An Oakland Athletics offense that was already fourth in baseball in WAR has acquired Tommy La Stella — a man who has hit .265/.361/.461 this year (.287/.350/.480 over the last two), and who has the lowest strikeout among baseball’s qualified hitters at a paltry 5.6% (7.9% combined the last two years, also the lowest in baseball) — to solidify a second base situation that has been molten since Jed Lowrie’s most recent departure. The A’s traded 24-year-old infielder Franklin Barreto to the Angels in exchange for La Stella.

As his now twice former manager Joe Maddon once said when he was a Cub, La Stella could roll out of bed and hit, a notion he has since further reinforced, as La Stella’s strikeout and barrel rates have each trended in a positive direction since he left the north side. He makes the A’s lineup a top-to-bottom threat for the rest of the year before he hits free agency this winter.

La Stella is a clear upgrade over incumbent keystone Tony Kemp, who emerged from a crowded preseason group mostly made up of disappointing prospects. Kemp is hitting just .250/.377/.281, with the OBP portion of his line driven by an unusually high walk rate and BABIP compared to the five-year big leaguer’s career norms. Kemp, who also has experience in the outfield, is likely to shift to a bench role as a situational lefty bat, and a late-inning replacement for La Stella, who is neither a good defender nor runner.

There will likely also be some instances when La Stella serves as Oakland’s designated hitter in lieu of the struggling Khris Davis (who is hitting .155/.269/.241 this season, and .213/.290/.371 over the last two combined), with either Kemp or Chad Pinder starting at second base. In essence, La Stella bolsters the second base and DH spots simultaneously as he himself is an upgrade, and his addition means Bob Melvin can choose from whichever of Pinder, Kemp or Davis he thinks is more likely to do damage that day. For instance, Pinder could play more often versus lefties, Kemp versus righties, and Davis against pitchers who throw a lot of fastballs. I think this move may put Rule 5 pick Vimael Machín‘s roster spot in jeopardy, especially in light of Marcus Semien’s recent injury, which could leave Oakland without a viable defensive shortstop on their 40-man, perhaps necessitating a deal or Nick Allen’s addition to the active roster for a brief stretch. Read the rest of this entry »

In November, teams will need to decide which minor league players to expose to other teams through the Rule 5 Draft, and which to protect from the Draft by adding them to their 40-man roster. Deciding who to expose means evaluating players, sure, but it also means considering factors like internal player redundancy, as well as other variables such as the number of option years a player has left, whether he’s making the league minimum or is deep into his arbitration years, and if there are other freely-available alternatives to a team’s current talent, which happens a lot at certain positions, like toward the bottom of bullpen barrels and with first base-only types.

Teams with both an especially high number of rostered players under contract for 2021 and many 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 the overflow of players away via trade for something they can keep — pool space, comp picks, or 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. This exercise can be done by using the RosterResource pages to examine current 40-man occupancy, subtracting pending free agents (on the payroll tab), then weighing the December ’20 Rule 5 eligible prospects to see who has the biggest crunch coming and might behave differently in the trade market because of it.

Teams seem to be getting better at preparing for this ahead of time. In my opinion, this year has fewer situations that can be leveraged by rebuilding clubs in the way, for instance, the Rangers were able to pluck Nick Solak from Tampa Bay last year. Nevertheless, here is a rundown of the (mostly) contending teams with some prospect overage that I think is worth discussing on Ops Zoom calls.

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 (like Mike Tauchman of the Yankees), they have to cut someone to make room. Read the rest of this entry »

Because they have had so many pitcher injuries, it was a bit of a surprise to see the Rays make a trade for an outfielder, let alone one who hasn’t been able to crack the starting lineup on a last place Royals team. But today, the Royals sent Brett Phillips to the Rays for prospect Lucius Fox.

It’s hard to say what Phillips will bring because he hasn’t been given much of a chance to do anything in Kansas City. Only twice this month has he gotten more than two plate appearances in a game, leaving us with an insufficient 2020 sample to evaluate him. He has historically struggled to make consistent contact in games but plays the outfield well and has elite arm strength. He appears to have slightly altered his swing this year, changing where his hands begin and how early his leg kick starts, but because he has barely played I don’t know if this has made a difference on the contact end of things. I still have him as a fifth outfielder type.

Phillips is not an easy roster fit for Tampa Bay. He is on the 40-man, so this move does not help to clear the small 40-man crunch the Rays will deal with as the Rule 5 roster deadline approaches, and Phillips has no options left. He’ll be on an active roster with several other outfielders who run well and have big arms, Phillips’ two most notable traits. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re a week from the Trade Deadline and still, almost all of the available information on pro prospects is limited to the big league level. That’s where I’ve been focusing my attention, with new player opinions then reflected on The Board, to which I made the following updates over the weekend.

Entering the 100

Padres infielder Jake Cronenworth becomes the first 2020 Pick to Click to, well, click. He moves into the top 100, ranked 93rd. At 26.6 years old, he becomes the oldest player on the hundred, pacing A’s catcher Sean Murphy by about seven months. Most of his pre-season scouting report holds water except that Cronenworth suddenly has relevant pop. He hit a ball 110 mph this year, up from a max of 106 mph last season in the minors. He now looks like an everyday player at a premium position rather than a super utility type, so he slots into the top 100 ahead of similar players who are a couple years away (like Brayan Rocchio) but behind players who are either there or who are close but much younger (like Washington infielder Luis García).

Cleveland righty Triston McKenzie made his big league debut in what was his first competitive game since 2018 due to multiple injuries and the global pandemic. Not only is he healthy, but McKenzie is throwing harder. His fastball lived in the 90-93 range in 2018 and was 90-94 this spring as he prepared for the season. He’s now living in the 93-96 range and leaned on the heater in big spots during his debut, shaking off Roberto Pérez to get to it. Hopes that McKenzie would eventually develop a third pitch have more than come to fruition, as both his slider and changeup have evolved to complement the fastball/curveball combo that headlines his arsenal.

So how about Dane Dunning? The 25-year-old, who debuted last week, also had not pitched since 2018, with his layoff due to Tommy John surgery. His stuff looked as it did pre-surgery, with the fastball in the 91-94 range, and both breaking balls effective. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago Cubs own the third-best record in all of baseball and have raced out to the game’s biggest division lead. The Chicago White Sox are currently third in their division, in the thick middle of the American League playoff picture as we approach the season’s halfway point. And yet, as the two of them prepare to square off at Wrigley Field this weekend, because of the way each teams’ pitching staffs are constituted, I prefer the Sox’ chances of making a deep postseason run more than I do the Cubs’. Here’s why.

Both Chicago clubs can hit (both are top five in hitter WAR) but are succeeding at preventing runs in diametrically opposed fashion. The Cubs starters have been great. They have the lowest BB/9 in baseball at 1.80, they’re fourth in starter ERA, second in FIP (3.24 and 3.25, respectively), third in innings pitched, third in WAR (including two of the top 10 individual WAR-producing starters, Kyle Hendricks and Yu Darvish), and they’re keeping the ball in the park, allowing fewer homers than any other rotation in baseball except for the Reds and Cardinals, who haven’t played as many games due to clubhouse viral infections.

But of the 10 teams that currently have playoff odds above 80%, the Cubs bullpen is the worst. Cubs relievers have the eighth-worst ERA in baseball, the fifth-highest walks per nine, and they’ve given up more homers (13) than the starters (12) in 50 fewer innings of work. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m wading into the gaming and streaming space with Yeoman’s Work, a lo-fi, multimedia presentation that follows my pursuit of a championship in the baseball simulator, Diamond Mind Baseball, paired with single-camera footage from my baseball video archives. Below is Episode 4, which features my series against Bryan Nelson and the last place Des Moines Drillers. In this episode, I play with my newly-acquired bullpen, including two-way player Michael Lorenzen, and start a two-month tightrope walk in pursuit of a playoff spot.

Video archive footage and discussion this week starts with Dustin May’s second-ever pro outing, and also includes chronological open-side footage of Trent Grisham and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., along with my brief thoughts on their progression.

Both DMB’s gameplay and most of my video archive are very quiet, low-sensory experiences without music or much crowd noise, and I think this will appeal to those of you who enjoy Baseball Sounds, as they are front and center in the footage. If this tone appeals to you, my “musical influences” in this department (i.e. the non-FanGraphs Twitch streams I watch on my own time) are Kenji Egashira’s and Luis Scott-Vargas’ live Magic: The Gathering content, Kate Stark’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds streams, and Kathleen De Vere’s pirate radio show, Brave New Faves. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

After strike-throwing hiccups (the percentage of pitches he threw in the zone dropped from 53% to 47%) contributed to a 2019 that was relatively pedestrian by his standards, Aaron Nola has come out of the gate red-hot in 2020. He’s getting ahead of hitters — his first-pitch strike percentage (68%) is sixth among qualified starters — and then finishing them, inducing a comfortably career-high 15.6% swinging strike rate, which is also sixth among qualified starters. Nola has now punched out an incredible 29 of the 68 hitters he’s faced this year and is one of just three starters who has fanned more than 40% of opponents (Trevor Bauer and Shane Bieber are the others).

Nola has done most of this damage with his changeup, which he is using much more than at any point in his career, calling on the cambio a whopping 30% of the time after using it at about a 16% clip in prior years. The changeup itself doesn’t appear to be any different than in the past, as its movement profile is similar to his career-best 2018 campaign (it had a little less sink in 2019). Nola’s release point is perhaps a little more consistent than last year, when he was getting underneath more changeups (hence less sink) and missing badly to his arm side, but unless something tactile about his release has changed (which is difficult to detect without the aid of a high-speed camera), the pitch appears to be the same. He’s just throwing it more (including to righties) and locating it more consistently, which Nola told the Philadelphia Inquirer he aimed to do back in February. Read the rest of this entry »

Except for a few who were plucked from the Mexican League, signing bonus info for all 1,300-ish players I consider to be prospects can now be found on The Board for your research, reference, and perusal.

The current chronological and structural limitations of The Board leave two holes in today’s chunk. First, this is not yet a comprehensive historical record of signing bonuses. That’s a possible long-term feature — one that will require some retroactive Board-building — but for now, there are some important flashpoint bonuses from recent drafts (Brady Aiken’s, Mark Appel’s) or deals that illuminate important and consequential trends in the amateur market (Stephen Strasburg’s, Josh Bell’s) you can’t view in the same space as recent pillars.

Second, for the time being, as players graduate, they’ll take their bonus amounts with them. This violates a “don’t take information away from readers” principle I try to adhere to and makes it more important to eventually build a catalog of this stuff that can be easily sortable, searchable, and compared to the current prospect environment.

In addition to the new info, I’ve made a few changes to the rankings on the pro side of The Board based on big league action. Without any minor league games or a reliable way to source info from the offsite camps, the big leagues are where changes are most visible right now. Scouts from other teams are not currently allowed at the alternate sites, and teams do not yet have a campsite data-sharing agreement in place. As a result, any dope coming from the campsites is coming from internal team sources, which creates an incentive/objectivity issue for prospect writers. Sources are also harder to protect because few personnel have camp access. With all that in mind, let’s touch on today’s changes. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »