The blur of Winter Meetings activity has come and gone, as today we continue our position-by-position, league-by-league look at hitter contact quality, using granular exit-speed and launch-angle data. Last time, we looked at AL shortstops. Here, we switch leagues and examine their senior-circuit counterparts. Stick around until the end for a brief look at the Red Sox blockbuster acquisition of Chris Sale, at very heavy prospect cost.
This year’s Rule 5 draft came and went yesterday, with 18 players selected in the major-league phase of the draft. All the players selected will need to spend the entire 2017 season on their new team’s active roster (or disabled list). Otherwise, they have to be offered back to their original team.
Here’s how the minor leaguers selected grade out by my KATOH system. KATOH denotes WAR forecast for first six years of player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses similar a methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.
Player listed in order of draft selection.
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Miguel Diaz, RHP, San Diego (Profile)
KATOH: 0.7 WAR
KATOH+: 0.7 WAR
Scouts love Diaz’s stuff, but it took him five years to get to the Low-A level and he wasn’t particularly dominant there in 2016. He pitched to a 3.71 ERA in 95 innings as a swingman with pedestrian strikeout and walk numbers. Every organization has several players with Diaz’s statistical profile, but the Padres think there’s more to Diaz than his stats.
With the new CBA in place and the Winter Meetings now complete, we continue our ongoing position-by-position look at hitter contact quality. Last time, we examined National League second basemen. Today, it’s American League shortstops in the spotlight. As usual, this analysis utilizes granular exit-speed and launch-angle data as its foundation. As an added bonus, I’ll toss in my take on the Yankees’ signing of Matt Holliday to a one-year deal at the end of the article.
About a month ago at this site, Dave Cameron argued that any offers for Andrew McCutchen this offseason would likely reflect McCutchen’s potential for a rebound from a poor and (until recently) anomalous 2016 season. Last week, Jeff Sullivan argued that the Washington Nationals represented an ideal fit for McCutchen. Finally, this past week, it seemed — for a time, at least — as though a deal between the Pirates and Nationals would come to fruition, with the latter club prepared to offer major prospects for the former’s star.
The deal didn’t happen, though, and the Nationals, after having negotiated for and failing to get Chris Sale from the White Sox, ultimately acquired Adam Eaton from that same team. That haul, or something close to it, could have gone to Pittsburgh in the Pirates’ quest to contend beyond 2017. This seems like a bad outcome for the Pirates, but it could prove to be a blessing in disguise for a team that still has a shot at contention next season.
The conventional wisdom around the Pirates’ interest in trading McCutchen is that they perhaps know something the rest of us don’t about one of the best players of the last decade. From 2011 through 2015, Andrew McCutchen averaged nearly seven wins above replacement per season. That’s a Hall of Fame-level peak, but last season, McCutchen’s bat went from spectacular to slightly above average. Add in below-average defense, and at the still-young age of 29, McCutchen went from Hall of Fame to below average in the blink of an eye. Given the height of the aforementioned peak, it’s entirely reasonable to expect a bounce-back season for McCutchen. That Pittsburgh would move McCutchen might suggest that the bounce back isn’t quite as likely as one might think. I’m not so sure.
The Pirates are in a unique situation: they have a corner outfielder in Starling Marte who could play quite capable defense in center field, another young corner outfielder in Gregory Polanco who has improved in his time in the majors, and one of the best prospects in baseball in Austin Meadows, who also plays the corner outfield. Marte is locked up through 2021 on a cheap, team-friendly deal. Polanco is in the same situation through 2023, and if the team calls up Meadows sometime in 2017, they will retain his services through the 2023 season. Andrew McCutchen has two team-friendly seasons left, totaling $28.5 million. While his 2016 campaign was disappointing, his value on the trade market remains incredibly high.
Brian Dozier had himself quite the 2016 season. If you want to be technical, you could say he had quite the second half of the 2016 season, but that’s splitting hairs — he was still pretty good in the first half. It wasn’t historically superlative, but for second basemen in this millennium, it was pretty impressive. Now the Minnesota Twins have essentially made him available, and “four to five” teams are said to be interested in acquiring his services. Let’s take a look at who those teams could be.
