40 players in-season because teams can add a player to the 40 to replace a player who’s on the 60-day Injured List. In the offseason, teams don’t get extra spots for injured players and have to get down to 40, so if they want to keep some of the injury fill-ins, they have to cut someone from the 40-man to make room.

In November, clubs have to add prospects to the 40-man to protect them from the Rule 5 draft. RosterResource is the most accessible resource for tracking the prospect timelines. Most teams add a handful of players every offseason, while some add just one, and others may add as many as 10. Read the rest of this entry »

Depending on how one frames Monday’s Yankees and Pirates swap of reliever Clay Holmes for upper-level minor leaguers Hoy Park and Diego Castillo, it can look pretty rough. Holmes, who is out of options, is walking over five per 9 IP and has an ERA just a shade under 5.00 in a middle relief role for one of the worst teams in baseball, while Park and Castillo are annihilating the upper levels of the minors and play valuable defensive positions. But even though my shoot-from-the-hip reaction to this deal was that the Yankees took a bit of a bath because I think Castillo has the most long-term upside of the players exchanged, there are indications that Holmes is better than his superficial stats and really special in a few ways. There are also minor league roster dynamics at play for New York that make parting with these two middle infielders more palatable.

But let’s start with Holmes since he’s the one most likely to play an immediate big league role in the Bronx pressure cooker. He owns the highest groundball rate in baseball at 72.8%. It’s well above Holmes’ career rates, but he’s also experienced a 3 mph uptick in velocity to his fastball, cutter and curveball. For a pitcher generating a league-leading rate of groundballs, his HR/FB rate, a whopping 18.8%, feels unusually high and seems likely to regress to his career mean or below, considering how sinkery his improved, harder fastball is playing. It’s part of why his FIP and xERA are at least a run below his ERA to this point.

Holmes has also had a shift in his pitch deployment, as his cutter/slider has taken precedent over his curve. The combination of repertoire alteration, newfound arm strength, and rust (Holmes barely threw in 2020 due to a foot fracture and a forearm strain) may be contributing to that poor control. Holmes’ walk rates (15% career, 13% this year) are troubling, though he’s slowly improved in that regard every season of his career. The Yankees are walking a tight rope here. Holmes is out of options and he had forearm trouble last year (he’s about a half decade removed from a 2014 Tommy John). He’s a little wild. He’s also superlative in a particular sense and joining a team that has been one of the best at developing pitchers in the last five years. Read the rest of this entry »

The players selected in the 2021 Draft have now been moved to their teams’ prospect lists on The Board. So if you want to know where Marcelo Mayer or Kumar Rocker falls on the Top 100, or where the Pirates’ picks fall on their team’s list, it’s now easy to do so. More players than were originally ranked on the Draft Board have been added to the pro lists and also now have a presence on the 2021 Draft Board; we ranked about 80 players before the draft, but another 80 or so who were picked felt as though they required immediate inclusion on the pro lists. I assumed anyone picked in the first 11 rounds will sign because, historically, they do. If a player who has been added to the pro side of The Board does not sign, I’ll remove them from the pro side and move them to the appropriate Draft year once the signing deadline passes. At most, that might be a couple of players.

Kevin Goldstein and I also took a “low-hanging fruit” pass at the Top 100 list and I took one, on my own, at most of the team-specific lists. Anyone whose FV on the team lists changed has an “up” or “down” arrow in the trend column. You can filter for those by clicking that column. There are some players within the 50 FV tier whose grades didn’t change but whose ranking did. Jasson Dominguez didn’t look great at Futures Game (he has swing path issues and close to average raw power with zero physical projection) but he’s still a teenage switch-hitter with good power for his age and a chance to stay up the middle. He’s a 50 FV prospect but didn’t look like a fast-rising, transcendent star, so he slid in the rankings though his FV is the same. I’m going to run through why those prospects changed (or were added) now.

