The Oakland A’s are cruising in the standings, but their World Series hopes took a hit over the weekend with the news that their star third baseman, Matt Chapman, would require season-ending hip surgery. After missing games for nearly a week with an initial diagnosis of hip tendinitis, a second opinion led to the decision to shut him down for the rest of 2020 due to a torn labrum.

There’s nothing here that would constitute good news, but the loss of Chapman has a minimal impact on Oakland’s chances of reaching the postseason. The team’s not a mathematical guarantee, but with just 14 games left to play, they’d have to give up seven games in the standings to the Astros and eight to the Mariners. Plus, Oakland has already clinched the tiebreaker over the Astros — they’re 7-3 against Houston and they play no more games — which gives them a tiny bit more breathing room in the event of a historic meltdown.

Chapman’s play in 2020 was distinctly below his MVP-contending 2018 and 2019 standards, but his 1.3 WAR has still been enough juice to lead the team. It’s a testament to his power and defense that a .276 on-base percentage likely would have still resulted in an All-Star appearance, if such a game had been played this year. The year-to-year dropoff in his contact numbers is a bit concerning, but given the state of the 2020 season, I’m far less worried than I would be in a more normal year. Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Raymond knows the West. The team he does play-by-play for, the Texas Rangers, not only competes in the American League West, their inter-league schedule this year comprises solely the National League equivalent. As a result, Raymond has been getting regular looks at two of the game’s most talent-rich divisions. In terms of powerhouse clubs and marquee players, the West is arguably baseball’s best.

How would Raymond rank the teams and players he’s seen this season? That was the crux of a conversation I had with the TV voice of the Rangers prior to last night’s game.

———

David Laurila: Which is the best team you’ve seen this year?

Dave Raymond: “I’ve been really impressed with the Padres. They looked really good against us [in mid-August]. We may have gotten them right on the way to their peak — and that might have been us headed right to the trough — but they were really impressive. They have so much great young talent. There are guys like Jake Cronenworth who are hardly even noticed in the shadow of Fernando Tatis Jr. I mean, Cronenworth has to be the top rookie-of-the-year candidate right now, and he doesn’t even stand out on that team.

“Even Manny Machado. It looked like the energy of some of the young players is lifting him a little bit. He made some plays against the Rangers that were were pretty neat. You got a glimpse again of that young Manny Machado who won a Gold Glove and was more of the all-round player.

“But here’s my thought about the Padres: if you look at that lineup, find me the homegrown guy. He’s not there. It’s made up of all these pieces that were plucked from different organizations in trades and free agent signings. In kind of a perverse way, it’s really remarkable. I don’t think anybody sets out to build a championship team almost exclusively from other teams, but that’s kind of what they’ve done. And we just saw them, at the trade deadline, going out and aggressively bringing in even more guys from other organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

For the last 15 years, Yusmeiro Petit has cast a spell over opposing hitters. He’s never thrown hard — his highest average fastball velocity was 89.6 mph in 2017, more than a decade into his career. He’s never been an All-Star, never received award votes. He’s been sketchy at times — his rookie season for the Florida (!) Marlins produced a 9.57 ERA. He didn’t pitch in the majors in 2010 or 2011. Through it all, however, he’s kept going, showed up and provided competent innings. He’s almost 36, and it feels like he might pitch until he’s 80.

That consistency is merely an illusion, however. When Petit first made the majors, he was pretty bad against lefties. Most righties get a little bit worse against left-handed batters; they strike out roughly two percentage points fewer opponents and walk roughly two percentage points more. Petit, on the other hand, turned into a pumpkin:

That split is through the end of 2017. I’m now going to do something that I strongly urge you not to do in your investigations of platoon splits — chop them up into smaller pieces. Since the beginning of the 2018 season, Petit’s platoon splits look different:

It’s a small sample, but I’m inclined to believe it. From 2008 (the beginning of pitch tracking data) to 2017, Petit threw his changeup to lefties 22.1% of the time. Since the beginning of 2018, he’s more or less doubled it, to 41.3%. Changeups are a righty’s best friend against lefties, so the improvement makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »

Just over a year ago, Mike Minor was the subject of much debate as far as whether the Rangers — a middling team as the deadline approached — should trade the lefty at or near the peak of his value given that he was pitching well and signed through 2020. Ultimately, the club chose not to move him, finished below .500, and saw his stock drop considerably with a rough start to the abbreviated 2020 season. On Monday, the Rangers did their best to salvage some value by dealing him within the AL West, sending him to the division-leading A’s along with cash considerations for a pair of players to be named later and international slot money.