As of yesterday afternoon, both Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen had been courted by the Yankees. Both had received offers. And both those offers were believed to exceed the four-year and $62 million deal that had just rendered Mark Melancon the most well-compensated relief pitcher in history.
Brian Cashman said his preference was for Chapman because, among other reasons, Chapman wouldn’t cost a draft pick, and the closer had pitched well in New York. Cashman told MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch that he “[didn’t] believe that Jansen would have any issues pitching in New York either, but it’s nice to have that box checked, too.” You have to figure Champan’s 100 mph fastball certainly helped matters.
Cashman got his wish. Chapman is a Yankee once again, to the tune of five years and $86 million. There are reasons the deal makes sense from a baseball point of view. It’s also possible that the spectacle of Chapman’s velocity will have some marketing value. Hal Steinbrenner himself has reportedly stated that he liked the buzz Chapman created at the stadium. By those criteria, it’s possible that they choose wisely, and I’ll address those points in a moment.
Just one day after they dealt away Chris Sale for an impressive crop of young talent, the White Sox continued their tear-down yesterday by flipping Adam Eaton for another nice haul. This time, they landed three young pitchers (roughly in order of consensus future value): Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning.
Here’s how the minor leaguers headed to Chicago grade out by my KATOH system. KATOH denotes WAR forecast for first six years of player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses similar a methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.
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Lucas Giolito, RHP (Profile)
KATOH: 5.8 WAR (47th overall)
KATOH+: 10.8 WAR (9th overall)
Giolito is one of those cases where the scouting reports outstrip the on-field performance. Scouts have long raved about Giolito’s fastball-curveball combination, and he parlayed it into dominance at the lower rungs of the minor leagues in 2014 and 2015. He was a consensus top-five prospect at this time last year, but things got a little rough for him in 2016.
The White Sox continued adding to their suddenly robust farm system yesterday, acquiring a trio of pitching prospects from Washington in exchange for star outfielder Adam Eaton. Below are my scouting reports on the prospects involved. Lucas Giolito (60 Future Value) will slot in behind Yoan Moncada on the next revision of the White Sox prospect list, the completions of which I might delay until Rick Hahn’s purge of the major-league roster appears complete. Reynaldo Lopez will slot between Michael Kopech and Zack Collins as a 55 FV, while Dane Dunning will be the top 45 FV on the list.
The once Prodigious Lucas Giolito has more recently become the Enigmatic Lucas Giolito. While he remains one of baseball’s best pitching prospects after an inconsistent 2016, Giolito is no longer head-and-shoulders the game’s best. The opinions of scouts who saw Giolito this year make for an interesting collage of hope, fear, tempered expectations and patience, but all agree that front-end starter upside is still extant, if a bit less likely.
That kind of upside has been apparent since Giolito’s days at Harvard-Westlake, where, before suffering a season-ending elbow injury that would later require Tommy John surgery, he was generating potential 1-1 buzz and had a legitimate chance to become the first right-handed high-school pitcher ever taken with the draft’s first pick.
So the Nationals now have Adam Eaton. Adam Eaton is really good! Last year, after moving to right field, Adam Eaton put up a +6 WAR season, thanks to his defensive ratings going through the roof. Washington, though, has some guy named Bryce Harper in right field, so Eaton is going back to center field, where he played up until last year. That will allow Trea Turner to move back to shortstop. That’s the plan, anyway.
But maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe the Nationals would be better off if they kept Adam Eaton in right field.
You might remember that, last year, the Nationals didn’t get who they wanted. They made a strong run at Yoenis Cespedes, but they obviously didn’t win. They made runs at Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist, too, but they didn’t win there, either. They ultimately wound up with Daniel Murphy, and Murphy worked out fantastic. The season worked out fantastic. The Nationals pulled off a significant pivot.
There’s been more pivoting this week. The Nationals made a run at Chris Sale, and they lost to the Red Sox. They made a run at Andrew McCutchen, and they couldn’t reach an agreement. So the front office quickly turned to Adam Eaton. You could think of Eaton as being the Nationals’ Plan C, and he’s not so sexy a splash as the others. And yet he’s good, incredibly good, arguably even McCutchen-good, and he’s the newest star player on the Nationals’ roster. All the Sale talks made the deal move fast. It must have been an exciting trade to complete.
