The 2019 Arizona Fall League rosters were (mostly) announced today, and we’ve created a tab on THE BOARD where you can see all the prospects headed for extra reps in the desert. These are not comprehensive Fall League rosters — you can find those on the AFL team pages — but a compilation of names of players who are already on team pages on THE BOARD. The default view of the page has players hard-ranked through the 40+ FV tier. The 40s and below are then ordered by position, with pitchers in each tier listed from most likely to least likely to start. In the 40 FV tier, everyone south of Alex Lange is already a reliever.

Many participating players, especially pitchers, have yet to be announced. As applicable prospects are added to rosters in the coming weeks, I’ll add them to the Fall League tab and tweet an update from the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account. Additionally, this tab will be live throughout the Fall League and subject to changes (new tool grades, updated scouting reports, new video, etc.) that will be relevant for this offseason’s team prospect lists. We plan on shutting down player/list updates around the time minor league playoffs are complete (which is very soon) until we begin to publish 2020 team-by-team prospect lists, but the Fall League tab will be an exception. If a player currently on the list looks appreciably different to me in the AFL, I’ll update their scouting record on that tab, and I may add players I think we’re light on as I see them. Again, updates will be posted on the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account, and I’ll also compile those changes in a weekly rundown similar to those we ran on Fridays during the summer.

Anything you’d want to know about individual players in this year’s crop of Fall Leaguers can probably be found over on THE BOARD right now. Below are some roster highlights as well as my thoughts on who might fill out the roster ranks.

Glendale Desert Dogs
The White Sox have an unannounced outfield spot on the roster that I think may eventually be used on OF Micker Adolfo, who played rehab games in Arizona late in the summer. He’s on his way back from multiple elbow surgeries. Rehabbing double Achilles rupturee Jake Burger is age-appropriate for the Fall League, but GM Rick Hahn mentioned in July that Burger might go to instructs instead. Sox instructs runs from September 21 to October 5, so perhaps he’ll be a mid-AFL add if that goes well and they want to get him more at-bats, even just as a DH. Non-BOARD prospects to watch on this roster include Reds righties Diomar Lopez (potential reliever, up to 95) and Jordan Johnson, who briefly looked like a No. 4 or 5 starter type during his tenure with San Francisco, but has been hurt a lot since, as have Brewers lefties Nathan Kirby (Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) and Quintin Torres-Costa (Tommy John). Dodgers righty Marshall Kasowski has long posted strong strikeout rates, but the eyeball scouts think he’s on the 40-man fringe. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday night, the Cardinals trailed the Brewers 5-3 entering the eighth inning. As the home team, St. Louis went back out on defense to start the frame. Lefty Tyler Webb retired the Brewers on eight pitches. Before the Cardinals could take their turn at the plate in the bottom of the eighth, however, it started raining. Confusion and more rain ensued.

Now, the Brewers had come up to bat in the top of the eighth, so the Cardinals were supposed to get a chance to at least finish the inning, right? That’s what the press box in St. Louis was originally told, but that statement was clarified.

As for the rule, MLB’s website states:

If a regulation game is terminated early due to weather, the results are considered final if the home team is leading. If the home team is trailing, the results are considered final if the game is not in the midst of an inning when the visiting team has taken the lead.

The rule is fairly clear that since the Brewers began the eighth inning with the lead, once the game is terminated, the Brewers get the win. A suspension to pick up the game at a later date wasn’t an option for this game. As Derrick Goold indicated above, general practice is to let the home team get as many cracks at scoring as the visiting team. If the game were to continue, the teams would have had to wait until at least 11:30 or 12, when the rain got lighter and died down. The Cardinals remained at home for their next game while the Brewers made the trip back to Milwaukee with an offday before their game on Friday. While I can’t say whether or not the result was fair, or look up all the instances in which games were delayed and then continued and to which this rule might have been applied, we can go back and look at all the instances when a game was terminated. Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike the other five divisions in the majors, the National League Central has spent 2019 in a constant state of upheaval. Four of the five teams have spent multiple days in first place, with none of the quartet being able to hang on to and solidify their lead. The division’s doormat, the rapidly collapsing Pittsburgh Pirates, spent nearly 15% of the season in first or second place. The Cincinnati Reds, the only team that hasn’t led the Central (I’m not counting the tie the morning after Opening Day), have the division’s second-best Pythagorean record.

In this environment, one might have expected to see significant wheeling-and-dealing at the trade deadline. While most of the National League could rightly claim to be in the Wild Card race, the Central teams jockeying for October baseball had the benefit of also being in a tight race for the division. Being able to draw the straight or the flush, the NL Central teams with 2019 postseason aspirations were incentivized to make an aggressive play for a Zack Greinke or a Trevor Bauer.

And the teams’ closeness wasn’t just a creation of the projections, either. On the morning of July 31, the Cubs and Cardinals were tied for first-place; the Brewers were a game back. ZiPS largely agreed that the Cubs had the strongest roster, enough to make the North Siders the favorite, but hardly a prohibitive one:

What ought to have made making significant upgrades more important for the Cardinals and Brewers is that hidden in the projections were signs that the Cubs were more dangerous at the end of July than they had been earlier in the season. Dial back to May 15 and the ZiPS projections only saw the Cubs roster as that of a .531 team, with the Brewers at .525 and the Cardinals at .519. That’s just under a two-game spread from top to bottom over the course of a 162-game season. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 trade deadline has passed and, with it, dozens of prospects have begun a new journey toward the major leagues with a different organization. We have all of the prospects who have been traded since the Nick Solak/Peter Fairbanks deal ranked below, with brief scouting snippets for each of them. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. Those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “From” column below. We’ve moved all of the players below to their new orgs over on THE BOARD, so you can see where they rank among their new teammates; our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline. Thanks to the scouts, analysts, and executives who helped us compile notes on players we didn’t know about.
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The Brewers came within one win of a trip to the World Series last year thanks in part to their stellar bullpen. The unit hasn’t been nearly so dominant this year, but with the team again battling for a playoff spot — at 56-52, they entered Wednesday in third place in the NL Central (two games out of first), and fourth in the Wild Card race (one game behind the Cubs and Phillies, who are tied for the second spot) — they’ve bulked up their relief corps by taking a flyer on a pair of Giants, Drew Pomeranz and Ray Black, albeit at the cost of middle infield prospect Mauricio Dubon.

Brewers get:

LHP Drew Pomeranz
RHP Ray Black

Giants get:

SS Mauricio Dubon

Back in 2010, the 6-foot-6, 240-pound Pomeranz was the fifth overall pick by the Indians. A variety of injuries, most notably recurrent biceps tendinitis, has dogged a nine-year major league career as he’s worn the threads (and sometimes frayed the nerves) of the Rockies, A’s, Padres, and Red Sox as well as the Giants. He enjoyed an impressive two-year run of success as a starter in 2016-17, making the NL All-Star team as a Padre in the former year before being dealt to the Red Sox (for righty Anderson Espinoza) just two days later, then serving as the second-best starter on Boston’s 2017 AL East champion squad. During that stretch, Pomeranz pitched to a 3.32 ERA and 3.82 FIP in 334.1 innings, with a 25.0% strikeout rate and 5.9 WAR.

Pomeranz has been unable to replicate that success as a starter, however, in part because he lost a couple ticks of velocity last year while missing time due to both a flexor mass strain and biceps tendinitis; in 26 appearances (11 starts) totaling 74 innings, he was torched for a 6.08 ERA and 5.43 FIP. After signing with the Giants as a free agent in January, the 30-year-old southpaw pitched acceptably in April but subsequently delivered diminishing returns; after carrying a 6.10 ERA and 5.58 FIP through the All-Star break, he was moved to the bullpen earlier this month. He’s made just four appearances there, totaling 5.1 innings, but in that time, he’s opened some eyes by allowing just one hit and one walk while striking out eight of the 16 batters he’s faced. Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago, Jesús Aguilar took the starting first base job in Milwaukee away from Eric Thames, hitting 35 homers and posting a 135 wRC+ as the Brewers rolled to a division title. This year, Aguilar’s struggles opened the job back up for Thames; Aguilar has been relegated to the weak side of a platoon. A strong month of July in part-time duty wasn’t enough to play him back into a starting role with the Brewers, but it was enough to get the Tampa Bay Rays interested and willing to part with a pitcher the Brewers can use for their own pennant drive. As first reported by Jeff Passan:

Brewers Receive

• RHP Jake Faria

Rays Receive

• 1B Jesús Aguilar

For the Rays, the need for a right-handed bat is obvious. The left-handed Austin Meadows and Nathaniel Lowe have been getting starts at first base and designated hitter against lefties, with Ji-Man Choi only playing against righties and catcher Travis D’Arnaud getting time at first as well. Aguilar and his righty bat should be able to relieve some of the poor matchups the Rays have found themselves in. Aguilar has bad splits against lefties this season, but that’s more likely a product of generally hitting poorly and some randomness than weird reverse platoon splits. And while his 2019 performance has been wanting, with an 82 wRC+, he’s shown some signs of putting things together over the last month, as the rolling wRC+ graph shows.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers and Pirates agreed to a minor trade on the Trade Deadline’s Eve-Eve, with Jordan Lyles heading to the Milwaukee Brewers for Double-A starter-turned-reliever Cody Ponce.

There’s little question that the Brewers are sorely in need of an additional starting pitcher for the stretch run. The rotation wasn’t exactly a source of strength for the team even before losing Jhoulys Chacin and Brandon Woodruff to abdominal injuries over the last week. With those two not expected to return quickly — Chacin isn’t expected until mid-August and it may take Woodruff into September — and the trade deadline approaching, the Brewers don’t have much margin for error. It would have been a phenomenal risk for the team to hope that the respective rehab stints of Brent Suter and Jimmy Nelson go extremely well, allowing them to arrive dramatically like Marshal Blücher at Waterloo.

Now, is Jordan Lyles the pitcher you want to bring in as your emergency replacement? That I’m less sure of. But I’m not as instantly dismissive as I normally would be of a pitcher sporting a 5.36 ERA. Lyles was actually quite effective for most of the season, his ERA not rising over four until his first start in July. His pummeling has been largely limited to three atrocious starts in which he allowed a total of 19 runs over 6 1/3 innings. He’s been bitten by both home runs (eight homers in four starts) and by BABIP (.556) and while he’s no doubt pitched poorly, he’s been that combination of lousy and unlucky. I’m not sure batters would have a .556 BABIP off a five-year-old pitching with the wrong hand.

For the season, Lyles has a 4.38 xFIP and ZiPS, which doesn’t just assume high home run totals are a fluke but looks at the detailed hit data, thinks he has allowed five more home runs than he ought to have based on those stats. StatCast’s data agrees with this, giving Lyles an xSLG against of .438, well below his actual .514. Read the rest of this entry »

Even before it began, the 2019 season seemed poised to become the year of the rookie hitter. That seems true every year nowadays, but it seemed especially so this year. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Fernando Tatis Jr. had a ton of anticipation surrounding their debuts, but there were other big names ready to introduce themselves as well. Eloy Jimenez was about to unleash his prodigious power upon the big leagues for the first time, Victor Robles was embarking on his first full season of showing off his game-changing speed in the majors, and Nick Senzel was going to finally try to put his injury problems behind him and show why he was the second overall draft choice in 2017. National prospect lists consistently laid out the excitement surrounding the next generation of great hitters, with our own Top 100 list featuring nine hitters in the top 10 prospects, and 17 in the top 20 (along with one two-way player).

Nearly two-thirds of the way through the season, many of those rookie hitters have shown the potential to carry the weight of a franchise on their shoulders. Unfortunately, most play for teams that won’t be challenging for postseason spots this season, so they will have to wait their turn to show off their talents in important fall baseball games. Others are playing on teams that will certainly be around in October, but they play at a spot that their organization was already doing quite well with. This piece isn’t about one of those guys, though. We’re here to talk about someone I think means more to his team’s postseason hopes than any other rookie in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been on something of a fastballs-down-the-middle kick recently. I hadn’t realized that it was possible to be so bad at hitting them until I looked into Wil Myers and his flailing ways. Then I started looking at a few underperforming hitters, and I was shocked by how many batters were missing middle-middle fastballs. Pitchers are throwing fastballs less often than ever before, and they’re designing new breaking balls every offseason. Meanwhile, some batters can’t handle a straight pitch in the center of the hitting zone. Baseball is weird sometimes!

Looking into these center-cut whiffs was baffling. There were a decent number of Jacob deGrom and Chris Sale fastballs on there, sure, but there were also plenty of replacement level relievers. Does the pitcher even have anything to do with it? Sure, Clayton Kershaw used to be great at throwing down the middle, but he’s thrown 96 pitches over the heart of the plate this year and gotten a paltry four swinging strikes. Aroldis Chapman excelled at it in 2016, but he’s thrown 43 of them this year and gotten only five swinging strikes. What if it’s a batter-centric phenomenon? Could it just be that batters sometimes miss because baseball is hard, regardless of pitcher?

Ha, no. Silly Ben. If you watched the 2018 playoffs, you’d already know: Josh Hader is the absolute king of throwing down the middle and coming out unscathed, and it’s not even close. Hader’s fastball is a magic trick, a sleight of hand performed on batters. In your head, he’s probably getting all his strikeouts at the very top of the strike zone or even a little above that, getting hitters to swing at pitches they can’t do anything with. That’s true, of course, but he’s also beating hitters when he messes up. Read the rest of this entry »

The last two offseasons have not been kind to Mike Moustakas.

After hitting a Royals franchise record 38 home runs in 2017, Moustakas went into free agency hoping to score a long-term deal. Months went by without a new contract. He was forced to settle in early March, taking a one-year, $6.5 million deal to return to Kansas City.

The Royals traded Moustakas to the Brewers midway through the 2018 season, ending his 12-year tenure with the organization. (Moustakas had been the Royals’ first round pick in 2007.) While he played well, his offensive production took a dip from the year prior. This was particularly true in the power department: Moustakas’ ISO fell from .249 to .208. He posted a 105 wRC+ and 2.4 WAR overall.

Due to improved defense, Moustakas was actually more valuable in 2018 than he was in 2017, but he faced similar issues in his attempt to procure a new contract. Again, Moustakas was forced to wait until late in the game to sign. A February 19 contract with the Brewers — a one-year, $10 million pact with a $7 million mutual option — to be the starting second baseman was the offer he ultimately accepted.

But now, after his second chilly free agency winter, Moustakas has stepped up his game, reaching a new level of offensive performance that we have not previously witnessed.

His numbers are better across the board. He’s already hit 22 home runs, just six shy of his 2018 season total. His 47-home run pace (per 650 PA) would result in a career-high. But in a larger sense, Moustakas has done more than just crank homers. He is getting on base at a higher rate and collecting more hits, many of which have been of the extra-base variety. His .390 wOBA would be a career-high, as would be his 140 wRC+. Moustakas has already produced 2.7 WAR, his highest total in four years and already the third-highest mark of his career. All of which is to say that Mike Moustakas has experienced an offensive surge, and I’m here to tell you why. Read the rest of this entry »