While the players headed to Texas can’t officially be named since they weren’t part of the A’s 60-man pool, a source told The Athletic’s Levi Weaver that they’re a pair of 2019 draft picks: third-rounder Marcus Smith, a center fielder who was 27th among A’s prospects on THE BOARD, and 11th-rounder Dustin Harris, a third baseman who did not crack the list of 39. More on them below.

Per the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Jeff Wilson, the Rangers are also sending Oakland half of Minor’s remaining salary (about $1.4 million remaining, prorated from his $9.5 million full-season salary) but are getting back $133,000 worth of international slot money. Interestingly enough, though interest in Lynn was said to be very high, so was their asking price, to the point that they again kept him

As for Minor, the 32-year-old southpaw entered 2020 riding a streak of three strong seasons since returning from a two-year absence from the majors (2015-16) caused by May 2015 surgery to repair a small tear in his labrum. He threw 77.2 innings out of the bullpen for the Royals in 2017, good for 2.2 WAR, then signed a three-year, $28 million deal with the Rangers. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

This week, key players on two American League playoff contenders made mistakes pertaining to COVID-19 protocols that will cost them significant chunks of the shortened 2020 season. Cleveland starting pitchers Mike Clevinger and Zach Plesac — two key members of what has been the majors’ most effective rotation thus far — were both placed on the restricted list by the team and ordered to self-quarantine for three days after sneaking out of the team hotel in Chicago. Meanwhile, Oakland center fielder Ramón Laureano was suspended for six games by Major League Baseball for his part in a bench-clearing incident that occurred in Sunday’s game against Houston.

The two situations are different in their particulars, but they share some commonalities. In a normal season, the actions of these players might not have generated more than a series of stern lectures behind closed doors, and whatever suspensions they led to would have been blips on the radar amid a 162-game schedule. However, the pandemic has necessitated new rules and regulations — over 100 pages of them in MLB’s 2020 Operations Manual — and all three players crossed lines that not only violated those rules but increased the risk of infection for themselves and their teammates. Their punishments have been amplified, perhaps disproportionally, albeit as a warning to other players.

The saga of the Indians’ starters unfolded in stages. On Sunday, the team sent Plesac, a 25-year-old righty with 24 major league starts under his belt, back to Cleveland after he left the hotel without permission and went out with friends on Saturday evening. As innocuous as it sounds, that’s now prohibited under the revised protocols MLB issued last week in the wake of outbreaks on the Marlins and Cardinals; any player wishing to leave the hotel on a road trip is required to obtain permission from the team’s compliance officer.

Plesac’s actions greatly upset both the Cleveland brass and his teammates. Mindful of the possibility that he had been exposed to someone with an infection and could trigger an outbreak, the team quickly moved to isolate him from the rest of the traveling party, arranging a car service to send him back to Cleveland. According to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Zack Meisel, both Plesac and the driver were given instant tests to ensure they were not already infected. Read the rest of this entry »

Sean Manaea began his start Wednesday night by allowing a home run on his first pitch of the game, and things only briefly got better. After Shin-Soo Choo’s lead-off blast, Manaea retired nine of the next 11 hitters he faced only to have trouble return again in the fourth. He gave up a single to Todd Frazier and a walk to Robinson Chirinos, followed by run-scoring hits from Nick Solak and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, before finally getting his first out of the inning in the form of a sacrifice fly by Rob Refsnyder. With four runs already in on six hits and a walk through 3.2 innings, Oakland manager Bob Melvin moved to his bullpen early, asking right-hander Burch Smith to get his team back on track.

“If you’re Burch Smith, you would love to be able to hand the ball off to somebody in the eighth inning,” A’s analyst Dallas Braden said on the broadcast as Smith tossed his warm-up pitches. In the moment, it sounded optimistic, maybe even a tad foolhardy. Saying something like that is a nice way to remind Oakland fans watching at home that a bad start does not mean hope is lost, and that their team is very much still in the game. But expecting any reliever to go get 11 outs when the starter could only achieve 10 is a pretty tough ask, especially when it’s a 30-year-old journeyman who owns a career ERA north of 6.00.

In reality, Braden almost got it exactly right. Smith pitched two outs into the seventh inning, retiring all 10 hitters he faced on just 33 pitches before Melvin replaced him with T.J. McFarland. McFarland gave up one hit and got two more outs, then Joakim Soria came into the game and retired the final five Rangers hitters of the night. In that time, the A’s hammered a total of four homers and came back to win the game, 6-4. The bullpen was asked to do the heavy lifting, and it did a near-perfect job at it.

That kind of performance has become the norm for the A’s over the first couple weeks of the 2020 season. Here are the most valuable ‘pens in baseball through Wednesday: Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and again I’ll conduct an interview that falls through the cracks. For one reason or another, the audio file ends up on the back burner long enough that its timeliness evaporates. Due to my neglect — and often to my consternation — the conversation never sees the light of day.

There are notable exceptions. Jordan Weems will reportedly be on Oakland’s Opening Day roster. In 2017 spring training, I’d talked to the then-24-year-old about his recent conversion from catcher to pitcher. He was in the Red Sox organization at the time, and while it was an interesting story… again, sometimes things fall through the cracks.

Fortunately I kept the audio, because it’s an even better story now. Nine years after Weems was drafted as a catcher out of a Columbus, Georgia high school, and seven months after he signed with the A’s as a minor-league free agent, he’s poised to make his major league debut as a reliever.

Weems was well south of the Mendoza line when his position player days ended midway through the 2016 season. The 2011 third round pick had a .119/.241/.134 line with Double-A Portland, and his OPS over 1,180 professional plate appearances was a paltry .568. He knew that his career was in peril, but at the same time, he wasn’t expecting a move to the mound. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I conclude my series discussing each team’s 60-man player pool with a focus on prospects. Previous installments of these rundowns, including potentially relevant context for discussion, can be found here:

AL East and Intro
NL East
AL Central
NL Central
NL West

Updating Previously-Covered Teams

A few teams have made significant player pool additions that merit discussion before I get to the AL West. Boston added Tanner Houck, Bryan Mata, Jay Groome, Jarren Duran and Jeter Downs to their pool. The Sox need to make 40-man decisions on all three of the pitchers on that list this offseason. Houck (who might debut this year) and Mata are virtual locks to be added to the 40, while Groome still hasn’t thrown very much as a pro and is far less certain. The good news for Boston (and the bad news for the scouting industry) is that even if Groome looks great, there’s no way for other teams’ scouts to know since they have no access to Sox camp. It’d take a rebuilding team with 40-man space for a developmental dart throw, led by decision-makers previously enamored with Groome (which might be tough to find since prospective Rule 5 picks are evaluated by pro departments, which haven’t seen much of him) to even consider taking someone like that and stuffing them on next year’s active roster. Downs and Duran have 2021 roster timelines.

The Mets also put several more pitching prospects in their pool: Thomas Szapucki, Jordan Humphreys, Franklyn Kilomé, and Matt Blackham. Szapucki, Humphreys and Kilomé are all TJ survivors who are on the 40-man and thus are a good bet to debut at some point this summer, potentially up for good in September. Blackham wasn’t on the Mets prospect list but sat 93-95 and touched 97 last year, and has 30-grade command. The Mets campsite hitters remain packed with veteran utility types more so than prospects.

I’ve mentioned a of couple teams as having a puncher’s chance to compete for postseason berths, in part because they’re in position to get unexpected, unusually strong performance from their bullpens. The White Sox late player pool additions — oft-injured Jacob Lindgren, Ryan Burr, former top 100 prospect Zack Burdi, new draft pick Garrett Crochet, and 2019 breakout guy Jonathan Stiever — are all candidates to pop and contribute to such a cause this year. Chicago also added Blake Rutherford, Luis Gonzalez and Micker Adolfo to their pool. I have low-end platoon grades on Rutherford (who might belong in a low-ball/high-ball platoon rather than a left/right one) and Gonzalez at this point, while it’s clear the org prioritized experimenting with Yermin Mercedes over just DH’ing Adolfo during camp, which I think is instructive for how they should be ordered on the club’s prospect list. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, a few days after the transaction freeze was lifted, we had our first mid-pandemic trade when the Padres acquired Jorge Mateo from Oakland for a Player to be Named Later. Let’s dig into this deal, which is more important mechanically than it is from a baseball standpoint.

The Padres sending a PTBNL to Oakland circumvents the stated 2020 restriction that only players who are part of the 60-man player pool may be traded. Even if the A’s and Padres already know who the player will be, announcing the deal with a PTBNL distinction enables Oakland to avoid using a player pool spot on the new prospect. It’s an indication that, whoever the player is or will be, they’re not currently in San Diego’s 60-man pool, otherwise they’d just have been announced as the trade piece. Since there will be no minor league season, we won’t have an awkward, Trea Turner or Drew Pomeranz situation where a team is rostering and developing a minor leaguer who they and the industry knows they’ll soon trade. Even if the PTBNL needs to be put on the 60 later this summer in order to complete the transaction, doing it at the last possible moment enables the teams to have that roster spot free for as long as possible. Read the rest of this entry »