As this year’s June amateur draft was about to get underway, The Sporting News published an article called Jo Adell Embraces Opportunity to Be Role Model for African-American Youth. The title was soon amended to include the word “Angels”: Anaheim selected the 18-year-old outfielder from Louisville, Kentucky, with the 10th-overall pick.

Adell’s intentions are admirable. Good role models are an asset to society, and as the son of an educator, the Ballard High School product understands that as well as anyone. He also knows that professional athletes — like it or not — serve as role models. Their words and actions influence others. With that influence comes responsibility.

Adell has a bright future in the game. Touted as a five-tool player — Byron Buxton has been a common comp — he slashed .325/.376/.532 over his first 222 professional plate appearances. That fact that those numbers came in Rookie ball stands out as meaningful. While Adell is talented, he’s also a few months removed from having received a high-school diploma. There’s still a lot for him to learn, and that includes how to go about being a role model as a professional athlete.

I asked a number of MLB players what advice they would give Adell with respect to his goal of becoming a role model, particularly for African-American youth.

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Chris Archer, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher: “Encouraging more black players to play baseball would be awesome. Baseball teaches you so many valuable life lessons. It’s not all about making it to the major leagues, but rather the opportunities that college may provide, or the life lessons you learn, like how to handle adversity.

“Being a role model is a large responsibility. If you want to be a role model, you’re not allowed to make mistakes. But the more role models you have — just in general — it’s going to be for the betterment of our community, our environment, and the world. My advice is to have the ability to speak out, but not be outspoken.”

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There’s dizzying loop hidden within the effort to build better baseball players. Because every player possesses a different body, it makes sense not to be prescriptive with mechanics. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions in baseball.

But there are still some underlying truths. All things being equal, power is good. Velocity is good. And so on. If coaching is tailored too closely to a perceived type, it might prevent the player from developing the sort of power or velocity to transcend that type. It’s possible that this is what happened to Andrelton Simmons for a few years.

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You wouldn’t believe what the Angels have had to deal with on the mound. I know that you wouldn’t believe it, because I’ve had trouble believing it, and I look at this stuff every day. The Angels aren’t the only team in baseball that’s had to work around pitcher injury and ineffectiveness, but their staff has been left in relative tatters, and still they’re pushing to advance to the playoffs. Now, when you’re thinking about the Angels, you have to think about Mike Trout, and he’s been very obviously the best player on the team. Andrelton Simmons, too, has had an outstanding five-odd months. But teams need to have some manner of pitching. The Angels have had to find ways to survive.

It’s the rotation that’s been depleted in particular. As I write this, the Angels rotation ranks 28th in baseball in WAR, with only the White Sox and Reds down below them. Out of curiosity, I pulled up every single individual team-season since 1950. For every team in every season, I identified the starting pitcher with the highest WAR. The Angels’ starter with the highest WAR this year stands at 1.2. That currently has the Angels ranked third from the bottom, in terms of having the worst best starter. And I should say, while there are a few weeks left to play out, that guy at 1.2 is done for the season. So if a pitcher will surpass 1.2, it’ll have to be somebody else. The 1983 Padres rank lowest, among teams that finished at least .500. Their best starter had a WAR of 1.6.

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So, things might be getting out of hand…

A lot of folks inside and outside the game don’t care for September roster expansion. After all, why play the game one way for five months, with one set of roster rules, and then in the most crucial month of the season change the limits of rosters?

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Two things are simultaneously true about the American League wild-card race. One, none of the teams, outside of the Yankees, are particularly good. Even the Yankees have their own flaws, but the rest of the teams in the mix are even weaker. One could argue whether any of them will deserve to be playoff teams at all. Two, there will be playoff teams. There will be, probably, the Yankees and someone else. No matter what you might think about team quality, playoff positions are at stake, and a playoff spot, for any club, holds considerable value. We don’t actually know how the playoffs will ever go. The biggest thing is just making it there. Plenty of AL teams are trying to make it there.

It’s with this year’s playoff race in mind that we’ve got the following trade:

Angels get

• Justin Upton
• moderate 2017 salary relief

Tigers get

• Grayson Long
• a player to be named later

The Angels are not a good baseball team, relative to other baseball teams. However, they don’t need to be good — rather, they just need to be good enough. Upton could well make them good enough, and because this trade was made official today, Upton, of course, would be eligible for the playoff roster. Upton’s contract does have another four years, but this trade is very much about today, tomorrow, and the weeks a little after that.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

8/28

Tom de Blok, RHP, Detroit (Profile)
Level: Low-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: NR  Top 100: NR
Line: 7 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
de Blok has been one of the more interesting stories in minor-league baseball this year. He was signed out of the Netherlands by Seattle in August of 2013, but he didn’t enjoy his time training in Arizona, some of his things were stolen, and de Blok retired during extended spring training the following year.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Michael Hermosillo, OF, Los Angeles AL (Profile)
Level: Triple-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 14  Top 100: NR
Line: 3-for-4, 2 HR, BB

Notes
Hermosillo, a 28th rounder in 2013, was a two-sport high schooler committed to play football at Illinois, but he was coaxed into pro ball by a $100,000 signing bonus. He opened up his stance a bit last year and hit fairly well during an injury-shortened regular season before heading to the Arizona Fall League, where his physical tools measured up nicely compared to some of baseball’s better prospects.

This year, Hermosillo’s in-box footwork has again been tweaked, and he’s deploying a slower, more committed leg kick. Hitters who have deployed a leg kick like this in recent years have noted that it not only unlocks more pull-side power but also improves their timing. This is what seems to have happened for Hermosillo, who’s now more consistent and comfortable in the batter’s box than he was last season. He’s patient, athletic, and might do enough offensive damage to project in more than just a bench outfield role if these changes have truly unlocked previously dormant physical ability.

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History was made on August 4. Technically, history was made again on August 13, and it was made again last night. It could be made again today, and it could be made further in any and every game hence. This is new history — expanding and developing history. It’s history without any limit. God only knows where the tally will stop. There is ever so much baseball to play.

Yet the moment of greatest significance occurred on August 4. Nearly two weeks ago, the Angels played a game against the A’s, with Troy Scribner starting opposite Jharel Cotton. It was a game I doubt that you watched, and it was an 8.5-inning game that somehow lasted more than three and a half hours. As the Angels batted in the bottom of the first, Mike Trout came up with one down and picked up an infield single on a grounder to short. That brought to the plate Albert Pujols, and Cotton gave Pujols a first pitch that he liked. Pujols saw the pitch, and he swung at it. His swing still basically looks the same as it ever has. Pujols swung, and he even made contact. Another grounder to short. The result of this one was different.

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Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the American League West. I have notes beneath the top 10s explaining why some of these prospects have moved up or down. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards.

Houston Astros (Preseason List)

1. Kyle Tucker, OF
2. Forrest Whitley, RHP
3. Franklin Perez, RHP
4. Yordan Alvarez, 1B
5. Derek Fisher, OF
6. J.B. Bukauskas, RHP
7. Gilberto Celestino
8. Daz Cameron
9. Cionel Perez, LHP
10. Colin Moran, 3B

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Most of the time when we talk about Mike Trout, we ask if anybody has ever done what he’s doing. Sometimes the answer is Mickey Mantle or Ty Cobb or Albert Pujols, but a lot of the time the answer is no and what Trout is doing is unprecedented. Today, we are asking two related questions:

1. Could Mike Trout deserve the American League Most Valuable Player Award despite missing 39 games earlier this season?
2. Does Mike Trout have a realistic chance to win MVP despite missing 39 games earlier this season?

While answering the second question might help prove the first through precedent, let’s restrict ourselves in the first part to the value Mike Trout provides. On Friday, I talked about Jose Altuve’s candidacy for MVP and showed this chart:

Things have already changed considerably. This is what the top of that chart looks like now.

So Trout is currently projected to be the AL position player WAR leader at the end of the season. If he keeps up his current pace and gets close to the the 200 more plate appearances he is projected for, he is going to get above 8 WAR. Trout is currently above a 200 wRC+, a number that hasn’t been reached since Barry Bonds and done by only nine players in non-strike seasons in history. He will actually have to exceed his projections in PAs to qualify for the batting title, as he is currently set to fall eight short. Read the rest of this entry »