Tuesday was a busy day in the world of the White Sox. Slugger Eloy Jiménez underwent surgery to repair a ruptured left pectoral tendon, an injury that could sideline him for most of the season and alter the balance of power in the AL Central along the way. In an attempt to help offset the loss of Jiménez and to allow for some potential lineup flexibility in the near term, the team signed free agent infielder Jake Lamb to a major league deal. What’s more, general manager Rick Hahn announced that top prospect Andrew Vaughn has made the Opening Day roster, and could open the season in left field.

The 24-year-old Jiménez, who last year bopped 14 homers while batting .296/.332/.559 (140 wRC+), was injured on March 24 when he caught his left arm on the outfield wall while trying to rob the A’s Sean Murphy of a home run:

Jiménez is expected to miss five or six months following surgery, a devastating blow considering that he was projected to clout 36 homers and provide 3.0 WAR as the team’s left fielder. Alas, it’s not even his first significant absence due to an injury suffered while playing defense. In his 2019 rookie season, he missed over three weeks due to a high right ankle sprain suffered while crashing into an outfield wall in an attempt to prevent a home run, and then another 10 days after colliding with center fielder Charles Tilson and suffering a right ulnar nerve contusion. Read the rest of this entry »

Four years ago, the Rangers viewed Rougned Odor as a foundational piece, signing him to a six-year, $49.5 million extension. By the time he arrived at spring training this year, he’d lost his starting second base job, the result of a string of bad seasons and adjustments that simply hadn’t taken. The 27-year-old instead competed for the third base job, but on Monday, the team — which is in the midst of a multiyear rebuild after going 22–38 last season — told him and the rest of the baseball world that he would not make their Opening Day roster and will be designated for assignment, effectively ending a 10-year run with the organization that signed him out of Venezuela in 2011.

Odor hit just .167/.209/.413 with 10 homers — but just nine singles — in 148 PA last year; his .157 BABIP was the majors’ third-lowest mark among hitters with at least 120 PA. His 60 wRC+ wasn’t a career low, but it was the third year out of the past four that he was below 80, and his -0.3 WAR marked his second season in that span that he was below replacement level, though his 0.3 WAR in 581 PA in 2019 was hardly more acceptable. His 1.6 WAR while playing second is the lowest among the 19 players who have received at least 1,000 PA at the position over the past four seasons.

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Between the fireworks shows put on by 21-year-olds Juan Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr., and the big numbers put up by teammates Freddie Freeman and Marcell Ozuna, Ronald Acuña Jr. didn’t command as much attention as his talents merited last year. A two-week stay on the injured list didn’t help, particularly when it came to posting eye-opening counting stats. Even so, and even in abbreviated form, Acuña turned in his third straight stellar campaign. As he heads into his age-23 season, his place among the game’s elite shouldn’t be ignored.

Acuña entered the 2020 season on a high note, following up his 2018 NL Rookie of the Year campaign with his first as an All-Star. Playing in 156 games in 2019, he hit .280/.365/.518 (126 wRC+), bashed 41 homers and stole a league-high 37 bases in 46 attempts; three more steals, and he would have joined Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Alex Rodriguez, and Alfonso Soriano as the only members of the 40–40 club. Back in the Baseball Abstract days, Bill James introduced a simple stat called Power-Speed number, which takes the harmonic mean of a player’s home run and stolen base totals. Acuña’s 2019 season is tied for 16th overall, and sixth among players 25 or under:

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Yesterday, Kevin Goldstein and Brendan Gawlowski reviewed the state of things in left and center field across the majors. Today, Jay Jaffe turns his attention to right fielders.

It’s not the happiest inevitability to contemplate, but there will come a day in the future when Mike Trout will no longer be the best player in baseball. When that day comes — and we’re not saying it’s tomorrow, or even in 2021 — there’s a very good chance that one of the game’s top three right fielders will be the player who claims the crown.

Mookie Betts already outdid Trout for the 2018 AL MVP award with a single-season WAR (10.4) slightly higher than anything our Halo’d hero has mustered (a max of 10.2 in 2013), and he’s only heading into his age-28 season, having already done the Trout-like thing of surpassing the average Hall of Famer’s seven-year peak in WAR at his position. What’s more, Betts has now played a central role in two championships, having helped the Dodgers get over the hump in 2020’s pandemic-shortened season thanks in large part to his October heroics at the plate, on the basepaths, and in the field.

If it’s not Betts who dethrones Trout, it may very well be 22-year-old Juan Soto, a new convert to the position whose production to date and projection going forward both place him in the midst of inner-circle Hall of Famers. And if not Soto, then perhaps 23-year-old Ronald Acuña Jr., whose speed makes him a threat to become just the fifth member of the 40-homer, 40-steal club. A year ago, Dan Szymborski projected Acuña as the most likely heir to Trout’s title, though today Soto might be the one, with Fernando Tatis Jr. perhaps elbowing his way into the picture as well.

As a group, right fielders outproduced all other positions in wRC+ for the first time in the history of our splits (which go back to 2002) in 2019, with a 108 wRC+. In the pandemic-shortened season, with Cody Bellinger and Christian Yelich having switched positions, the group “slipped” to 106, five points below that of first basemen, but even so, good players having big years such as Michael Conforto and Bryce Harper, late bloomers like Mike Yastrzemski and Teoscar Hernández, and on-the-rebound players such as Wil Myers and Jason Heyward helped to uphold the position’s high standard for offense. Moves by Soto and Kyle Tucker, the maturation of Dylan Carlson and the return of Mitch Haniger should help keep that going, even if not all of the pandemic’s top producers can replicate last year’s punch. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, RJ McDaniel and Jason Martinez examined the league’s second and third basemen. Today, we wrap up the infield positions, starting with catcher.

It’s all in the framing. The baseball industry’s ability to quantify catchers’ skill at converting borderline pitches into strikes has had a noticeable effect on the player pool, weeding out good-hit, bad-defense backstops — where have you gone, Ryan Doumit? — while lowering the bar for what constitutes acceptable offense. The short season, with its small samples, was particularly weird in this regard, as Jeff Mathis, the majors’ worst hitter over the past decade or so, outhit eight catchers who had at least 60 PA.

Short-season anomalies aside, the change in offensive expectations has been particularly noticeable during the Statcast era. While catchers as a group combined for about a 91 wRC+ from 2008 (the start of the PITCHf/x era) through 2014, that average dropped a full four points from 2015-19 as teams became more focused upon this area, though last year’s 92 WRC+ probably owed to short-season weirdness. As that offensive bar has been lowered, the gap between the majors’ best framer and the worst has shrunk; where it was nearly 98 runs in 2008, and an average of 57 runs from 2009-14, the gap was about 34 runs from 2017-19, and just 9.2 runs last year. Prorating that last figure to 24.8 runs over a full season, here’s the picture:

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2:02	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! I’m back after a very abbreviated chat full of technical difficulties last week.

2:03

Jay Jaffe: I’ve been kind of scarce on FanGraphs this week because I was working on the first of my two Positional Power Rankings assignments, the catchers, but I did just publish something about Jacob deGrom’s Hall of Fame chances, inspired by numerous questions along those lines in this space. Enjoy! https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jacob-degrom-might-be-blazing-his-way-to-c…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Also, I am pleased to announce that I’m freshly vaccinated as of yesterday! As is my wife as of today! Yaaaay! Here’s hoping that if you haven’t gotten your first shot, it’s coming soon

2:04	Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show

2:06	Jay Jaffe: I don’t pay a ton of mind to it except that pitchers’ batting WAR is included in JAWS, because pitchers who can hit (and run the bases) well do have more value than ones who don’t. Zack Greinke, who has 5.1 bWAR for example, gets a nice little bump in his JAWS thanks to his offense.

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Given their blockbuster trade for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco, their additions of James McCann and Taijuan Walker, and their projected first place NL East finish, the Mets already had plenty of buzz about them this spring. As if they needed more, their best player, Jacob deGrom, has provided some during the Grapefruit League season by reaching triple digits with his fastball velocity. On Tuesday against the Astros, his heater reportedly reached 100 mph 11 times on the stadium scoreboard, topping out at 101 on a pitch to Alex Bregman.

This is nothing new for the 32-year-old righty, who hit 100 in his first outing of the spring on March 6, the same day he was named the team’s Opening Day starter. Statcast wasn’t available for that outing or his March 11 one (both of which also came against the Astros in a spring where travel restrictions limit the pools of exhibition opponents). Here’s a look at deGrom’s upper-level readings from Tuesday:

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It’s a race that currently means nothing because it hasn’t actually begun, but at this writing, the Brewers have inched ahead of the Cardinals in our projected NL Central standings, albeit by a whopping 1.3 wins, 82.1 to 80.9. It’s the kind of thing that happens as we tweak the playing time inputs based upon spring training-related news and updated assumptions, but it’s a reminder that the gap between the two teams — or really, the Central’s top four, including the Cubs (projected for 79.5 wins) and Reds (78.1 wins) — is very small. Any edge could be the difference between snagging a division title or sitting at home in October, particularly given the unlikelihood of the division generating a Wild Card participant.

In that light, the Cardinals’ rotation rates as a moderate concern, at the very least. Last year, the unit entered the season projected as the majors’ 16th best in terms of WAR, but St. Louis soon took significant hits. Just before the pandemic-delayed season got underway, the team lost Miles Mikolas for the year due to a flexor tendon strain that required surgery and Carlos Martinez to a COVID-19 diagnosis after one turn amid a season-halting outbreak, then wound up losing Dakota Hudson to Tommy John surgery late in the year. The Cardinals made the expanded playoffs in spite of their rotation, which tied for 19th in the majors (and placed 11th in the NL) with 3.1 WAR and delivered a 3.86 ERA and 4.55 FIP, with Adam Wainwright as their only starter to deliver more than 0.6 WAR, and that in his age-38 season.

Like the vast majority of teams, the Cardinals appeared as though they would benefit from a dip into the free-agent market for some rotation fortification. Yet they sat on their hands for most of the winter before re-signing Wainwright to a one-year, $8 million deal, and otherwise eschewed any outside help. They kicked the tires on James Paxton, Taijuan Walker, and Jake Odorizzi, but despite saving money elsewhere — particularly by declining Kolten Wong‘s $12.5 million option, cutting Yadier Molina’s salary (from $20 million to $9 million via his new one-year deal), and flat-out stealing Nolan Arenado from the Rockies in exchange for five bodies of varying warmth while getting Colorado to pay the entirety of his $35 million 2021 salary ($20 million of it deferred) — they watched each of those starters sign elsewhere.

And so the Cardinals head into battle with basically the same rotation as before, minus Hudson. The unit is again projected to rank in the middle of the pack, 14th in our Depth Charts at 11.3 WAR. Yet already two starters are dealing with minor injury issues, and it’s tough to ignore all of the various question marks.

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2:02	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! It’s nearly 70 degrees outside in Brooklyn and it’s taking all of the willpower I can muster to remain in front of the computer for this chat, but a commitment is a commitment, and I’m here. A bit of housekeeping before we launch this thing forward…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Today I’ve got a piece on the historical precedents for Juan Soto’s performance and what that could mean with regards to a contract extension and a spot in Cooperstown https://blogs.fangraphs.com/extending-juan-soto-all-the-way-to-coopers…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday, I took a look at the impact on the Yankees’ bullpen caused by the loss of Zack Britton, who’s having surgery to remove bone chip(s) in his elbow. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/loss-of-britton-puts-a-dent-in-yankees-bul…

2:05

Jay Jaffe: And in a trifecta, I took a look at the spring debuts of Shohei Ohtani, David Price, and Stephen Strasburg, and the implications for their respective teams .https://blogs.fangraphs.com/shohei-ohtani-is-on-the-comeback-trail/ https://blogs.fangraphs.com/david-price-is-ready-for-whatever-and-so-a… https://blogs.fangraphs.com/strasburgs-return-and-a-thumbnail-guide-to…

2:05	Jay Jaffe: I also spoke to RJ McDaniel about Ohtani for today’s FanGraphs Audio https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-joe-block-talks-pirates/ And now, on with the show.

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With Fernando Tatis Jr. landing a massive, jaw-dropping contract extension last month, all eyes are now on the game’s other 22-year-old phenom and his next step. Juan Soto has hit at an historical level during his three seasons in the majors, landing himself on leaderboards among legends like Williams, Foxx, Hornsby, Cobb, and Trout. Reportedly, the Nationals intend to offer him a long-term extension, one that could in theory make him the game’s next $400 million man — a contract befitting a player who has already taken significant strides towards Cooperstown.

That may seem like hyperbole, but it’s not. Though Soto has played only one full 162-game season from among his three, the statistical history of players who have done what he’s done at such a young age overwhelmingly suggests a Hall of Fame-level career, and the projections based on his performance… well, we’ll get to those.

The Dominican-born Soto reached the majors on May 20, 2018, still more than five months shy of his 20th birthday. The next day, in his second major league plate appearance, he homered off the Padres’ Robbie Erlin, and he hasn’t stopped hitting, though he did his best to warp the space-time continuum by homering in the June 18 leg of a suspended game that began on May 15. Soto completed his rookie season with 22 homers and a .292/.406/.517 (146 wRC+) line, then followed up with a 34-homer, .282/.401/.548 (142 wRC+) full-season showing. In the pandemic-shortened season, he became not only the youngest player to win a batting title but also the youngest to win the slash-stat triple crown, hitting .351/.490/.695 (201 wRC+) with 13 homers.

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