Adley Rutschman’s rank didn’t change but he moved from the 65 FV tier to the 70 FV tier on the strength of his Futures Game look. He is not normal. A switch-hitter his size, with his kind of rotational explosion, who has the bat-to-ball feel to switch which side of the cage he’s hitting in mid-batting practice session and just keep hitting bombs is not normal, and this is also an elite defensive catcher and locker room guy. He’s now in the FV tier Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatis Jr., Ronald Acuña Jr., and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. were in as prospects. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s check in on the farm system rankings before the draft. I’m going to begin by pointing readers to a few useful resources. First and most importantly, here is a primer to remind you of the features of the rankings and here is Craig Edwards’ research on prospect valuation that helped inform our rankings methodology. Readers should consider the dollar amounts as an approximation of what the player might receive were they exposed to the open market, which in addition to acting as a filter that aids in our analysis of trades featuring prospect where money also changes hands, is also an illustration of the gap between what minor leaguers earn and what they’re “worth” to their organizations.

Next I’ll note that the “2021 Updated” section of The Board is now live. As players are added to (via the draft or trade) or subtracted from (via trade or graduation) an organization, the Farm Rankings associated with those teams will also update automatically. You may want to follow the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account, which I typically use to tweet Board updates when players are added, subtracted, or move within the Future Value tiers. If you avoid Twitter because it crosses the wires of your brain and tears at our social fabric, you can simply access the feed on the Prospects Homepage. Just scroll down a little bit; it’s on the right. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago Cubs. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Milwaukee Brewers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

There were lots of notable performances in the minors last night, so I covered more players than usual and shortened up some of the notes. Additionally, the 2021 Futures Game rosters were announced today and they are freaking loaded. You can see the entire rosters and access players’ scouting reports on The Board’s seasonal tab. Thanks to Sean Dolinar for his speedy help in getting that up.

A.J. Puk, LHP, Oakland Athletics
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Las Vegas Age: 26 Org Rank: 2 FV: 50
Line: 2 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 4 K

Notes
Puk has now had two consecutive scoreless outings after he surrendered multiple runs in each of his previous six (!). When I saw him during the spring, his velo was only in the low-90s, well below the 96-99 range a fully healthy Puk would typically be operating in. Per Synergy, that velocity has returned to peak levels during the regular season. Today I noticed a change in Puk’s arm slot. This change occurred earlier this month. I don’t know if that velo rebound occurred in concert with this change, or if this is something Puk was instructed to do, or if it just began happening naturally. Regardless, this is still a lefty with big velo and a deep coffer of impact secondaries. If he can get right at some point this season, he can be an impact relief weapon for a team fighting for its division, and I still like Puk as a multi-inning reliever long-term. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Juan Corniel, SS, Arizona Diamondbacks
Level & Affiliate: Complex Level Age: 18 Org Rank: TBD FV: TBD
Line: 3-for-5, 3 RBI, R

Notes
Corniel has been one of the Extended Spring standouts in Arizona. At a projectable 6-foot-1 or so, he’s an amalgam of twitch, athleticism, and body projection right now. He has the athleticism and actions to play shortstop but doesn’t yet have sentient control of his body. Offensively, the switch-hitting Corniel has swings that are fairly short to the ball but still explosive. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Nolan Jones, 3B, Cleveland
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Columbus Age: 23 Org Rank: 2 (66 over) FV: 50
Line: 2-for-4, HR, SB

Notes
Jones got off to a poor start and his overall line hasn’t yet recovered (he’s slugging just .405 on the season, the lowest since his first pro summer back in 2016), but he’s hit .253/.374/.495 over the last month, which is enough to quell overall concerns about him right now. He is a three true outcomes type of player and there may be long stretches where his average is hovering close to the Mendoza line but he’s going to walk a ton and hit for power while playing poor defense at several positions. Jones can be beaten with well-located fastballs at the top of the zone and he’s swung through a lot of them this year, but his swing decisions are typically very good. Per Synergy Sports, he has just a 19% O-Swing% so far this year, which would put him in the top five of qualified big leaguers. There’s real, elite plate discipline here and 70-grade power, but also a clearly exploitable hole in the swing at the top of the strike zone. How those things will interact at the big league level I truly don’t know, though it feels like that hole in the swing is a load-bearing Jenga block against big league pitchers who throw hard and often work at the top of the zone. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »