Before the lockout froze the offseason, the Rangers were in the middle of an incredibly active winter. They signed Corey Seager and Marcus Semien to massive contracts, and added Jon Gray and Kole Calhoun as well. That was a good start to addressing the needs of a team that lost 102 games in 2021, but per Dan Szymborski’s mid-lockout ZiPS projections, those moves only got Texas to around 73 wins. If the Rangers have designs on competing for a playoff spot in 2022, they’ll need to continue adding to their roster once the owner’s lockout is lifted.

One of those potential additions could come via trade. Back in September, the Rangers were one of the many teams that checked in with the Oakland A’s about a potential deal involving Matt Olson. The Athletics seem likely to tear down their current roster at some point in the near future, possibly as soon as teams are able to trade with each other again. Just last week, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News wrote that the Rangers were “absolutely” planning on revisiting their earlier talks with Oakland.

Olson would be a massive addition to Texas’s roster, as he’s coming off a year in which he set career bests in strikeout rate, home runs, wRC+, WAR, and a number of other offensive categories. Of course, the Rangers already have an incumbent first baseman whom they traded for just a year ago. If it came down to it, though, Nathaniel Lowe shouldn’t be much of a barrier to adding Olson to their lineup; Olson is one of the premiere first basemen in the game and only has a year and change on Lowe age-wise. But the Rangers shouldn’t write off Lowe just yet either. He had his ups and downs during his first full season in the majors, but he showed some promise as a potential middle-of-the-order bat in 2021. Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins starting rotation is a clear area of weakness for the team as they head into the 2022 season. The departures of José Berríos, J.A. Happ, and Michael Pineda, plus Kenta Maeda’s elbow injury, drained the group of some serious talent. Before the lockout, Minnesota’s only move to address this concern was to add Dylan Bundy on a one-year deal. For all sorts of reasons, it seems clear the team just isn’t likely to bring in another quality starter from outside the organization. Instead, I suspect the Twins are hoping some of their young starters will take a significant step forward in 2022.

Bailey Ober, Joe Ryan, and Randy Dobnak have fewer than 50 career starts between them but each is likely to hold down a significant role this year. Earlier this week, I examined Ober’s deep arsenal and the path he could take toward a breakout sophomore season. Despite being injured for most of 2021, the five-year extension Dobnak signed before the season should give him a long leash to prove he can be a successful major league starter. Luke Hooper already investigated the intriguing addition of Jharel Cotton to the pitching staff (though his role is far from defined at this point). As for Ryan, he has a fascinating profile that has the potential to be the best of the bunch.

Ryan was a seventh round pick in the 2018 draft out of Cal State Stanislaus. He was assigned to Low-A that same year and started racking up tons of strikeouts. After blowing through three levels of the minors in 2019, he started appearing on Rays prospect lists, debuting at 13th on the 2020 list as a 45 FV. In all, he compiled a 36.7% career strikeout rate as a member of Tampa Bay’s farm system. Questions about his fastball, which sat around 90-94 mph, and a lack of quality secondary stuff held him back from rising any higher on our prospect lists despite the elite results he was putting up at each level.

Eventually, Ryan was traded to the Twins in the Nelson Cruz deal and made his major league debut on September 1. The strikeouts continued to come in the big leagues, as he sent down 30% of the batters he faced on strikes. He wound up with a 3.43 FIP and a phenomenal 6.00 strikeout-to-walk ratio across his five starts during the final month of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

After trading away José Berríos and J.A. Happ last season and losing Kenta Maeda and Michael Pineda to Tommy John surgery and free agency, respectively, the Twins rotation was in serious need of rejuvenation. Instead of diving into the pre-lockout free agent frenzy in November, the Twins stayed on the periphery, only signing Dylan Bundy to a one-year, bounce-back contract after his ugly season for the Angels. With Byron Buxton newly signed to a long-term extension, the Twins have indicated their intention to compete for the AL Central crown in 2022. But even with Bundy added to their staff, their starting rotation looks exceedingly thin.

Under president of baseball operations Derek Falvey and general manager Thad Levine, Minnesota has been notoriously risk averse when it comes to committing to pitchers for any significant length of time. It was probably a long shot to assume the Twins would be among the suitors for the top names in a strong class of free agent starting pitchers and once the lockout is lifted, it seems like it’ll be difficult to add another arm to their rotation. Of the 16 starters ranked in our top 50 free agents, all but six have already signed with a new team. That doesn’t leave many options for the Twins when it comes to outside help.

Instead of bringing in another quality arm from outside the organization, I suspect the Twins are hoping some of their young starters take a significant step forward in 2022. Bailey Ober, Joe Ryan, and Randy Dobnak have less than 50 career starts between them but each will likely hold down a significant role this year. Additionally, top pitching prospects Jordan Balazovic and Jhoan Duran could make their major league debuts some time during the season. It may not be an inspiring group of names, but one of those young pitchers holds potential that could provide some upside for Minnesota.

Among that group of inexperienced starters populating the Twins’ projected rotation, Ober compiled the most innings in 2021. He made his major league debut in mid-May and wound up throwing 92.1 innings with a 4.19 ERA and a 4.56 FIP that was just a step behind. Even more impressive was his 5.05 strikeout-to-walk ratio, the 13th highest in the majors among starters who threw at least 90 innings. Those excellent peripherals formed the foundation of his 4.01 xFIP, with only his extremely high home run rate holding him back.

A 12th round pick in the 2017 draft, Ober compiled a 31.9% strikeout rate during his minor league career. He paired that lethal ability with a 3.4% walk rate; astonishingly, his walk totals never crossed double-digits in any of his minor league stops. With such phenomenal results, you might expect Ober to be highly ranked on the Twins prospect lists, but he never reached higher than 22nd on the 2021 list with a 40 FV. His command was an obvious strength but his fastball consistently sat below 90 mph in the minors. There was some considerable dissonance between his scouting reports and the results he was putting up.

During the 2020 season, Ober wasn’t invited to the alternate site but worked on smoothing out his mechanics on his own. Upon reaching the majors in May 2021, his fastball averaged 92.3 mph, a big uptick in velocity. The raw velocity he showed in the big leagues was a significant improvement over what he was showing in the minors, but 92 mph isn’t exactly head-turning. Fortunately, his gigantic 6-foot-9 frame allows him to impart a ton of additional effective velocity on his pitches. Just six other pitchers had a higher release extension than Ober’s 7.3 inches. That elite extension helped him add more than 2 mph to his heater, the largest difference between raw velocity and effective velocity among all fastballs thrown at least 100 times in 2021.

With a heater that plays up due to his extension and uncommon delivery, he leaned on that pitch pretty heavily during his rookie season. His excellent command allowed him to locate his fastball up in the zone regularly. The combination of effective velocity and location led to a 24.8% whiff rate, slightly above the league average for four-seamers. Even though batters often had trouble making contact with the pitch, they did tremendous damage against it when they did put it in play. Throwing hard stuff up in the zone comes with its drawbacks if batters are able to connect with those pitches. Nearly 60% of the balls in play off Ober’s fastball were fly balls or line drives and he allowed a .578 expected wOBA on those elevated batted balls.

Ober’s repertoire also includes a slider, changeup, and curveball. Of those three secondary pitches, the two breaking balls are the most interesting. Along with his fastball, those three pitches each ran swinging strike rates in the double digits, forming a deep arsenal to give Ober plenty of options with which to attack batters. What’s more, he completely revamped his slider mid-season. In an effort to differentiate his slider from his curveball a little more, he tinkered with a new slider grip and started implementing it in mid-August. He detailed his process in an interview with David Laurila in September:

I started throwing a new slider [in early-to-mid-August]. I wanted something a little bit harder. It had been around 78-80 [mph] and I wanted to give hitters something different. It was kind of blending with my curveball, too. Basically, the idea was something with a bigger speed difference between my curveball and my slider.

Before, I had it a little deeper in my hand and it had a lot more horizontal movement on it. It wasn’t as depth-y as my new one. My new one is harder [82-84] and has a little more depth, and it’s also not as horizontal anymore.

Here’s how different his two sliders looked in practice. This slider was thrown in mid-July:

And here’s his overhauled slider from a game in mid-August:

They’re completely different pitches. Ober still used them both similarly, locating them on the outer edge against right-handed batters to generate swings and misses. Here’s what the physical characteristics and results of the two pitches looked like:

Despite the drastic changes to the pitch’s shape, his results were nearly the same as they were with the slower, looping slider. But with his harder slider established in his repertoire, his curveball suddenly became vastly more effective. From August 11 through the end of the season, Ober’s curveball ran a 45.5% whiff rate, a 26.5 point improvement over the 19% whiff rate he ran during the first half of the season. Differentiating the two pitches really helped him mold his breaking balls into two separate weapons that should give batters fits at the plate.

The path towards a breakout season for Ober seems pretty clear. He has three pitches that produce excellent results and he has excellent command of his entire arsenal. His fastball is decent, especially with its effective velocity helping it play up, but he could probably stand to throw it a bit less in favor of his two breaking balls. Pounding the strike zone with his heater is a fine strategy in the minor leagues, but he needs to learn how to better incorporate his two breaking balls into his pitch mix to avoid allowing so much loud contact off his elevated fastballs. I haven’t even mentioned his changeup, which was graded his best secondary offering as a prospect. With such a deep repertoire, Ober has plenty of avenues to take to build on his promising debut.

Back in December, I wrote about Cedric Mullins’ breakout 2021 season, the catalyst for which was a decision to stop switch-hitting and begin batting exclusively from the left side of the plate. By dropping his right-handed swing, Mullins, a natural lefty, could focus on honing one swing instead of struggling to maintain two separate swings.

Switch-hitting has always been a rare skill throughout baseball history, but the number of batters who can swing both ways has dwindled in recent years. From that previous piece:

In 2021, just 17 qualified batters (13.1%) were switch-hitters, right in line with the league-wide average over the last decade. Compare that to the decade between 1986 and ’95 (excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season), when more than one in five qualified batters (21.1%) hit from both sides, with a peak of 24.8% in ’89. With modern baseball strategy so heavily emphasizing the platoon advantage, it’s surprising to see so few switch-hitters these days. Giving up that advantage in every at-bat is a radical decision, and there’s barely any precedent for it.

The number of players who have dropped switch-hitting after making their major league debuts is tiny. J.T. Snow did it in 1999, halfway through his career. So did Orlando Merced in 1996. Shane Victorino flip-flopped between switch-hitting and batting right-handed after injuries forced him to give up left-handed batting at various points during his career. More recently, Tucker Barnhart gave up switch-hitting in 2019.

After seeing the success Mullins had after giving up swinging from the right side, the obvious follow-up question is whether we can identify any other switch-hitters who might benefit from focusing on swinging from one side or the other.

The extremely small number of players who have actually made the decision to stop switch-hitting at the major league level should tell us that this isn’t a silver bullet solution to a player with a wide platoon split. Anecdotally, more players stop switch-hitting in the minors because they have a lot more to gain if the adjustment pays off. For those players who have already made it to the majors but haven’t truly established themselves, like Mullins, it’s a risky decision. They’d be making the change against the best the sport has to offer, likely resulting in a significant adjustment period. Still, with teams focused on finding every miniscule advantage to wring out of their rosters, it’s a worthwhile question to pursue.
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There might not have been a bigger surprise performer in 2021 than Cedric Mullins. With just over 400 plate appearances spread across parts of three years prior, he had put up a cumulative 72 wRC+ and accumulated -0.4 WAR; this season, he pushed his wRC+ up to 136 and posted 5.3 WAR, the 14th highest mark among all position players. He also became just the 11th player to reach 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in a single season over the last decade.

The catalyst for his breakout season was quite simple: Mullins quit switch-hitting and began batting exclusively from the left side. That discussion had begun all the way back in 2018, his debut season, when then-Orioles manager Buck Showalter suggested it to him. After struggling to establish himself in the majors for three seasons, he finally decided to rely on his natural swing during the offseason. “It was getting difficult to try and create two different swings,” he told MASN’s Steve Melewski in March. “I know my left-side is my natural side, so trying to develop my right-handed swing at the highest level was challenging.”

Switch-hitting has always been a scarce skill, but the number of players who can swing both ways has dwindled in recent years. In 2021, just 17 qualified batters (13.1%) were switch-hitters, right in line with the league-wide average over the last decade. Compare that to the decade between 1986 and ’95 (excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season), when more than one in five qualified batters (21.1%) hit from both sides, with a peak of 24.8% in ’89. With modern baseball strategy so heavily emphasizing the platoon advantage, it’s surprising to see so few switch-hitters these days. Giving up that advantage in every at-bat is a radical decision, and there’s barely any precedent for it.

The number of players who have dropped switch-hitting after making their major league debuts is tiny. J.T. Snow did it in 1999, halfway through his career. So did Orlando Merced in 1996. Shane Victorino flip-flopped between switch-hitting and batting right-handed after injuries forced him to give up left-handed batting at various points during his career. More recently, Tucker Barnhart gave up switch-hitting in 2019. But those previous examples were all players who had already established themselves in the majors. Mullins could have seriously damaged his chances of having a productive major league career if his decision went wrong.
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The Marlins have one of the most intriguing starting rotations in baseball. They just signed Sandy Alcantara to a five-year extension after his phenomenal 2021 season. Trevor Rogers just finished second behind Jonathan India in the National League Rookie of the Year voting. Behind those two, Pablo López, Jesús Luzardo, Sixto Sánchez, Elieser Hernandez, Edward Cabrera, and Max Meyer provide tons more talent to dream on. The only thing missing was a catcher to help guide and maximize those young arms.

Ever since J.T. Realmuto was traded away after the 2018 season, the Marlins had been rather aimless behind the plate. In the three seasons since, their catchers have accumulated just 1.3 WAR, the sixth worst mark in baseball over that stretch. In 2021, Jorge Alfaro, Sandy León, and a few other backup catchers combined for -0.1 WAR. Things got so bad with Alfaro that they tried playing him at first base and in the outfield after Miami acquired Alex Jackson at the trade deadline.

On Monday, though, the Marlins got their man: Miami acquired catcher Jacob Stallings from the Pirates in exchange for right-handed pitcher Zach Thompson and two prospects, Kyle Nicolas and Connor Scott. (Alfaro was traded to the Padres a day later for a player to be named later or cash considerations.) Read the rest of this entry »

After trading away Blake Snell and declining Charlie Morton’s club option last offseason, the Rays made a flurry of smaller moves to bolster their rotation depth, bringing in Michael Wacha, Rich Hill, and Chris Archer on one-year deals. But Archer ended up spending the majority of the season on the Injured List, Hill was traded away in July, and while Wacha pitched better than his 5.05 ERA might lead you to believe, it was still a 5.05 ERA. Those three combined for 48 appearances for Tampa Bay and just 1.9 WAR, and all three won’t be returning in 2022.

With Tyler Glasnow projected to be sidelined for the entire season after Tommy John surgery, the Rays’ rotation once again looked rather pyramid-shaped heading into this offseason: lots of depth and plenty of options in the middle, but thin at the top. Shane McClanahan, Drew Rasmussen, Ryan Yarbrough, Luis Patiño, and Shane Baz are lined up to take on the bulk of the starter innings in 2022, but while that group was solid last season, putting up a cumulative 5.9 WAR in 112 combined games, no one present has all that much major league experience.

To that young group, the Rays have added a veteran who can also address their need for a frontline starter, signing Corey Kluber to a one-year, $8 million contract on Sunday. The deal includes incentives based on games started that could push the total up to $13 million — a safeguard given his recent and long injury history. He missed the majority of the 2019 season in Cleveland after a line drive fractured his throwing arm and made just one start in Texas the year after, leaving his only appearance with a shoulder injury after a single inning. He signed a one-year deal with the Yankees in January and started the season looking good, making nine starts through April and May, but left his tenth with another shoulder injury that kept him off the mound for two months; he returned at the end of August and made six more starts down the stretch.
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Despite having the generational talents of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani anchoring their roster, the Angels entered this offseason with plenty of question marks. They’ve squandered the majority of Trout’s early career, making with just one postseason appearance since his debut in 2012 despite spending levels that were in the upper echelons of the majors for most of that time. They started this offseason with a bang, signing Noah Syndergaard to a one-year deal last week. That move comes with its fair share of risk, but the top of their rotation now projects to be much more solid. Yesterday, the Angels started addressing some of the question marks around the fringes of their roster. First, they acquired utility man Tyler Wade from the Yankees for a player to be named later or cash considerations. Then, they signed left-handed reliever Aaron Loup to a two-year, $17 million pact, including a team option for 2024 that includes a $2 million buyout.

Loup’s addition addresses a much bigger need than Wade’s. Raisel Iglesias rejected the Angels’ qualifying offer last week, becoming a free agent and leaving a significant hole in their bullpen. While Loup isn’t quite the reliever Iglesias is, he’s been remarkably effective over the past two seasons. Among all qualified relievers during that period, Loup’s park- and league-adjusted ERA ranks second in baseball, 63% better than league average. He led all qualified relievers in 2021 with a 0.95 ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you’re a diehard fan, you’d be hard pressed to name a single member of the Marlins bullpen. Given that they traded away a bunch of their relievers in July and still look like they’re a few years away from building a true contender, that’s not surprising. Building a lockdown relief corps isn’t the top priority based on where they are in their rebuild. But GM Kim Ng mentioned during last week’s General Manager Meetings that adding depth to the bullpen was part of the offseason to-do list — a bit of surprise given the context above. They started to address that depth right away, too, acquiring right-handed pitcher Louis Head on Sunday from the Rays for a player to be named later or cash considerations.

Miami’s relief corps was pretty solid in 2021, with the third best park- and league-adjusted FIP in the National League, 8% better than league average. But Marlins relievers weren’t exactly flamethrowers; collectively, they posted a 22.0% strikeout rate, the fourth-worst mark in baseball. Instead, the team employed a bunch of pitchers who ran above-average ground-ball rates, helping them successfully manage the contact they did allow. As a group, they had the fifth-highest ground-ball rate and second-lowest barrel rate in baseball.

Bass was signed to a two-year deal last offseason, making him the highest paid member of this group. A surprising number of minor league free agents ended up making a solid contribution in the majors, and the rest were acquired via the same kind of under-the-radar trade that brought Head into the fold. Despite all their success this year, the average age of these relievers is 30.3 years old. It’s a competent collection of relievers assembled from the castoffs of other organizations, and Head fits in perfectly.
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The period between the end of the World Series and the official start of free agency is usually uneventful, with teams taking care of procedural moves to get their rosters ready for the long offseason. That wasn’t the case for the Reds. On the first day of the offseason, the team traded Tucker Barnhart to the Tigers for infield prospect Nick Quintana. A day later, Nick Castellanos exercised his opt-out clause, forgoing two more years in Cincinnati and $34 million in total salary to test the market. A few days later, the Cubs announced they had claimed a surprisingly available Wade Miley off waivers. It was a pretty eventful few days for the Reds, and they now enter the offseason with a lot more question marks hanging over their roster than they had before the Fall Classic’s conclusion.

All three of these moves have significant implications for the Reds’ payroll in 2022. In a media session after the Barnhart trade last Wednesday, Reds general manager Nick Krall explained the reasoning behind that move: “Going into 2022, we must align our payroll to our resources and continue focusing on scouting and developing young talent from within our system.” That same rationale explains why Miley was so freely available to the league on waivers. While Castellanos opting out of his two remaining years with the club was unsurprising after his phenomenal 2021, his $17 million salary next year is now off the books, and both Barnhart and Miley held club options for next season — $7.5 million for the former and $10 million for the latter.

Even though those comments from Krall are couched in business speak, it’s not hard to understand the direction the Reds are headed this offseason. After a hefty increase in payroll from just over $100 million in 2018 to a non-pro-rated $149 million in ’20, the Reds look like they’re about to cut spending for the second season in a row. Even with Castellanos, Barnhart, and Miley off the roster, their estimated payroll for 2022 currently comes out to $131 million, $10 million over their final payroll figure for this season and just $17 million below the franchise high-water mark from 2020.

Given that payroll number and their comments, the Reds probably don’t have much room to add any players to address the numerous holes on their roster. They currently have just over $70 million in salary committed to five players in 2022: Joey Votto ($25MM), Mike Moustakas ($16MM), Sonny Gray ($10.7MM), Eugenio Suárez ($11.3MM), and Shogo Akiyama ($8MM). And that doesn’t take into account the 10 players due to receive a raise in salary arbitration this offseason. It’s likely they’ll try to move Moustakas, Gray, or another one of their high-priced players to free up further salary space. But this isn’t a case of addition by subtraction; the Reds are taking steps to field a team that constitutes a significant step back from the competitive rosters from the last two seasons. Read the rest of this entry »